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<!DOCTYPE HTML>
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<HEAD>
<title>Chariots For Apollo, ch3-2</title>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
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<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
<p>
<h2>Proposals: Before and after May 1961</h2>
<p>
NASA Administrator James Webb in early 1961 had inherited an agency
assumption that direct ascent was probably the natural way to travel to
the moon and back. It was attractive because it seemed simple in
comparison to rendezvous, which required finding and docking with a
target vehicle in space. But direct flight had drawbacks, primarily its
need for the large rocket called Nova, which would be costly and
difficult to develop. And the direct flight mission, itself, had been
worked out only in the most general terms. At a meeting in Washington in
mid-1960, the first NASA Administrator, Keith Glennan, had asked how a
spacecraft might be landed on the moon. Max Faget of the Space Task
Group had described a mission in which the spacecraft would first orbit
the moon and then land, either in an upright position on deployable legs
or horizontally using skids on the descent stage. Wernher von Braun of
Marshall and William Pickering of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory JPL
thought it would be unnecessary to orbit the moon first. As Faget
recalled, "Dr. Pickering [said] you don't have to go into orbit; .
. . you just aim at the moon and, when you get close enough, turn on the
landing rockets and come straight in. . . . I thought that would be a
pretty unhappy day if, when you lit up the rockets, they didn't
light."<a href = "#source1"><b>1</b></a><p>
<p align=center>
<img src = "images/c063b.gif" width=454 height=280 ALT="Two landing techniques">
<p>
<cite>Sketched at the left are two landing techniques proposed for the
direct ascent mode.</cite>
<p>
<hr>
<p>
Direct flight also had supporters outside NASA. The Air Force had worked
since 1958 on a plan for a lunar expedition. Called LUNEX, this proposal
evolved from the earlier "Man-in-Space-Soonest" studies that
had lost out in competition with Project Mercury. Major General Osmond
J. Ritland, Commander of the Space Systems Division of the Air Force
Systems Command, viewed LUNEX as a way to satisfy "a dire need for
a goal for our national space program." When President Kennedy
announced on 25 May 1961 that a lunar landing would be that goal, the
Space Systems Division offered to land three men on the moon and return
them, using direct flight and a large three-stage booster. SSD believed
the mission could be accomplished by 1967 at a cost of $7.5 billion.<a
href = "#source2"><b>2</b></a><p>
<p align=center>
<img src = "images/c063a.jpg" width=539 height=399 ALT="Contending lunar landing modes">
<p>
<cite>Three principal contending lunar landing techniques were suggested
for the Apollo program: direct ascent, above left; earth-orbit
rendezvous, above center; and lunar-orbit rendezvous.</cite>
<p>
<hr>
<p>
Rendezvous appeared dangerous and impractical to some NASA engineers,
but to others it was the obvious way to eliminate the need for gigantic
Nova-size boosters. Foremost among the variants in this approach was
direct flight's chief competitor, earth-orbit rendezvous (EOR). The von
Braun group had revealed an interest in this mode when it briefed
Glennan in December 1958 - long before its transfer from the Army to
NASA. Von Braun had made a strong pitch for using EOR and the Juno V
later Saturn booster, painting a pessimistic picture of developing
anything large enough for direct ascent. Agreeing that direct flight was
basically uncomplicated, von Braun nevertheless said he favored
earth-orbit rendezvous because smaller vehicles could be employed. He
sidestepped the problems of launching as many as 15 Saturns in rapid
succession to rendezvous and dock in orbit to do the job,<a href =
"#source3"><b>3</b></a><p>
While working for the Army, the von Braun team published a study called
"Project Horizon." Billed as a plan for establishing a lunar
military outpost, Horizon justified bases on the moon in terms of the
traditional military need for high ground, but it emphasized political
and scientific gains as well. Again, the operational techniques would
require launching several rockets and refueling a vehicle in earth orbit
before going on to the moon.<a href = "#source4"><b>4</b></a> On 18 June
1959, NASA Headquarters had asked the Army Ballistic Missile Agency
(ABMA) for a study by the von Braun team of a lunar exploration program
based on Saturn boosters. In its report of 1 February 1960, ABMA
indicated there were several possibilities for a lunar mission, but only
two - direct flight and earth-orbit rendezvous - seemed feasible.
Reaffirming its authors' belief in rendezvous around the earth as the
most attractive approach, the report continued: "If a manned lunar
landing and return is desired before the 1970's, the SATURN vehicle is
the only booster system presently under consideration with the
capability to accomplish this mission."<a href =
"#source5"><b>5</b></a><p>
<p align=center>
<img src = "images/c063c.gif" width=496 height=340 ALT="Earth-orbit rendezvous">
<p>
<cite>Earth-orbit rendezvous.</cite>
<p>
<hr>
<p>
After transferring to NASA and becoming the Marshall Space Flight
Center, the von Braun group continued its plans for developing and
perfecting its preferred approach. In January 1961, Marshall awarded 14
contracts for studies of launching manned lunar and planetary
expeditions from earth orbit and for investigations of the feasibility
of refueling in orbit.<a href = "#source6"><b>6</b></a> By mid-year,
Marshall engineers were gathering NASA converts to help them push for
earth-orbital rendezvous.<p>
<p align=center>
<img src = "images/c064.gif" width=366 height=424 ALT="Lunar surface rendezvous">
<p>
<cite>In this proposed version of a lunar-surface-rendezvous procedure,
a propellant-transfer vehicle takes fuel from the tanker to a manned
space vehicle. After loading the fuel, the two astronauts would fire the
engine of their spacecraft to return to the earth.</cite>
<p>
<hr>
<p>
Across the country from Huntsville, another NASA center had different
ideas about the best way to put man on the moon. Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California, suggested a link-up of vehicles on
the moon itself. A number of unmanned payloads - a vehicle designed to
return to earth and one or more tankers - would land on the lunar
surface at a preselected site. Using automatic devices, the return
vehicle could then be refueled and checked out by ground control before
the crew left the earth. After the manned spacecraft arrived on the
moon, the crew would transfer to the fully fueled return vehicle for the
trip home. One of the earliest proposals for this approach was put
together by Allyn B. Hazard, a senior development engineer at the
laboratory. His 1959 scheme laid the groundwork for JPL's campaign for
lunar-surface rendezvous during the Apollo mode deliberations.<a href =
"#source7"><b>7</b></a><p>
Even before the President's May 1961 challenge, Pickering had tried to
sell lunar-surface rendezvous to NASA's long-range planners. Earlier
that month, he had met in Washington with Abraham Hyatt, Director of
Program Planning and Evaluation, to discuss this method of landing men
on the moon. "We seriously believe," he later wrote,
"that this is a better approach to getting man there quickly than
the approaches calling for a very large rocket." Pickering favored
this mode because the Saturn C-2 would be adequate for the job, unmanned
spacecraft could develop the techniques of vertical descent and soft
landings, NASA could space the launches months or even years apart, and
the agency need not commit the manned capsule to flight until very late
in the program (and then only if everything else was working properly).
He admitted that the small payload capability of the C-2 would restrict
the early missions to one-man flights but contended that "it is
easy to extend the technique for larger missions, as larger rockets
become available."<a href = "#source8"><b>8</b></a> Hyatt assured
Pickering that Headquarters would examine all suggested modes, while
confessing to a certain incredulity about this approach. "The idea
. . . leaves me with very strong reservations," Hyatt said.<a href
= "#source9"><b>9</b></a><p>
The fact that the United States had no large boosters in its inventory
caused several farfetched schemes to surface. One such proposal promoted
rendezvous and refueling while in transit to the moon, a concept pushed
persistently by a firm named AstraCo. During the summer of 1960, AstraCo
argued that this approach would "improve the mission capability of
fixed-size earth launch systems." At the request of Senator Paul H.
Douglas, NASA officials met with two of the company's representatives in
Washington on 6 December 1960. After a discussion of the physical
aspects of this kind of rendezvous and an analysis of fuel consumption
and weight factors, the visitors were told that NASA was not interested.
Three months later, on 14 March 1961, AstraCo took its case through
another congressman to the NASA Administrator, and Webb asked his staff
to take a second look. William Fleming and Eldon Hall calculated that
rendezvous while on the way to the moon would save very little more
weight and fuel than earth-orbit rendezvous and would be "far less
reliable and consequently far more hazardous." Fleming recommended
that this scheme be turned down, once and for all. Webb concurred.<a
href = "#source10"><b>10</b></a><p>
Another approach was the proposal to send a spacecraft on a one-way trip
to the moon. In this concept, the astronaut would be deliberately
stranded on the lunar surface and resupplied by rockets shot at him for,
conceivably, several years until the space agency developed the
capability to bring him back! At the end of July 1961, E. J. Daniels
from Lockheed Aircraft Corporation met with Paul Purser, Technical
Assistant to Robert Gilruth, to discuss a possible study contract on
this mode. Purser referred Daniels to NASA Headquarters. Almost a year
later, in June 1962, John N. Cord and Leonard M. Seale, two engineers
from Bell Aerosystems, urged in a paper presented at an Institute of
Aerospace Sciences meeting in Los Angeles that the United States adopt
this technique for getting a man on the moon in a hurry. While he waited
for NASA to find a way to bring him back, they said, the astronaut could
perform valuable scientific work. Cord and Seale, in a classic
understatement, acknowledged that this would be a very hazardous
mission, but they argued that "it would be cheaper, faster, and
perhaps the only way to beat Russia."<a href =
"#source11"><b>11</b></a> There is no evidence that Apollo planners ever
took this idea seriously.<p>
Amid these likely and unlikely suggestions for overcoming the country's
limited booster capacity came yet another plan, lunar-orbit rendezvous
(LOR), which seemed equally outlandish to many NASA planners. As the
name implies, rendezvous would take place around the moon rather than
around the earth. A landing craft, a separate module, would descend to
the lunar surface. When the crew finished their surface activities, they
would take off in the lander and rendezvous with the "mother"
ship, which had remained in orbit about the moon. They would then
transfer to the command module for the voyage back to the earth.<a href
= "#source12"><b>12</b></a><p>
Early in 1959 this mode was seen primarily as a way to reduce the total
weight of the spacecraft. Although most NASA leaders appreciated the
weight saving, the idea of a rendezvous around the moon, so far from
ground control, was almost frightening.<p>
Perhaps the first identifiable lunar-orbit rendezvous studies were those
directed by Thomas Dolan of the Vought Astronautics Division, near
Dallas. In December 1958, Dolan assembled a team of designers and
engineers to study vehicle concepts, looking for ways for his company to
share in any program that might follow Project Mercury. From mid-1959,
the group concentrated on lunar missions, including a lunar landing, as
the most probable prospect for future aerospace business. Dolan and his
men soon came up with a plan they called MALLAR, an acronym for Manned
Lunar Landing and Return.<p>
Dolan's group recognized very early that energy budgets were the keys to
space flight (certainly no radical discovery). It conceived of a modular
spacecraft, one having separate components to perform different
functions. Dolan said, "One could perceive that some spacecraft
modules might be applied to both Earth-orbital and lunar missions,
embodying the idea of multimanned and multimodular approaches to space
flight." With this as the cornerstone of a lunar landing program,
Dolan concluded that the best approach was to discard the pieces that
were no longer needed. And he saw no reason to take the entire
spacecraft down to the lunar surface and back to lunar escape velocity.
MALLAR therefore incorporated a separate vehicle for the landing
maneuver.<a href = "#source13"><b>13</b></a><p>
At the end of 1959 the Dolan team prepared a presentation for NASA.
Early in January 1960, J. R. Clark, Vice President and General Manager
of Vought Astronautics, wrote Abe Silverstein about Dolan's concept. The
MALLAR proposal, Clark said, considered not only costs and vehicles but
schedules. He also cited the advantages of the modular approach, mission
staging, and the use of rendezvous.<a href =
"#source14"><b>14</b></a><p>
Nothing came of the proposal, although Dolan tried to interest NASA in
MALLAR for the next two years. He found many technical people
sympathetic to his ideas, but he was signally unsuccessful in winning
financial support. He did get several small contracts from Marshall, but
these were intended to bolster Marshall's stand on rendezvous in earth
orbit. Vought tried in vain to win part of Apollo, first competing for
the feasibility study contracts in the latter half of 1960 and then, a
year later, teaming with McDonnell Aircraft Corporation on the
spacecraft competition. Because of these failures, Dolan and his group
gradually lost the support of their corporate management.<a href =
"#source15"><b>15</b></a> Thereafter, Chance Vought mostly faded out of
the Apollo picture - although the company competed (and lost) once more,
when the lunar landing module contracts were awarded in 1962.<a href =
"#source16"><b>16</b></a><p>
<p>
<hr>
<p>
<a name = "source1"><b>1</b>.</a> Maxime A. Faget, interview, Houston, 15 Dec.
1969; Ivan D. Ertel, notes on Caldwell C. Johnson interview, 10 March
1966. See also John M. Logsdon, "Selecting the Way to the Moon: The
Choice of the Lunar Orbital Rendezvous Mode," <cite>Aerospace
Historian</cite> 18, no. 2 (June 1971): 63-70.<p>
<a name = "source2"><b>2</b>.</a> U.S. Air Force, "Lunar Expedition Plan:
LUNEX," USAF WDLAR-S-458, May 1961.<p>
<a name = "source3"><b>3</b>.</a> Wernher von Braun, Ernst Stuhlinger, and
H[einz] H. Koelle, "ABMA Presentation to the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration," ABMA Kept. D-TN-1-59, 15 Dec. 1958, pp.
113-15.<p>
<a name = "source4"><b>4</b>.</a> U.S. Army, "Project Horizon, Phase I
Report: A U.S. Army Study for the Establishment of a Lunar Military
Outpost," 8 June 1959, vol. 1, "Summary": 1-3, 17-26; 2,
"Technical Considerations and Plans," passim, but esp. pp.
4-6, 139-41.<p>
<a name = "source5"><b>5</b>.</a> Army Ballistic Missile Agency, "A Lunar
Exploration Based upon Saturn-Boosted Systems," ABMA Kept.
DV-TR-2-60, 1 Feb. 1960, pp. 224-40.<p>
<a name = "source6"><b>6</b>.</a> House Committee on Science and Astronautics,
<cite>Aeronautical and Astronautical Events of 1961: Report,</cite> 87th
Cong., 2nd sess., 7 June 1962, p. 3; idem, <cite>Orbital Rendezvous in
Space: Hearing,</cite> 87th Cong., 1st sess., 23 May 1961, pp. 16-17; J.
Thomas Markley to Assoc. Dir., STG, "Trip report . . . on May 10,
11, and 12, 1961 to Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville), Chance
Vought (Dallas) and Douglas (Los Angeles)," 19 May 1961; Koelle to
Robert R. Gilruth, "Mid-tem (6-month) Contractor Reviews on Orbital
Launch Operations Study," 22 May 1961.<p>
<a name = "source7"><b>7</b>.</a> [Nicholas E. Golovin], draft report of
DoD-NASA Large Launch Vehicle Planning Group (LLVPG), 1 [November 1961],
pp. 6B-39 through 6B-42; Allyn B. Hazard, "A Plan for Manned Lunar
and Planetary Exploration," November 1959.<p>
<a name = "source8"><b>8</b>.</a> William H. Pickering to Abraham Hyatt, 22 May
1961.<p>
<a name = "source9"><b>9</b>.</a> Hyatt to Pickering, 31 May 1961.<p>
<a name = "source10"><b>10</b>.</a> William A. Fleming to Admin., NASA,
"Comments on In-transit rendezvous proposal by AstraCo," 5
April 1961; Charles L. Kaempen, "Space Transport by In-Transit
Rendezvous Techniques," August 1960; James E. Webb to James
Roosevelt, 26 April 1961.<p>
<a name = "source11"><b>11</b>.</a> Paul E. Purser to Gilruth, "Log for
week of July 31, 1961," 10 Aug. 1961; House Committee on Science
and Astronautics, <cite>Astronautical and Aeronautical Events of 1962:
Report,</cite> 88th Cong., 1st sess., 12 June 1963, p. 112; "Apollo
Chronology," MSC Fact Sheet 96, n.d., p. 19; John M. Cord and
Leonard M. Scale, "The One-Way Manned Space Mission,"
<cite>Aerospace Engineering</cite> 21, no. 12 (1962): 60-61, 94-102.<p>
<a name = "source12"><b>12</b>.</a> [Golovin], draft rept., pp. 6B-36 through
6B-39.<p>
<a name = "source13"><b>13</b>.</a> Thomas E. Dolan, interview, Orlando, Fla.,
14 Oct. 1968.<p>
<a name = "source14"><b>14</b>.</a> J. R. Clark to NASA, Attn.: Abe
Silverstein, "Manned Modular Multi-Purpose Space Vehicle Program -
Proposal For," 12 Jan. 1960, with enc., "Manned Modular
Multi-Purpose Space Vehicle."<p>
<a name = "source15"><b>15</b>.</a> Dolan interview; House Committee on Science
and Astronautics, <cite>Orbital Rendezvous in Space,</cite> pp. 16-17;
Markley to Assoc. Dir., STG, 19 May 1961; Koelle to Gilruth, 22 May
1961; "Participating Companies or Company Teams" in
"Partial Set of Material for Evaluation Board Use," n.d. [ca.
7 Sept. 1960]; NASA MSC, "Source Evaluation Board Report, Apollo
Spacecraft, NASA RFP 9-150," 24 Nov. 1961.<p>
<a name = "source16"><b>16</b>.</a> MSC, Apollo Spacecraft Program Off. (ASPO)
activity rept., 23 Sept.–6 Oct. 1962; H. Kurt Strass, interview,
Houston, 30 Nov. 1966.
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