1957 to Mid-1961

The orbiting of Sputnik I in October 1957 stirred the imagination and fears of the world as had no new demonstration of physics in action since the dropping of the atomic bomb. In the United States the effect was amplified by realization that the first artificial satellite was Russian, not American. Yet the few scientists and engineers working in Project Vanguard and other U.S. space projects were surprised only at the actual timing. Indeed, they had already considered means of sending man around the moon.

Modern rocket technology dates from the Second World War; the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles in succeeding years resulted in machines that could eventually launch vehicles on space missions. In this same time, man’s flying higher, faster, and farther than ever before suggested that he could survive even in space. Sputnik I caused alarm throughout the United States and the ensuing public clamor demanded a response to the challenge.¹ During the next year, many persons in government, industry, and academic institutions studied means and presented proposals for a national space program beyond military needs. After decades of science fiction, man himself, as well as his imagination, moved toward an active role in space exploration.

Concurrently with the formation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in late 1958 - a year after the first Sputnik² - a proposal (which became Project Mercury) was approved to fly man in near-earth orbit.³

Forging a National Space Agency

The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, passed by Congress in July of that year, said nothing about the moon or manned space flight. In its declaration of policy and purpose, however, the general objectives were to improve and use aeronautical and space capabilities “for the benefit of all mankind.” If achieving international leadership in space meant that this nation would have to fly men to the moon, the Act encouraged that ambition. ⁴ Clearly NASA, as the nonmilitary agency of the United States, would be responsible for furthering the national interest in space affairs. But the new agency required more than just a charter before the President and the Congress could turn it loose on a task requiring a vast acceleration of activity and a large commitment of national resources.

Much of the preliminary planning for Project Mercury had been done by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), NASA’s predecessor. NASA’s first Administrator, T. Keith Glennan, president of Case Institute of Technology (on leave), set about organizing and using the heritage of experience and resources that had carried Mercury from the planning stage into actuality. His deputy, Hugh L. Dryden (former Director of NACA), planned and executed policy decisions during NASA’s first few years. Abe Silverstein, who came from NACA’s Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, was assigned by Glennan to manage a coordinated program for a stable of rocket boosters to suit a variety of space missions. ⁵

The White House had approved plans to develop big boosters, but Glennan knew that would not be enough. He wanted organizations that had participated in developing these vehicles, and toward this end he laid plans for the eventual transfer of the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and of the Army’s Wernher von Braun team (Army Ballistic Missile Agency; ABMA) into the NASA family. In January 1959, Wesley L. Hjornevik, Glennan’s assistant, pressed the Administrator to “move in on ABMA in the strongest possible way . . . because it is becoming increasingly clear that we will soon desperately need this or an equivalent competence.” Although JPL came into the fold soon after the agency opened for business, a year and a half passed before Glennan persuaded the Eisenhower administration to consign a portion of ABMA and some of its facilities, later named the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, to NASA. ⁶

In addition to the oldest NACA laboratory - at Langley Field, Virginia, across Hampton Roads from Norfolk - and the other two NACA laboratories - Ames, at the lower end of San Francisco Bay, and Lewis, in Cleveland - NASA inherited the NACA authorization to build a center for development and operations. Dryden was well aware of the applied research character of Langley, Ames, and Lewis. He was anxious to insulate these former NACA centers from the drastic changes that would come while shifting to actual development in NASA’s mission-oriented engineering. Space science, mission operations, and, particularly, manned space flight should, he thought, be centralized in the new facility to be built near Greenbelt, Maryland. To direct Project Mercury, Glennan established the Space Task Group,a semiautonomous field element under Robert R. Gilruth. When the new center was completed, the Mercury team would move to Maryland. ^* In May 1959, Glennan announced that this new installation would be called the Goddard Space Flight Center in commemoration of Robert H. Goddard, the American rocket pioneer. ⁷

Besides the NACA personnel, programs, and facilities, NASA acquired, by transfer, ongoing projects from the Army (Explorer), Navy (Vanguard), and Air Force (F-1 engine). ⁸ These were worthwhile additions to the new agency; to comply with the language and intent of the Space Act, however, NASA had to plan a long-range program that would ensure this country’s preeminence in space exploration and applications.

The Starting

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.⁹

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.¹⁰

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.”¹¹

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.

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.

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.”¹²

Next, Stuhlinger rose and said:

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.

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.”¹³ Although Glennan was impressed, he knew that NASA’s first tasks were Mercury and the giant F-1 rocket engine.

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, The Next Ten Years in Space, 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.¹⁴

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.”¹⁵

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.^*

These rockets were expected to fulfil 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.¹⁶

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.

The Goett Committee

On 1 April 1959, NASA Headquarters called for representatives from its field centers to serve on a Research Steering Committee for Manned Space Flight, headed by Harry Goett, an engineering manager at Ames who became Director of the new Goddard center in September. Goett and nine others^* began their deliberations in Washington on 25 May. Milton W. Rosen, NASA Chief of Propulsion Development, led off with a report on the national booster program. Next, representatives of each center described the status of work and planning toward man-in-space at their respective organizations.¹⁷

Laurence K. Loftin, Jr., said that 60 percent of Langley’s effort pertained to space and reentry flight research; Maxime A. Faget, of the Space Task Group, discussed Mercury’s development. Alfred J. Eggers, Jr., told the group what Ames was doing and then advocated that NASA’s next step be a spacecraft capable of flying two men for one week, with enough speed to escape the earth’s gravitational pull, fly to the moon, orbit that body, and return to the earth.

Bruce Lundin described propulsion and trajectory studies under way at Lewis and warned against “setting our sights too low.” As Glennan and Dryden had done, Lundin took a broad view of space exploration, reminding the committee that a manned lunar landing was merely one goal, leading ultimately to manned interplanetary travel.

It was apparent that NASA leaders intended to aim high. Faget, one of the inventors of the Mercury capsule, and George Low urged manned lunar landings as NASA’s next objective. Low stressed study of ways to perform the mission, using several of the smaller Saturns in some scheme besides direct ascent to avoid total dependence upon the behemoth that Nova might become. The Goett Committee then recorded its consensus on the priority of NASA objectives:

1. Man in space soonest - Project Mercury
2. Ballistic probes
3. Environmental satellite
4. Maneuverable manned satellite
5. Manned space flight laboratory
6. Lunar reconnaissance satellite
7. Lunar landing
8. Mars-Venus reconnaissance
9. Mars-venus landing¹⁸

The next meeting of the Goett Committee was at Ames 25-26 June. Going into details about technical problems and their proposed solutions as seen from different pockets of experience around the country, the members heartily endorsed moon landing and return as NASA’s major longrange manned space flight goal. As Goett later remarked:

A primary reason for this choice was the fact that it represented a truly end objective which was self-justifying and did not have to be supported on the basis that it led to a subsequent more useful end.¹⁹

At this meeting, the Goett Committee members compared direct ascent with rendezvous in earth orbit. At Low’s request, John H. Disher first reviewed the sizable activity at Huntsville. In February 1959, the Department of Defense had announced that development of the 5,800-kilonewton (1.3-million-pound-thrust) rocket had been designated Project Saturn. Less than six months later, Disher reported, the von Braun group already had its sights set on a Saturn II (a three-stage version with an 8,900-kilonewton 2 million-pound-thrust] first stage) and rendezvous in earth orbit, even working on some modes that called for refueling in space. Von Braun’s team was also studying a Nova-class vehicle for direct ascent.

Lundin then made some disquieting comments. For direct flight to the moon, propulsion needs were staggering. Even with cryogenic propellants in the upper stages of the launch vehicle, the combined weight of rocket and spacecraft would be about 4,530 to 4,983 metric tons - a formidable size. He also noted that prospects for earth-orbital rendezvous seemed little brighter; such a procedure (launching more than a dozen Saturn-boosted Centaurs to form the lunar vehicle) required complex rendezvous and assembly operations. Lundin ticked off several areas that would need further study, regardless of which mission mode was chosen: cryogenic storage in space, a throttleable lunar-landing engine, a storable-propellant lunar-takeoff engine, and auxiliary power systems.^{** 20}

On 8 and 9 December 1959 at Langley, Goett’s group met for the third (and apparently last) time. The main discussions centered on lunar reentry heat protection, all-the-way versus assembly-in-orbit, parachute research, environmental radiation hazards, and the desirability of or necessity for a manned orbiting laboratory. Most of the field center studies were predicated on a two-man, 14-day circumlunar flight, boosted by some sort of Saturn vehicle and protected by ablative shielding. Very little specific thought, however, had been given to the actual lunar landing.²¹

Opinion within the committee on what NASA’s next (as opposed to its long-range) program should be had been far from unanimous, however. Langley, which by this time had begun extensive studies of space station concepts and related problems including rendezvous, strongly favored earth-orbital operations.^*** Faget was allied with Langley, because the Space Task Group was greatly concerned about the unknowns in lunar operations, especially radiation. But Goett and Low remained unswerving in their advocacy of lunar flight. They insisted that the technology for flying to the moon could be applied to near-earth missions, but not vice versa. Indeed, Low perhaps more than any other pushed for landing rather than just circumlunar flight, but neither the committee as a whole nor the chairman was willing to go that far. “In fact,” Low later said, “I remember Harry Goett at one time was asked, ‘When should we decide on whether or not to land on the moon? And how will we land on the moon?’ And Harry said, ‘Well, by that time I’ll be retired and I won’t have to worry about it.’ “²²

Although the time had come for someone in authority to start making the decisions that could lift the moon mission out of the realm of research and start it on the path toward development, Glennan could not commit the agency to any specific long-range programs, especially lunar flight. Knowing that the President’s intent to “balance the budget, come hell or high water,” would preclude anything beyond Project Mercury just then, Glennan bided his time. Without executive approval, NASA could only continue its studies and wait for a more propitious moment.²³

Focusing the Aim

The Goett Committee did only what it was set up to do - study possible options and suggest objectives that NASA might pursue - but its findings did focus attention on manned circumlunar flight. Well before the committee discontinued its meetings, small groups at nearly all of the field centers had taken the initiative and started research toward that goal.

For example, during the summer of 1959, Gilruth formed a New Projects Panel within the Space Task Group under H. Kurt Strass.^* Meeting twice in August, the panel members identified a number of areas for research and recommended that work begin immediately on an advanced manned capsule, a second-generation spacecraft crewed by three men and capable of reentering the atmosphere at speeds nearly as great as those needed to escape the earth’s gravitational pull. The group was clearly planning a lunar spacecraft. Convinced that this should be the Space Task Group’s next major project, the members further agreed that manned lunar landing should be the goal to design toward, and they assumed 1970 as a suitable target date.²⁴

At the third meeting of the panel, on 28 September, Alan Kehlet presented some ideas for a lenticular reentry vehicle. (Later, he and William W. Petynia worked out enough details to apply for a patent on a capsule that appeared to be formed by two convex lenses and looked like a flying saucer.)²⁵

The thinking of the New Projects Panel - and that was all Gilruth intended it to do, think - may have been premature, but it pointed out the need to raise the level and amount of manpower invested in planning advanced spacecraft systems.^** At a Space Task Group management meeting on 2 November 1959, Gilruth assigned Robert O. Piland, Strass, John D. Hodge, and Caldwell Johnson to delve into “preliminary design of a multiman (probably 3)” circumlunar spacecraft and into mission analyses of trajectories, weights, and propulsion needs.²⁶

Piland’s group focused on circumlunar flight as NASA’s immediate objective. The team members dealt mostly with spacecraft design, but they also dipped fairly deeply into mission analyses. They adopted the idea of flying directly from the earth to the moon’s surface. Again, however, these studies by the Space Task Group at Langley were only part of similar efforts going on concurrently at NASA Headquarters, at Langley, at Ames, at Lewis, and at several industrial contractors’ plants. After the thinking, the task of picking and choosing what to do would begin.²⁷

At Headquarters, toward the end of 1959, the Office of Program Planning and Evaluation, headed by Homer J. Stewart, drew up a “Ten Year Plan.” Much of it, especially the part dealing with manned flight, evolved from the Goett Committee’s priority list. In addition to a program of unmanned lunar and planetary exploration, it called for manned circumlunar flights and a permanent space station in earth orbit by the late 1960s. Lunar landings were projected for some time after 1970.

The Headquarters plan recommended developing more powerful engines and fitting them to huge Nova-class launch vehicles, as the most practical means of getting to the moon. Studies of rendezvous in space were under way as a part of the Saturn vehicle lunar mission analysis, but Stewart’s group anticipated that manned lunar exploration would depend on Nova.²⁸

To clarify some of the thinking about designing manned spacecraft and missions for them, Administrator Glennan in December 1959 set up another in the long string of committees (and there would be a plethora of these before Apollo took on its final form), this time to try to define more precisely just what would make up the Saturn rocket systems. With Abe Silverstein as chairman, this group consisted of Colonel Norman C. Appold of the Air Force, Abraham Hyatt and committee secretary Eldon W. Hall of NASA, von Braun of the Army’s ABMA, George P. Sutton of the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Thomas C. Muse of the Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering. There had been a lot of talk about what kinds of propellants to use in the vehicle’s upper stages. The Lewis laboratory had researched the potentials of liquid hydrogen in combination with liquid oxygen throughout the mid-1950s. Department of Defense and NASA research was aimed at prototypes of the Centaur rocket to prove the worth of these high-energy, low-weight propellant systems. The most important result of the committee was that Silverstein and his team hammered out a unanimous recommendation that all upper stages should be fueled with hydrogen-oxygen propellants. This determination, like many others, was a significant piece of the launch vehicle puzzle.²⁹

Calendar year 1959 had been fruitful for those who saw the moon as manned space flight’s next goal. NASA’s leaders were coming around to that viewpoint and, on 7 January 1960 in a meeting with his staff, Glennan concurred that the follow-on program to Project Mercury should have an end objective of manned flight to the moon.³⁰ NASA had its ten-year plan to present to Congress and a reasonable assurance of getting President Eisenhower’s approval to speed up the development of a large launch vehicle.

Priming the Pipeline

“You are hereby directed . . . to accelerate the super booster program for which your agency recently was given technical and management responsibility,” Eisenhower wrote Glennan in January 1960. This action ensured the transfer of the von Braun group from the Army Ballistic Missile Agency to NASA,³¹ giving Glennan the launch vehicle development and management capability that he wanted.

Eisenhower’s letter to Glennan was the first indication that the administration might approve something beyond Mercury. At least, Glennan interpreted it that way and told Silverstein, Director of NASA’s Office of Space Flight Programs, to encourage advanced design teams at each field center and in the aerospace industry. Plans soon came in from both of those sources. In February 1960, von Braun’s team distributed its latest study, “A Lunar Exploration Program Based upon Saturn-Boosted Systems.”³² A month earlier, J. R. Clark of Vought Astronautics, the Dallas, Texas, division of Chance Vought Aircraft, Inc., had sent Silverstein a brochure, “Manned Modular Multi-Purpose Space Vehicle,” the work, primarily, of Thomas E. Dolan. The booklet outlined a unified, systematic approach to a national space exploration program leading toward a manned lunar landing mission.³³

In early 1960, with Mercury still unproved, chances of winning administration approval to move either of these proposals (or any others that surfaced) into the hardware development stage were small. On the other hand, no one was told to stop planning a payload that might fit atop the newly approved superbooster. In fact, on 15 February 1960, Silverstein told Gilruth to “work out a presentation similar to Vought using the] modular concept,” which simply meant designing separate pieces of the spacecraft for specific functions at different phases of a mission. Gilruth gave this task to Piland’s advanced design group, a somewhat more concrete assignment than that of the previous November.³⁴

Piland’s team pulled together some guidelines and began presenting them to all the NASA centers. Piland, Faget, Stanley White, and Robert Chilton spoke, answered questions, and distributed copies of their papers on the aspects of lunar mission planning, leaving the final summary to Gilruth’s Associate Director for Development, Charles J. Donlan. Donlan outlined the problems that could be foreseen and solicited “suggestions and proposals as to how best this effort can be carried out. . . . We would hope in the immediate future to obtain your views as to the problems each Center may concentrate on so that the whole NASA effort can be integrated as soon as possible.”

Donlan asked specialists at the NASA centers to study such critical areas as flight duration, optimum launch times, propulsion requirements, trajectory analyses, and the effects of the moon’s gravity on lunar orbits. He also cited the need for configuration studies of the lunar landing stage - “a one- or two-component lunar vehicle.”³⁵ While these briefing sessions were going on, Langley sponsored a conference on space rendezvous in May 1960. Participants from all of NASA’s organizations reviewed rendezvous studies under way and discussed likely avenues for further research. Although rendezvous would be invaluable for future manned space programs, until NASA secured funds for a rendezvous flight-test program, the centers would be limited to their own ground-based experiments. Langley was already engaged in studies.³⁶ John C. Houbolt, Assistant Chief of the Dynamic Loads Division, had formed a small group to study “soft rendezvous” - or how two vehicles could come together at the high velocities required for space travel without crashing into each other.³⁷

Toward mid-1960, committees and groups within NASA had done as much preliminary internal work as was profitable; John Disher and George Low persuaded Glennan that it was time to sponsor a NASA-Industry Program Plans Conference in late July to tell of NASA’s tentative plans. At one of the last briefings for this meeting, on 9 July, the Administrator approved the awarding of three feasibility contracts for advanced manned space flight studies.³⁸

Silverstein, one of those leading the charge toward more far-ranging flights than Mercury, had been looking for a suitable name for a payload for the Saturn rockets. None suggested by his associates seemed appropriate. One day, while consulting a book on mythology, Silverstein found what he wanted. He later said, “I thought the image of the god Apollo riding his chariot across the sun gave the best representation of the grand scale of the proposed program.” Occasionally he asked his Headquarters colleagues for their opinions. When no one objected, the chariot driver Apollo (according to ancient Greek myths, the god of music, prophecy, medicine, light, and progress became the name of the proposed circumlunar spaceships. At the opening of the conference on 28 July 1960, Dryden announced that “the next spacecraft beyond Mercury will be called Apollo.”³⁹

On 28 and 29 July 1960, 1,300 representatives from government, the aerospace industry, and the institutions attended the first in a series of NASA-industry planning sessions. During these two days, 20 NASA officials outlined the agency’s plans for launch vehicle development and potential projects for manned and unmanned spacecraft. Many of the invitees returned on 30 August to learn about plans for a circumlunar manned spacecraft program and three six-month feasibility contracts to be awarded later. Briefings by the Space Task Group’s top officials and planners, including Gilruth and Piland, emphasized that Apollo would be earth-orbital and circumlunar and would directly support future moon landings. Donlan wound up the afternoon with particulars of the Space Task Group’s procurement plan. Any interested company would be invited to a bidders’ conference in two weeks; formal proposals would be required four weeks later; and the study contracts would be awarded by mid-November.⁴⁰

Following the same general format, the bidders’ briefing at Langley on 13 September included a formal request for proposal, a statement of work, and some definite guidelines. Essentially, these ground rules were based upon the assumption that the Saturn booster could launch a lunar reconnaissance spacecraft that would support three men for two weeks.

Piland laid out four mission and vehicle guidelines: manned lunar reconnaissance; earth-orbital missions in conjunction with a space laboratory or space station; Saturn booster compatibility (spacecraft weight not to exceed 6,800 kilograms for lunar missions); and a 14-day flight time.

Faget stressed return, reentry, and landing: safe recovery from aborts; ground and water landings (with a capability for avoiding local hazards); 72-hour postlanding survival period; landing in preplanned locations; and auxiliary propulsion for maneuvering in space.

Richard S. Johnston presented three demands: “shirt-sleeve” environment, three-man crew, and radiation protection. He discussed the need of the crews for a safe environment and for atmospheric control.

Finally, Chilton presented guidelines for onboard command, emphasizing man’s role as an active participant in the mission and its influence on hardware design, and for communications tracking, discussing the ground facilities needed for flights beyond earth orbit. Altogether, these guidelines constituted what the Space Task Group would demand of the Apollo spacecraft.⁴¹

The Feasibility Studies

The Space Task Group had published the formal Request for Proposal on 12 September 1960. Eighty-eight firms sent representatives to the bidders’ briefing, but only sixty-three picked up forms. By 9 October, NASA had received 14 bids.^* Many aerospace firms teamed up, either in partnership or as subcontractors, to vie for the awards.

All bidders were told that even the losers should continue their efforts, thus strengthening their chances in competing for the hardware phase of Apollo. NASA assured them that the agency would not limit its choice of the designer and builder of the spacecraft to the three selected study contractors. Space Task Group people met later with representatives from the losing firms, discussed the weaknesses in their proposals, and offered to work with them informally to overcome these failings.⁴²

Donlan and contracting officer Glenn F. Bailey prepared a detailed plan for the orderly evaluation of proposals, to begin on 10 October. Five technical panels were set up, and Donlan was appointed chairman of the evaluation board. Besides Faget and Piland (with Goett and Gilruth as ex officio members), Donlan’s board consisted of Disher (NASA Office of Space Flight Programs), Alvin Seiff (Ames), John V. Becker (Langley), and Koelle (Marshall).⁴³

On 25 October, after the panels had compared the bidders’ proposals in trajectory analysis, guidance and control, human factors and radiation, onboard systems, and systems integration, Goett announced the winners: the teams led by Convair/Astronautics of San Diego, General Electric of Philadelphia, and the Martin Company of Baltimore. Contracts of $250,000 were awarded to each of the three.

Convair/Astronautics operated under a more complicated arrangement than the other two winners, using its Fort Worth division for radiation and heat protection, its San Diego plant for life support studies, the Lovelace Foundation and Clinic in Albuquerque for aerospace medicine, and the Avco Corporation’s Research and Advanced Development Division in Wilmington, Massachusetts, for data on reentry vehicle design. General Electric’s Missile and Space Vehicle Department teamed with Bell Aerosystems Company. Martin decided to go the whole route alone.⁴⁴

Members of the Space Task Group who monitored the three study contracts developed into a fourth group, working out their own advanced designs just as the contractors were doing. Jack Funk, Stanley H. Cohn, and Alan Kehlet, for example, concentrated on trajectory analysis; Chilton, Richard R. Carley, and Howard C. Kyle studied guidance and control; Johnston, Harold I. Johnson, C. Patrick Laughlin, James P. Nolan, Jr., and Robert B. Voas investigated the human factors area; and John B. Lee, Richard B. Ferguson, and Ralph S. Sawyer looked into designs for onboard systems. This sort of work gave them the confidence they needed to act as monitors for the study contractors and an opportunity to compare their designs with those submitted by industrial experts. Most significantly, perhaps, the systems integration crowd (members who were studying how all the pieces would fit together) - Caldwell Johnson, Owen E. Maynard, Strass, Robert E. Vale, and Kenneth C. Weston - soon decided that the Space Task Group’s own preliminary design was a good one.⁴⁵

When the time came to draw up early specifications for Apollo - the technical aspects of the program - NASA Headquarters left its spacecraft and booster design people alone. The tasks of these two groups, still in the preliminary stage, were so well separated that there was no real need as yet for any arbitration of the problems that might arise when Gilruth’s spacecraft group and von Braun’s launch vehicle team began putting their pieces of the space vehicle together.⁴⁶

Washington had, as a matter of fact, a more pressing problem on its hands: where to locate the center that would conduct future manned space flight activities. Glennan had begun to question the wisdom of moving the the Space Task Group to Goddard after Mercury ended. The new center was becoming more and more occupied with unmanned space science programs, which Glennan did not want to see diluted and engulfed by manned space flight. On 1 September 1960, Robert C. Seamans, Jr., replaced Richard Homer as Associate Administrator. That same day, Seamans talked with Glennan about the future home of manned space flight. Goett and Gilruth had discussed the matter and had concluded that Gilruth should ask for separate center status for his group.⁴⁷

At the end of the month, Glennan called for a special study of the relocation. A four-man team headed by Bruce Lundin began by collecting opinions from about 20 officials in the field and in Washington. Glennan’s order basically restricted the candidate sites to an existing major NASA installation near which a proposed life sciences center might be built, insisted that Mercury not be disrupted by the move, and recognized that Apollo would use contractor participation to a far larger extent than Mercury. Glennan also decreed that Marshall, Lewis, and the High Speed Flight Station were not to be considered, which left only Ames and Langley as possible sites.

Lundin and his teammates Wesley Hjornevik, Ernest O. Pearson, Jr., and Addison M. Rothrock found their task difficult. Senior NASA officials did agree that manned space flight would soon need a center of its own. But where it should be and how it would be integrated into existing facilities was, it seemed, going to be a major issue. Lundin’s group, after many administrative, political, and technical compromises, recommended rather weakly that manned space flight activity should probably be relocated in 1961 to Ames in California.⁴⁸

Gilruth, his technical assistant Paul E. Purser, and others leading the Space Task Group, who may not have been enthusiastic about the prospect of being uprooted from their Virginia homes, had little time to worry about a move. Mercury-Atlas 1 had exploded in mid-air on 29 July, and morale among its managers was at its nadir. Unless these troubles could be overcome there might be little point in moving-there might not even be a Mercury program, much less a more advanced project. Gilruth was hard pressed to spare even enough of his experts to proceed with the feasibility studies for Apo1lo.⁴⁹

The three successful bidders began discussions with the Space Task Group on the technical aspects of their tasks almost immediately, with General Electric visiting its Langley-based monitors first. Donlan appointed three liaison engineers to act as single points of contact for the studies: Herbert G. Patterson for General Electric, John Lee for Martin, and William Petynia for Convair. Monthly meetings between these special monitors and the contractors kept Donlan and Piland informed of progress.⁵⁰

The industry conferences and the awarding of the feasibility contracts attracted the attention of the White House staff. George B. Kistiakowsky, Eisenhower’s special assistant for science and technology, assigned Donald F. Hornig of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) to the chairmanship of a six-man ad hoc Panel on Man-in-Space.^** This Group would investigate both NASA’s activities thus far and its goals, missions, and costs in the foreseeable future. After several field trips, Hornig’s panel reported: “As far as we can tell, the NASA program is well thought through, and we believe that the mission, schedules and cost are as realistic as possible at this time.”

Obviously, the report continued, “any of the routes to land a man on the moon will] require a development much more ambitious than the present Saturn program,” calling not only for larger boosters but for lunar landing and takeoff stages as well. “Nevertheless . . . this new major step is implicit in the present Saturn program, for the first really big achievement of the man-in-space program would be the lunar landing.”⁵¹

The cost of the moon landing would be determined to a great extent by the effort to develop, build, and qualify an extra-large and undefined Nova. Basing its estimates on Saturn costs to date, the PSAC panel placed this figure anywhere from $25 to $38 billion. Rendezvous schemes, as then envisioned, would afford little fiscal advantage: “Present indications suggest that alternative methods . . . of accomplishing the manned lunar landing mission could not be expected to alter substantially the over-all cost.” In addition to its analysis of America’s booster program in relation to a lunar landing objective, Hornig’s panel summarized the worldwide significance of an expanded national space effort. “We have been plunged into a race for the conquest of outer space,” the group said:

As a reason for this undertaking some look to the new and exciting scientific discoveries which are certain to be made. Others feel the challenge to transport man beyond frontiers he scarcely dared dream about until now. But at present the most impelling reason for our effort has been the international political situation which demands that we demonstrate our technological capabilities if we are to maintain our position of leadership. For all of these reasons we have embarked on a complex and costly adventure.⁵²

Early in 1960 Glennan had established a Space Exploration Program Council to oversee program planning and implementation. Near the end of the year, Seamans thought it wise to convene that body. Goett, von Braun, William H. Pickering, Ira H. Abbott, Silverstein, Major General Don R. Ostrander, and Albert F. Siepert met with Seamans on 30 September for a briefing by George Low on “Saturn Requirements for Project Apollo.” Low posed five questions and defended his answers to them as proof of the realism of the proposed schedule for Apollo: (1) Will the spacecraft be ready in time to meet the Saturn schedule? (2) Will the spacecraft weight be within Saturn capabilities? (3) Are there any foreseeable technological roadblocks? (4) Will solar flare radiation prevent circumlunar flights by men? (5) What are the costs for this program?

To each of the five questions, Low made positive assertions of competence and capability. He argued that an Apollo circumlunar prototype spacecraft could be ready in three to four years, a production vehicle in twice that time. Space Task Group weight estimates showed a reasonable margin between the weight of the spacecraft and the payload the C-2 Saturn could be expected to boost. No insurmountable technological obstacles were anticipated, Low said, not even reentry heating or solar flare radiation. Low concluded that the current cost level of $100 million a year would eventually rise to approximately $400 million annually. All of these considerations, in his opinion, argued for an immediate decision to go ahead. But the fact that this planning aimed at lunar circumnavigation rather than lunar landing seemed to be blocking approval of Apollo. NASA’s top administrators appeared hesitant to fight for a mere flyby mission to the moon.⁵³

Low recognized this reluctance and on 17 October told Silverstein he was taking another tack:

It has become increasingly apparent that a preliminary program for manned lunar landings should be formulated. This is necessary . . . to provide a proper justification for Apollo, and to place Apollo schedules and technical plans on a firmer foundation..

To this end, said Low, he and Eldon Hall, Oran W. Nicks, and John Disher would try to establish ground rules for manned lunar landing missions, to determine reasonable spacecraft weights, to specify launch vehicle requirements, and to prepare an integrated development plan, including the spacecraft, lunar landing and takeoff system, and launch vehicles.⁵⁴

The Space Task Group, although still having difficulties with Mercury (in an attempted launch on 21 November, the first Mercury-Redstone had risen only a few centimeters off its pad), also moved to support a program that would be more than just a circumlunar flight. Gilruth had reorganized his people in September, setting up an Apollo Projects Office in Faget’s Flight Systems Division. After getting the feasibility study contracts started, Faget, Piland (head of the new office), and J. Thomas Markley attended an Apollo-Saturn conference in Huntsville, at which they reported progress on the contracts. Later that afternoon, Faget and von Braun agreed to work together on a plan to place man on the moon and not just in orbit around it.⁵⁵

Gilruth assigned Markley as liaison with Marshall. Spending most of his time in Huntsville, Markley learned the opinions of many of von Braun’s group on future vehicles and mission approaches and became well versed in their preference for rendezvous in earth orbit rather than direct flight, which would require vehicles much bigger than Saturn as then planned. In December, Markley reported to Donlan that Marshall was studying orbital assembly and refueling techniques and was planning to let contracts to industry for further studies on these subjects.⁵⁶

Portents for Apollo

During the latter part of the 1960 presidential campaign, Apollo (and even Mercury) faced a murky future. This period of doubt, caused by the imminent change in administrations, led Glennan to call a mid-October session at Williamsburg, Virginia, to wrestle with the question of future NASA programs. The attendees - including top management from Headquarters and all the centers - voiced varying opinions, but the need for a manned lunar landing program threaded throughout the discussions. Glennan observed that the decision on Apollo would have to wait until the new President took office, although he assumed there would be few changes, since space flight was surely a nonpartisan ambition. But the next month, November 1960, Glennan was still not sure that Apollo was ready to move beyond the study phase without more answers than all his committees and groups had yet produced. Before spending the $15 billion he estimated Apollo would cost, Glennan wanted the reasons for going to the moon - international prestige or whatever they might be - laid out more clearly.

With the coming of the new year, then, there was a measure of uncertainty. Assuming that manned space flight would have some part in John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” however, Glennan strengthened the chances for an Apollo program by announcing that the Space Task Group was a separate autonomous field element, responsible for all civilian manned space flight programs. Although the location of its permanent home was still unsettled - and Glennan favored Ames in California - Gilruth’s position was affirmed. On the heels of this move, Glennan called the Space Exploration Program Council together again, to talk with many of those who had been at Williamsburg. He still warned that an Apollo hardware contract lacked presidential endorsement, but he also conceded that NASA seemed to be inevitably headed toward a lunar landing mission.⁵⁷

During the first week of January 1961, Glennan waited in vain for some member of the incoming administration to get in touch with him about the transition. Meanwhile, Dryden and Seamans discussed the coming congressional budget hearings for fiscal 1962.^* At this time, they decided to formalize Low’s committee as the “Manned Lunar Landing Task Group.” The expanded team was to prepare a position paper to answer, in some depth, the questions, “What is NASA’s Manned Lunar Landing Program? . . . How much is it going to cost to land a man on the moon and how long is it going to take?”⁵⁸

Low and his committee (still primarily a Headquarters group - Hall, Nicks, Alfred M. Mayo, and Pearson - but now including Faget and Koelle as spokesmen from the field centers for the spacecraft and launch vehicle) met on 9 January. Seamans outlined the group’s task in detail. The members were to draft plans for a lunar program, describing both direct ascent and rendezvous, for use in budget presentations to Congress. They were to include cost and schedule estimates for both modes. Developing a plan for manned lunar landings was among NASA’s major objectives, the group was reminded, even though the program was not yet approved.⁵⁹

During the next four weeks, the committee labored over “A Plan for Manned Lunar Landing” and submitted it on 7 February. Low told Seamans that the report “accurately represents, to the best of my knowledge, the views of the entire Group.” No major technological breakthroughs, no crash programs, and no real physiological barriers were envisioned. The concurrent development of spacecraft and launch vehicle should lead, if financially supported, almost inevitably to a manned lunar landing in 1968 to 1970, they thought. Its costs ought to peak around 1966 and total about $7 billion. The big Saturn and bigger Nova boosters would be built and tested anyway, the group reasoned, and a manned space station in earth orbit would probably be extant by then. Low conceived Apollo in two phases: first, extended earth-orbital missions; second, circumlunar, leading to lunar landing missions.

The Low Committee stated that lunar landings could be made by using either direct-ascent or earth-orbital rendezvous modes. Launch vehicle development would determine how large a step NASA could take in space at any given time. Moon landings demanded launch vehicles that could lift from 27,200 to 36,300 kilograms into space fast enough to escape the earth’s gravitational pull. (The C-2 Saturn in the agency’s fiscal 1962 budget request would be able to boost no more than 7,000-8,000 kilograms to that velocity. It could thus send manned flights to the vicinity of the moon, but it could not land there and then return its cargo to the earth.) The committee cited two ways of getting this booster capability for manned landings, either refueling a number of C-2s in earth orbit or building a vehicle large enough to perform the mission directly from the ground. Although both appeared feasible, the earth-orbital-rendezvous scheme would probably be quicker. Accordingly, NASA must develop orbital operations techniques; refueling in orbit would probably be possible by 1967 or 1968.⁶⁰

And there the matter rested. Early 1961 was an unsettled period for NASA. With the country acquiring a new President and the agency a new Administrator, the prospect for moon flights was highly uncertain. But Kennedy was deeply interested in space. Before his inauguration, he had appointed an ad hoc committee, headed by Jerome B. Wiesner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to review the entire missile and space effort. The Wiesner Committee’s report, quite critical of the way Mercury was being managed and of NASA’s apparent bias in favor of manned space flight at the expense of the unmanned science programs, called for a stronger technical competency within NASA and a redefinition of goals.⁶¹ Because Wiesner had joined in the “missile gap” rhetoric during the November presidential campaign, his committee’s report the following January was suspect in some quarters. Nevertheless, it spurred NASA’s civil service workers to prove it wrong.

The Wiesner report also touched off a debate on the choice of a new leader for the space agency. Wiesner, like other scientifically oriented advisers within the administration, favored a proved and respected scientist-engineer. Shortly before his inauguration, however, Kennedy had delegated responsibility for space matters to Vice President-Elect Lyndon B. Johnson, long-time champion of America’s space programs in Congress and architect of the 1958 legislation that created NASA. In contrast to Wiesner, Johnson wanted a hard-driving, politically experienced administrator to preside over the agency. When he was named to head the powerful National Aeronautics and Space Council, Johnson won.

Glennan’s resignation from NASA was effective 20 January, but Kennedy did not announce his successor until the end of the month. In the interim, at the request of the White House staff, Dryden was Acting Administrator. On 30 January, the President ended a spate of speculation by naming James E. Webb as NASA’s new head. Quickly confirmed by the Senate, Webb was sworn in on 15 February. Dryden, whose continued service the new Administrator solicited, remained as Deputy Administrator, personifying scientific interests within the agency.

Dramatic changes for NASA seemed likely. Webb was a man with a long and varied background in government, industry, and public service. During the Truman era he had first been Director of the Bureau of the Budget (1946-1949) and later Under Secretary of State (1949-1952). With forceful demeanor, grandiloquent style, and a genius for extemporization, Webb soon became a familiar figure on Capitol Hill as champion of the space program and defender of the agency - and its fiscal interests - before Congress.⁶²

Webb met with his key officials from Headquarters and the field centers at NASA’s fifth semiannual retreat, in Luray, Virginia, 8-10 March 1961. He announced that Seamans would be the “operating vice president” of the agency and that the field centers would, in future, report directly to Seamans rather than to the major Headquarters staff offices, as in the past. There were hints of other significant changes that would be needed to manage a program the size of Apollo, once it was approved. Webb’s ideas were not hatched overnight but were founded, in part at least, on documents passed on to him by Glennan. The principal contribution was a study led by Lawrence A. Kimpton, Chancellor of the University of Chicago. Contained in the “Kimpton Report” were recommendations that the centers should report directly to the Associate Administrator, that formally established project offices should manage projects, and that NASA should rely more on contracting support. In 1961, many of these suggestions were implemented. Seamans’ new assignment was the first step along that path.⁶³

Testimony before congressional committees began at the end of February. George Low described Apollo both as an earth-orbiting laboratory and as a program for circumlunar flight that could lead to a manned lunar landing. Abraham Hyatt outlined NASA’s long-term objectives, with charts that showed large launch vehicle development as the pacing item.

Before Seamans and Low finished this round of testimony, a Russian test pilot named Yuri A. Gagarin circled the earth on 12 April in Vostok I. Congressional deliberations changed into direct demands to respond to the Russian challenge, just as they had in October 1957 after Sputnik I. Overton Brooks, chairman of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, said bluntly on 14 April, “My objective, and this is speaking individually, is to beat the Russians.” Seamans reminded the committee that Webb had told them only the day before that the cost of Apollo, without a crash program, would be between $20 billion and $40 billion over the next ten years. With an accelerated program, that figure could go even higher.⁶⁴

President Kennedy had begun strengthening the space program in late March. He sent Congress a revised fiscal 1962 budget for NASA, raising the agency’s funding more than $125 million over Eisenhower’s recommended level of $1.11 billion. Much of this increase was earmarked for the Saturn C-2 and the F-1 engine and was expected to speed up development of these important items significantly.^{** 65}

Seamans suggested even greater increases than NASA actually received. Given the funding levels he proposed, manned circumlunar flight with the C-2 would be feasible in 1967 rather than 1969. The F-1 engine, essential to an even larger launch vehicle, was the key to manned landings. “The first manned lunar landings,” Seamans stressed, “depend upon this chemical engine as well as on the orbital and circumlunar programs and “can be achieved in 1970 rather than 1973.” More money, he told Webb, “will increase the rate of closure on the USSR’s lead in weight lifting capability and significantly advance our manned exploration of space beyond Project Mercury.” Webb forwarded Seamans’ memorandum to President Kennedy on 23 March 1961, in response to a request for information about NASA’s plans.⁶⁶

While NASA’s leaders appeared to have pushed Apollo closer to an approved program, activities in the field had also accelerated. The Technical Liaison Groups formed to evaluate the three industrial studies had grown to include, part-time, virtually every senior engineer in the Space Task Group, as well as representatives from other NASA centers. By mid-February, feverish preparations were being made by Donlan’s office for separate midterm reviews of the Martin, General Electric, and Convair contracts. In March, the industrial teams came to Langley one by one and stood before a large audience who had come to hear what the contractors had to tell.

Each company followed roughly the same agenda: trajectory analysis; guidance and control; configuration and aerodynamics; heating; structures and materials; human factors; onboard propulsion; mechanical systems; and instrumentation and communications.

The NASA auditors commented on the presentations, each of which seemed a bit too general and lacking in the technical information the NASA planners wanted. Martin Company’s team, for instance, led by E. E. Clark and Carlos de Moraes, was complimented for its briefing on mechanical systems but chided for neglecting structures and materials analyses related to Apollo design requirements. The General Electric group, headed by George R. Arthur and Ladislaus W. Warzecha, scored high on human factors but low in its discussions of mission abort studies, instrumentation, and communications.⁶⁷

Faget was especially irritated that none of the contractors had proposed modifying and expanding the blunt-body, Mercury-style spacecraft. Some theoreticians had predicted that the hot gas radiation heating caused by Apollo’s greater reentry speeds would make this shape unacceptable, but experiments by Clarence Syvertson at the Ames Research Center indicated that these predictions would not materialize. In addition, Caldwell Johnson, Faget’s chief design assistant, had recently finished a study on the advantages of the conical, blunt-body command module over the designs of any of the three contractors. Willard M. Taub, of the same office, later recalled that the contractors, after the midterm review, “had to jump in real fast and come in with a new vehicle based on the [Space Task Group] version.” Conversely, Mel Barlow of Convair looked on the modified Mercury as only a slight technological advance. He said he was shocked to learn that NASA intended to keep that configuration.⁶⁸

While most of the Space Task Group labored under heavy operational pressures - the third Mercury-Atlas had failed almost as miserably as the first - the nine Technical Liaison Groups at Langley tried to clarify the engineering designs for a spacecraft that would circumnavigate, and perhaps land on, the moon. Although they acknowledged that Saturn C-2 (or its next larger version) should be capable of sending a large payload to that body, the questions of how large, by what route, and with what capacities were by no means settled or even well defined.⁶⁹

In early May of 1961, the first reports from the completed study contracts began arriving at the Space Task Group. All three contractors had spent considerably more than the $250,000 NASA paid them for the work.

Convair/Astronautics’ report depicted a three-module lunar-orbiting spacecraft. Command, mission, and propulsion modules were designed primarily for lunar orbit, with flexibility and growth potential built in for more advanced missions (such as a lunar landing) with the same basic vehicle design. A total Apollo cost of $1.25 billion over about six years was estimated.

The San Diego-based company had selected a lifting-body concept, much like one conceived several years earlier by Alfred Eggers of Ames for the return vehicle. The command module, with an abort tower attached through launch, would nestle inside a large mission module. What Astronautics proposed was similar in its mode of operation to the command and service modules that ultimately evolved for Apollo. Convair/Astronautics envisioned mission planning as building progressively upon many earth-orbital flights before attempting circumlunar and then lunar-orbital missions. Earth landings would be by glidesail parachute near San Antonio, Texas. Elementary experiments that would evolve into rendezvous, docking, artificial gravity, maneuverable landing, and an eventual lunar landing were foreseen. The study cost the contractor about $1 million, four times what NASA paid the company. The other two contractors spent even more of their own money.⁷⁰

General Electric’s study cost twice as much as Convair’s and featured a semiballistic blunt-body reentry vehicle. Had this configuration been selected, the payload sent to the moon would have resembled the nose cone flown on the early Saturn C-1. General Electric’s design capitalized upon hardware already almost ready to fly, but it did offer one innovation - a cocoonlike wrapping for secondary - pressure protection in case of cabin leaks or meteoroid puncture. Although General Electric did not estimate the final costs in its summary, the company was confident of achieving circumlunar flight by the end of 1966 and lunar-orbital flight shortly thereafter.⁷¹

The Martin Company produced the most elaborate study of the three. Martin not only followed all the Space Task Group guidelines, but also went far beyond in systems analysis. Focusing on versatility, flexibility, safety margins, and growth, this was the only study that detailed the progression of steps from lunar orbiting to lunar landing. Martin’s spacecraft would have been similar to the Apollo spacecraft that ultimately emerged. Later, when the hardware contract proposals were evaluated, Martin scored first on configuration design.

Martin recommended a five-part spacecraft. The command module was a flat-bottomed cone with a rounded apex and a tower for a tractor-rocket launch escape system. Behind the flat aft bulkhead were propulsion, equipment, and mission modules. Tradeoffs between weight and propulsion requirements led to the selection of a pressurized shell of semimonocoque aluminum alloy coated with a composite heatshield of superalloy plus charring ablator. Two crewmen would sit abreast, with the third behind, in couches that could rotate for reentry g-load protection and for getting in and out of the spacecraft. Flaps for limited maneuverability on reentry, a parachute landing system, and a jettisonable mission module that could also serve as a solar storm cellar, a laboratory, or even the descent stage for a lunar lander were also featured. Almost 300 persons in Martin spent the better part of the six months and about $3 million on the data and designs for their recommendations.⁷²

NASA and its Space Task Group might have evaluated the contractor reports at a more measured pace in more normal times, but in April - the month before these reports came in - the pressures “to get America moving” toward the moon became intense.

The Challenge

In the aftermath of Gagarin’s flight, President Kennedy asked Vice President Johnson to find a way to regain American technological prestige through space flight. NASA top management was in almost constant communication with the White House staff, Bureau of the Budget officials, and congressional leaders. Apollo was about to pass from planning to action. Less than a month and a half after the Russian feat, NASA’s new manned space flight project was approved.

Now it is time to take longer strides - time for a great new American enterprise - time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.

. . . I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

With these words, on 25 May 1961, President Kennedy proclaimed before Congress and the world that manned lunar landing belonged in the forefront of an expanded American space program.⁷³ And Congress obviously agreed with him. With almost no internal opposition, both the Senate and the House of Representatives responded to Kennedy’s challenge by increasing funds for the agency that was to undertake this bold program. At this juncture, the Americans had chalked up 15 minutes and 22 seconds of manned space flight experience. The Russians had clocked 108 minutes.

On 5 May 1961, NASA had launched Freedom 7, the first manned U.S. spacecraft. Pilot Alan Shepard became the forerunner of a new genre of American adventurer-hero, the astronaut.^* Shepard’s flight, a lob shot up over the Atlantic, was a far from spectacular demonstration of this country’s spacefaring capabilities when compared to Gagarin’s single orbit of the earth. But, as only the third flight of a Mercury-Redstone, it was a dangerous and daring feat.⁷⁴

NASA officials maintained that the agency was ready and eager to take on the lunar landing, even though it added enormously to the challenge of Apollo. Following the President’s speech on 25 May, Webb, Dryden, and Seamans told newsmen that much of the additional funding Kennedy had requested would be spent on advanced launch vehicles, particularly Nova, the key to manned lunar landings. Nova was so crucial to Apollo, Webb declared, that the agency planned a parallel approach to the development of propellants for the big booster. NASA would continue its work on liquid propellants, while the Department of Defense would pursue solid-fueled-rocket development as an alternative for Nova’s first stage. “As soon as the technical promise of each approach can be adequately assessed,” he said, “one will be selected for final development and utilization in the manned space program.”⁷⁵

Dryden expanded on Webb’s statement. Asked if the agency considered orbital rendezvous a serious alternative to use of Nova, he replied, “We are still studying that, but we do not believe at this time that we could rely on [it].” He stressed that Kennedy’s decision had forced NASA to begin work on Nova prematurely:

This illustrates the real nature of the decision. We could make some of these decisions better two years from now than we can now, if the program had gone along at the ordinary pace. But if we are going to accelerate this we have got to do some parallel approaches, at least for a time. The solid and the liquid propellant are going to be carried forward full steam. We have a certain amount of effort on rendezvous. If it looks like this presents any opportunity, we will certainly take advantage of it.⁷⁶

Both Dryden and Seamans freely admitted that NASA lacked the immediate scientific knowledge needed for lunar landings. Another use of the additional funding would be to speed up research into the unknowns. Development of hardware - boosters, spacecraft, and equipment - must be built upon this scientific and technical foundation. At this juncture, nobody had any really firm idea about how NASA was going to implement Kennedy’s decision. Techniques for leaving the earth and flying to the moon - even more, landing there and returning - were open to considerable debate and much speculation.

There was a vague feeling within the agency (though with several notable exceptions) that direct ascent would eventually be the answer, but no one had worked out the tradeoffs in much detail. Subsequently, as Apollo planning progressed, the question of how to fly to the moon and back loomed ever larger. In the end, the choice of mode was perhaps the single greatest technical decision of the entire Apollo program. The selection was inextricably linked to launch vehicles, spacecraft, facilities, cost, development schedules, and the future of America’s posture in space. Ultimately, the mode question shaped the whole of Apollo. Many possible methods were carefully considered, and a Pandora’s box of problems was opened. At the time, however, technical thinking had not matured to that degree. The United States was just on the threshold of manned space flight, and orbital flights around the earth were in themselves mind-boggling. A program to land men on the moon, 400,000 kilometers away, and bring them safely home was nearly too stupendous for serious contemplation.

One participant charged with transforming the concepts drafted by committees and study groups to hardware later described his reactions. Acutely aware that NASA’s total manned space flight experience was limited to one ballistic flight and that he was being asked to commit men to a 14-day trip to the moon and back, Robert Gilruth said he was simply aghast.⁷⁷