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<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<title>Chariots For Apollo, ch1-3</title>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
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<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
<p>
<h2>The Starting</h2>
<p>
As part of its legacy NASA inherited the insight of an ad hoc Space
Technology Committee into what some of its research goals should be. At
the behest of James H. Doolittle, Chairman of NACA's Main Committee, in
February 1958 H. Guyford Stever of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology had headed a group that examined a wide variety of possible
space projects, giving NACA needed guidance for research into space
technology. Exploration of the solar system was seen as an arena where
man, as opposed to mere machines, would definitely be needed. When NASA
opened for business in October 1958, this recommendation in the Stever
Committee's final report gave the new agency a start on its basic
plans.<a href = "#source9">9</a><p>
Sending men beyond the earth's gravitational field, however, required
launch vehicles with weight-lifting capabilities far beyond that of the
Atlas, the only American missile that could lift the small Mercury
spacecraft into earth orbit. Moreover, there was nothing being developed
and very little on the drawing boards that could carry out the Stever
Committee's suggestion. Glennan was therefore willing to listen to
anyone who might provide a sensible booster development plan. On 15
December 1958, he and his staff sat in their headquarters in the Dolley
Madison House in Washington to be briefed by missile development leaders
from ABMA. Wernher von Braun and two associates, Ernst Stuhlinger and
Heinz H. Koelle, surveyed the capabilities of current and planned
boosters, their utility for various space missions, and ABMA's work on
launch vehicle design and operation. In essence, they described how
their agency might play a leading role in America's national space
program.<a href = "#source10">10</a>
<p align=center>
<img src = "images/c005.jpg" width=401 height=359 ALT="ABMA concept"><p>
<p>
<cite>A lunar-earth return vehicle as envisioned at the Army Ballistic
Missile Agency in early 1960 was drawn for Wernher von Braun's use in
an ABMA study, "A Lunar Exploration Program Based upon
Saturn-Boosted Systems."</cite>
<p>
<hr>
<p>
The theme of these presentations was manned landings on the moon. Koelle
emphasized the need for a few versatile space vehicles, rather than a
plethora of different models. ABMA offered a program for building a
family of these rockets. Koelle predicted that perhaps by the spring of
1967 "we will have developed a capability of putting . . . man on the
moon. And we still hope not to have Russian Customs there." He
stressed how neatly ABMA's launch vehicle program complemented NASA's
emerging manned space flight activity. "The man-in-space
effort," he said "dovetails with the lunar and cislunar
activities because you simply can't land a man on the moon before you
have established a man-in-space capability; that is quite clear."<a
href = "#source11">11</a><p>
Von Braun said ABMA preferred clustering engines in launch vehicles,
emphasizing that the multiengine concept of aviation was directly
applicable to rockets. Next he talked about plans for a multistage Juno
V - suggesting different propellants for particular stages - the most
ambitious rocket ABMA then contemplated.<p>
To answer, "What will it take to get people to the surface of the
moon and back?" von Braun described five techniques, direct ascent
and four kinds of rendezvous en route. Assuming the feasibility of
high-energy (liquid-hydrogen and liquid-oxygen) upper stages and a
capsule conservatively estimated at 6,170 kilograms, for direct ascent
"you would need a seven-stage vehicle which weighed no less than
13.5 million pounds [6.1 million kilograms]." Developing and flying
such a rocket was forbidding to von Braun.<p>
Instead of this enormous vehicle, he suggested launching a number of
smaller rockets to rendezvous in earth orbit. He proposed using 15 of
these, which "it just so happens," he said, wryly, "had
the size and weight of the Juno V." These boosters could place
sufficient payload in orbit to assemble a vehicle of some 200,000
kilograms, which could then depart for the moon. The lunar-bound craft
would be staged on the way, dropping off used tanks and engines as the
flight progressed - "in other words, leave some junk
behind."<a href = "#source12">12</a><p>
Next, Stuhlinger rose and said:
<blockquote><p>The main objective in outer space, of course, should be man
in space; and not only man as a survivor in space, but man as an active
scientist, a man who can explore out in space all those things which we
cannot explore from Earth.</blockquote><p>
He catalogued the unknowns of space vehicle components and research
objectives in materials and in protection against space hazards. What
happens, for instance, to metals, plastics, sealants, insulators,
lubricants, moving parts, flexible parts, surfaces, coatings, and
liquids in outer space? How could we guard men and materials from the
dangers of radiation, meteorites, extreme temperatures, corrosion
possibilities, and weightlessness? What kinds of test objectives, in
what order and how soon, should be established? "We . . . are of
the opinion that if we fail to come up with answers and solutions to
[these] problems, then our entire space program may come to a dead end,
even though we may have the vehicles to carry our payloads
aloft."<a href = "#source13">13</a> Although Glennan was impressed,
he knew that NASA's first tasks were Mercury and the giant F-1 rocket
engine.<p>
Congress had been seeking some consensus of what the nation should do in
space. At the beginning of 1959, the House Select Committee on
Astronautics and Space Exploration released a staff study,<cite> The
Next Ten Years in Space,</cite> reporting a poll of the aerospace
community on the direction of America's space program through the 1960s.
Prominent among projected manned programs beyond Mercury was circumlunar
flight. Those queried spoke confidently of this goal, saying it was only
a question of time. Not a single spokesman doubted the technical
feasibility of flying around the moon. Predictions spanned the latter
half of the decade, with expectations that manned lunar landings would
follow several years later.<a href = "#source14">14</a><p>
Glennan and Dryden, responding to congressional inquiry, subscribed to
this belief. They outlined NASA's plans in space sciences, the
application of space capabilities to the national welfare, and research
and development in advanced space technology. "There is no doubt
that the Nation has the technological capability to undertake such a
program successfully," they said. "There is a good chance that
[within ten years] space scientists may have circumnavigated the Moon
without landing and an active program should be underway to attempt a
similar flight to Venus or Mars. . . . Manned surface exploration will
be receiving serious research and development effort."<a href =
"#source15">15</a><p>
The NASA Administrator immediately asked for funds to begin designing
and developing a large booster, the first requirement for space
exploration. At the end of January 1959, NASA submitted to President
Dwight D. Eisenhower a report on "A National Space Vehicle
Program," in which the agency proposed four boosters, Vega,
Centaur, Saturn, and Nova.<a href = "#explanation1">*</a><p>
These rockets were expected to fulfill all foreseeable needs during the
next decade. Although Vega and Nova barely progressed beyond the drawing
board, all four were basic concerns for some time. Listed here in order
of their envisioned power, only the high-energy Centaur and the
multistaged and clustered Saturn systems were to be developed. During
January and February of 1959, the von Braun team's Juno V gained
substantial backing and emerged with a new name, becoming the first in
the Saturn family of rocket.<a href = "#source16">16</a><p>
NASA's research centers also had done some preliminary thinking about
what should follow Project Mercury. In the spring of 1959 Glennan,
wanting to encourage that thinking, created a team to study advanced
missions and to report its findings to him. The Goett Committee became
one of the foremost contributors to Apollo.<p>
<p>
<hr>
<p>
<a name = "explanation1">*</a> Vega and Centaur were upper stages for
launch vehicles. The Vega was either one or two stages (depending on the
payload to be lifted or moved about in space) and used conventional
fuels. Toward the end of 1959, Vega was canceled because it was too
similar to the Air Force Agena. NASA continued development of the
Centaur upper stage because of its more exotic propellants, hydrogen and
oxygen, which promised lifting power far beyond the weight of its fuel
load about 40 percent greater than possible with conventional rocket
fuels like kerosene. It was not until 1966 that the agency had some
confidence that the vehicle could be trusted for manned flights.<p>
Saturn and Nova were multistage launch vehicles, not clearly defined
during NASA's first three years and often described in ways that made it
difficult to tell which was which (see page 47). Some Apollo program
participants contend that the Saturn V, eventually selected, was very
close to what would have been a Nova had the agency chosen it.<p>
<p>
<hr>
<p>
<a name = "source9"><b>9</b>.</a> NASA Special Committee on Space Technology
[Stever Committee], "Recommendations regarding a National Civil
Space Program," 28 Oct. 1958.<p>
<a name = "source10"><b>10</b>.</a> Wernher von Braun, Ernst Stuhlinger, and
H[einz] H. Koelle, "ABMA Presentation to the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration," ABMA Rept. D-TN-1-59, 15 Dec. 1958.<p>
<a name = "source11"><b>11</b>.</a> Ibid., pp. 34-35, 46.<p>
<a name = "source12"><b>12</b>.</a> Ibid., pp. 64, 113, 115. See also Koelle et
al., "Juno V Space Vehicle Development Program (Phase I): Booster
Feasibility Demonstration," ABMA Rept. DSP-TM-10-58, 13 Oct. 1958;
idem, "Juno V Vehicle Development Program (Status Report - 15
November 1958)," ABMA Rept. DSP-TM-11-58, 15 Nov. 1958.<p>
<a name = "source13"><b>13</b>.</a> Von Braun, Stuhlinger, and Koelle,
"ABMA Presentation to NASA," pp. 129, 132-33, 139, 140-45.<p>
<a name = "source14"><b>14</b>.</a> House Select Committee on Astronautics and
Space Exploration, <cite>The Next Ten Years in Space, 1959–1969: Staff
Report</cite>, 86th Cong., 1st sess., H. Doc. 115, 1959, p. 3.<p>
<a name = "source15"><b>15</b>.</a> Ibid., pp. 118-22.<p>
<a name = "source16"><b>16</b>.</a> [Milton W. Rosen et al.], "A National
Space Vehicle Program: A Report to the President," NASA, 27 Jan.
1959; John B. Medaris, <cite>Countdown for Decision</cite> (New York:
Putnam, 1960); David S. Akens, <cite>Saturn Illustrated Chronology:
Saturn's First Eleven Years, April 1957 through April 1968</cite>, 5th
ed., MHR-5 (Huntsville, Ala.: Marshall Space Flight Center, 20 Jan.
1971), p. 3; General Dynamics/Astronautics, <cite>A Primer of the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Centaur</cite> (San
Diego, February 1964), pp. 1-29.<p>
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