1962

During 1962, NASA faced three major tasks: keeping North American moving on the command and service modules, defending its decision to fly the lunar-orbit rendezvous mode, and finding a contractor to develop the separate landing vehicle required by that approach.

North American engineers spent the opening months of the year at desks, at drawing boards, and in conference rooms. Although not all the pieces of the Apollo stack had been defined, the first job was obviously to build a three-man earth-orbital spacecraft. This Phase A or Block I version, already worked out by NASA in considerable depth, still required detailed analyses, precise engineering specifications, and special manufacturing tools. The contractor also had to make scale-model spacecraft for wind-tunnel tests and full-size mockups of wood and metal for study and demonstration uses.¹

The Team and the Tools

Harrison A. Storms, Jr. (widely known as “Stormy”), Vice President of North American and President of its Space and Information Systems Division, was a forceful leader in advanced design and development work and a vigorous decision-maker who got things done. He had studied aeronautical engineering under Theodore von Kármán at the California Institute of Technology during the 1940s. Subsequently, at North American, he had advanced steadily through the ranks. With the nationally famous test pilot A. Scott Crossfield, among others, Storms had shepherded the company team through the first phases of the X-15 and later the XB-70 aircraft programs.²

John Paup, who had worked at North American for several years before joining Sperry Rand, returned to his former employer in mid-1961 to help Storms bid on the NASA proposals and to become general manager for Apollo.#source3``3 Paup, in turn, picked Norman J. Ryker, Jr., as his chief designer. Ryker, who had joined the company in 1951, had been a stress analyst on the pioneer Navajo missile. He had also helped prepare bids for contracts for the Ranger and Surveyor spacecraft. North American had lost these competitions, but Ryker had remained in advanced design work.⁴

Charles H. Feltz, a company man since 1940, was a fourth major leader of North American’s Apollo development team. He had worked on P-51 and B-25 aircraft during the Second World War and later on the B-45, the F-86, and the F-100. Feltz had been project leader on the X-15 rocket research aircraft, coming into close contact with NACA and then NASA leaders with whom he would work on Apollo. Feltz was considered by his peers to be one of the best manufacturing managers in the airframe business.⁵

In the days before Project Mercury, North American, with General Electric, had been under contract to the Air Force for “Man-in-Space-Soonest.” When the Air Force lost the manned space flight mission to NASA, North American had put in a bid for Mercury. After losing to the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in 1959, North American officials in 1961 were not eager to chance another defeat in a major NASA competition. But Storms and Paup, after combining forces with Ryker and Feltz, were determined to try for Apollo. When NASA picked North American on 11 September 1961 to build the S-II second stage of the advanced Saturn, J. Leland Atwood, President of the corporation, and Samuel K. Hoffman, President of the firm’s Rocketdyne Division, were reconciled to this role in the program. Storms, Paup, and Ryker were not; they pressed on to win the spacecraft contract as well.⁶

Storms’ team operated from a two-story building in Downey, California. Design engineers and draftsmen occupied the major portion of the structure, their desks crowded together in cavernous halls. An adjacent building housed the manufacturing activities for the space division. Ninety percent of the property belonged to the federal government, but long-term leases had made North American, as tenant, virtually the proprietor. Now, with the Apollo contract, plans were made to recruit personnel, to buy adjoining property, and to construct more buildings and facilities. In the meantime, some of the personnel worked out of house-trailer offices in the parking lots.

The manpower buildup in Storms’ division in the first six months of 1962 doubled the size of his organization - from 7,000 to more than 14,000 persons. Although many employees were busy on the Air Force’s Hound Dog missile, among other projects, the newcomers for the most part were hired to develop the Apollo command and service modules.⁷

One of the first structures built at Downey specifically for Apollo began to take shape early in 1962. The Impact Test Facility, 46 meters high, looked like a gigantic playground swing. It was a swing of sorts - one designed to hold and drop a command module so the Apollo team could study it and improve structural strengths of the heatshield, honeycomb shock absorbers, inner and outer shells, afterbody, and astronaut couches. At one end of the swing was a pool of water, at the other a sandpile that could be banked or pitted with gravel and boulders. To return men safely from the moon required a knowledge of the exact limits they and their machine could endure at the final landing on earth.⁸

As expected, structures, heatshields, and radiation protection were primary concerns during the first year or so. Unexpectedly, however, the manufacture of mockup modules, initially considered of less importance, quickly grew into a major program to supply boilerplate spacecraft (metal models designed to be used in testing). North American’s structural assembly department had begun tooling up for extensive work on mockups in January 1962. By the end of the year, this shop employed 305 persons on three shifts, tooling, drilling, welding, and assembling custom-built units. D. W. Chidley, a 14-year veteran of North American’s prototype manufacturing and head of the department, reported at year’s end that his group had built six test vehicles and two full-scale mockups, which had been featured in NASA-North American reviews during the year.⁹

To keep key personnel ready for the frequent meetings with NASA and aware of daily plant operations, Storms, Paup, Ryker, and Feltz held ten-minute briefings for all plant supervisors at the beginning of each morning shift. Agendas were carefully controlled; no interruptions were permitted; and everyone was required to speak for his section. Thus, until North American’s Apollo operation grew too large to make this kind of communication useful, all the major managers had at least one daily direct contact with their colleagues and superiors. Some of these sessions were devoted to plans for selecting and working with the subcontractors who would develop the subsystems.¹⁰

Shortly after the NASA-North American contract was signed, subcontractors for four of the spacecraft systems were picked: (1) Collins Radio Company for telecommunications; (2) The Garrett Corporation’s AiResearch Manufacturing Company, environmental control; (3) Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company, stabilization and attitude control; and (4) Northrop Corporation’s Radioplane (later Ventura Division, parachutes and earth landing.

North American soon added other subcontractors. In February 1962 the Lockheed Propulsion Company was selected to design the solid-propellant motor for the launch escape tower. By the end of March, The Marquardt Corporation had been chosen for the command and service modules’ reaction control system, Aerojet-General for the service module’s main engine, and Avco Corporation for ablative coatings and the spacecraft heatshield. In April, Thiokol Chemical Corporation was named to work with Lockheed on the launch escape system.¹¹

While NASA was trying to decide on the mode during the first half of 1962, John Paup and his North American engineers were getting restive. Although repeatedly warned by his own people not to bend tin or cut metal too soon, Paup insisted that hardware production should get under way. He did have his model shops turn out a mockup of a lunar excursion module - which looked like a helicopter cab atop thin spidery legs - and of a lunar braking module, just in case a direct route to the moon should be chosen. On the first of June, Paup wrote Houston that schedules for spacecraft delivery were slipping further and further behind. How could they build the service module, he asked, if they did not know what it would be used for?¹²

But there was at least one area where work could start immediately. Early in the contract, North American and Houston engineers had agreed on a flight-test program, putting boilerplate command and service modules through structural tests and checking out the abort escape system. In mid1961, while he was still with NASA before joining North American in 1962, Alan Kehlet had suggested using a fin-stabilized, clustered-rocket, solid-propellant booster for these tests. The “Little Joe II” (named after the Project Mercury test vehicle) would be able to propel a full-sized Apollo reentry spacecraft to velocities as great as those in the critical portions of the Saturn trajectory and to altitudes of 60,900 meters. The tests would be a simple and fairly inexpensive way of determining - in flight - the full-scale spacecraft configuration concepts, systems performance, and structural integrity. Tests of the launch escape system at maximum dynamic pressure would be most important. In May 1962 the Convair Division of General Dynamics was selected to develop the vehicle.¹³

Although launch sites at Wallops Island, Virginia; Eglin Air Force Base, Florida; and the Cape were considered, the New Mexico desert north of El Paso, Texas, was picked early in the spring of 1962 as the Little Joe II test area. The Army’s White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) seemed the most suitable for Little Joe II ballistic flights.¹⁴

NASA engineers expected to conduct three kinds of tests at White Sands: (1) pad aborts, in which a solid-fueled rocket mounted on a tower attached to the top of the command module would pull the spacecraft away as it would have to do if the Saturn threatened to blow up on the launch pad; (2) maximum-dynamic-pressure (“max q”) tests, in which the rocket would pull the spacecraft away from the launch vehicle if the booster veered off course shortly after launch; and (3) high-altitude tests, in which the rocket would haul the spacecraft away from the launch vehicle if the Saturn were unable to boost its payload to orbital flight.¹⁵

Other organizations, such as the Ames Research Center, near San Francisco, had been working on Apollo while waiting for a mode decision. Quite often after a day’s work at Downey, North American engineers flew to Moffett Field, carrying models for Ames to test in its wind tunnels. Ames engineers were also dropping test vehicles on a simulated lunar surface to study landing gear designs and possible structural damage on impact.¹⁶

Ames had a close relationship with its Navy neighbors at Moffett Field. Navy flight surgeon Harald A. Smedal, who had been in aviation medicine for years, was a logical consultant to NASA’s research engineers. Interested in physiological instrumentation as well as pilot performance during flight, Smedal worked on spacecraft cabin designs, especially on cockpit layouts that emphasized pilot convenience in spacecraft control.¹⁷

Another example of Ames’ applied research that fed into North American was the work of test pilots and life scientists in ground-based simulations of the characteristics of spacesuits, restraint harnesses, work-rest cycles, and isolation conditions. North American and Ames were intent on making certain that the cockpit was designed to take full advantage of the pilots’ capabilities in performing and sharing their duties.¹⁸

The Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, also took a hand in getting spacecraft development on a good footing by putting Marquardt’s reaction control jets through a test program. These small motors - used to turn the spacecraft right or left, up or down, or in a roll maneuver - were cooled regeneratively (in a process in which the expansion of part of the hot gas cools the remainder). When tests showed that the engines would burn up during reentry heating, Houston directed North American to use Marquardt motors only on the service module (since it would be jettisoned before reentry) and to make or buy command module jets similar to the ablative engines developed for Gemini. In August 1962, the command module thruster contract was transferred to North American’s Rocketdyne Division, which produced Gemini’s attitude control and maneuvering engines and reentry control system.¹⁹

Even though the Manned Spacecraft Center had gained its independence and had moved away, the ties between NASA-Langley and NASA-Houston remained strong, providing another source to draw on for help. Shortly after the move to Houston, Axel T. Mattson came to Texas as full-time liaison officer, coordinating the use of Langley’s five-meter transonic wind tunnel in testing and studying the aerodynamic effects of reaction control jets and escape tower exhaust plumes on the command and service modules.

Langley’s wind-tunnel experts also conducted diagnostic tests of heat transfer, heating loads and rates, and aerodynamic and hydrodynamic stability on the command module heatshield. The heatshield contractor - the Avco Corporation’s Everett, Massachusetts, division - had proposed an ablative tile shield, a layered and bonded single-piece construction similar to that used on Mercury. Then McDonnell had advanced heat protection technology by developing ablator-filled honeycomb material for Gemini. When North American and NASA engineers approved this thermal protection Avco refined the new system to withstand the higher heating rates of lunar reentry. McDonnell’s Gemini heatshield was made of a Fiberglas honeycomb material; the ablator, developed by Dow-Corning, was poured into it and allowed to harden. The Apollo ablative heatshield, however, was bonded to an inner brazed stainless steel honeycomb shield, and the 400,000 honeycomb cells in its plastic outer shield were filled by hand using a caulking gun,²⁰ with an ablator developed by Avco.

While the heatshield was going through its growing pains, the earth landing system for the command module was beginning to mature. Apollo’s preliminary plan had included either water or land landing. John W. Kiker, a landing system specialist in Houston, had studied several alternatives: a rotating wing (like a helicopter’s), a flexible wing (similar to a paraglider), or traditional parachutes (such as were used in Mercury). Kiker, working with experts at Langley and Ames, ran the proposed models through wind-tunnel tests and then asked the Flight Research Center to put the equipment through free-flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base.²¹

But by the middle of 1962 hopes for a touchdown on land were beginning to fade. At a meeting in Houston on 10 May engineers of Northrop-Ventura (the recovery system subcontractor) described their designs for a cluster of three ring-sail parachutes for the main landing system. North American liked Northrop’s proposal better than the system being tested, which deployed the parachutes through the heatshield cover on the conical top of the command module. In the proposed system, the cover would be jettisoned before the parachutes were released. On 16 May Houston told North American to go ahead with the development of this multiple-parachute system and to set the paraglider aside for further review.²²

At that time, North American was developing a paraglider landing system for the Gemini spacecraft. In Houston, Max Faget noted that the contractor was having trouble with the Gemini system and became skeptical of the paraglider’s value for Apollo. In June 1962, he recommended water

landings for the lunar program. At NASA Headquarters, George Low told Brainerd Holmes that North American’s concentration on parachutes for Apollo would mean the end of the paraglider for that program. Holmes wanted to know if it could be put in later, provided the technical difficulties were solved. Low said this could be done only if the paraglider were ready within a year.²³ When NASA and the Navy recovered John Glenn and Scott Carpenter and their Mercury spacecraft from the water with comparative ease, chances for a dry landing in Apollo grew slim.

Another key part of the command module that had to keep moving was the guidance and navigation system. To get started in the right direction, representatives from North American and MIT decided to meet regularly, either at Downey or Cambridge, to keep an eye on progress and trade information. In early 1962, the guidance and navigation system had, of course, moved very little beyond the embryo stage. Some advances had been made on the gyroscopes and accelerometers for the inertial measurement unit (similar to that used to help guide the Polaris missile), but digital computer development and the space sextant were not well defined.²⁴

Manned Spacecraft Center engineers had questioned whether an astronaut in a pressurized suit could operate a sextant or the other delicate pieces of navigation equipment. The Apollo contract had specified a shirt-sleeve environment. For this reason, North American had been told not to include in its design a hatch that opened by explosives, like Mercury’s. An accidentally blown hatch would cause an instant vacuum and certain death for a crewman not wearing his pressure suit. But on some occasions, such as launch, the crew would be in their suits and would need equipment that could be operated while wearing the bulky gloves and helmet.²⁵

In June 1962, several Manned Spacecraft Center and North American engineers went to MIT to learn how the crew was to operate the guidance system. One of the talks covered the use of the sextant in determining navigational position. At that point, the MIT experts were invited to Houston to try operating the sextant while wearing an inflated suit. Whether they came was not documented, but in the succeeding months modifications made the sextant and suit operation more compatible. The chief result of all these meetings, however, was a new understanding of the command module’s cabin layout, which gave MIT a clearer picture of how components should fit.²⁶

Ames Research Center engineers also participated in the meetings (giving Gilruth another set of specialists to call upon in monitoring MIT’s work). The Ames guidance experts sponsored a session at a NASA-university conference that dealt with such subjects as midcourse guidance and navigation techniques and the procedures for reducing the uncertainties connected with these operations. Ames speakers recommended making mid-course corrections early in flight to avoid the wider dispersions and greater fuel use that might result from making trajectory changes closer to the moon. Studies by Ames on atmospheric entry guidance - another critical operation - indicated that a man could indeed steer his spacecraft through the narrow reentry corridor to a safe landing on the earth.²⁷

When some components of the command module’s guidance and navigation system were ready for development and fabrication by subcontractors, NASA Associate Administrator Robert Seamans appointed a Source Evaluation Board in January 1962, headed by Robert G. Chilton,^* of MSC, to select industrial supporters for MIT. NASA chose the AC Spark Plug Division of General Motors to build the inertial platform, Raytheon to make the digital computer, and the Kollsman Instrument Corporation to manufacture the optical systems. By May 1962, most of these contractual arrangements were complete.²⁸

NASA’s top officials had been concerned about MIT’s ability to build a guidance and navigation system that would take a crew to the moon and back to the earth. As the system began to take shape, another worry cropped up. Would the Instrumentation Laboratory be able to manage the industrial contractors once the design evolved into development? To be certain that the subcontractors understood the arrangement, Seamans visited the Wakefield Laboratory of AC Spark Plug in July, where he was assured that AC and MIT could work together just as they had on the Titan II inertial guidance system. But the managerial task in the complex and interlocking systems of the command module, as well as those of the other vehicles in the Apollo stack, had to be spelled out in precise and formal guidelines to ensure orderly progress. A system of “Interface Control Documents” became standard.

There was nothing very mysterious about the Interface Control Documents. Somewhere along the line, some piece of Apollo’s two million functional parts assembled in one place had to meet and match with a piece put together in another place. After MIT had designed and supervised the building of the guidance and navigation system, for example, the component was sent to North American for installation in the command module. Size and location of the equipment had to be defined and agreed upon in advance so it would fit properly. Because of the many, many companies working on the different parts of the Apollo stack, these interface documents were essential in laying out just where and how the parts would come together - systems with spacecraft, spacecraft with launch vehicles, launch vehicles and spacecraft with launch facilities, and all these systems and craft with the crew and with launch and mission control centers.²⁹

All in all, during 1962 good progress had been made in getting command module development under way. Contractors were working together, and cooperation among the NASA field centers had improved. One of the underlying factors in this advancement had been the establishment of a formal Apollo spacecraft management office at the Manned Spacecraft Center.

In January 1962, when Charles Frick became manager of the new Apollo Spacecraft Project Office, he assumed responsibility “for the technical direction of North American Aviation and other industrial contractors assigned work on the Apollo Spacecraft Project.” Frick arrived at Langley Field, Virginia, just in time to meet the 45 persons that his deputy, Robert Piland, had gathered into the new project office before they moved to Houston on 1 February. The new organization settled into the Rich Building, one of the center’s 13 rented sites scattered around the Gulf Freeway.³⁰ But, even before Frick’s arrival and the establishment of the formal spacecraft office, the Apollo workers in Gilruth’s center had taken on an expanded responsibility.

Preliminary Designs for the Lunar Lander

Work at NASA’s lead Apollo center on the excursion vehicle had started in late 1961, when designers began looking at the advantages of lunar-orbit rendezvous. But these had been analyses of general rather than specific configurations. Wernher von Braun’s researchers in Huntsville had also studied concepts for soft landing. For landers weighing several thousand kilograms (and thus presumably manned), they considered liquid-fueled engines more practical than those using solid propellants. Houston engineers also drew on studies conducted by the Langley Research Center in Virginia. By mid-September 1961, Gilruth’s people had roughly worked out a mission plan and figured out the kind of vehicle that might do the job. From September to December, they tried to nail down systems operations more precisely, particularly in such areas as propulsion and communications.³¹

The mysterious nature of the moon’s surface received much attention, since a safe lunar landing presented some tricky design problems. Manned Spacecraft Center engineers considered such things as the effect of engine exhaust on the surface layer, the influence of dust layers on landing-gear footpads, and surface dust effects on optical and radar landing aids. Although a model of the lunar surface drawn from the best available data was used for these engineering studies, Gilruth’s men realized that there were varying views among scientists about the lunar surface characteristics, especially the depth of the dust layer.³²

By early 1962, spacecraft specialists had begun to move beyond the study phase. While others fought for their chosen mode, they worked out details for building the lunar module and started preparing for its procurement. The newly created Houston Apollo spacecraft office drafted a lengthy document in April defending the hardware and operational feasibility of lunar rendezvous and the excursion vehicle. Basic concepts of the mission profile and docking and of storage arrangements for the lander inside the spacecraft adapter were fairly firm. Many aspects of guidance and navigation and of operations in lunar orbit were well understood. Several theoretical vehicle shapes were depicted, velocity requirements were delineated, vehicle weights (up to 9,200 kilograms, including a 25-percent contingency margin) were estimated, and mission development plans, using the Little Joe II and the Saturn C-IB and C-5, were considered.³³

William Rector was assigned to Frick’s project office staff “to start worrying about the LEM.” Using command module documentation as a guide, he wrote a work statement. Rector drew on technical expertise from within the project office and from other center organizations, particularly Max Faget’s research and development directorate. He relied heavily on advice from the Spacecraft Research Division in preparing the procurement documents. Rector began with “a real shoestring operation,” a small group of specialists for communications, propulsion, and overall configuration, and for assembling information and writing the request for proposals.

Early in May, Rector and his team finished the preliminary statement of work and started on the formal proposal request. “I’ll never forget,” he said later, “all we did was just sort of turn the command module upside down and put a window and a propulsion stage in it.” From this point on Rector and his group continually revised the proposal, to include additional information on visibility requirements, crew location, and propulsion systems as it became available. They also took first cuts at the guidance and communications systems, among others, trying to work out the basic interrelationships for each subsystem and to get them into the work statement.³⁴

The spacecraft office wanted the work statement in its final form by mid-July. When the early drafts went to Washington for review, Joseph Shea in the Office of Manned Space Flight insisted that the vehicle should be configured for unmanned, as well as manned, flight because NASA might want to use it to ferry large payloads to the lunar surface. Everyone in Houston, from Gilruth on down, claimed that such a lander would be unreliable. The lunar module design should not be compromised by throwing in this dual requirement.

After a series of meetings, including a last-minute session with Gilruth and Frick, Rector carried a work statement to Headquarters that left the door open for future negotiations. To avoid further delay in procurement, he had inserted a clause that obligated the contractor to study the advantages and drawbacks of automatic versus manned modes and to assist the agency in coming to a final decision. The procurement documents were approved and issued to 11 aerospace firms^* during the latter half of July.³⁵

While Houston was getting ready to procure the lander, Shea’s Office of Systems was defending the agency’s choice of lunar-orbit rendezvous before the President’s advisers and the public. This was a time-consuming and harried process, a grinding day-by-day burden, that began even before the official announcement in July.

Pressures by PSAC

The Space Vehicle Panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) was apprehensive about lunar-orbit rendezvous well before NASA picked that approach. After the decision was made public in July 1962, Nicholas Golovin, at the behest of Jerome Wiesner, probed deeply into NASA’s planning activities. If NASA was to reverse its decision, pressure would have to be applied before the development contract was awarded. Once that had been done, the course of Apollo would be virtually impossible to change.

PSAC’s interest in manned space flight had begun with the Mercury program and had led to the establishment of the Space Vehicle Panel in the fall of 1961. Headed by Franklin A. Long of Cornell University, the panel had met in October and December for briefings by NASA officials on the agency’s plans for launch vehicles. Long reported in January 1962 the group’s observations and recommendations for strengthening the country’s booster capabilities. Since Apollo planning had by then shifted from direct flight to earth-orbit rendezvous, the panel also pressed for the development of rendezvous and docking techniques.³⁶

Thus, 1961 had closed with some degree of harmony between NASA and PSAC; but that soon changed. As the space agency began to waver on its mode choice during the first half of 1962, Wiesner, Golovin, and the panel wedged themselves into the daily activities of spacecraft development. When NASA began to look more favorably on lunar rendezvous, relations between the two organizations deteriorated rapidly.

Panel members visited Los Angeles during February for discussions on spacecraft and launch vehicle development by North American and then went on to Washington and several of the NASA centers later, looking closely at the mode comparison studies then in progress. They grew resentful of NASA’s refusal to supply them with every draft document, both government and industry, the agency had on the subject. NASA, on the other hand, chafed at the panel’s snooping into internal and contractual relationships, insisting that these activities lay outside PSAC’s advisory authority.³⁷

During May and June, Golovin asked for detailed information on launch vehicles and spacecraft for all approaches under consideration; he also requested progress reports from all Apollo spacecraft contractors and on engine development programs. Shea did not want to release this material while the mode comparison studies were in progress, and he sent a staff member to tell Golovin that schedules were not firm and that his request was premature. Golovin was, as a matter of fact, at something of a personal disadvantage in his pursuit of NASA information. He had stirred up controversy during the 1960-1961 period of Project Mercury with his statistical reliability analysis methods, which many Mercury engineers considered merely a “numbers game.”³⁸

Just before the lunar rendezvous selection was publicly endorsed, the Space Vehicle Panel met with NASA officials in Washington on 5 and 6 July. In preparation for this meeting, Golovin again asked Shea for the draft documents that had been used to produce the mode comparison studies. Shea advised Golovin that this material was still subject to final editing. Golovin said that all the panel wanted was a preview of the technical data and analyses of various mode alternatives, their feasibility, and advantages.

On 3 July, after examining some papers Shea had sent the day before, Wiesner and Golovin thought they had found a flaw. One table showed a higher probability of disaster for lunar rendezvous than for either earth rendezvous or direct flight. Wiesner called Webb, who, in turn, telephoned Shea and suggested that he see Wiesner immediately.

Shea tried to persuade Wiesner and Golovin that the reliability numbers based on Marshall’s computations contained an error. The PSAC officials were also told that figures from the report of the Large Launch Vehicle Planning Group (of which Golovin himself had been chairman) were invalid because of unduly pessimistic assumptions about the reliability of rendezvous and the difficulties of abort. Calculations made within the Office of Manned Space Flight, Shea argued, showed success-failure probabilities essentially the same for all three modes. Shea got nowhere with his assertions, and he left the meeting discouraged. But he was still hopeful that the forthcoming session with the space panel would “allow us to get the facts squared away.”³⁹

At the 5-6 July assembly, Shea’s hopes for clearing the air were dashed when panel member Lester Lees distributed a memorandum presaging the adverse tone of the panel’s final report, to be issued later that month. (Lees, from the California Institute of Technology’s Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, was a paid consultant to North American, which did not favor lunar rendezvous. Shea was convinced that this was the reason for his antagonism to lunar-orbit rendezvous.) Lees agreed that all four mission modes were technically feasible. But, he asked, “which of these risky adventures involves the least risk to the astronauts, provides the greatest growth potential for the manned space program, and at the same time gives us the best chance of fulfilling the President’s [goal] to land an American on the moon by 1970?” Lees recommended earth-orbit rendezvous with the Saturn C-5 as the prime mode and direct flight using an uprated C-5 as backup. He disputed NASA’s claims that the lighter, more maneuverable landing craft was significantly better than the command module for being set down on the moon. Lees also discounted NASA’s demands for extensive visibility for the hover and touchdown maneuver, which was looked on by some pilots, he said, as “probably similar . . . to landing ‘on instruments’ here on Earth.”⁴⁰

The Space Vehicle Panel’s reservations about lunar-orbit rendezvous were reemphasized by Wiesner in Webb’s office on 6 July. Shea, Brainerd Holmes, and Robert Seamans listened as Webb was forced to equivocate, to agree that the lunar rendezvous decision was only tentative. Later in the year, following additional mode studies, NASA would either reaffirm its July preference or pick one of PSAC’s favored approaches.⁴¹

During the last half of July, the formal positions of the two sides were staked out. On the 17th Wiesner wrote to Webb spelling out PSAC’s opinions of NASA’s manned programs, particularly lunar rendezvous in relation to booster capabilities and America’s military posture in space. Wiesner accused NASA of not adequately assessing such hazards as radiation and the potential problems of weightlessness. He had, Wiesner told Webb, “assured [President Kennedy] that there is ample time to make the additional studies . . . agreed upon before the contracts for the lunar landing vehicle need be awarded.”

Webb assured Wiesner that NASA was, and had been, investigating weightlessness and radiation. The Administrator defended lunar rendezvous as a contribution to American space capabilities: “It is our considered opinion,” Webb wrote, “that the LOR mode . . . provides as comprehensive a base of knowledge and experience for application to other possible space programs, either military or civilian, as either the EOR mode or the C-5 direct mode.”⁴²

The PSAC panel issued its final report on 26 July, still contesting NASA’s justification for lunar rendezvous and affirming once again the desirability of two-man direct flight. “We can only note that the Panel was originally widely divided in its opinions, but that after hearing and discussing the evidence presented to us, there is no dissent in the Panel to the views presented here.”⁴³

Thus, in July, President Kennedy found the space agency and his scientific advisory body firmly entrenched in separate camps. The situation remained static until lunar module procurement activities accelerated. Then Wiesner and his panel tried once more to block lunar rendezvous.

Golovin knew that the Manned Spacecraft Center was getting ready to let the lander contract. In mid-July, he asked NASA to arrange a briefing at Downey so he could review the technical details of North American’s studies of direct and rendezvous mission modes. Most North American officials favored almost any mode except lunar-orbit rendezvous, which kept the command module from actually landing on the moon. A humorous cartoon on the company walls during August 1962 depicted a rather bored and disgruntled man-in-the-moon eyeing an approaching command module with lander attached. The caption read, “Don’t bug me, man.” Golovin, hoping for a negative response from these contractor studies, insisted that NASA allow the briefing. Webb complained to Wiesner that NASA “had rather complex relationships with North American” and “did not want a disturbing influence brought to bear.” When Wiesner offered to withdraw the request for the visit, however, Webb declined, saying he just wanted to be sure that Wiesner was aware of his concerns.

Golovin had his California briefing at the end of July. On the way back to Washington, he stopped off at Cleveland to see what the Lewis Research Center was doing on the mission mode comparisons. Associate Director Bruce Lundin told Golovin that if he wanted this kind of information he should ask NASA Headquarters for it.⁴⁴

In August, Wiesner told Webb of the Space Panel’s conviction that NASA had not selected lunar-orbit rendezvous because of any overriding technical reasons and had not satisfactorily justified its decision to PSAC. The Administrator admitted that he saw “some real value [in having PSAC’s] independent judgment,” but added, “we [-are] an operating agency and [can] not submit . . . our decisions for this independent judgment.” Webb said that NASA “would have to find some [other] method of review that did not prevent [our] moving ahead.” Wiesner conceded that “it was . . . important to keep in motion.”⁴⁵ Tacitly, then, he acknowledged the priority of President Kennedy’s deadline.

But Wiesner and Golovin still did not stop their sorties. Golovin visited Shea on 22 August to suggest that NASA invite a number of independent experts to decide who was right on the mode question. Shea responded that NASA was already using outside help. This session with Golovin “reinforced [Shea’s] feeling that we are in for another go-around with the PSAC Committee,” He was certain that Golovin and Wiesner still believed that they could overturn the mode decision.⁴⁶

The Webb-Wiesner and Shea-Golovin discussions had, if anything, widened the gap between NASA and PSAC. Early in September, Wiesner again wrote Webb, reiterating his concerns about lunar-orbit rendezvous and this nation’s inferiority to Russia in the big booster field. PSAC, he assured Webb, stood ready to assist NASA in gathering “the best talents nationally available” to study the mode question. Wiesner sent a copy of this letter to the President, perhaps hoping that Kennedy might step in to settle their differences.⁴⁷

President Kennedy did, in fact, become involved while on a two-day visit to NASA’s space facilities on 11 and 12 September 1962. After viewing the Apollo spaceport being built in Florida, Kennedy flew on to Huntsville, Alabama. There, during a tour of Marshall and a briefing on the Saturn V and the lunar-rendezvous mission by von Braun, Wiesner interrupted the Marshall director in front of reporters, saying, “No, that’s no good.” Webb immediately defended von Braun and lunar-orbit rendezvous. The adversaries engaged in a heated exchange until Kennedy stopped them, stating that the matter was still subject to final review. But what had been a private disagreement had become public knowledge. Editorial criticism stemming from the confrontation-including the question, “Is our technology sound?” - forced NASA to justify its selection of lunar-orbit rendezvous to the public, as well as to PSAC.⁴⁸

Accusations by Wiesner that lunar rendezvous had not been thoroughly studied particularly galled Shea. He compiled material for Webb to use in refuting this charge, outlining the many studies leading to the selection. Shea estimated that more than 700 scientists and engineers at Headquarters, at the field centers, and among contractors had spent a million man-hours working on the route comparisons.⁴⁹

In early August, Shea formed a team to monitor contracts awarded to Space Technology Laboratories and McDonnell to rehash the feasibility of a direct flight by two men in either a scaled-down Apollo or a modified Gemini spacecraft. Gilruth worried that these studies might impede McDonnell’s work on Gemini, especially after a NASA visitor reported that the St. Louis contractor apparently wanted to expand the scope of the study as much as NASA would allow.

Shea and his staff reviewed these studies and presented the results to the rest of the manned space flight organization early in October. The contractors agreed that either two-man direct flight or earth-orbit rendezvous was feasible but both were less attractive than lunar rendezvous because the probability for mission success was lower, the first landing would be later, and the developmental complexity would be greater. The vote was still for three-man, lunar-orbit rendezvous.⁵⁰

Among the strongest criticisms of the PSAC-preferred two-man direct flights was an analysis that indicated they would be marginally feasible with cryogenic propellants in the braking stages and with storable propellants for the lunar takeoff and return to earth. Such flights were clearly possible only if cryogenics were used on the return leg as well. But Houston was unalterably opposed to cryogenics, which required complicated equipment and special handling, for the lunar takeoff stage.

Another indictment of PSAC’s choice was that the panel members persisted in claiming that lunar rendezvous had no time advantage over the other modes. NASA was equally obdurate in its belief that adopting one of the other modes would mean a lag of ten months. A space tanker would have to be developed, critical refueling techniques would have to be perfected, and changes in the S-IVB stage would have to be made to permit long-term storage of cryogenic propellants. All of this would mean more money, perhaps as much as an additional $3 billion.⁵¹

The Office of Manned Space Flight assembled the meat of these studies into another “final” version of the mode comparison, which was issued on 24 October 1962. Earlier arguments for lunar rendezvous, the report stated, were as valid in October as they had been in July. That approach was still “the best opportunity of meeting the U.S. goal of manned lunar landing within this decade.”⁵²

The day NASA released this report, Webb wrote Wiesner that, unless the science adviser had objections serious enough to be taken to the White House for arbitration, a contract would be awarded for development of the lunar excursion module. He told Wiesner:

My understanding is that you . . . and your staff . . . will examine this and that you will let me know your views as to whether we should ask for an appointment with the President.

My own view is that we should proceed with the lunar orbit plan, should announce our selection of the contractor for the lunar excursion vehicle, and should play the whole thing in a low key. . . .

If you agree, I would like to get before you any facts, over and above the report, perhaps in a thorough briefing, which you believe you should have in order to put me in [a] position to advise Mr. [Kenneth] O’Donnell [one of the President’s aides] that [you do not wish] to interpose a formal objection. . . . In that case, I believe Mr. O’Donnell will not feel it wise to schedule the President’s time and that the President will confirm this judgment.⁵³

Wiesner and Golovin were not reconciled by NASA’s latest justification. Upon reviewing the report, Wiesner asked Holmes for material to expand on that abstracted from the proposals of those aerospace companies responding to the request for bids to develop the lunar lander. Not too surprisingly, the bidders had all emphasized the advantages of a lunar excursion vehicle and had played down the difficulty of rendezvous as an added operational step. All the proposals cited the benefits from lunar rendezvous, chiefly mission success and crew safety, with a craft specifically designed for lunar landing and the need for only one Saturn C-5.

Wiesner now wanted to examine these contractor documents in full, which Webb refused to allow because of the proprietary information they contained. Next, Wiesner asked that certain material be given Golovin without identification of the contractors. What the pair was seeking, Webb confided to Seamans, were the lunar weight estimates, but “I cannot see how the contractors’ estimates can help [them] decide whether you, I, and Dryden have made the correct decision.”⁵⁴

Holmes did send Wiesner those sections of the proposals that dealt with estimated weights for the lander. Most of the figures assumed a target weight of around 10,000 kilograms. But, Holmes pointed out, estimates of the different subsystems had varied widely. More knowledge of the lunar surface and of radiation and meteoroid fluxes would probably “force weight increases in the landing gear and shields.” Both Mercury and Gemini had demonstrated the need for keeping a margin of weight for additional equipment and redundancy, Holmes added.⁵⁵

On 2 November, Wiesner and Golovin met with Webb and his staff once again. It was obvious that the two organizations still occupied opposing camps. Golovin presented a detailed re-analysis of the 24 October mode study, challenging both payload margins and reliability and safety considerations. He still contended that, of the two modes capable of using only storable propellants, earth-orbit rendezvous had a somewhat higher performance margin. Moreover, with cryogenic propellants in the landing stage (and for this he cited research done at Lewis), two-man direct flight was quite feasible.

But Golovin found more serious faults in NASA’s stance on reliability and crew safety. As he wrote Shea later that day, “It has been surprising to [read in the report] that the Direct Ascent case is less likely to be successful, and to be more dangerous to the crew than the obviously more complicated LOR mode.”⁵⁶

Members of Shea’s staff disputed Golovin’s estimates of performance margins and reliability factors that made earth-orbit rendezvous and direct flight appear safer than lunar rendezvous. This exchange - NASA’s final technical response to outside criticism of the agency’s handling of the mode question - was actually a postmortem. After Webb’s letter of 24 October, Wiesner decided not to take his objections to Kennedy, since the President was occupied with the Cuban missile crisis. Subsequently, Wiesner took the position that had the situation been different, his actions might not have been the same. Webb then advised the White House that Apollo was committed to lunar rendezvous.⁵⁷ Wiesner had never argued that this mode was impossible; he had simply preferred other methods. He realized the depth of Webb’s commitment to his technical organization. If Wiesner had carried the question to President Kennedy, Webb would have insisted that NASA alone must make crucial program decisions. The Chief Executive almost certainly would have backed the man he had appointed to run NASA. So, presumably, Wiesner decided to let the issue die. At the end of the first week in November 1962, NASA announced its selection of a manufacturer for the lunar module.⁵⁸

Fitting the Lunar Module into Apollo

Since responsibility for the Apollo command and service modules already rested with Gilruth’s Manned Spacecraft Center, NASA assigned Houston to procure and manage the lunar excursion vehicle. NASA officials decided to hire a separate contractor to develop the lunar landing spacecraft.

North American had made a strong bid for the lander when the lunar travel mode became a hot issue. Although the company was sent a request for proposals in July 1962, it was first discouraged, and then precluded, from bidding on this contract. NASA evidently believed that North American already had all the Apollo development work it could handle.⁵⁹

Facing the loss of the glamor associated with landing its own craft on the moon, North American did not give up gracefully. Harrison Storms carried his case to Administrator Webb, suggesting that his company be selected as sole source contractor for the lander, farming out most of the actual hardware work. This arrangement would have made North American the systems manager, responsible for integrating all the payload vehicles. Legal and procurement officers within NASA warned Webb against this approach. The agency should contract the lander directly, they urged. To permit an industrial firm to take over this task without competition, even though NASA would have the final approval of the selection of the subcontractors, “might be regarded as a delegation of NASA’s inherent responsibility to perform its procurement function.”⁶⁰

Requests for proposals on the lander were issued on 25 July 1962, and a bidders’ briefing was held in Houston on 2 August. On 5 September, barely five weeks after the issuance, NASA announced that nine companies had submitted proposals and that the agency planned to award the contract in six to eight weeks. Of the 11 companies originally invited to bid, only McDonnell - and North American - had not submitted proposals.

Evaluations began at Houston immediately after the proposals were received and they ended on 28 September. At Ellington Air Force Base in mid-September, company officials made formal presentations to the Source Evaluation Board and a number of technical management panels. NASA teams then made one-day visits to the company plants, to see what facilities each bidder could draw upon to support the development program.⁶¹ Early in October, officials from Houston presented their findings and recommendations to NASA Headquarters. Holmes wanted the selection completed, approved, and announced by the middle of the month. But the last-minute demands by PSAC postponed the contract award for three weeks. On 7 November, NASA formally announced that the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation of Bethpage, New York, would build the excursion module.⁶²

Several bidders had been very close, both technically and managerially, William Rector later said. Any of them could have done the job - “Grumman didn’t turn in the only good design.” A major factor in Grumman’s selection had been its facilities: spacious engineering design and office accommodations, ample manufacturing space, and a clean-room complex for vehicle assembly and testing.

The Manned Spacecraft Center continued its studies, even after the requests had been issued. Rector remembered that “our designs were really beginning to take shape. . . . We were getting a much better feel for what we wanted this thing to look like.” The Apollo Spacecraft Project Office had been realigned on 1 August, to give the lunar module an organization of its own. Rector became project officer for the lander and Thomas Markley for the command and service modules. Rector and Markley then revised the North American statement of work to reflect Grumman’s and the lunar module’s place in the Apollo-Saturn stack, particularly in the arrangements for docking and for stowage within a protective adapter section.

Rector’s office began defining the lander’s subsystems: propulsion, guidance and control, reaction control, electrical power, and instrumentation. The planners hoped to use Mercury and Gemini spacecraft components as well as Apollo command and service module parts (“common usage” equipment in the new vehicle. The guidance and navigation system in the command module received the closest initial scrutiny for common usage parts. MIT studies indicated that the inertial measurement unit, the telescope, and some computers and displays might be modified for the lander.⁶³

Numerous lunar-module-related design problems were examined during the last weeks of 1962. Among the most pressing were requirements for rendezvous and landing radar (and where to put the equipment); analyses of individual vehicle systems, such as electrical power and thermal control; considerations of mission trajectory from lunar orbit and back and of abort trajectories from any point during the descent; projections of overall costs for developing the vehicle; and questions of dust layers on the moon, the blast effect caused by descent engine exhaust, and the influence of these factors on both vehicle design and landing site selection. During this time, NASA decided that the lander’s propulsion systems would be tested at White Sands in facilities similar to those being developed at Sacramento for testing the service module’s main engine.⁶⁴ Apollo leaders also expected to flight-test the lunar module in New Mexico, using the Little Joe II booster.

Simulating lunar landings to train the crews would require ingenuity; imitating one-sixth g within the earth’s gravitational field is complex and difficult. Three methods were considered, the simplest being a fixed-base simulator like those built for the Mercury and Gemini programs. More complicated were plans for tethered flights of a model of the lunar lander at Langley on a huge A-frame structure that used cables and rigging to relieve the descent engine of most of the vehicle’s weight.

The third method, which would simulate in free flight the actual landing on the moon, employed a unique and specially fitted flying machine called the lunar landing research vehicle. Dubbed the “flying bedstead” or “pipe rack,” this was a complex combination of rocket motors and a vertical jet engine designed to accustom the astronauts to flying in the lower gravity of the moon. Work on the vehicle, based on concepts proposed by Bell Aerosystems, had already begun at NASA’s Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. After awarding a contract to Bell in January 1962, that center solicited support from Houston in designing, building, and flying the craft. Paul F. Bikle, Director of the Flight Research Center, insisted that close contact with the builders of the lunar module during the designing of the hover craft was essential to make certain the handling characteristics of the moon lander were accurately represented.⁶⁵

NASA Adjustments for Apollo

In mid-1962, Washington program planners spelled out in detail the interrelations of Apollo and the total space program. The agency’s unmanned satellites and space probes, especially Ranger and Surveyor, would have to focus on the lunar mission, since the most pressing need was for accurate information about the space environment such as meteoroid and radiation hazards and the lunar surface.⁶⁶ Subordination of unmanned scientific programs to the manned programs brought considerable criticism during the next few years.

NASA leadership was confronted during the summer and fall of 1962 with the dual tasks of informing Congress of the status of Apollo and of fitting its fiscal plans to the lunar-rendezvous approach. Defending Apollo’s budget request for fiscal 1963 before the Senate Committee on Appropriations on 10 August 1962, Webb and Low reiterated that technical considerations had been important in choosing that approach, but so had costs. Lunar rendezvous for Apollo, although not lessening the agency’s needs for the upcoming year, would be cheaper in the long run. But NASA must get started on both the lunar vehicle and a C-IB version of the Saturn booster, Webb pointed out, to develop and test rendezvous procedures in earth orbit before attempting them in lunar orbit.⁶⁷

In late 1962 and early 1963, financial resources for NASA were uncertain, particularly the funds needed for development of the lunar module. Houston needed to know when the money would be available. On 9 October, Holmes asked Seamans to request a supplemental appropriation from Congress, but Seamans refused. For the next year and a half, the fiscal 1963 and 1964 funds, set at $2.058 billion and $3.402 billion, would cover research and development and construction of facilities. This should be enough, Seamans said, to keep on schedule and meet a 1967 landing date.⁶⁸

On 21 November 1962, Webb, Holmes, and others met with the President to explore the possibility of an Apollo landing earlier than 1967 and to discuss NASA’s budget. Kennedy asked the Administrator for a policy statement on the priority of the moon landing within the overall civilian space effort. On 30 November, in a lengthy letter, Webb replied: “The objective of our national space program is to become pre-eminent in all important aspects of this endeavor and to conduct the program in such a manner that our emerging scientific, technological, and operational competence in space is clearly evident.” Apollo, the largest single project within NASA, consuming three-fourths of the agency’s resources, was “being executed with the utmost urgency” and was expected to “provide a clear demonstration to the world of our accomplishments in space.”

Although it had the highest priority within NASA, the manned lunar landing program alone would not achieve superiority in space, Webb continued. “We [must] pursue an adequate well-balanced space program in all areas. . . .” He advised against canceling or curtailing space science and technology development programs merely to funnel these funds to Apollo, although that money, some $400 million, was just the additional amount needed by Apollo for 1963. NASA’s top officials were concerned, he said, that attempts to get a budget supplement might jeopardize appropriations for coming years and possibly leave the agency open to charges of cost overruns and poor management. “The funds already appropriated,” Webb affirmed, “permit us to maintain a driving, vigorous program in the manned space flight area aimed at a target date of late 1967 for the lunar landing.”⁶⁹

Although a steady flow of money during the succeeding years was essential to the success of Apollo, it was not the major concern in late 1962. The lunar module contractor had been selected, but there was still a lot of work to be done. And the lander was, potentially, the pacing item - the factor that would determine when the United States might land astronauts on the moon.

NASA-Grumman Negotiations

When Grumman was selected for Apollo, the company expanded from an aircraft producer into a major aerospace concern. This transition reflected a long-term resolution, and a considerable investment of funds, on the part of the firm’s senior management to penetrate the American space market.

The story of Grumman’s drive for a role in manned space flight has a rags-to-riches, Horatio Algerlike quality. The company had competed for every major NASA contract and, except for the unmanned Orbiting Astronomical Observatory satellite, had never finished in the money. Late in 1958, when NASA was looking for a contractor for the Mercury spacecraft, Grumman had tied with McDonnell in the competition. But only a short time before, the Navy had awarded several new aircraft development programs to Grumman. For almost three decades the words Grumman and carrier-based aircraft had been virtually synonymous. To avoid disrupting

Navy scheduling and to ensure its contractor’s concentration on Mercury, NASA had selected McDonnell.⁷⁰ Nevertheless, board chairman and company founder Leroy R. Grumman and president E. Clinton Towl had continued to support study programs to strengthen the firm’s capabilities and build a cadre of experienced engineering experts. By 1960 Grumman’s study group, guided principally by Thomas J. Kelly, had begun to focus on lunar flight, examining lunar spacecraft concepts and guidance and trajectory requirements. The company had also done some guidance work on circumlunar flight for the Navy and passed its findings on to NASA.⁷¹

When NASA awarded the three six-month Apollo feasibility contracts in the latter half of 1960, Grumman again bid unsuccessfully. But Kelly and about 50 engineers continued their investigations full-time, without monetary assistance from NASA. Through a series of informal briefings and reports, they kept the agency informed of what they were doing. This group, on one occasion, said that the lack of funds had limited its investigations to lunar-orbital flights. In mid-May, when the three funded feasibility contractors had submitted final reports, Grumman (like several other firms that had gone ahead independently) also presented the results of its study to the Manned Spacecraft Center.⁷²

Grumman officials had begun to realize just what a massive undertaking the Apollo program would be. After much soul searching, the company decided not to bid alone for the command module contract, joining with General Electric, Douglas, and Space Technology Laboratories in submitting a proposal. Grumman’s chief contribution was cockpit design and layout. A strengthened space working group was now headed by Joseph G. Gavin, Jr., a Grumman vice president. On three floors of a commercial building near Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the teams, sometimes numbering 200 persons, from the four companies worked day and night to put its proposal together.⁷³

When NASA announced that North American had won the Apollo spacecraft contract, at the end of November 1961, the prevalent feeling at Grumman was, as one tired engineer recalled, “What do we do now?” One segment of the combined proposal, however, gave them some ideas and provided a reason to continue. The four firms had examined many aspects of a lunar landing mission beyond what was called for by NASA. One central feature the team explored was the mission mode, only lightly touched on in the proposal request. At the outset of work on the contract bid, each of the companies had studied a different mode. By chance, Grumman had drawn lunar-orbit rendezvous. After the studies had been compared, this approach was recommended in the joint proposal.⁷⁴ In the fall and winter of 1961-1962, Gavin turned full attention to lunar rendezvous and to the separate vehicle that would be needed.

Under the leadership of Gavin as Program Director and Robert S. Mullaney as Program Manager, the study group had achieved formal status in the corporate structure of Grumman and had acquired a number of Grumman’s most experienced engineering and design experts. The team studied configurations of staged versus unstaged vehicles, subsystem requirements, propulsion needs, and weight tradeoffs for the lunar lander. Thus, when NASA issued the requests for proposals for the lunar module, Grumman was able to include a large amount of solid information in its bid. Even before lunar-orbit rendezvous had been chosen, Grumman had begun to build simulators, to define the facilities that would be needed for the program, and to construct the aerospace building where, in the beginning, all the design work was done.

Gavin and his people were confident that they were well founded in the technical requirements of the program; they also recognized that management capabilities would be an important criteria in the selection. They therefore enlisted a team of potential subcontractors and stressed the expertise of these allies. Prominent among the subcontractors were the firms for the two propulsion systems (Bell and Rocketdyne), which included the all-important throttleable descent engine.⁷⁵

Once Grumman had been selected, NASA agreed that a definitive contract could be written immediately, instead of (as with North American) an interim, or “letter,” contract followed by interminable negotiations leading to final agreement. For the lunar module, Rector said, “we negotiated [the whole program], even though we didn’t understand [it] that well at the time.”

Grumman officials did not really know what NASA wanted. It was, in Kelly’s words, “an example of ignorance in action, . . . at least on our part.” Neither side fully appreciated the size of the development they were undertaking. The Grumman group entered negotiations under the impression that it was simply going to build the vehicle it had proposed, but “that wasn’t what the NASA people had in mind.” NASA expected that, once negotiations were concluded, Grumman would begin a preliminary design phase, redefining the complete spacecraft item by item. In the long run, the definition phase took longer than either party had anticipated. But Grumman had submitted a preliminary design of the lander, and “we were still somewhat enthralled with [it],” Gavin recalled. “It took some time for this to settle down.”⁷⁶

Conferences between NASA and Grumman began on 19 November. About 80 persons from Grumman traveled to Houston for the talks. The Bethpage contingent was broken into a dozen technical teams and several program management, reliability, and support groups. Grumman’s Negotiation Management Team comprised Gavin, Kelly, C. William Rathke (Engineering Manager), and John Snedeker (Business Manager). This management team obviously had more authority than North American’s negotiating group had on the command and service modules, which was hardly surprising in view of Gavin’s position as vice president of the company and director of Grumman’s space activities.⁷⁷

The customer and contractor teams sat down to define contractual details, review subcontracting plans, work out a technical approach, and spell out management arrangements and procedures for running the program. They examined requirements for facilities and determined the number and kinds of test articles (roughly equivalent to North American’s boilerplate spacecraft), to avoid the need for building complete vehicles for testing specific subsystems. Agreements were eventually hammered out. The total value of the cost-plus-fixed-fee contract was set at $385 million, including Grumman’s fee of just over $25 million.⁷⁸

Apollo officials had intended to finish the negotiations and sign the contract before adjourning, but the Grumman team caught the last available airline flight back to New York on Christmas Eve with a few details still unresolved. Gilruth went to Bethpage early in January to settle these outstanding items with Gavin and get the contract in final form for signing. The Houston center had also expected Headquarters approval during early January; that, too, was delayed. On 14January 1963, NASA told Grumman to begin development of the lunar module, although the contract was not signed until early March, at a revised cost figure of $387.9 million.⁷⁹

End of a Phase

Fitting Apollo’s final two jigsaw pieces, the mode and the lunar landing vehicle, into the picture had closed a phase for NASA. For four years, the space agency had been planning, defining, or defending some facet of what led up to and became Apollo. NASA now faced a period of developing and testing hardware and then a time of attaining the operational experience needed to land men on the moon. The past year, 1962, had been the most strenuous, not only because of Apollo’s crowded activities but because Mercury and Gemini had demanded so much attention.

Project Mercury enjoyed a banner year in 1962, with three manned earth-orbital flights: John Glenn in Friendship 7 (Mercury-Atlas 6) on 20 February, Scott Carpenter in Aurora 7 (MA-7) on 24 May, and Walter Schirra in the six-orbit flight of Sigma 7 (MA-8) on 3 October. These, plus a good Saturn I flight on 16 November, gave the operations people experience in conducting actual missions.

It was becoming clear to Walter Williams and Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., Houston’s mission and flight directors, that something larger and better equipped than the Mercury Control Center at Cape Canaveral would be needed for Projects Gemini and Apollo, with their longer and more complex missions. Flight controllers were spending a disproportionate amount of time traveling from Houston to the Cape - time that could more profitably be used for discussing ways of getting better performance from the spacecraft systems, training a larger cadre of flight controllers, and studying methods for handling Apollo missions.⁸⁰

The Houston group began pushing hard for an “Integrated Mission Control Center” at the new Clear Lake site southeast of the city. “Integrated” meant not only transferring flight control from the Cape but also moving computer programming and operations to the Texas center. Computer functions, including tracking and communications, had been Goddard’s responsibility during Mercury. Harry Goett’s team at the Maryland center had worked out plans for expanding the Manned Space Flight Network developed for Mercury to several times the size it was then. To this team, it seemed logical to keep this function in its own capable hands. Administrator Webb, however, agreed with Williams and Kraft, at least in part, and announced on 20 July 1962^* that the main Apollo control center would be in Houston. But the location of the primary computer complex and the division of labor for the manned space flight tracking and communications network was still unsettled at the end of 1962.⁸¹

Project Gemini operations in 1962 essentially paralleled those of Phase A - earth-orbital - for the Apollo spacecraft. The Gemini team was busy with detailed systems and subsystems definition and subcontracting. McDonnell’s engineering mockup of the Gemini spacecraft was ready for review by Houston officials on 15 and 16 August. As the inspection began, Russian cosmonauts Andrian G. Nikoleyev in Vostok III and Pavel R. Popovich in Vostok IV landed safely after flights that, at first glance, seemed to have accomplished two Gemini objectives designed to gain experience for Apollo - long duration and rendezvous.

Although the cosmonauts did log a combined time of nearly 166 hours, contrasting with less than 20 hours total time for the three Mercury pilots during the year, it soon became obvious that the Soviets could not maneuver their craft to rendezvous in space. Because the two Russians came within five kilometers of each other, however, Gemini engineers wanted to see if the Mercury spacecraft could be modified to rendezvous with a passive target. After intensive study, Kenneth Kleinknecht, the Mercury project manager, reported that the modifications would add too much weight - the spacecraft might not even reach orbital altitude.⁸²

The Gemini announcement in late 1961 had declared that “NASA’s current seven astronauts will serve as pilots in this program. Additional crew members may be phased in during later stages.” In April 1962, the agency began selecting a new group of pilots. Six months later, eight of the nine “astronaut trainees”^** watched from the Florida shoreline as Schirra began his six-orbit flight. Across the ocean, people in 17 countries viewed the first European television broadcast, via the communications satellite Telstar, of a space launch in “real time.”⁸³

Amid these and many other activities - such as building offices and training, checkout, and test facilities and erecting launch pads - the feasibility and definition phases of Apollo ended for NASA Headquarters and the three manned space flight field centers. The next step, design and development, promised to be equally strenuous and demanding.