அப்பல்லோ திட்டம்

thumb|right|Apollo 11, முதலில் மனிதன் நிலவில் கால்பதித்தத் திட்டம்,1969
அப்பல்லோ திட்டம் என்பது 1961–1972 வரை, ஐக்கிய அமெரிக்க நாட்டினால் நடைமுறைப்படுத்தப்பட்ட, ஒரு தொடரான மனித விண்வெளிப்பறப்புத் திட்டமாகும். இது, தசாப்தம் 1960களுக்குள் ஒரு மனிதனைச் சந்திரனில் இறக்கி, பாதுகாப்பாக பூமிக்குத் திருப்பிக் கொண்டுவருவதை நோக்கமாகக் கொண்டது. 1969ல் அப்பல்லோ 11 திட்டத்தின் மூலம், இந்த நோக்கம் அடையப்பட்டது. சந்திரனில், ஆரம்ப ஆள்மூல அறிவியல் ஆய்வுகளை மேற்கொள்வதற்காக, இத் திட்டம், 1970களின் முற்பகுதிவரை நீட்டிக்கப்பட்டது.

 அறிமுகம்
மேர்க்குரித் திட்டம், ஜெமினி திட்டம் ஆகியவற்றைத் தொடர்ந்து, அப்பல்லோ திட்டம் ஐக்கிய அமெரிக்காவின் மூன்றாவது ஆளேற்றிய விண்பறப்புத் திட்டமாகும். அப்பல்லோ, டுவைட் டி. ஐசனாவர் நிர்வாகத்தில், மேர்க்குரித் திட்டத்தின் தொடர்ச்சியாக, உயர்நிலை பூமிச்சுற்று ஆய்வுகளுக்காக, உருக்கொடுக்கப்பட்டது. பின்னர், மே 25, 1961ல், அமெரிக்கக் காங்கிரசின் விசேட கூட்டு அமர்வில், ஜனாதிபதி கெனடியால் அறிவிக்கப்பட்டபடி, தீவிர நிலவில் இறங்கும் நோக்கத்துக்காக மாற்றியமைக்கப்பட்டது.

 ஒரு திட்ட முறையைத் தெரிவுசெய்தல்
thumb|நாசாவில் கென்னடியின் பேச்சு, செப்டம்பர் 12, 1962
சந்திரனை இலக்காகத் தீர்மானித்ததன் பின்னர், மனித உயிருக்கான ஆபத்து, செலவு, தொழில்நுட்பம், விமானிகள் திறமை ஆகிய தேவைகளின் குறைந்த அளவு உபயோகத்துடன், கெனடி அறிவித்த நோக்கங்களை அடைவதற்காகப் பறப்புத் திட்டங்களை வடிவமைப்பதில், அப்பல்லோ திட்டத்தின் திட்டமிடலாளர்கள் பெரும் சவாலை எதிர்நோக்கினார்கள்.

மூன்று திட்டங்கள் கருத்திலெடுக்கப்பட்டன. முதலாவதாக, விண்கலத்தை நேரடியாகச் சந்திரனுக்கு ஏற்றுதல். இதற்குத் தற்போது திட்டமிடப்பட்டிருப்பனவற்றிலும் பார்க்கச் சக்தி கூடிய நோவா தூக்கி வேண்டியிருக்கும். இரண்டாவது, பூமிச் சுற்றுப்பாதை திட்டமிட்ட சந்திப்பு (EOR) என அழைக்கப்பட்டது. இதன்படி, ஒன்றில் விண்கலத்தையும், மற்றதில் எரிபொருளையும் வைத்து, இரண்டு சனி 5 (Saturn V) ராக்கெட்டுகள் ஏவப்பட வேண்டும். விண்கலம் பூமியின் சுற்றுப்பாதையில் தரித்து நிற்க, நிலவுக்குச் சென்று திரும்பிவரப் போதுமான அளவு அதற்கு எரிபொருள் நிரப்பப்பட வேண்டும்.

 சந்திரச் சுற்றுப்பாதை திட்டமிட்ட சந்திப்பு
thumb|முதல்வடிவமைப்பு,LOR,1962
உண்மையாகக் கடைப் பிடிக்கப்பட்ட திட்டத்தின் உருவாக்குனர், ஜோன் ஹூபோல்ட் என்பவராவர். இத்திட்டம் 'சந்திரச் சுற்றுப்பாதை திட்டமிட்ட சந்திப்பு' (LOR) என்னும் தொழில் நுட்பத்தைப் பயன்படுத்தியது. விண்கலம் கூறுகளாக உருவாக்கப் படும், இவற்றுள் ஒரு 'கட்டளை/சேவை கூறு' (CSM) மற்றும் ஒரு 'நிலா கூறு' (LM; சந்திரப் பயண கூறு என்ற அதன் ஆரம்ப ஆங்கிலப் பெயரையிட்டு, 'லெம்' என உச்சரிக்கப்படும்) என்பன அடங்கியிருக்கும். கட்டளை/சேவை கூறு மூன்று பேரடங்கிய குழுவுக்கு, 5 நாள் நிலவுக்குச் சென்று திரும்பும் பயணத்துக்குத் தேவையான, உயிர் காப்பு முறைமைகளைக் கொண்டிருப்பதுடன், அவர்கள் பூமியின் காற்றுமண்டலத்துள் நுழையும்போது தேவைப்படும், வெப்பத் தடுப்புகளையும் கொண்டிருக்கும். நிலா கூறு, சந்திரச் சுற்றுப்பாதையில், கட்டளை/சேவை கூறிலிருந்து பிரிந்து, இரண்டு விண்வெளிவீரர்களை நிலா மேற்பரப்பில் இறக்குவதற்காகக் கொண்டுசெல்லும்.

நிலா கூறு தன்னுள் இறங்கு மேடையொன்றையும், ஏறு மேடையொன்றையும் கொண்டுள்ளது. முன்னது, ஆய்வுப்பயணக் குழு, சந்திரனைவிட்டுப் புறப்பட்டுப் பூமிக்குச் திரும்புமுன், சுற்றுப்பாதையிலிருக்கும் கட்டளை/சேவை கூறு உடன் இணையச் செல்லும்போது, பின்னையதற்கு ஏவு தளமாகப் பயன்படும். இத் திட்டத்திலுள்ள ஒரு வசதி என்னவென்றால், நிலா கூறு கைவிடப்படவுள்ள காரணத்தால், அது மிகவும் பாரமற்றதாகச் செய்யப்படலாம் என்பதுடன், சந்திரப்பயணம் ஒற்றை சாடர்ன் V ஏவூர்தியால் ஏவப்படவும்கூடியதாக உள்ளது.

ஏவு வாகனங்கள்
thumb|right|300px| அப்பல்லோ திட்டத்திற்கான நான்கு ஏவூர்திகளும் ஒப்புமையில் வரையப்பட்டுள்ளன: லிட்டில் ஜோ II, சாடர்ன் I, சாடர்ன் IB, மற்றும் சாடர்ன் V

அப்பல்லோ திட்டம் தொடங்குவதற்கு முன்னர், வெர்னர் வான் பிரவுன் மற்றும் அவரது ராக்கெட் பொறியாளர்களின் குழுவினர் சாடர்ன் தொடர் மற்றும்  நோவா தொடர் ஆகிய மிகப்பெரும் ஏவூர்திகளின் வடிவமைப்பில் ஈடுபட்டிருந்தனர்.  இந்த திட்டங்களின் நடுவில், வான் பிரவுன் இராணுவத்திலிருந்து நாசாவிற்கு மாற்றப்பட்டு மார்ஷல் விண் பறத்தல் மையத்தின் இயக்குனராக நியமிக்கப்பட்டார்.  தொடக்கத்தில்,  மூன்று விண்வெளி வீரர்களைச் சுமந்துசெல்லும் அப்பல்லோ கட்டளை / சேவைப் பெட்டகத்தை நேரடியாக சந்திர மேற்பரப்புக்கு அனுப்புவதாகத் திட்டமிடப்பட்டது; இதற்கு  சுமையைச் சுமந்துசெல்லுமளவுக்கான திறன்கொண்ட நோவா வகை ஏவூர்திகள் பயன்படுத்தத் திட்டமிடப்பட்டதுBilstein 1996, Chapter 2.2: "Aerospace Alphabet: ABMA, ARPA, MSFC". p. 50.  ஜூன் 11, 1962-ல் நிலவுச் சுற்றுப்பாதையில் பிரிந்து/இணையும் வண்ணம் கட்டளை / சேவைப் பெட்டக திட்டத்தை செயல்படுத்த முடிவெடுத்ததன்பின்  சனி தொடர் ஏவூர்திகளின் வடிவமைப்பு, மேம்பாடு மற்றும் சோதனை முடுக்கிவிடப்பட்டது.Bilstein 1996, Chapter 3: "Missions, Modes, and Manufacturing". p. 60

லிட்டில் ஜோ II

மெர்க்குரித் திட்டத்தைப் போலவே, அப்பல்லோ திட்டத்திலும் ஏவுதலில் தோல்வியேதும் ஏறபடுமாயின் வீரர்கள் தப்பிப்பதற்கு ஏவுநிலை விடுபடு அமைப்பு (Launch Escape System) தேவையானதாகவிருந்தது; அதற்கு சிறிய அளவிலான ஏவூர்தி பறத்தல் சோதனைகளுக்குத் தேவையாக இருந்தது.  மெர்க்குரித் திட்டத்தில் பயன்படுத்தப்பட்ட லிட்டில் ஜோ-வினை விட சற்றே திறன்மிகுந்த ஏவூர்தி அத்தேவையைப் பூர்த்தி செய்யும் எனக் கணக்கிடப்பட்டது.  இதன்பிறகு, லிட்டில் ஜோ II ஏவூர்தியானது ஜெனரல் டைனமிக்ஸ் / கான்வெய்ர் நிறுவனங்களால் வடிவமைக்கப்பட்டு, தயாரிக்கப்பட்டது.  ஆகஸ்டு 1963-இல் நிகழ்த்தப்பட்ட தேர்வுநிலை சோதனைப் பறத்தலின் பிறகுTownsend 1973, p. 14, மே 1964-க்கும் சனவரி 1966-க்கும் இடைப்பட்ட காலகட்டத்தில் நான்கு ஏவுநிலை விடுபடு அமைப்பு சோதனை பறத்தல்கள் நிகழ்த்தி சோதிக்கப்பட்டது.Townsend 1973, p. 22

 பறப்புகள்

அப்பல்லோத் திட்டம் அப்பல்லோ 7 முதல் அப்பல்லோ 17 வரையான, 11 ஆளேற்றிய பறப்புக்களை உள்ளடக்கியிருந்தது. இவையனைத்தும், புளோரிடாவிலுள்ள கெனடி விண்வெளி மையத்திலிருந்து ஏவப்பட்டன. அப்பல்லோ 2 இலிருந்து அப்பல்லோ 6 வரை, ஆளில்லா சோதனைப் பறப்புகள். முதல் ஆளேற்றிய பறப்பாகத் திட்டமிடப்பட்டிருந்த அப்பல்லோ 1, ஏவுதளச் சோதனையொன்றின்போது தீப் பிடித்து, மூன்று விண்வெளிவீரர்களும் இறந்துபோயினர். முதல் ஆளேற்றிய பறப்பில் சற்றேர்ண் 1-B ஏவுவாகனம் பயன்படுத்தப்பட்டது. தொடர்ந்து வந்த பறப்புகள் அனைத்தும், கூடிய சக்தி வாய்ந்த சாடர்ன் V-ஐப் பயன்படுத்தின. இவற்றில் இரண்டு (அப்பல்லோ 7 உம் அப்பல்லோ 9 உம்) பூமிச் சுற்றுப் பாதைப் பயணங்கள். அப்பல்லோ 8 உம் அப்பல்லோ 10 உம் நிலாச் சுற்றுப்பாதைப் பயணங்கள். ஏனைய 7 பயணங்களும், சந்திரனில் இறங்கும் பயணங்களாகும். (இவற்றுள் அப்பல்லோ 13 தோல்வியடைந்தது.)

சுருக்கமாக, அப்பல்லோ 7, அப்பல்லோ கட்டளை மற்றும் சேவைக் கூறைப் (CSM) புவியின் சுற்றுப்பாதையில் பரிசோதித்தது. அப்பல்லோ 8 CSM ஐச் சந்திரனின் சுற்றுப்பாதையில் பரிசோதித்தது. அப்பல்லோ 9, லூனார் கூறை (LM), புவியின் சுற்றுப்பாதையில் பரிசோதித்தது. அப்பல்லோ 10, லூனார் கூறை (LM), சந்திரனின் சுற்றுப்பாதையில் பரிசோதித்தது. அப்பல்லோ 11, ஆளேற்றிக்கொண்டு நிலவிலிறங்கிய முதற் பயணமாகும். அப்பல்லோ 12, சந்திரனில், குறித்த இடத்தில் சரியாக இறங்கிய முதற் பயணம் என்ற பெயரைப் பெற்றது. அப்பல்லோ 13, சந்திரனில் இறங்கும் முயற்சியில் தோல்வியுற்றதெனினும், பேரழிவாக முடிந்திருக்கக்கூடிய பறப்பினுள் ஏற்பட்ட வெடிப்பைத் தொடர்ந்து, பாதுகாப்பாகப் பயணக்குழுவைப் பூமியிலிறக்கி வெற்றிகண்டது. அப்பல்லோ 14, சந்திர ஆய்வுப் பயணத் திட்டத்தை மீண்டும் துவக்கியது. அப்பல்லோ 15, சந்திர ஆய்வுப்பயண வல்லமையில், நீண்ட தங்கு நேரம் கொண்ட LM, மற்றும் நிலவில் திரியும் வாகனம் மூலம், புதிய மட்டத்தை அறிமுகம் செய்தது.
அப்பல்லோ 16 தான் சந்திரனின் உயர் நிலத்திலிறங்கிய முதல் ஆளேற்றிய இறக்கமாகும். அப்பல்லோ 17, அறிவியலாளரான, விண்வெளி வீரரைக் கொண்ட முதற் பயணமும், திட்டத்தின் இறுதிப் பயணமுமாகும்.

 திட்ட நிறைவு

தொடக்கத்தில், அப்பல்லோ 18 தொடக்கம் அப்பல்லோ 20 வரை மூன்று மேலதிக பயணங்களுக்குத் திட்டமிடப்பட்டிருந்தது. இந்தப் பயணங்கள், விண்வெளி விமான உருவாக்கத்தின் நிதித் தேவைகளுக்காகவும், அப்பல்லோ விண்கலத்தையும், சாடர்ன் V ஏவு வாகனங்களையும், ஸ்கைலேப் திட்டத்துக்குக் கொடுக்கும் பொருட்டும், கைவிடப்பட்டது. ஒரு சற்றேர்ண் V மட்டுமே உண்மையில் பயன்படுத்தப்பட்டது; ஏனையவை நூதனசாலைக் காட்சிப்பொருள்களாயின.

 அப்பல்லோவுக்கான காரணங்கள்

அப்பல்லோ திட்டமானது, சோவியத் யூனியனுடனான கெடுபிடிப் போர்ச் சூழலில், விண்வெளித்தொழில் நுட்பத்தில், அமெரிக்கா, சோவியத் யூனியனிலும் தாழ்ந்த நிலையிலிருந்ததற்குப் பதிலளிக்குமுகமாகவே, ஓரளவுக்கு ஒரு உளவியல்சார்-அரசியல் நிலைப்பாட்டின் அடிப்படையில் தூண்டப்பட்டது. இதில் அது மிகத் திறமையான முறையில் வெற்றிபெற்றது. உண்மையில் ஆளேற்றிய விண்பறப்புக்களில் அமெரிக்காவின் மேலாண்மை, முதலாவது அப்பல்லோ பறப்புக்கு முன்னரே, ஜெமினி திட்டம் மூலம் பெறப்பட்டது. தங்களுடைய N-1 ராக்கெட்டுகளை முழுமை நிலைக்குக் கொண்டுவர இயலாமை காரணமாக சோவியத் சந்திரனுக்குச் செல்வது தடைப்பட்டதுடன், 1990 கள் வரை அவர்கள் ஒரு நிலவுத் திட்டத்தைக் கொண்டிருப்பதையும் தடுத்துவந்தது.

அப்பல்லோத் திட்டம் தொழில்நுட்பத்தின் பல துறைகளுக்குத் தூண்டுதலாக அமைந்தது. லூனாரிலும், கட்டளை கூறிலும் பயன்படுத்தப்பட்ட, ஒரேமாதிரியான, பறப்புக் கணனியே ஒருங்கணைந்த சர்க்கியூட்டுகளையும், காந்த முதன்மை நினைவகம் ஐயும் பயன் படுத்திய முதற் சந்தர்ப்பமாகும். இக் கணினிகள் அப்பல்லோ வழிகாட்டுக் கணினிகள்

 நானாவித தகவல்கள்

அப்பல்லோ திட்டத்துக்கான செலவு: $25.4 பில்லியன்

சந்திரனிலிருந்து கொண்டுவரப்பட்ட சந்திரப் பொருட்களின் அளவு: 381.7 கிகி

அப்பல்லோ என்ற பெயர் கிரேக்கக் கடவுளைக் குறிக்கும்.

 பயணங்கள்
அப்பல்லோ பறப்புகளில் கவனிக்கப்படவேண்டிய ஒரு விடயம், சற்றேர்ண் ராக்கெட்டுகளை வடிவமைத்த மார்ஷல் விண்வெளிப் பறப்பு மையம், பறப்புகளை, சற்றேர்ண் - அப்பல்லோ (SA) என்று குறிப்பிட, கெனடி விண்வெளி மையம் அப்பல்லோ - சற்றேர்ண் (AS) என்று குறிப்பிடுகிறது.

 ஆளில்லா சற்றேர்ண் 1

 SA-1 – S-1 ராக்கெட்டின் சோதனை
 SA-2 – S-1 ராக்கெட்டின் சோதனை மற்றும், வானொலி ஒலிபரப்பு, காலநிலை என்பவற்றின் தாக்கங்களைப் பரிசோதிக்க, 109,000 லீற்றர்களை ஏற்றிச் செல்லல்.
 SA-3 – SA-2 போல
 SA-4 - நிறைவுக்கு முந்திய இயந்திர நிறுத்தத்தின் தாக்கம் பற்றிய சோதனைகள்.
 SA-5 – நேரடி முதற் பறப்பு, இரண்டாம் கட்டம்.
 A-101 - அப்பல்லோ கட்டளை/சேவை கூறின் வெப்பக்கலன் தகட்டின் அமைப்புத்திறனை சோதித்தது
 A-102 - சற்றேர்ண் 1 தூக்கியின் முதல் நிரல்தகு கணனியை எடுத்துச் சென்றது; கடைசி சோதனை பறப்பு

 A-103 - புவியின் சுற்றுப்பாதையில் சின்னஞ்சிறு விண்கற்களின் தாக்கத்தை ஆய்வு செய்த பிகாசசு விண்மதியை எடுத்துச் சென்றது.
 A-104 – A-102 போல
 A-105 – A-102 போல

 ஆளில்லா ஏற்றுமேடை இடைச்சிதை சோதனைகள்

 ஏற்றுமேடை இடைச்சிதை சோதனை-1 - ஏற்றுகை தப்புதல் அமைப்பிற்கு தரைநிலையில் எறியூட்டல்
 ஏற்றுமேடை இடைச்சிதை சோதனை-2 - ஏற்றுமேடை இடைச்சிதை சோதனை-1 போல
 ஆளில்லா லிட்டில் ஜோ II
 A-001 - ஏற்றுகைக்குப்பின் ஏற்றுகை தப்புதல் அமைப்பை சோதித்தல்
 A-002 – A-001 போல
 A-003 – A-001 போல
 A-004 – A-001 போல

 ஆளில்லா அப்பல்லோ-சற்றேண்
 AS-201 – சற்றேர்ண் IB ராக்கெட்டின் முதற் சோதனைப் பறப்பு.
 AS-203 - நிறையற்ற தன்மையை S-IVB இன் எரிபொருட் தாங்கியில் பரிசோதித்தல்.
 AS-202 – கட்டளை மற்றும் சேவை கூறு வின் துணை சுற்றுப்பாதைச் சோதனைப் பறப்பு.
 அப்பல்லோ 4 - சற்றேர்ண் V தூக்கி பரிசோதனை
 அப்பல்லோ 5 - சற்றேர்ண் IB தூக்கி பரிசோதனையும் நிலா கூறும்.
 அப்பல்லோ 6 - சற்றேர்ண் V தூக்கியின் ஆளில்லாப் பரிசோதனை

 ஆளியக்கியவை
 அப்பல்லோ 1 - விமானிகள் குழு சோதனை முயற்சியொன்றிபோது அழிந்தனர்
 அப்பல்லோ 7 - முதலாவது ஆளேற்றிய அப்பல்லோ பறப்பு
 அப்பல்லோ 8 - நிலவுக்கு முதலாவது ஆளேற்றிய பறப்பு
 அப்பல்லோ 9 - நிலா கூற்றின் முதலாவது ஆளேற்றிய பறப்பு
 அப்பல்லோ 10 - நிலவைச் சுற்றிய,நிலா கூற்றின் முதலாவது ஆளேற்றிய பறப்பு
 அப்பல்லோ 11 - நிலவில் முதல் மனிதனின் இறக்கம்.
 அப்பல்லோ 12 - நிலவில் முதலாவது அச்சொட்டான இறக்கம்
 அப்பல்லோ 13 - வழியில் ஒட்சிசன்தாங்கி வெடிப்பினால் குலைந்துபோன இறக்கம்.
 அப்பல்லோ 14 - அலன் ஷெப்பேட், சந்திரனில் நடந்த முதல் அசல் விண்வெளி வீரரானார்.
 அப்பல்லோ 15 – நிலவு உலவு வாகனத்துடன் முதலாவது பயணம்.
 அப்பல்லோ 16 - சந்திர உயர் நிலத்தில் முதல் இறக்கம்.
 அப்பல்லோ 17 - நிலவுக்குக் கடைசி ஆளேற்றிய பறப்பு. (இது வரை...)

 பின் தொடர்ந்த திட்டங்கள்
 ஸ்கைலேப்
 அப்பல்லோ-சோயுஸ்

மேலும் பார்க்க
 மெர்க்குரித் திட்டம்
 ஜெமினி திட்டம்
 சாடர்ன் V

உசாத்துணைகள்

 வெளி இணைப்புகள்
 உத்தியோகபூர்வ வலைத்தளம்

*

Prior to the start of the project, Warner van Brown and a group of his rocket scientists were involved in the development of major concepts such as Sadron series and Nava series.

தொடங்குவதற்கு

பொறியாளர்களின்

ஏவூர்திகளின்

வடிவமைப்பில்

ஈடுபட்டிருந்தனர்

[23] The original impetus for Saturn envisioned a brawny booster to launch Department of Defense payloads. The von Braun team at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) received money from the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency to demonstrate the concept. Furthermore, von Braun's group eventually became the nucleus of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). These convolutions and the vague outlines of evolving Saturn vehicle technology constitute the themes of chapter 2.
The Saturn program eventually included three basic vehicles: Saturn I, Saturn IB, and Saturn V. Chapter 3 describes the events that led to these three separate rockets, whose configuration evolved out of the choice to go the moon by means of the lunar orbit rendezvous technique. MSFC began development of facilities to develop and test the mammoth boosters. Chapter 3 concludes with a discussion of the design and manufacture of lower-stage boosters for the Saturn I and Saturn IB.
[25] In November 1956, when the Air Force finally triumphed over the Army and Navy for leadership in long-range military rockets, planners at ABMA momentarily regrouped to plot a new direction, a strategy for large booster development geared instead to the exploration of space. Having lost round one to the Air Force, ABMA's stratagem was to leapfrog onward and upward to a quantum jump.1
In April 1957, ABMA began design studies on an advanced booster concept. With a total thrust of approximately 6 800 000 newtons (1.5 million pounds) in the first stage alone, the proposed vehicle was referred to as the Super-Jupiter. The impetus for the development of a Super-Jupiter class apparently evolved from Department of Defense plans for "certain advanced missions using space devices in communication," as well as space probes and weather satellites. However, such payloads, especially satellite programs, required a booster much larger than existing launch vehicles. The Department of Defense guidelines called for a launch vehicle capable of putting 9000 to 18 000 kilograms into Earth orbit or accelerating space probes of 2700 to 5400 kilograms to escape velocity. At that time, ABMA estimated that satellite carriers on order, such as Thor, Juno II, and Atlas, could be expected to put up to 1400 kilograms into orbit. This capability might be increased to 4500 kilograms with high-energy propellants in upper stages. However, these boosters, with conventional propellants, would not be available for at least two years. The high-energy versions would not be operational until 1961 or 1962. Given the urgency of Department of Defense requirements for large payloads, a new class of booster and associated equipment had to be developed in a very short time, while keeping costs within low DOD limitations.2
[26] Early design and cost studies at ABMA suggested the possibility of using a single engine of 4 450 000 newtons (1 million pounds) of thrust, for which Rocketdyne Division of North American had made a feasibility study for the Air Force. Although this was an "Air Force engine," no other large propulsion system existed. The F-1 engine seemed unlikely to reach the point of full-scale testing for at least two years-too late to meet the accelerated booster development program of the Department of Defense. In any case, a booster with 6 700 000 newtons (1.5 million pounds) of thrust was needed, so the ABMA planning staff gave up on the simplicity of one large engine and turned to a combination of four smaller ones.
Rocketdyne also had a project under way for a 1 600 000- to 1 690 000-newton (360 000- to 380 000-pound) thrust engine known as the E1. Proposals for the four-engine booster involved the use of what one ABMA official called "off-the-shelf tankage" (presumably a single large-diameter booster propellant tank from the existing stable of military missiles) with the four E-1 engines in a clutter underneath it. This version of Super-Jupiter was closely analyzed by ABMA and technical experts from North American, and a number of upper-stage configurations were suggested. With specific choices in terms of engines and tankage still open, ABMA was by now certain that the clustering of engines was the most feasible route to attain quickly the Department of Defense goal of a 6 700 000-newton (1.5-million-pound) first-stage booster. In December 1957, ABMA delivered its proposal to the Department of Defense: "A National Integrated Missile and Space Vehicle Development Program." The document affirmed the clustered engine mode as a shortcut method to achieve large payload capability in the least amount of time.3
Nevertheless, Super-Jupiter still remained a feasibility study, existing only on paper and within the fertile imaginations of von Braun and his group at Huntsville. The Department of Defense had its stated requirements for payloads of many tons, and ABMA had its proposals for possible booster configurations, but there was still no priority or money to get Super-Jupiter past the level of paperwork. The immediate catalyst came in the form of a new Department of Defense organization whose high-priority recommendations cut through layers of red tape and allocated dollars for converting studies into hardware-the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
During the turbulent months of late 1957 and early 1958, the Eisenhower administration wrestled with the challenges posed by Sputnik I, the abortive launches of Vanguard, and the last ditch mission of Explorer I. A long-term, reasoned, and integrated space program called [27] for some informed and firm decisions. In February, President Eisenhower chartered a special committee under the guidance of Dr. J. R. Killian to study the issues and make recommendations for a national space program. As the Killian committee convened, the Department of Defense moved on its own to rationalize space research involving the armed services. On 7 February 1958, ARPA was formally established by Secretary of Defense Neil H. McElroy, and after part-time guidance through most of two months, Roy W. Johnson became the new agency's director on 1 April. Johnson, a graduate of the University of Michigan, had been executive vice-president at General Electric. There was no doubt that Johnson had extensive authority: he reported directly to the Secretary of Defense. The influence of ARPA became evident when William M. Holaday, Director of Guided Missiles in the Department of Defense, received orders to transfer some of his activities to the new agency. Johnson insisted on running ARPA as a mechanism for establishing goals and coordinating research efforts, as opposed to active R&D work and management of contracts. ARPA made top decisions and allocated the money, giving full rein to whatever organization was nominated to run a project. ARPA remained a small, tightly knit organization, numbering about 80 people "including the girls (in the office)," as Johnson put it, and drew the core of its technical staff from specialists in the Army, Navy, and Air Force.4
Through the spring of 1958, ARPA began to get its own organization in line while ABMA continued preliminary studies for the Super-Jupiter with E-1 engines. Then in July, ARPA began to show more specific interest in the huge 6 700 000-newton (1.5-million-pound) booster but argued for the use of available engine hardware, as opposed to the still untried E-1 propulsion systems. ARPA's line of reasoning was tied to its objective of developing the big booster in the shortest amount of time and doing the job within a framework of limited funds. The von Braun group in Huntsville possessed considerable experience with the engines for its own Jupiter series of rockets, and so a new cluster, with eight Jupiter engines instead of four E-1 types, began to evolve. Even though no formal agreements existed as yet between ARPA and ABMA, the close working relationship between the two organizations was evident in the name chosen for the new eight-engine booster. Known as Juno V, the designation followed ABMA's prior conceptual studies for advanced Juno III and Juno IV multistage rockets. By using off-the-shelf hardware, including the engines, it was estimated that Juno V, compared with the Super-Jupiter with E-1 engines, would save about $60 millon and as much as two years research and development time.5
With such preliminaries out of the way, ARPA issued more specific instructions to ABMA, granting authority and authorizing funds for the Juno V. ARPA Order Number 14-59, dated 15 August 1958, clarified the discussions of the previous weeks:
[28] Initiate a development program to provide a large space vehicle booster of approximately 1 500 000-lb. [6 700 000-newton] thrust based on a cluster of available rocket engines. The immediate goal of this program is to demonstrate a full-scale captive dynamic firing by the end of CY 1959.
This was an historic document, for it committed money and engaged the von Braun team at Huntsville in an effort they had long dreamed about. Juno V became the progenitor of a new family of launch vehicles that would be used in the nation's future space program. As von Braun himself put it, "Juno V was, in fact, an infant Saturn.6
Indeed, during this early period the Saturn designation was frequently used by von Braun and others inside ABMA. A new name seemed appropriate, because Saturn was seen as a distinct break from the Juno series-a new breed of launch vehicle that would see an active lifetime of a decade or more. "The SATURN," observed one ABMA report, "is considered to be the first real space vehicle as the Douglas DC-3 was the first real airliner and durable work-horse in aeronautics."7 In the autumn of 1958, however, the full development of the Saturn was only beginning. As two engineers from Huntsville commented, "The state of the art at this time classified the Saturn booster as almost impossibly complex."8
[29] The decision not to use the E-1 engine and to go to off-the-shelf hardware did not catch ABMA personnel flatfooted. Technicians and engineers at Huntsville were already working on propulsion systems related to the Jupiter to increase thrust, simplify operation, and improve overall mechanical and other systems. This work gave the engine development an important momentum early in the game and encouraged ABMA's optimism when ARPA requested a program for static firing a multiple engine cluster within 18 months, while operating on a shoestring budget. Still, "it was not easy," Willy Mrazek, one of the top ABMA planners, mused years later. One of the problems involved the engine manufacturer. When ABMA contacted Rocketdyne and laid out the program, company officials were intrigued by the big cluster idea but protested that the dollar allocation simply could not stretch far enough to finance the rebuilding and testing of engines and spares for the size of the program suggested by ABMA. By using all their persuasive power, and even a little "arm twisting," as Mrazek recalled, the von Braun group convinced Rocketdyne to take the plunge, including the authorization for the company to glean hardware from their stockrooms that was left over from prior manufacturing and development programs sponsored by the government. By 11 September 1958, Rocketdyne had signed a contract with ABMA to uprate the original Thor-Jupiter engine, known as the S-3D propulsion system, creating a unit suitably modified to operate in the cluster configuration. The new engine was called the H-1, and ABMA signed away half of its available funds to get it.9
With the money they had left, ABMA went to work in Huntsville to decide how to allocate their scarce dollars for oversized test stands and to define the configuration of the tankage. An early decision was made to modify an existing test stand "out in our backyard," as Mrazek phrased it, keeping in mind that, although it had been designed to take Army missiles like the Jupiter 2.67-meter-diameter tank and a thrust of 734 000 newtons (165 000 pounds) the test stand had to be reworked to take a "monster" that was 24 meters high, 6 meters in diameter, and built to put out a thrust of almost 6 700 000 newtons (1.5 million pounds). The lean budget also had to cover a miscellany of items such as tooling to fabricate the oversized tanks and development of a thrust structure to take the maximum force of eight engines firing together at full throttle. There was also the need for oversized assembly jigs for manufacturing and checkout of the big new booster and for the costs of getting all the materials and the manpower to put the thing together. Like Rocketdyne, ABMA found that short funds made a virtue of scrounging in the dark corners of warehouses and stockrooms and puts a premium on imaginative shortcuts.
Because ARPA Order Number 14-59 called only for a static demonstration in the test stand, not a flight-configured launch vehicle, the booster that began to take shape on the Redstone Arsenal drawing [30] boards and in the shops was definitely a bargain-basement and patchwork affair. The volume of the tankage posed a special problem. The fabrication and welding of a single 6-meter-diameter tank, with separate compartments for fuel and oxidizer, meant new techniques and working jigs. Consumption of time and money threatened to become exorbitant. A different approach to the problem evolved, and existing tanks were used instead. From its own earlier production runs, ABMA located partial rejects and incomplete 1.78-meter tanks from the Redstone and 2.67-meter tanks from the Jupiter missiles. Since the engines were going to be clustered, why not the tanks? "The dire need made us more inventive," Mrazek pointed out, "and we bundled the containers to be loaded with propellants." So the vaunted big booster emerged from the drawing boards as a weird compromise of eight separate 1.78-meter Redstone tanks surrounding a 2.67-meter Jupiter tank. It did not look exactly like a smooth, streamlined futuristic vehicle for the exploration of space, nor was it intended to be. Designed solely to see if a blockbuster of a rocket could run its eight engines in concert, ABMA was satisfied with its awkward-looking compromise.10
While the work in Huntsville progressed, representatives from ARPA kept a close watch on the proceedings and made frequent visits to Redstone Arsenal. They increasingly liked what they saw. So much so, in fact, that they decided to propose a series of test flights. On 23 September 1958, ARPA and the Army Ordnance Missile Command (AOMC) drew up an additional memorandum of agreement enlarging the scope of .....
[31] ....the booster program. Signed by Major General J.B. Medaris for AOMC and Roy Johnson for ARPA, the joint memorandum stated: "In addition to the captive dynamic firing..., it is hereby agreed that this program should now be extended to provide for a propulsion flight test of this booster by approximately September 1960." Further, the von Braun group was called on to produce three additional boosters, the last two of which would be "capable of placing limited payloads in orbit." Along with the new scheme came much needed funds. ABMA could now count on $13.4 million in FY 1959 and $20.3 million in FY 1960 for the captive firing test and first launch, in addition to $8.6 million in the same period for development of appropriate facilities. For the three additional flights by 1961, ABMA would receive as much as $25 million to $30 million.
The decision to make the Juno V into a flight vehicle added new dimensions to planning problems. First, a launch site had to be selected. Moreover, the size of the booster posed unique transportation problems. As long as the launch location remained undetermined (possibly a remote site in the Pacific), ABMA planned to dismantle the entire booster and airlift the components separately, a concept that would be possible because of the use of individual propellant tanks, engines, and associated structural modules. Still, the Juno V engineering team was never quite sure the dismantling and rebuilding scheme would work effectively. "Thank goodness," Mrazek admitted, "we never had to disassemble the first flight vehicle." In the end, it was agreed to launch from the Atlantic Missile Range at Cape Canaveral, and ABMA worked out a more feasible method of transporting its launch vehicles intact by relying on water routes.11
While ARPA proceeded to hammer out a program for booster development, a number of government committees were at work, attempting to clarify overall priorities for a national space program. On the heels of Sputnik, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson began probing the status of America's national security and the space program through hearings of the Senate Preparedness Investigation Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Forces Committee. As chairman of the subcommittee, Johnson kicked off the hearings on 25 November 1957. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was gearing up its own studies about the same time, and the White House also had a high-powered study in progress-the Killian committee, directed by President Eisenhower's recently appointed Special Assistant for Science and Technology, James R. Killian. The subcommittees of Killian's group reporting early in 1958 evidently had the most influence in shaping the Administration's approach. Even though the committee reports were shot through with overtones of [32] national security and the notion of a space race with the Russians, Administration officials generally agreed that proposals for a new space agency should result in an organization that was essentially nonmilitary. Because of its civil heritage, existing programs, and general programs, NACA was singled out as the most likely candidate to form the nucleus, though a new name was recommended. Strictly military programs would continue under the Department of Defense.12
During April 1958, Eisenhower delivered the formal executive message about the national space program to Congress and submitted the Administration's bill to create what was then called the "National Aeronautical and Space Agency." The hearings and committee work that followed inevitably entailed revisions and rewording, but the idea of a civilian space agency persisted, and the old NACA role of research alone began to change to a new context of large-scale development, management, and operations. Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 on 16 July, and Eisenhower signed the bill into law on the 29th. During August, the Senate speedily confirmed Eisenhower's nominations of T. Keith Glennan as Administrator and Hugh Dryden as Deputy Administrator. At the time of his appointment, Glennan was president of Case Institute of Technology and had been a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. Dryden, a career civil servant, had been Director of NACA but was passed over as the new chief of NASA. The subsequent days and months included some jockeying and horse trading to establish the principal directives of the new organization.
When the Space Act was signed, no mention was made as to the management of a program for manned space flight, and the Army, Navy, and Air Force continued to maneuver for position until late August, ....
[33] .....when Eisenhower specifically designated NASA as the agency to conduct manned space flight programs. In September, NASA's new Administrator, T. Keith Glennan, and Roy Johnson of ARPA agreed to cooperate in the development of a manned satellite. NASA's effective date of birth was l October 1958. The employees who left their NACA offices Tuesday evening, 30 September, returned to the same offices Wednesday morning as personnel of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. With the passage of time, ARPA's entire big-booster program would find a niche in the new organization.13 These were bold plans, and neither the old NACA nor the new NASA possessed an existing capability for the job. Glennan wanted ABMA's von Braun team for its abilities in launch vehicles and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (a major Army contractor) for its general expertise in astronautical engineering and payload development. NASA had to accept a compromise: the space agency got the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (officially transferred on 3 December 1958), but ABMA's missile team stayed in the Army. ABMA and its big booster were, however, already enmeshed in NASA planning, and it was only a matter of time before assimilation was complete.14
NACA, for its part, had already been speculating about its role in the space program, and several committees had been at work in late 1957 and early 1958 studying the various factors a space program entailed: vehicles; reentry; range, launch, and tracking; instrumentation; space surveillance; human factors; and training. Late in March 1958, a NACA group studying "Suggestions for a Space Program" included notations for a launch program in January 1959 to put satellites of 135 000 to 225 000 kilograms in orbit (reflecting the earlier Department of Defense plans), and development of a rocket of 4 450 000 newtons (1 million pounds) thrust, as well as "development of hydrogen fluorine and other special rockets for second and third stages."
The ABMA large booster program first entered NASA planning through the NACA Special Committee on Space Technology chaired by Guyford Stever. The Working Group on Vehicular Program included von Braun as chairman. Organized 12 January 1958, the Stever committee made its final report on 28 October, when NASA was already a month old.15 Von Braun's working group on vehicles had already made its preliminary report on 18 July. The language did not differ much from that of the final draft. The report began with harsh criticism of duplication of effort and lack of coordination among various organizations working on the nation's space programs. "The record shows emphatically," the report said, that the Soviet Union was definitely ahead of the United States in space travel and space warfare.
How was the United States to catch up? There were several existing vehicle systems to help the United States proceed on a logical and consistent space research program. At least two large booster types under [34] development or in the planning stages would place the Americans in a better position. The von Braun paper described five generations of boosters. First was the Vanguard class of launch vehicles, and second were the Juno and Thor IRBM vehicles. Third were the Titan and Atlas boosters from the ICBM inventory. Fourth came the clustered boosters, which would yield up to 6 700 000 newtons (1.5 million pounds) of thrust. Fifth, and last, was the possibility of using an advanced 6 700 000-newton (1.5-million-pound) thrust single-barrel engine in a cluster of two to four engines to give up to 25 000 000 newtons (6 million pounds) of thrust. How were they to be employed? The working group conjectured that the United States might put into operation a four-man space station in 1961 with the use of the ICBM boosters. By using clustered boosters, with first flights beginning in 1961, the committee estimated a manned lunar landing in 1965-1966. The clustered vehicles would also support the deployment of a 50-man space station in 1967, and the fifth generation of boosters would support sizable moon exploration expeditions in 1972, set up a permanent moon base in 1973-1974, and launch manned interplanetary trips in 1977. "The milestones listed... are considered feasible and obtainable as indicated by the supporting information presented in the body of the report," the working group concluded.16
The recommendations to achieve these goals included NASA's rapid development as the major director and coordinator of the vehicle program, working in partnership with ARPA. "The immediate initiation of a development program for a large booster, in the 1.5 million pound [6 700 000 newton] thrust class, is considered a key to the success of the proposed program," the report stated, and urged the development of such an engine. The program would cost about $17.21 billion to pay for 1823 launches, including the as-yet undeveloped ICBM and clustered boosters. There would be considerable savings, the group noted, if a comprehensive booster recovery scheme were incorporated.17
With von Braun representing ABMA on the Stever committee, his presence marked an early meshing of ABMA and NACA in the nation's space programs. Indeed, the Stever committee was intended to fill in the gaps in NACA space technology. NACA officials James Doolittle, Dryden, and Stever selected committee members with an eye to their future roles in the space programs as well as educating NACA personnel in space R&D. Large rocket boosters certainly constituted a big gap in NACA competence, so that the selection of von Braun was a key move, along with Sam Hoffman of Rocketdyne, Abe Hyatt of the Office of Naval Research, and Colonel Norman Appold, representing Air Force General Bernard Schriever, who spearheaded the development of big rockets in the Air Force.18
[35] The interwoven activities of a civilian space agency using a booster of military origins left the issue of payloads somewhat uncertain. ABMA had been operating its big booster program under the aegis of ARPA and considered the Juno V primarily a military vehicle with an imprecise potential for use in a civilian role. On 13 October 1958, ABMA listed its customers in order of importance. First was ARPA, as the Department of Defense representative of all military services, with the Juno V as a general carrier vehicle for research and development of "offensive and defensive space weapons." Certain specific tasks were forecast for each of the military services, including navigation satellites for the Navy; reconnaissance, communications, and meteorological satellites for the Army and Air Force; support for Air Force manned missions; and surface-to- surface supply for the Army at distances up to 6400 kilometers. For NASA, the ABMA planners considered the possibilities of the Juno V in support of satellites, space probes, and space stations, as well as a test bed for a 6 700 000-newton (1.5-million-pound) thrust engine and other propulsion systems. There was also conjecture about using the big clustered booster for international programs sponsored by the United Nations and for missions under contract to companies in the private sector.19
Because the mission plans were beginning to place more and more emphasis on putting payloads in orbit, there was an evident need for an upper stage to ensure orbital velocity of the payload. During the latter months of 1958, engineers at ABMA had already begun the search for a feasible upper stage for the Juno V, although the amended ARPA order in September called for lower flight stages only. Medaris urged upper-stage studies because he liked the idea of a unified and cohesive design effort; applying the "off-the-shelf" dictum, he sought to identify possible upper-stage candidates from projects already under way. One suggestion resulting from such brainstorming was to mount an X-15 research plane atop the Juno V, or perhaps incorporate an Air Force project known as Dyna-Soar. The X-15 idea did not last long, but Dyna-Soar persisted for several years. The Dyna-Soar (for dynamic soaring) dated from the autumn of 1957 and was envisioned as a manned, rocket-propelled glider in a delta-winged configuration, capable of reaching altitudes of up to 120 kilometers. More likely prospects for Juno V upper stages included Jupiter, Atlas, and Titan.20
The problems of selecting the Juno V configuration, upper stages, and payloads also bothered the people at NASA. Sitting in his office on the second day of the new year 1959, W. L. Hjornevik, Assistant to the Administrator, dashed off a memo to his boss, Glennan. Hjornevik's [36] message addressed itself to a basic issue in NASA's future: "Next Steps in the Development of a National Booster Program." The overtones in the memo suggested the uncertainties that still faced the young organization, not only in crystallizing specific goals but also in developing the capabilities for the tasks ahead. In spite of conversations with Dryden and others at NASA, Hjornevik wrote, he was still not sure of the proper route to take in developing a rational booster program. The payloads were still unsettled, and there was the problem of timing to bring boosters on line while the payload issue was still open. The question of a conventionally fueled second stage remained unanswered, even while "our position on the million-pound cluster" was unresolved.21
During 1959, NASA began to cope with these issues. A plethora of committees, long meetings, and voluminous reports provided the milieu in which NASA and Department of Defense personnel came to agreement on booster priorities, upper stages, and the issue of high-energy propellants. In the process of settling these problems, NASA acquired its own in-house capability for the production of the nation's first large launch vehicles, to be known as the Saturn rockets.
In a report prepared for President Eisenhower, dated 27 January 1959, NASA officially structured its own plan for a national space vehicle program. Attributed to NASA's propulsion staff, the document was prepared under the aegis of Abraham Hyatt, Chief of Launch Vehicles. The principal author was a NASA engineer, Milton Rosen. Preparation of the report included liaison with the Department of Defense, especially ARPA, the Air Force, and the Army to avoid duplication of effort and keep the Department of Defense informed of NASA's intentions regarding the use of military hardware. In its preamble, Rosen's report emphasized the lag in American rocket technology vis-a-vis the Russians and underscored the need for a new generation of large boosters. "The current group of booster vehicles, namely Vanguard, Jupiter C, Juno II, and Thor-Able, were all hurriedly assembled under pressure of meeting the threat of Russian Sputniks," the document declared, "and none of them possesses the design characteristics required by future needs of the National Space Program." A successful space program, in NASA's view, required three new classes of general-purpose launch vehicles.
The first type included two versions based on the Atlas, one as a single-stage booster, and the other as a two-stage booster using the liquid-hydrogen-fueled Centaur as the second stage. The Centaur proposal had special significance, because liquid hydrogen (LH2) technology was recommended for inclusion in later designs. In fact, if high-energy liquid hydrogen fuel failed to become an operable technology, then the Rosen report predicated disappointingly low payloads in the future.
The second group of boosters was keyed to the Juno V, the ABMA eight-engine cluster concept. NASA envisioned the Juno V as the first stage of a large multistage vehicle, requiring second and third stages to [37] make a complete booster, and the report proposed two different configurations. For the version known as Juno V-A, the NASA propulsion staff recommended adding the Titan I ICBM, itself a two-stage missile with conventional fuel, making a three-stage vehicle. For Juno V-B, the third (top) stage would be replaced with an LH2-fueled vehicle, probably the Centaur, to achieve higher escape velocities. Missions for the two Juno V variations included orbital research payloads, a five-man orbiting module, and unmanned lunar and other planetary missions using a fourth stage to gain escape velocity for larger payloads. The report further estimated that the Juno V configurations would be operational in 1963, with a useful lifetime of 5 to 10 years.
One of the most interesting items in the Rosen report pertained to a completely new class of launch vehicle-a super rocket of extraordinary size and payload capability known as Nova. Propulsion for the Nova class of vehicles would rely on the 6 700 000-newton (1.5-million-pound) thrust single-chamber engine that had been under development by the Air Force. With four engines clustered in the first stage, Nova would generate an unprecedented 25 000 000 newtons (6 million pounds) of thrust at liftoff. The second stage would use one of the same engines, and the third and fourth stages would incorporate liquid- hydrogen-fueled engines (developed in the Juno V program), with four of them in the third stage and one in the fourth stage. The amount of propellants needed for such a high-powered vehicle meant unusually large propellant tanks and a rocket that towered to a height of 79 meters. NASA, however, would also have a vehicle capable of fulfilling the dream of a manned lunar landing. "Despite its immense size," the Rosen report argued, "Nova is the first vehicle of the series that could attempt the mission of transporting a man to the surface of the moon and returning him safely to the earth."22
During the course of the year, NASA's attention was directed primarily toward Juno V and Nova, although some name changes occurred. In February, the Department of Defense announced that the Juno V development program would henceforth be known as Project Saturn, with work to be continued at Huntsville under the direction of ABMA. The change in big booster nomenclature was consistent with von Braun's earlier inclination to refer to the clustered rocket as Saturn and logically followed the Jupiter vehicle in terms of christening boosters after successive planets in the solar system. The Saturn also reflected a proclivity within ABMA to name some boosters after ancient gods,23 such as Juno and Jupiter.
Meanwhile, the von Braun team at Redstone Arsenal was becoming thoroughly enmeshed with the problem of selecting Saturn's upper stages. A "Saturn System Study," completed and submitted to ARPA on 13 March, contemplated the use of either Atlas or Titan upper stages. But dozens of potential upper-stage configurations were possible. This....
.....made NASA a bit anxious because realistic planning was difficult as long as no firm booster configuration was drawn up. T. Keith Glennan expressed his concern in a memo to Roy Johnson at ARPA within a week of the publication of the "Saturn System Study." An early decision on Saturn upper stages was needed, he said, and he urged Johnson toward an early resolution of the issue.24
ARPA's own plans for the Saturn booster remained tied to a combination with Centaur, to place "very heavy satellites in high orbits, especially for communications purposes." In testimony before Congress in late March, Johnson described the ARPA program for such satellites in equatorial orbits for global communications. More than that, he emphasized development of the Saturn cluster as a number one priority because it would serve a number of vehicle requirements for the next two years, not only for communications but also as an all-purpose space "truck" for a variety of missions, including launches of manned orbital satellites.25
The all-purpose Saturn suddenly ran into stiff opposition within the Department of Defense. Herbert York, Director of Department of Defense Research and Engineering, announced that he had decided to [39] terminate the Saturn program. In a memorandum to Johnson dated 9 June 1959, York rebuffed an ARPA request for additional funds. "In the Saturn case," York said, "I consider that there are other more urgent cases requiring support from the limited amount... which remains uncommitted." York's reasoning apparently stemmed from a position taken by other Eisenhower Administration advisors that the requirements of the Department of Defense for launching military communications satellites would be achieved more effectively by relying on existing ICBM boosters. Saturn had always been touted as the military's booster for such missions, so it did not seem to be needed any more. Saturn was a "costly operation being conducted at ABMA," York wrote, and advised Johnson, "I have decided to cancel the Saturn program on the grounds there is no military justification."26 York's bombshell came as a real blow to ABMA, especially since the first H-1 engines for the Saturn cluster had begun arriving in Huntsville some weeks before, in April.27
With NASA programs tied closely to the Saturn, as indicated in the earlier Rosen report, the launch vehicle staff in Washington immediately got to work to head off the York cancellation order as soon as they heard the news. Collaborating with Saturn supporters from within the Department of Defense, Rosen and Richard Canright from ARPA drafted a crucial memorandum in defense of the clustered booster program. They realized that Saturn as an Army project was in trouble apparently because the Army had no specific use for it. At that time, neither did NASA, although Rosen and Canright felt that the range of potential missions cited in the prior Rosen report offered, in the long run, enough justification to keep Saturn alive. Rosen and others in NASA were completely captivated by Saturn's promise. "We all had gut feelings that we had to have a good rocket," he said, emphasizing the appeal of Saturn's size. Rosen felt that he had "lived all his life with too small a launch vehicle."28
Thus, in a tense three-day meeting, 16-18 September 1959, York and Dryden co-chaired a special committee to review Saturn's future and discuss the roles of the Titan C boosters and the Nova. Committee members included representatives from the Army, Air Force, and NASA as well as Canright from ARPA. After hours of intensive presentations and discussion, the Saturn backers finally carried the debate, but not without some conditions. Under York's prodding, it was agreed to start discussions to transfer ABMA and the Saturn project to NASA. York also insisted that such a transfer could be accomplished only with the Administration's guarantee for supplemental funding in support of Saturn.29
Years later, reviewing the issue of Saturn's cancellation, York elaborated on his reasoning. For one thing, there seemed to be a strong feeling within the Department of Defense that Saturn tended to siphon off money, not only from important military projects in ABMA but from [40] the Air Force as well. The Secretary of Defense twice turned down requests for a DX (priority) rating for Saturn, once in December 1958 and again in May 1959. Moreover, York felt that Saturn was simply too big for any military mission, and that included men in space. Big boosters of the Saturn class should be NASA's responsibility, he reasoned, because there was no urgent military application and because of York's own reading of the Space Act of 1958 and his understanding of Eisenhower's views on the matter. In the meantime, York apparently agreed to continue adequate funding of Saturn through ARPA until the issue of ABMA's transfer to NASA was resolved. As for the von Braun team at Hunstville, York recalled that von Braun himself "made it very clear in a face-to-face discussion in the Pentagon that he would go along only if I allowed Saturn to continue."30
The near loss of the Saturn booster was a sobering experience. This close brush with disaster underscored NASA's problems in securing boosters developed and produced by other agencies; many in NASA now believed they had to have control of their own launch vehicles. In fact, York had already favored the transfer of ABMA, with responsibility for Saturn, to NASA. Late in 1958, when Glennan and Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald A. Quarles had proposed such a transfer, the Army and ARPA had strongly opposed the move.31 The ABMA transfer continued to beguile top NASA executives, and Hjornevik emphatically urged action on the matter. In a memo to Glennan late in January 1959, Hjornevik argued that the role of ABMA as consultant and supplier was operable as long as NASA was content merely to buy Redstone rockets in the Mercury program, but the rapid changes in an ambitious NASA launch program revealed a gap in the agency's capabilities, and Hjornevik left no doubt that NASA needed ABMA's competence. Hjornevik phrased his recommendations in no uncertain terms. "I for one believe we should move in on ABMA in the strongest possible way," he declared. "It is becoming increasingly clear that we will soon desperately need this or an equivalent competence." Hjornevik cited NASA's needs in managing the national booster program, especially the engines and "the big cluster," and the suggested joint funding as a means to "achieve a beachhead on the big cluster."32
Roy Johnson, speaking for ARPA, emphasized the need for keeping the von Braun team together, particularly if a transfer occurred. "At Huntsville we have one of the most capable groups of space technicians in the country," Johnson said during congressional testimony in March 1959. "I think that it is a unique group... a national resource of tremendous importance." Then he added, "ABMA team is the kind of group that, if somebody had planned 10 years ago to create it, could not have been done better." Although Johnson told the congressional committee that he could work with ABMA in or out of the Department of Defense, he personally preferred it in the Department of Defense.
[41] Among other things, he commented, he was not optimistic about lunar payloads taking precedence over the Saturn's role as a booster for military satellites.33
NASA's lively interest in Saturn and the Huntsville group continued to mount. In mid-April, Glennan called a meeting of Dryden, Hyatt, Hjornevik, and others, including Abe Silverstein, Director of Space Flight Development. The NASA executives got together one Friday to assess the events of the past week and, among other things, to consider the question of Saturn. In the course of the discussion, the participants reached a consensus that the highly competent ABMA group had the best qualifications to develop the total Saturn vehicle, and they should be encouraged to forge ahead. At the same time, NASA should keep a sharp eye on its own interests in regard to Saturn and build a "significant financial and management role." A distinct takeover move, previously pushed by Hjornevik, did not take place for several months, simply because, as Glennan himself observed, NASA lacked a specific mission for Saturn that would justify wrenching the booster away from ARPA.34
But the days of Saturn's ties to ARPA were numbered. After letting the issue simmer on a back burner most of the year, York raised the transfer issue again in the autumn of 1959, and this time got the support of both the Secretary of Defense and President Eisenhower.35 Given the inclinations of the NASA hierarchy, ABMA's transfer from ARPA became inevitable. NASA's own requirements for a booster the size of the Saturn had been made more explicit as a result of the Research Steering Committee on Manned Space Flight, chaired by Harry J. Goett of NASA's Ames Research Center. The Goett committee, formed in the spring, had considered NASA goals beyond the Mercury program, and during the summer a circumlunar mission emerged as the principal item in NASA's long-range planning. A manned lunar landing required a much larger booster-Saturn. With potential mission and booster requirements finally outlined, satisfying Glennan's criteria to have a specific mission for the launch vehicle, total NASA responsibility for Saturn was obviously needed.36
The transfer of ABMA, Saturn, and the von Braun team was phased over a period of nearly six months. NASA's technical direction of Saturn dated from a memorandum signed by Glennan on 21 October 1959 and by the acting Secretary of Defense, Thomas Gates, on 30 October, and approved by Eisenhower on 2 November. The document affirmed continuing joint efforts of NASA and the Department of Defense in the development and utilization of ICBM and IRBM missiles as space vehicles. Pointing out that there was "no clear military requirement for super boosters," the memorandum stated that "there is a definite need for super boosters for civilian space exploration purposes, both manned and unmanned. Accordingly, it is agreed that the responsibility for the super booster program should be vested in NASA."
[42] Specifically, the core of ABMA's Development Operations Division would be shifted to NASA-Saturn personnel, facilities, equipment, and funds. Both sides agreed on the unique talent of the von Braun team and the need to keep it intact. "The Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, and NASA, recognizing the value of the nation's space program of maintaining at a high level the present competence of ABMA, will cooperate to preserve the continuity of the technical and administrative leadership of the group."37
The process of coordinating the administrative, technical, and physical transfer of the Saturn program progressed during the early months of 1960. To help provide guidelines and avoid as much chaos as possible, NASA called on McKinsey and Company, a private management consulting firm with offices in several major U.S. cities, including Washington. McKinsey and Company had helped NASA set up its own organization in 1958 and was thereby familiar with the agency's headquarters structure and personnel. By March 1960, the move was complete. On the 16th of the month, NASA assumed both administrative and technical direction of the Saturn program. The Goett committee, having wound up its work in December 1959, had pointed NASA in the direction of lunar-oriented missions as a goal. The transfer of the von Braun team, completed in the spring of 1960, gave NASA the expertise and a vehicle program to perform the task.38
In the process of shedding ABMA's initials, the von Braun team now acquired a new set. By a presidential executive order on 15 March 1960, the space complex within the boundaries of Redstone Arsenal became the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). On 1 July 1960, Major General August Schomburg, commander of the Army Ordnance Missile Command, formally transferred missions, personnel, and facilities to von Braun, as Director of MSFC. Official dedication took place on 8 September with Mrs. George C. Marshall and President Dwight D. Eisenhower heading the list of distinguished visitors. In his public remarks, President Eisenhower noted Marshall's military career, his distinguished service as the Secretary of State, and the award to Marshall of the Nobel Peace Prize, the only professional soldier to have received it. "He was a man of war, yet a builder of peace," proclaimed Eisenhower. These sentiments fittingly paralleled the evolution of MSFC, with its origins in the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. In a brief, but moving ceremony, Mrs. Marshall unveiled a red granite bust of her late husband. Then von Braun escorted Eisenhower on a tour of the site, including a close-up inspection of the Saturn booster under construction.39
During the months in which their relocation was being debated, ABMA personnel in Huntsville were still absorbed in the exercise of [43] trying to determine the configuration of upper stages for their multiengine booster. Design drawings of Saturn B and Saturn C studies during the first few months of 1959 showed clustered tank-and-engine first stages of 6.5 meters diameter and various combinations of upper stages of 6.5-meter and 3-meter diameters towering as high as 76 meters. The use of new hardware was apparently not contemplated; given ARPA's guidelines for economy in the program, a more realistic possibility was to add upper stages that used Titan or Atlas ICBM vehicles fitted directly to the clustered tankage and engines. By the spring of 1959, both ABMA and ARPA agreed on the feasibility of Titan and Atlas versions. ARPA advisors leaned more toward a decidedly hybrid concept in which a modified Titan second stage was used in combination with a modified Centaur third stage from the Atlas vehicle. Yet another twist in the evolution of Saturn upper stages came in July, when DOD's Director of Research and Engineering issued a new directive to both the Air Force and ARPA to consider the joint development of a second-stage vehicle keyed to the Air Force Dyna-Soar project, since the Saturn second stage and the Dyna-Soar booster appeared to be similar in design and concept. So ARPA ordered work on the Titan upper-stage studies to stop, pending further studies on this new DOD directive, although R&D work on the first-stage cluster forged ahead through the summer.40
The decision to halt work in mating existing military missiles to the Saturn came as something of a relief to ABMA. Using such off-the-shelf hardware definitely narrowed the flexibility of mission planning. As a second-stage booster, it turned out that Jupiter just did not have the muscle, and the Atlas and Titan, although adequate in thrust for their ground-launch ICBM role, lacked performance capabilities as upper-stage vehicles to be ignited at altitude. Moreover, their 3-meter diameters limited their growth potential in relation to the possibilities of the far bigger Saturn. "In comparison," Willy Mrazek said, "this was like....
[44] ....considering the purchase of a 5-ton truck for hauling a heavy load and finally deciding to merely load a wheelbarrow full of dirt."41 As a result of new evaluation studies that followed cancellation of work on the Titan as an upper stage, ARPA decided to forego requirements to employ existing hardware, and ABMA confidently embarked on a new series of design concepts for Saturn upper stages, utilizing large diameters that offered increased mission flexibility and payload capability. Undertaken in the fall of 1959, these new "Saturn System Studies," as they were called, were conducted with an eye to NASA requirements in particular.42
The last months of 1959 could be called a watershed period for NASA in many respects. The agency had acquired the von Braun team and sharpened the focus on upper stages for a multistage vehicle. In December, a critical judgment on the application of high-energy propellants for Saturn's upper stages was in debate. The issue of high-energy propellants centered on liquid hydrogen in combination with liquid oxygen-and the use of liquid hydrogen (LH2) did not have the wholehearted support of von Braun or his staff at Huntsville.
At NASA Headquarters, on the other hand, Abe Silverstein and several others were convinced that LH2 was the key to future Saturn success. Silverstein had joined NACA in 1929, and worked in wind tunnels at the Langley Laboratory. When the Lewis Propulsion Laboratory was formed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1943, Silverstein joined the new organization and became its Associate Director in 1952. He had come to Washington in 1958 to become Director of Space Flight Development. For the next three years, Silverstein played an important role in policy decisions at NASA Headquarters before returning to Cleveland as Director of Lewis Research Center.
NASA had inherited an LH2 development program as a result of NACA work carried on at Lewis Research Center throughout the 1950s; the work culminated in the successful test of an 89 000-newton (20 000-pound) thrust LH2 engine and propellant injector in the late l950s. The Lewis LH2 group, led by Abe Silverstein, had been convinced of the practicality of LH2 by subsequent successful test runs. The research at Lewis-and its successful prototype engine design-encouraged Silverstein to push hard for LH2 engines in Saturn's upper stages.43 The first practical application of the LH2 engine was planned as a high-energy stage, named Centaur, for Atlas or Titan. The plan stemmed from an ARPA directive to the U.S. Air Force's Air Research and Development Command. During congressional testimony in March 1959, Roy Johnson noted early plans to incorporate an LH2-fueled stage (apparently the Centaur, or a close derivative) on the Saturn vehicle. Continuing research was solving problems of pumping LH2 in large quantities, he explained, and he expected a breakthrough in propulsion for use in a second or third stage. Johnson's enthusiasm for an LH2 vehicle was unbounded. "It is a miracle stage as I see it," he declared.44 By the summer of 1959, the LH2 rocket [45] also had support at NASA Headquarters, where Hyatt was corresponding with Silverstein about it.45
Just before the Christmas holidays, the stage was set for a high-level conference at Headquarters to determine the basic configuration of the multistage Saturn. On 17 November, Associate Administrator Richard Horner told the Director of Space Flight Development to organize a study group to make additional recommendations concerning the transfer of the von Braun team to NASA, "to prepare recommendations for guidance of the development of Saturn, and specifically, for selection of upper-stage configurations." A "Saturn Vehicle Team" was organized; it comprised representatives from NASA, the Air Force, ARPA, ABMA, and the Office of the Department of Defense Research and Engineering (ODDR&E). Chaired by Abe Silverstein, the seven-man group was known as the "Silverstein Committee." In addition to Silverstein, the NASA representatives included Hyatt and Eldon Hall, and the other members were Colonel N. Appold (USAF), T. C. Muse (ODDR&E), G. P. Sutton (ARPA), and Wernher von Braun (ABMA).46
When the Silverstein committee convened in December, not everyone was in favor of the untried LH2 technology because LH2 was widely thought to be too volatile and tricky to handle. Von Braun in particular expressed doubts about LH2 even though the Saturn-Atlas combination had the Centaur's LH2 system in the Atlas final stage, and he was definitely opposed to a new LH2 Saturn second stage. On the other hand, several influential committee members made a forceful case for LH2. Hyatt was already for it; Eldon Hall, not long before the committee had been organized, had analyzed the performance of launch vehicles using various combinations of propellants. Using his background in the work previously done at Lewis, Silverstein argued with all the persuasive powers at his command. It was just not logical, Silverstein emphasized, to develop a series of vehicles over a 10-year period and rely on the limited payload capability of conventionally fueled boosters with liquid oxygen and kerosene-based propellants. He was convinced that the use of LH2 in the upper Saturn stages was inherently sound, and his conviction was the major factor in swaying the whole committee, von Braun included, to accept LH2 boosters in the Saturn program. "Abe was on solid ground," von Braun acknowledged later, "when he succeeded in persuading his committee to swallow its scruples about the risks of the new fuel."47
Next, von Braun had to convince his colleagues back at Huntsville. Before the committee adjourned, von Braun telephoned the Redstone Arsenal to talk to Mrazek, one of the key team members who had come with him from Germany, and the two men brainstormed the possibilities.
As Mrazek recalled his phone conversation, von Braun made the following points: The Saturn could not use existing hardware for the upper stages-it needed an original design; the Saturn plan should stress the new hydrogen technology and the Centaur's engines; and the hydrogen upper stage would need six engines. This final aspect could have been controversial because some experts still harbored strong doubts about the use of eight conventional, though proven, rocket engines for the first-stage booster. There would be even more carping about a half dozen new and untried engines burning exotic liquid hydrogen. But von Braun said he was not overly concerned about the cluster of six hydrogen engines, since at least a dozen Centaur launches were scheduled before the first Saturn would have to go up. The ABMA group could profit from whatever trials and tribulations the Centaur engines developed, with plenty of time to iron out any problems before the first Saturn left the launch pad. In short, von Braun was confident of success with the new hydrogen technology, and Mrazek agreed; so the scenario was finally set.48 (See chapter 5 for further details of LH2 technology.)
[47] In the spring of 1960, as the word of NASA's decision to rely on the novel propellant combination for Saturn reached the public, Eldon Hall and Francis Schwenk, from the Office of Launch Vehicle Programs at NASA Headquarters, outlined the reasons for the choice. The higher vehicle performance required for advanced missions simply required higher energy propellants, they explained. The staging of several rockets using conventional propellants rapidly reached optimum design limits, because advanced missions and payloads required more thrust and more engines-which meant heavier rockets with bigger tanks and engines and proportionately less efficiency in design and capability. On the other hand, high-energy propellants promised the best results for advanced missions requiring high escape velocities. "The choice of high-energy upper stages for Saturn is based almost entirely on the fact that, with present knowledge of stage construction, at least one of the upper stages must use high-energy propellants if certain desirable missions are to be accomplished with this vehicle," Hall and Schwenk emphasized. So "the Saturn program was established for early incorporation of a high-energy second stage into the vehicle system."49
In the course of the deliberations of the Silverstein committee, three types of missions for the Saturn vehicle emerged. First priority was given to lunar and deep-space missions with an escape payload of about 4500 kilograms. Next in order of priority came satellite payloads of about 2250 kilograms in a 24-hour equatorial orbit. Finally, the committee considered the possibility of manned missions involving the Dyna-Soar program, in which a two-stage vehicle would be used to put 4500 kilograms into low orbit. On the basis of these assumptions, the committee stressed the evolutionary pattern of Saturn development and its potential for a variety of future roles. "Early capability with an advanced vehicle and possibilities for future growth were accepted as elements of greatest importance in the Saturn vehicle development."
Once more, the Saturn Vehicle Team reviewed the wide array of potential configurations, reduced the number of choices to six, and began to weed out the least promising. The A-1 version, with modified Titan and Centaur upper stages, would provide the earliest flight schedules and lowest costs with existing hardware. It was rejected because it could not meet lunar and satellite payload requirements and because the slender 3-meter-diameter upper stages were considered to have potential structural weaknesses. The A-2 type, with a cluster of Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) in the second stage, also saved money and promised early availability but did not have the capability for some of the planned missions. A proposed B-1 vehicle met all mission requirements but needed a totally new stage with conventional fuels. The B-1 type was expensive, would take a lot of time to develop, and had some shortcomings for advanced missions.
[48] Moreover, all first three candidates needed high-energy propellants in the top stage. So why restrict the promise of LH2 to the top stage alone? "If these propellants are to be accepted for the difficult top-stage applications," the committee concluded, "there seem to be no valid engineering reasons for not accepting the use of high-energy propellants for the less difficult application to intermediate stages." The Saturn family of rockets finally envisioned by the Silverstein committee included C-1, C-2, and C-3, all with LH2 in the upper stages. The three-stage C-1 met the mission requirements and used Centaur engines in the LH2 upper stages. The second stage had four uprated Centaur engines, designated the S-IV stage, and the S-V top stage was the Centaur itself, with two engines. The hop-scotch numbering occurred because of the "building block" concept, in which hardware was used as available, the concept, was tested, and then newer and advanced stages were incorporated in the next major configuration. During C-1 development and flight, for example, a new S-III stage for Saturn C-2 would be prepared with the use of a newer, more powerful generation of LH2 engines. As the development and flight test of Saturn C-2 proceeded, the S-II stage would be worked up with four of the newer LH2 engines. The final C-3 vehicle would stack all the various stages together as a five-stage booster. Further, the Saturn Vehicle Team suggested that the first stage of the C-3 model might even include an F-1 engine to replace four of the cluster of eight uprated H-1 engines.
In its final recommendations for the phased development of Saturn C-1 through C-3, the Silverstein committee emphasized the building block concept keyed to the Saturn first-stage cluster, along with hydrogen-oxygen propellants in all the upper stages. Proceeding from the Centaur technology under development at the time, the committee urged immediate development of a new LH2 engine and initiation of design studies for the S-II and S-III stages to use the more powerful engines.50
With in-house capability established, in the form of the ABMA transfer, and with immediate vehicle guidelines established as a result of the Silverstein committee, NASA now proceeded to refine its priorities and goals.
The ultimate goal was a lunar landing. The Director of Lunar Vehicles, Donald R. Ostrander, stated in a planning conference for NASA and industry in January 1960: "The principal mission which we have used as an objective in these planning studies has been that of a manned landing on the moon and return to earth."51 Looking ahead, NASA executives told Congress during hearings late in the same month that the agency planned a circumlunar flight by 1970 and a manned ....
[50] .....lunar landing soon after. The agency also estimated the cost at $13 to $15 billion over the coming decade, and Associate Administrator Horner explained the need to look so far ahead and plan a budget:
Virtually all of our key programs presume a scheduled progress in launch vehicle and spacecraft development. These major developmental tasks frequently require time periods of 5 to 6 years for completion and can be substantially longer under given circumstances of technological progress and research availability.
Thus, although the usefulness of highly tentative plans might be questioned, long-term objectives, on the order of 10 years in advance of today's program, are essential to keep our development activities properly focused.
The actions we initiate this year and next in the vehicle development program will have a determining influence our capabilities for meeting national objectives in the last half of this decade and even beyond. Accordingly, we have developed a 10-year plan, one which we expect to modify from year to year on the basis of realized experience, development progress, and resource availability. It is formulated around the requirement that its implementation must so utilize the resources of the United States that our national role as a leader in the aeronautical and space sciences and their technologies is preserved and steadily enhanced. We have also assumed that a steady growth in the scale and intensity of our efforts, especially for the next 5 years, is an essential basis for consistent and fruitful efforts in meeting this requirement.52
As NASA prepared to forge ahead on its 10-year program in 1960, the agency enjoyed increased support from Eisenhower, and Glennan won an important advantage for the Saturn program in terms of a high priority endorsement. "As we have agreed," the President wrote to Glennan on 14 January, "it is essential to push forward vigorously to increase our capability in high thrust space vehicles." In the same directive to Glennan, Eisenhower gave his authorization to prepare an additional funding request for the balance of fiscal 1960 and 1961, "to accelerate the super booster program," and to use overtime as needed, "consistent with my decision to assign a high priority to the Saturn development." Four days later, on 18 January, the rating for highest national priority (DX rating) became official, authorizing the use of overtime wages and giving Saturn precedence for materials and other program requirements.53
The configurations of the Saturn family were still in a state of flux, however, and the Nova was still a probability in the NASA scheme. Straightening out the lines of development and mission application became an issue that absorbed personnel in program studies and committee meetings for another two and a half years. Although the Saturn Vehicle Team did not mention Nova in their recommendations, the towering booster figured prominently in plans for manned lunar landings. During a meeting on advanced propulsion requirements at NASA Headquarters in early June 1960, the Huntsville group discussed Nova "for manned lunar landing and return," in a configuration that [51] would boost a 81 600-kilogram payload to escape velocity and return 6800 kilograms to Earth. The vehicle featured eight of the 6 700 O00-newton (1.5-million-pound) thrust engines in the first stage, four LH2 engines in the second stage, and one LH2 engine each in the third and fourth stages. Data for a C-2 launch with assisted boost from Minuteman missile solid-fuel strap-ons were also discussed, although "Marshall people were not enamored with the idea of any changes to the C-2."54 Therefore, the Saturn configurations remained keyed to liquid propulsion engines, especially the LH2 propulsion systems. NASA planners considered using the Saturn "C" series of vehicles for manned space stations, manned circumlunar missions, and unmanned lunar and planetary probes. Manned lunar excursions, Homer Stewart reminded NASA Administrator Glennan, would definitely require the application of the 6 700 000-newton (1.5-million-pound) thrust engine (known as the F-1) used in a cluster, probably in a Nova vehicle, and if the LH2 program developed any snags, he warned, the Saturn program would quickly find itself in dire trouble.55
Toward the end of 1960, NASA planners decided it was time to review the space program once again and make more specific recommendations for future development in the Saturn and Nova projects. Early in November, NASA laid out its milestone for the next 10 years. "A ten-year interval has no special significance," the report asserted, "yet it is considered to be an appropriate interval since past experience has shown that the time required to translate research knowledge into operationally effective systems in similar new fields of technology is generally of this order." This time span permitted opportunity to establish mission goals and plans and coordinate the development of spacecraft and appropriate booster hardware. Apparently there was already some confusion about terminology, since the "Proposed Long Range Plan," as drafted by the Headquarters Office of Program Planning & Evaluation, included some definitions. "Launching vehicle" meant a first-stage booster and upper stages to inject a spacecraft into proper trajectory. "Spacecraft" included the basic payload as well as guidance and its own propulsion systems for trajectory modifications following injection. The term "space vehicle" encompassed the entire system-launching vehicle plus spacecraft.56
With definitions thus established, the document discussed the major launch vehicles, or boosters, under NASA cognizance: C-1, C-2, and Nova. The C-1 and C-2 descriptions closely followed the analysis prepared by the Silverstein committee the previous year, the descriptions reaffirming the building block concept with the C-1 as a three-stage vehicle and the C-2 as a four-stage booster including a newly developed second stage with a cluster of four 890 000-newton (200 000-pound) thrust hydrogen engines. The R&D for the Centaur and the new hydrogen engines appeared to be the biggest gamble in the long-range plan. The decision to use LOX-LH2 engines in C-1 and C-2 upper stages "was based on a calculated risk," the report stated, that such engine technology [52] would come along smoothly enough to keep the building block sequence on schedule. By FY 1964-1967, according to the "Proposed Long Range Plan," the C-1 should be operational in support of preliminary Apollo orbital missions, as well as planetary probes and as a test bed for advanced technology electron engines and nuclear engines. The C-2 should be ready somewhat later to place twice the payload into orbit, as well as for launching deep-space probes.57
As for the Nova, "its primary mission is to accomplish manned lunar landings," the plan said. Nova was admittedly still in the conceptual stage, since its size and ultimate configuration depended on space environmental research, progress in advanced chemical engines such as the F-1, and potential development of nuclear engines. The Nova, with an F-1 cluster combination to total 53 million newtons (12 million pounds) of thrust in the first stage, seemed to be the most feasible, and the Nova booster could make a manned lunar landing mission by direct staging to the moon and return or by a series of launches to boost hardware into low orbit for a series of rendezvous operations, building up a space vehicle in low orbit for the final lunar mission.58
As a prelude to the ambitious moon missions, a lot of basic research had to be integrated into the plans for the launch vehicle development. Guidance and control was one area singled out for special attention, requiring advances in the state of the art in accelerometers; in cryogenic, electromagnetic, and electrostatic support systems for gyros and attitude control; inertia wheels; in long-life gyro spin axis bearings. The long-range plan noted research challenges in terms of heating and other aerodynamic problems, along with mechanical, hydraulic, electrical, electronic, and structural difficulties. The space environment created a wide range of potential trouble spots in metals, plastics, seals, and lubricants. The scaled-up size of Saturn and Nova suggested difficulties in devising adequate automatic test equipment and techniques for the fabrication and assembly of oversized components. The long-range plan provided the opportunity to look ahead and anticipate these problem areas, giving NASA designers and engineers the chance to start working on solutions to these and other problems that were sure to crop up in the course of launch vehicle development.
The long-range plan also projected a series of key dates in the development of launch vehicles:
1961
first suborbital astronaut flight
first launch Saturn 1st stage
1963
launch 2-stage C-1
launch 3-stage C-1
1964
qualification of 200K LH2 engine
1965
qualification of 1.5-million-pound engine
launch 3-stage C-2
1968-1970
Apollo manned orbiting lab and circumlunar flights
Beyond 1970
manned lunar landing
The long-range plan also estimated the costs.59 NASA's plans at this time found support from the President's Scientific Advisory Committee, which had formed a special ad hoc group to examine the space program to date and analyze its goals, missions, and costs. In its report, released on 14 November, the group advanced the rationale that "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." The report considered the scientific motive of much less significance than prestige but commented that "it may be argued that much of the motivation and drive for the scientific exploration of space is derived from the dream of man's getting into space himself."60 The committee wondered if 25 test flights for the C-1 and 16 for the C-2 were enough to qualify the vehicles for manned launches but gave NASA good marks overall on their plans and schedules. Further, the committee endorsed the R&D plans for liquid hydrogen technology and encouraged development of larger post-Saturn launch vehicles like the Nova.61
But NASA was not entirely free from difficulties. NASA Administrator Glennan departed NASA at the end of the Eisenhower Administration and resumed his position as president of Case Institute. Several weeks passed before President John F. Kennedy's new Administration settled on a successor. Lyndon Johnson, the Vice-President, still played a strong hand in space program planning, and favored someone with strong administrative credentials. Other advisers contended that NASA needed a technical man at the helm. As the Kennedy Administration prepared to take over early in 1961, the space agency received some hard knocks from the President-elect's science advisor, Jerome B. Wiesner, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kennedy announced Wiesner's appointment on 11 January and released the "Wiesner Report" the next day.62 Officially titled "Report to the President-Elect of the Ad Hoc Committee on Space," the report gave due credit to the "dedication and talent" that had achieved notable advances in space exploration during the past few years but implied deficiencies in the booster program. "Our scientific accomplishments to date are impressive," the document observed, "but unfortunately, against the background of Soviet accomplishments with large boosters, they have not been impressive enough."
Among other recommendations, the Wiesner report urged technical competence in the positions of Administrator and Deputy Administrator, along with technical directors for propulsion and vehicles, scientific programs, nonmilitary space applications, and aeronautical programs.63
For several weeks, contact with the new Kennedy Administration was [54] haphazard. The Wiesner report aroused real concern among NASA personnel; there was a definite feeling that the report was neither fair nor carefully prepared. The issue of NASA leadership was resolved in February, when James E. Webb was nominated as Administrator. Vice President Johnson had found the managerial talent he wanted. A lawyer and ex-officer in Marine Corps aviation, Webb had headed the Bureau of the Budget and served as Undersecretary of State during the Truman Administration. At the time of his appointment, Webb was actively involved in the management of large corporations and was an active member of several professional administrative and policy organizations. Webb was sworn in by 14 February, with Dryden again as Deputy Administrator. Members of the Wiesner committee were subsequently given a deeper insight into the NASA program and organization that produced a much more positive feeling on their part. The organizational structure of the space agency was indeed firmed up, and a healthy rapport was established with the new Administration.
During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy had made an issue of the Eisenhower record in space, although the question was addressed more in terms of the so-called "missile gap" than in terms of space exploration. After the election, however, the Kennedy Administration evinced a growing interest in NASA's programs. In February, Webb was asked to conduct a thorough review and make recommendations; although a revised NASA budget request was trimmed, the space agency went to Congress in March with a program that amounted to over $125 million more than Eisenhower's original $1.1 billion for fiscal 1962. On 10 April, Kennedy submitted a specific request to amend the Space Act, in keeping with a campaign statement, to revive the dormant National Aeronautics and Space Council, and to appoint Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, a partisan of space exploration, as its head. In sum, the national space program under the new Kennedy Administration began moving with positive, if modest, momentum. Rapid acceleration occurred as a reaction to dramatic Russian progress.64
The successive achievements of Russian efforts in space exploration early in 1961 not only intensified NASA's plans in astronautics, but also influenced President Kennedy's commitment to a more active program by the United States. The day after Webb and Dryden were sworn in, the Soviet Union launched a probe to Venus from a space vehicle in a parking orbit; Kennedy remarked at a public press conference that the Russian lead in space boosters was "a matter of great concern."65 Then, on 12 April, while Congress was debating additional funds for NASA's budget in the coming year, a Russian booster put Yuri Gagarin into Earth orbit-the first human to orbit the Earth. On the evening of the following day, President Kennedy hosted a meeting at the White House, inviting Webb, Dryden, Wiesner, Theodore Sorensen, and several others, including [55] a reporter, Hugh Sidey, from Life magazine. The conversations revealed Kennedy's considerable concern about the Soviet Union's growing preeminence in space. The President speculated about the steps the United States could take to improve its own activities and about the costs involved in an accelerated program. Dryden observed that it might cost up to $40 billion to fund a program to land on the moon before the Russians, and even then, the Russians might make it before the Americans. But the President clearly wanted action. "There's nothing more important," he was remembered as saying.66 Not long afterward, in remarks to the Congress, Kennedy firmly asserted that it was "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."67 Shortly thereafter, Kennedy instructed Johnson and the Space Council to study space projects that would give the United States a visible lead in space exploration.
Congress also wanted more information from NASA about costs and the problems of landing on the moon ahead of the Russians. In mid-April, Webb repeated to Congress what Dryden had told the President. The cost would be anywhere from $20 to $40 billion. Some congressmen suggested the possibility that the Russians might attempt a lunar landing around 1967, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. With massive infusion of funds, the representatives asked, could the Americans beat a Russian landing? In his response, Associate Administrator Robert Seamans was wary. The target date of 1967 for the Russians was only an assumption, he said. Current NASA planning put an American lunar landing in 1969 or 1970 at the earliest. To reduce American intentions by three years was not necessarily an impossibility, Seamans stated, but would certainly be tremendously expensive in the short term.68
During April and May, the executive and legislative branches of government blossomed committees and working groups like flowers in a spring garden. Within NASA, planning groups funneled a series of honed and polished study papers to the White House for Kennedy's consideration, and the Department of Defense and the space agency refined mutual goals and individual efforts to ensure cooperation where necessary and to avoid needless redundancy. The nexus of all these streams of activity culminated in President Kennedy's State of the Union message on 25 May 1961. The manned space program would be the province of NASA, a civilian agency, not a military agency. He proposed to increase NASA's 1962 budget by more than $500 million. Kennedy left no doubt as to NASA's objective or its schedule for realization. "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."69
[56] Haltingly, a national space program coalesced around a new entity, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. After turning to the Department of Defense for its large boosters, funded through ARPA and under development by ABMA, NASA realized the need to control its own booster program when the Saturn project was nearly canceled owing to budgetary cross-currents. The eventual transfer of the von Braun team and the Saturn booster was a significant step forward for NASA. During 1959-1960, important agreements on upper stages and the use of high-energy LH2 technology were also worked out, capped by President Kennedy's decision to achieve a manned lunar landing within the decade of the 1960s. The next moves required decisions on mission profiles and production facilities.

Question: who created the sadron series of rockets

வெர்னர் வான் பிரவுன்

Question: what is the name of the rocket series created by warner van brown

Question: Warner van brown and a group of his rocket scientists were involved in the development of what

சாடர்ன் தொடர் மற்றும் நோவா தொடர்

Question: what was warner van brown's profession

ராக்கெட் பொறியாளர்களின்

Question: the sadron series and nava series are examples of what

Prior to the start of the project , Warner van Brown and a group of his rocket scientists were involved in the development of major concepts such as Sadron series and Nava series .

[57] At the time of Kennedy's historic pronouncement, the booster vehicle program was still in flux. The Saturn rocket was considered a multi-purpose vehicle, and the Department of Defense was still planning Earth-orbital missions using Dyna-Soar. During the summer and fall of 1960, NASA and Air Force executives were still engaged in mission studies using Dyna-Soar as a payload for Saturn.1 By January 1961, the DynaSoar appeared to have won an even stronger place in Saturn mission studies. In a planning session at Huntsville, the second stage of the Saturn C-2 configuration study was firmed up as to trajectory, performance, and structural considerations. All of these parameters derived from a Saturn and Dyna-Soar vehicle combination with the Dyna-Soar as the upper stage.2 Yet the C-2 configuration itself was only a paper study, and Saturn configurations changed rapidly in the early months of 1961.
At the opening of the new year, as NASA was still formulating its mission plans and goals, Glennan injected a note of caution into discussions involving a manned lunar landing because a formal announcement from the White House had not yet been made. In general, the mood at NASA was to proceed toward the lunar goal along a broad base of action, leaving open a variety of options including Department of Defense missions like Dyna-Soar. If all the options were pursued, then a broad series of booster vehicles needed to be developed, and von Braun was already hoisting storm signals about the allocation of manpower in NASA programs. At current levels, he noted, NASA would most certainly find itself overextended by trying to maintain parallel development of both the C-2 and the Nova.3
[58] During 1961, configurations seemed to change month by month. In January, the C-1 vehicle changed from a three-stage to a two-stage booster, eliminating the S-V upper stage to leave only S-I and S-IV stages; but S-V development continued during February. By May, the C-1 had become a possible three-stage vehicle again, including Block I and Block II interim versions. In February, the C-2 was ticketed as a three-stage vehicle for Earth-escape missions (featuring an S-II second stage); in May, there was talk of a need for an even more powerful vehicle for circumlunar missions; in June the C-2 was dropped in favor of a C-3, although Nova would continue; later in the year, there were plans for a C-4, along with a solid-booster C-1. By the end of the year, there was also the C-5.4 One result of this was the decline of Dyna-Soar, whose position as a NASA payload essentially evaporated after the C-2 cancellation in June.5
The rise and fall of vehicle configurations reflected the rapidly shifting concepts of mission profiles, payloads, schedules, and money. The fluctuating pattern of Saturn configurations and numbers created confusion even among those in government who were close to the program, as Hugh Dryden admitted in a letter to Hugh Odishaw, of the National Academy of Sciences. Written in March 1961, the letter also revealed the concern of some observers that future development of Saturn was a "dead end road." Such talk irritated Dryden. If critics were referring to the Saturn S-1 first stage, with a total thrust of 1.5 million pounds, then he admitted that maximum development was self-evident, since the propulsion came from the most advanced engines available from the ballistic missile program. Dryden complained that critics did not allow for advanced Saturns of much improved performance, using what he called "the Saturn engine."6 He could have been referring to either the F-1 or the liquid hydrogen propulsion system (known as the J-2), but both types of engine would be crucial for advanced configurations involving more ambitious missions. The C-3 version, for example, boasted two F-1 engines in the first stage (double the thrust of the existing Saturn C-1 first stage), four J-2 engines in the second stage, and a pair of J-2s in the third stage. During a high-level NASA conference in late July 1961, Milton Rosen emphasized that the United States was still in contention in the race for a manned lunar landing "only because we initiated J-2 and F-1 development at a relatively early date." If the United States intended to maintain a competitive position, Rosen warned, NASA had to capitalize on the use of these propulsion systems, both of which were still under development.7
Certainly if the F-1 and J-2 were to be the optimum engines, then the vehicle known as the Saturn C-5 promised to be an optimum booster. The designers at MSFC made a firm commitment to the C-5 by late 1961, [59] and NASA Headquarters gave formal approval for development on 25 January 1962. The C-5 was a three-stage vehicle, with five F-1 engines in the first stage, five J-2 liquid-hydrogen engines in the second stage, and one J-2 in the third stage. The C-5 could handle a number of missions, including 113 000-kilogram payloads into low Earth orbit, or 41 000 kilograms on a lunar mission, which could be a circumlunar voyage or a manned landing.8
During a spring meeting of various NASA managers at Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, Ernst Geissler of MSFC reviewed the status of the booster program. Despite the welter of configuration changes and confusing nomenclature, one of the guiding principles of the vehicle development program continued to be the building block concept, an idea even more significant with the passage of time and realization of the immense costs and complexities of the program. "By qualifying individual components, such as stages, a fewer number of flights are necessary for high reliability of the total vehicle system," he emphasized. Moreover, the step-by-step approach allowed the space agency to experiment with various maneuvers in orbit, as required for different mission concepts.9 The Saturn C-1, at that time, was planned for vehicle development launches that would also include testing of the planned lunar spacecraft module in orbit and reentry, culminating in a series of manned flights. The spacecraft would thus be qualified in plenty of time, ready for launch aboard the C-5. Qualifying some of the C-5 hardware suggested possible problems, however, unless some preliminary flight tests occurred. Geissler referred to still a different launch vehicle, the C-IB. This interim vehicle, using the C-5's intended third stage as its own second stage, would take advantage of the proven C-1 first-stage booster. Thus, the C-1B would be able to qualify certain hardware and systems for the C-5, while demonstrating the feasibility of orbital operations inherent in C-5 mission concepts.10
Geissler summarized three principal modes for a lunar landing mission with the C-5 vehicle. Lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) involved descent to the lunar surface from lunar orbit by using a small spacecraft that separated from a parent lunar satellite and then rejoined the orbiting spacecraft for the return home. Earth orbit rendezvous (EOR) involved the landing of a larger vehicle directly on the lunar surface, thus eliminating the descent and ascent of a separate spacecraft from orbit. But the EOR mode required rendezvous techniques in building up the necessary vehicle in Earth orbit. Geissler explained two different approaches. After launching two vehicles, the upper stages of each could be connected to form the lunar vehicle. An alternative was to transfer oxidizer from one vehicle to the other in Earth orbit. There was one more feasible way of going to the moon: if a large enough vehicle could be built, a single launch would suffice. MSFC refused to give up on Nova. The Nova in the spring of 1962 was to have 8-10 F-1 engines in the first stage, and a....
....second stage mounting a powerful new LH2 engine, the M-1, under development by Aerojet General. Although Geissler predicted a test launch of the Nova by the autumn of 1967, the logic of development favored the C-5 because it was predicted to be fully operational by November 1967.11
Nova, like Dyna-Soar, seemed to evaporate as other issues were settled that placed a premium on the development of its nearest competitor, the C-5. On 11 July 1962, NASA officially endorsed the C-1B as a two-stage Saturn for Earth-orbital tests of Apollo hardware. At the same time, NASA confirmed the choice of the LOR mode for the lunar mission, thereby focusing development on the C-5. Early in 1963, NASA Headquarters announced a new nomenclature for its large launch vehicles. The C-1 became Saturn I, C-1B became Saturn IB, and C-5 became Saturn V. Nova was not even mentioned.12
The disarmingly simple NASA statement of 11 July 1962, confirming the choice of LOR as the mode, represented only the tip of a bureaucratic iceberg. The choice of LOR came after a series of skirmishes and....
....engagements among various NASA centers and within Headquarters. The struggle in reaching the final decision also suggested some of the problems to be faced by NASA management when one center had responsibility for the launch vehicle and another organization had the payload. The problems were compounded when both were trying to fashion programs and develop hardware without always knowing what each would require in the end.
The von Braun group, after all, had been developing both payload and boosters as integral systems for years. Now it would be necessary to defer to different design teams and accept outside judgments about payloads. In the case of Saturn, the payload development stemmed from the Space Task Group (STG) originally set up in October 1958 to manage Project Mercury. Located physically at Langley Research Center, Virginia, STG reported to the Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt, Maryland. Beginning in 1959, STG received management responsibilities for studies leading to Project Apollo.13 In the spring of 1960, STG and MSFC began closer contact when STG organized a special liaison group, the "Advanced Vehicle Team," nine men headed by R.O. Piland and reporting directly to the STG chief, Robert R. Gilruth. Among other things, the Advanced Vehicle Team was to maintain appropriate contact with the various NASA centers, and, specifically, to maintain "the necessary liaison with the Marshall Space Flight Center in matters [62] pertaining to the development and planned use of boosters in the advanced manned space flight program."14
Early on, participants in the liaison effort discovered that their style did not always mesh with that of MSFC. One trip report from an STG team member in October 1960 noted von Braun's desire for additional meetings in November and December, and added, somewhat peevishly, "Dr. von Braun wants to participate. This probably means another ballroom meeting." Apparently the MSFC method was to have a large gathering for a semiformal presentation, then break into smaller groups for detailed discussions. "I've reached the opinion that MSFC staff have no qualms about playing one group against the other... if we have separate meetings," the correspondent complained, and warned STG to be careful.15
Perhaps part of the problem was STG's lesser standing vis-a-vis Marshall as a full-fledged center. This aspect was improved in January 1960, when STG became a separate field element, reporting directly to the NASA Director of Space Flight Programs, Abe Silverstein. As Director of STG, Gilruth had his own staff of some 600, still physically located at Langley. With a new organizational structure and bureaucratic independence, STG was authorized to conduct advanced planning studies for manned vehicle systems, as well as to establish basic design criteria. STG also had authority to assume technical management of its projects, including the monitoring of contractors. By November, STG became even more independent when it was officially redesignated the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC),16 and plans were being made to transfer MSC to its new location near Houston, Texas, by the middle of 1962.
It is interesting that Gilruth and von Braun's emissary, Eberhard Rees, soon thereafter were stressing the "equality" of the two NASA centers. Meeting in July 1961, the two men also agreed on setting up four joint panels to cope with the growing problems of design, hardware, operational, and bureaucratic coordination: Program Planning Scheduling; Launch Operations; Apollo-Advanced Vehicles; Apollo-Saturn C-1. Each panel, in addition, included certain working groups for specific areas, with provisions for ad hoc joint study groups as the need arose. For problems involving other NASA agencies, there were special technical liaison teams. In general, technically knowledgeable members were assigned on a functional, rather than an organizational, basis; wherever possible, the responsibilities of experienced personnel already assigned to internal working groups were increased.17
Naturally, all concerned hoped that the joint groups would promote understanding and reduce friction. That the Apollo-Saturn program succeeded as well as it did testifies to the value of such efforts, but this is [63] not to say that differences of opinion were always easily and quickly adjusted. The issue of EOR versus LOR, for example, brought Marshall and the Manned Spacecraft Center into head-on conflict.
Early in 1961, NASA's studies for a manned lunar landing were keyed to the EOR mode using a Saturn vehicle or to direct ascent with the Nova.18 In view of MSC's later acceptance of LOR, Gilruth's initial support of the direct ascent concept is intriguing. "I feel that it is highly desirable to develop a launch vehicle with sufficient performance and reliability to carry out the lunar landing mission using the direct approach," he wrote to NASA Headquarters reliability expert Nicholas Golovin in the autumn of 1961. As for the rendezvous schemes (and here he apparently referred only to EOR), Gilruth said that they compromised mission reliability and flight safety, and that they were a "crutch to achieve early planned dates for launch vehicle availability, and to avoid the difficulty of developing a reliable Nova Class launch vehicle." At the same time, he understood the need for an Earth parking orbit during any mission to allow adequate time for final checkout of spacecraft, equipment, and crew readiness before going far from Earth.19
The concept of lunar orbital rendezvous (LOR) had been studied at Langley Research Center as early as 1960. The idea was passionately advocated by John Houbolt, a Langley engineer who first encountered it while investigating rendezvous techniques for orbiting space stations. The Langley-Houbolt concept of LOR was soon absorbed by the STG-MSC crew, and MSC eventually became the leading champion of LOR.20 Houbolt played a key role in converting Headquarters planners to the LOR concept. Convinced that the idea had not received a fair hearing, Houbolt bypassed everyone and wrote directly to Associate Administrator Robert C. Seamans, Jr., in November. Fulminating at what he viewed as grandiose plans for using boosters that were too large and lunar landers that were too complex, Houbolt urged consideration of LOR as a simple, cost-effective scheme with high likelihood of success. "Give us the go-ahead, and a C-3," Houbolt pleaded, "and we will put man on the moon in very short order."21
Houbolt's letter apparently swayed several managers at Headquarters, especially George Low, Director of Space Craft and Flight Missions, in the Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF). But D. Brainerd Holmes, who presided over OMSF, still had a prickly managerial problem. There remained people at Headquarters with doubts about LOR, principally Milton Rosen, newly named Director of Launch Vehicles and Propulsion in OMSF. Early in November, Holmes and Seamans directed Rosen to prepare a summary report on the large launch vehicle program, which of necessity dealt with the issue of EOR-LOR-direct ascent. The Rosen study came on top of several other committee reports on vehicles and....
.
.
[65] ...landing modes, Rosen's group of 11 people, including 3 from MSFC (Willy Mrazek, Hans Maus, and James Bramlet), submitted its report on 20 November.22
The issue of how to achieve a lunar landing at the earliest date became a principal theme in the Rosen group's deliberations. Although rendezvous offered an early possibility of a manned lunar landing, Rosen's working group noted that actual rendezvous and docking experience would not be available until 1964. LOR also seemed the riskiest and most tricky of the rendezvous modes, and the group expressed a decided preference for EOR. Either way, a C-5 Saturn with five F-1 engines in the first stage was the recommended vehicle. In spite of all the discussion of rendezvous, the Rosen committee in the end favored direct ascent as opposed to either EOR or LOR. "The United States should place primary emphasis on the direct flight mode for achieving the first manned lunar landing," the report flatly stated. "This mode gives greater assurance of accomplishment during this decade." Therefore, the Nova vehicle "should be developed on a top priority basis."23 The trend toward LOR strengthened, however. Even though EOR became the "working mode" for budgetary planning for 1962, the debate went on.
Holmes hired Joseph Shea, an energetic young engineer, as Chief of the Office of Systems Engineering in OMSF, with responsibilities to conduct and coordinate mission mode studies. Holmes also instituted a top-level series of meetings under the rubric of "The Management Council," to discuss issues involving Headquarters and more than just one center alone.24 At just about every meeting of the Management Council, Rosen and Gilruth got into a debate over the mode choice. Finally, as Rosen recalled, Gilruth came up to him after one of the meetings had adjourned and made one more pitch for the LOR mode. The most dangerous phase of the mission, Gilruth argued, was the actual landing on the moon. If Rosen's direct ascent idea was followed, then at the moment for lunar descent, that meant landing an unwieldy vehicle that was both quite long and quite heavy. A very touchy operation, Gilruth emphasized. LOR, on the other hand, boasted an important advantage: the lunar landing and lunar takeoff would be accomplished by a very light and maneuverable vehicle specifically designed for the task. Rosen confessed he had been preoccupied with simplicity from one end of the mission-the launch from Earth-and he had no convincing counterarguments when Gilruth made him look at simplicity from the other end, the lunar landing.25
While the consensus at Headquarters now shifted towards LOR, the split between MSC and MSFC showed few signs of easing. On a swing through both MSC at Langley and MSFC at Huntsville in January 1962, Shea was discouraged by the entrenched position of the two centers: Marshall people displayed an "instinctive reaction" of negativism on the [66] issue of LOR, while MSC personnel seemed too enthusiastic, even unrealistic, about rendezvous problems and the weight situation. Each center, Shea observed, intent on its own in-house studies, "completely ignores the capability of the other's hardware."26 During the spring, however, MSC's research seemed to become more convincing. MSFC also began to regard LOR with increased interest. In mid-April, an MSC presentation at Huntsville elicited several favorable comments from von Braun himself.27
The evidence suggests that von Braun increasingly felt the necessity of settling the issue so that they could get on with definitive contracts for launch vehicles and other hardware with long lead times.28 Resolution of the EOR-LOR controversy finally came on 7 June 1962, when Shea and his aides were in Huntsville for still another session on the mode of rendezvous. In his concluding remarks, von Braun noted that the conference had given six hours of intensive analysis to various proposals, including Nova-direct as well as EOR and LOR. They all appeared to be feasible, von Braun commented; the problem was narrowing the choices to one and then acting on it. "It is absolutely mandatory that we arrive at a definite mode decision within the next few weeks, preferably by the first of July 1962," he declared. "We are already losing time in our overall program as a result of lacking a mode decision." Then von Braun announced that LOR was Marshall's first choice.
There were complex technological, economic, and administrative reasons for Marshall's ultimate decision to go along with LOR. Although von Braun elaborated on 11 principal reasons for choosing LOR, the basic consideration involved confidence that it provided the best chance for a successful manned lunar landing within the decade. The concept promised good performance margins. Separation of the lunar lander from the reentry vehicle seemed desirable from many considerations of design and operation, and the overall concept suggested good growth potential for both the lander and the booster. Von Braun also implied that both sides could work together without the potential friction of an "I told you so" attitude. The fact that he felt compelled to proffer such a verbal olive branch suggests that the heat generated by the EOR-LOR debate must have been considerable. The MSFC Director observed that "the issue of 'invented here' versus 'invented there' does not apply," because both MSC and MSFC, in effect, adopted an approach originally put forth by Langley. "I consider it fortunate indeed for the Manned Lunar Landing Program that both Centers, after much soul searching, have come to identical conclusions," von Braun emphasized. "This should give the Office of Manned Space Flight some additional assurance that our recommendations should not be too far from the truth."
Quickly ticking off the reasons for deciding against EOR, von Braun pointed out that it was still feasible. A looming negative factor was the double loss incurred if, for example, the tanker launch went just fine, but [67] the manned launch was postponed too long on the pad or had to abort during ascent, wiping out the mission to the cost of two complete launch vehicles and associated launch expenses. In addition, von Braun noted complex management and interface problems with dual launches. Using the C-5 in a direct launch posed some thorny technical problems and permitted only the thinnest margins in weight allowances for the spacecraft, so the C-5 direct route was rejected. The huge Nova booster could have solved some of these problems, but it was rejected principally because of its size, which would have created requirements beyond the existing scope of fabrication and test facilities available to NASA; there were also serious problems seen in time, funding, and technical demands for a booster of Nova's dimensions.29
Even with von Braun's imprimatur in June, the irrevocable decision for LOR did not come until the end of 1962. The Huntsville conclave produced agreement at the center level only; NASA Headquarters still had to formalize the choice and implement the decision. Early in July, Seamans, Dryden, Webb, and Holmes concurred with a recommendation for LOR by the Manned Space Flight Management Council, but the President's Scientific Advisory Committee still actively questioned the LOR mode. The committee evidently preferred the EOR approach because it felt the technological development inherent in the EOR concept had more promise in the long run for civil and military operations; its argument also suggested that the LOR choice stemmed from internal NASA expediency-as the cheapest and earliest mission possibility-even though technical analysis of LOR was incomplete. Nicholas Golovin and Jerome Wiesner, in particular, remained adamantly against LOR, and the controversy actually boiled over into a public exchange between Wiesner and NASA officials at Huntsville while President Kennedy was touring Marshall Space Flight Center in September.
Host von Braun and the President were standing in front of a chart showing the LOR maneuver sequence. As von Braun proceeded to explain the details, Kennedy interrupted, "I understand Dr. Wiesner doesn't agree with this," and turned around to search the entourage of newsmen and VIPs around them, "Where is Jerry?" Kennedy demanded, Wiesner came up to join Kennedy and von Braun, with Webb, Seamans, and Holmes also in the group. Wiesner proceeded to outline his objections to LOR, and some lively dialogue ensued, just out of the earshot of straining newsmen and dozens of onlookers on the other side of a roped-off aisle. "They obviously knew we were discussing something other than golf scores," Seamans recalled. In fairness to Wiesner, Seamans later noted, the President's scientific advisor had to play the devil's advocate on many issues when a robust agency was vigorously pressing its position. Wiesner's job was to make sure that the President received alternative views, and he once confided to Seamans that he was....
.....not always comfortable in having to take negative points of view as Kennedy's advisor. Certainly, the LOR issue was one such example. As Seamans phrased it, "Here the President had his advisors recommending one approach and the line operators recommending another." It was also one notable instance when Kennedy took a tack opposed to the PSAC position and supported NASA's decision for the LOR mode.30
After a final round of studies, James Webb reaffirmed full commitment to LOR on 7 November and named a prime contractor, Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, to build the lunar module.31 Thus, by the end of 1962, the outlines of the Apollo-Saturn program were firmly delineated, with agreement on a family of three evolutionary Saturn vehicles, a functionally designed spacecraft, a technique to land men on the lunar surface, and a technique to return them safely to Earth.
The Saturn program created a vast new aerospace enterprise, partly private and partly public, with MSFC directing a group of facilities whose extent far exceeded anything in the days of the old NACA. The federally owned facilities under Marshall's immediate jurisdiction eventually included the sprawling installation at Huntsville; the cavernous Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) at New Orleans; the huge Mississippi Test Facility (MTF) at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi; and the Slidell Computer Facility at Slidell, Louisiana. Other government-owned facilities directly related to the Saturn program included the NASA Rocket Engine Test Site at Edwards [69] Air Force Base in California and the government-owned production facilities for the S-II second stage at Seal Beach, California.
The growth of Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville began almost as soon as the transfer of the von Braun team from the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in 1960. This shift involved some 4.8 square kilometers of land (within the 162 square kilometers of the Redstone Arsenal) and facilities valued at $96 000 000, along with 4670 employees from ABMA's Development Operations Division. (For subsequent figures on manpower, plant value, etc., see the appendixes.) Settling in its new role, MSFC evolved as a facility of three distinct sectors, divided into an administrative and planning area, an industrial area, and test area. Although the transfer gave NASA the bulk of the land and facilities previously used by ABMA's Development Operations Division, von Braun's administrative staff was allowed to remain in their old ABMA offices on a temporary basis only, and a Saturn-sized test area was needed. Construction began on a new administrative complex and the first MSFC personnel took occupancy during the spring of 1963. Of the several approaches to the center, perhaps the most impressive was from the north. Driving several miles through the green pastures and wooded, rolling hills of the Alabama countryside, a viewer watched the administrative complex looming ever larger. Three multistory buildings were arranged in a "V" shape, with Building 4200, the tallest of the three, proudly riding the crest of a low hill. With the U.S. flag snapping smartly from its pole, this impressive office complex rising out of the rural landscape rarely failed to impress visitors. As director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, von Braun, with his staff, occupied office suites on the top two floors of Building 4200, irreverently known as the "von Braun Hilton."
Once over the crest of the hill, the visitor saw the rest of the Marshall complex stretching for several miles to the Tennessee River. In the foreground, the former ABMA laboratories and manufacturing areas occupied the equivalent of many city blocks. The labs incorporated facilities for a host of esoteric research projects, computation, astrionics, test, and other specialized research activities. Buildings for manufacturing, engineering, quality and reliability assurance, and others had cavernous, high bay areas attached to accommodate the outsized Saturn components. In the background, the skyline was punctuated by the silhouettes of the assorted test stands and other installations of the expanded test area. Here were the engine test stands, an F-1 engine turbopump test position, and two especially large installations visible for miles. One was the big, burly test stand for the S-IC first stage, 123 meters high, completed in 1964. The second was the Dynamic Test Stand, 129 meters high, designed to accommodate the complete Saturn "stack" of all three booster stages, the instrument unit, and the Apollo spacecraft. Inside the Dynamic Test Stand, heavy duty equipment shook [70] and pounded the vehicle to determine its bending and vibration characteristics during flight. Still further to the south, specially built roads for transporting the bulky Saturn flight stages led to docking facilities on the Tennessee River, where barges picked up or dropped off stages en route to other test sites or launch facilities at Cape Kennedy.32
Except for the lawns and plantings around the administrative complex, Huntsville always had a factory look about it. Crisscrossed by streets and railroad tracks, Marshall still bore the stamp of its heritage as an Army arsenal, with lean, utilitarian structures, linked together by a web of electric and phone lines supported by ubiquitous poles. Buildings in the industrial area were frequently flanked by ranks of high-pressure gas bottles, cranes, hoists, and assorted large rocket components. A visit to the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston, with its sleek, ultramodern office complexes and well-tailored inner courtyards (complete with ponds and rocky little streams) was a study in contrasts.
When Marshall was organized in 1960, the Army launch team under the direction of Kurt Debus became the Launch Operations Directorate, Marshall Space Flight Center. At the Army's Missile Firing Laboratory, the Debus team had been launching a series of Army vehicles, including Redstone and Jupiter, and had launched the first American Earth satellite, Explorer I. In the months following the transfer to NASA, they launched the manned Mercury-Redstone suborbital flights. As plans for the Saturn series were finalized, the Launch Operation Directorate, through Debus, participated in the search for a new launch site, large enough and removed far enough from population centers to satisfy the physical requirements of the big new space boosters. Cape Canaveral was chosen, and development of the new facilities began, with Launch Complex 34 becoming operational during the fall of 1961 to launch the first Saturn I vehicles.
The immense task of constructing new launch pads and developing the huge installations required for Saturn V operations called for a separate administrative entity. In March 1962, NASA announced plans to establish a new Launch Operations Center (LOC) at the Cape, and the change became effective on 1 July 1962. While close liaison continued, launch operations ceased to be a prime responsibility of MSFC, and Kurt Debus proceeded as Director, LOC, to develop the launch facilities for the Apollo-Saturn program.33
Large as it was, the aerospace complex at MSFC could not begin to accommodate the escalating dimensions of the Saturn program. Consistent with its heritage as an Army arsenal with an extensive in-house capability, Marshall manufactured the first eight models of Saturn I's first stage and did the testing in its backyard. The physical size of other Saturn stages, the frequency of testing as production models came on line, and the sheer magnitude of the endeavor dictated the need for additional facilities located elsewhere. Each major contractor developed the....
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....special industrial capabilities required for the unique sizes inherent in the Saturn program, including fabrication, manufacturing, and testing. There was a certain kaleidoscopic aura about all these arrangements, since some were accomplished entirely by the contractor on privately owned premises and others were undertaken in government-owned facilities, with the contractor supplying most of the work force.
For example, the Saturn IB and Saturn V first stages were manufactured at the Michoud Assembly Facility (known familiarly as "Michoud") 24 kilometers east of downtown New Orleans. The prime contractors, Chrysler and Boeing, respectively, jointly occupied Michoud's 186 000 square meters of manufacturing floor space and 68 000 square meters of office space. The basic manufacturing building, one of the largest in the country, boasted 43 acres under one roof. By 1964, NASA added a separate engineering and office building, vertical assembly [72] building, (for the S-IC) and test stage building (also for the S-IC). By 1966, other changes to the site included enlarged barge facilities and other miscellaneous support buildings. Two things remained unchanged: a pair of chimneys in front of the Administration Building, remnants of an old sugar plantation. These ungainly artifacts served as reminders of Michoud's checkered past, from a plantation grant by the King of France in 1763, to ownership by the wealthy but eccentric New Orleans recluse and junk dealer, Antoine Michoud. Never a successful plantation, its sometime production of lumber and other local resources from the swampy environs helped generate the local slogan, "from muskrats to moonships."
The plant itself dated back to World War II, when it was built to produce Liberty ships. A hiatus in contract agreements shifted the emphasis to cargo planes, but only two C-46 transports rolled out before the war ended. The government facility remained essentially inactive until the Korean War, when the Chrysler Corporation employed over 2000 workers to build engines for Army tanks. Dormant since 1954, the building had been costing the government $140 000 per year to keep up. With so many jobs in the offing and the obvious level of economic activity to be generated by the manufacture of large rocket boosters, selection of the site occurred in a highly charged political atmosphere, with active lobbying by a number of congressmen and chambers of commerce from around the country. Eventual selection of the Michoud facility in 1961 followed a series of thorough NASA investigations, and Michoud easily fulfilled several high-priority considerations: production space and availability; location near a major metropolitan area; convenient year-round water transport facilities (to haul the oversized Saturn stages); and reasonable proximity to MSFC, the Cape, and a contemplated test-firing site for the finished stages.34
The extent of computer services required for the activities at the Mississippi Test Facility and Michoud prompted MSFC managers to consider a major computer installation to serve both operations. Happily, a location was found that included a structure originally designed to support sophisticated electronic operations. At Slidell, Louisiana, 32 kilometers northeast of Michoud and 24 kilometers southwest of MTF, Marshall acquired a modern facility originally built by the Federal Aviation Administration. For modifications and installation of new equipment, MSFC spent over $2 000 000 after acquiring the site in the summer of 1962. The array of digital and analog computers for test, checkout, simulation, and engineering studies made it one of the largest computer installations in the country.35
In contrast to Michoud, where the plant facility sat waiting, the development of the Mississippi Test Facility became a contest with Mississippi mud-to say nothing of the poisonous snakes and clouds of mosquitoes that plagued construction workers. Although NASA began [73] with a list of 34 potential locations, the site for test-firing Saturn V rocket stages logically had to be close to the production facilities at Michoud and also be accessible by water for shipment of S-II stages. Other criteria quickly ruled out most of the other contending sites. The test area had to be big. Size was a safety factor; test sites had to be widely separated from critical support and supply facilities in case of accidental destruction of a stage during a test run. More important, at the time the test facility location was being debated, NASA designers were looking ahead to big, deep-space booster stages of up to 111 million newtons (25 million pounds) of thrust, and lots of noise. Therefore, a test area of expansive proportions was required but in a location where a minimum number of people would have to be relocated. After juggling all of these requirements, in October 1961 NASA settled on a sparsely populated corner of Hancock County, Mississippi. A new, $300-million-plus space-age facility was hacked out of soggy cypress groves, Devil's Swamp, Dead Tiger Creek, and the Pearl River. By the intracoastal waterway and the Pearl River, MTF was only a 72-kilometer barge trip from the production facilities at Michoud, and was accessible by water to MSFC and the Cape.
The central test area, around the test stands, comprised 55 square kilometers, with a buffer zone of 518 square kilometers surrounding it. Approximately 850 families from five small hamlets were resettled outside MTF boundaries. The central test area was exclusively reserved for NASA use, and although the buffer zone was uninhabited, the area continued to be lumbered and teemed with wildlife, including wild hogs descended from abandoned farm stock. An employee picnic in 1967 frugally consigned some of these natural resources to a barbecue pit.36
At the heart of MTF were the monolithic test stands: a dual-position structure for running the S-IC stage at full throttle, and two separate stands for the S-II stage. Laboratories, monitoring equipment, control center, and storage areas, including docks, were all deployed thousands of meters away. The MTF complex was tied together by 12 kilometers of canals (with navigation locks and a bascule bridge); 45 kilometers of railroads; and 56 kilometers of roads and paved highways. Under it all snaked 966 kilometers of cables, connecting test stands, laboratories, and data banks. Each month, MTF consumed enough electricity to keep 6000 households functioning.
An arm of MSFC at Huntsville, MTF had an administrative pattern that was a bit unusual. A comparatively small cadre of NASA personnel (about 100) carried out overall managerial and supervisory duties. This select group also made the final evaluation of test results and issued the flight-worthiness certificates to the stage contractors. Approximately 3000 contractor personnel made up the vast majority of the work force. North American and Boeing each had several hundred people running their respective test stands. The General Electric Company, with over 1500 people, had the contract for housekeeping services at MTF and [74] provided maintenance for the facility and operational support at the test stands and elsewhere for the other tenants, including the construction firms. GE's range of support ran the gamut from 19 special items of cable equipment (for $ 1 183 187), to the always popular snake bite kits ($1.25 each). On occasion, GE hired cowboys to round up stray cattle in the outreaches of MTF, and it was GE that arranged for the transfer of the cemeteries during resettlement of the area's small towns.
Development of MTF had a hectic air about it. Construction delays mounted by early 1964, after Mississippi went through a highly unusual cold snap and a snowstorm. Heavy rains came during January, topping records that had been on the books for 30 years. The schedules for construction and testing merged to the point where the first test firings in 1966 were being planned concurrently with ongoing construction. The MTF director, Jack Balch, observed: "We're sure this is the only way to do it, but for the next year we'll be riding with one foot on each of two galloping horses." The government-industry team at MTF did the job; the first stage-firing test, a 15-second test of the S-II stage, was performed successfully on 23 April 1966 in the test stand designated A-2. On 3 March 1967, a 15-second test of the S-IC-T (test) stage activated the first-stage facility. In September 1967, the other S-II stand, designated A-1, was declared operational.37
While these facilities were being developed, MSFC drew on experience, accumulated during the days of ABMA and the Army's arsenal concept, and developed the Saturn I-the vehicle originally designated as Juno V. On the threshold of starting to work on the large Juno V class of vehicles and other space hardware in 1959, Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, von Braun's chief scientific advisor at ABMA, briefed NASA officials on the range of expected challenges and research required to develop vehicle components for space exploration. He noted the potential hazards from radiation, meteors, temperature extremes, and weightlessness. To cope with these environments, Stuhlinger stressed the need for research on a broad front, including special investigation into a list of 11 crucial materials and their current shortcomings in the space environment- from the decomposition of dielectrics and sealants, to unusual regimes of friction and wear for bearings and various moving parts, to the degradation of plastic and exposed surfaces, and to the vaporization and vacuum sticking of metals.38 Specific investigation of these and other problems moved on parallel tracks with the integration of components and materials into the launch vehicle design, even while the launch vehicle itself was taking form on drawing boards and in machine shops.
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[76] Like most major development projects, the evolution of the Saturn I changed between conception and execution, although the configuration that emerged in 1958 was subjected to remarkably few major design variations before its first launch in 1961. The basic outlines for ABMA's concepts of the Saturn I (when it was still called Juno V) were sketched out in two reports to Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in October and November 1958; insights on various aspects of early design choices were provided by von Braun himself in ABMA's presentation to NASA in December 1958. For example, original concepts for yaw, pitch, and roll control called for hinged outer engines: two hinged for pitch; two hinged for yaw; all four for roll. But application of adequate control forces required fairly high deflection of the engine thrust vector, and the engine contractor (Rocketdyne) complained that this would put too much stress on propellant flex lines. Instead, gimbaling of all four outer engines was adopted, achieving adequate control force with less engine deflection. The gimbal system for mounting engines permitted each engine in the cluster to swivel about for either yaw or pitch control.
On the other hand, the original multiengine concept was maintained. Throughout the early design phase, ABMA stressed the reliability of the multiengine approach in case one or even two were lost. Particularly in the case of manned missions, von Braun emphasized, the engine-out capability offered much higher margins of safety in continuing a mission until conditions were less hazardous for separation of the crew capsule.
The multitank design also persisted as a design choice. In his NASA presentation, von Braun praised the multitank design for several reasons. Component tanks could be flown by Douglas C-124 Globemasters to any part of the world and reassembled for launch; this procedure would provide a high degree of flexibility. The separate tanks eliminated the technical difficulties of internal horizontal bulkheads, required in a large tank vehicle, to keep fuel and oxidizer separate. It also meant a shorter, and more desirable, vehicle. In spite of the added weight, most rocket propellant tanks included internal fuel slosh baffles, because splashing and surging of the liquid fuel created problems in keeping the vehicle stable and under control. In 1958, von Braun predicted that no fuel slosh baffles would be required in the multitank design because of the small diameter of the individual tanks (although the flight versions actually incorporated slosh baffles in their design). A great deal of attention was also given to booster recovery schemes, in which the spent first stage would be recovered from the ocean after its descent had been slowed by retrorockets and parachutes. The Huntsville group foresaw immense savings in the recovery scheme, since the illustration given by von Braun assumed "5 or 19 years from now" a launch rate of 100 vehicles per year over a 5-year period, at a cost of about $10 million per launch.39
[77] More than any of the Saturn vehicles, the Saturn I S-I stage configuration evolved during flight tests (for details, see chapter 11). NASA developed the Saturn I as first-generation and second-generation rockets, designated Block I and Block II. The first four launches used the Block I vehicle, with inert upper stages and no fins on the first stage, the S-I. Block II versions carried a live second stage, the S-IV, sported a corolla of aerodynamic fins at the base, and used uprated H-I engines. The S-I first stage for the Saturn I also became the first stage of the Saturn IB; in this application, it was called the S-IB. Again, there were modifications to the fins, engines, and various internal components. Nevertheless, the basic details of fabrication and testing of the Saturn I and Saturn IB remained similar. The first stage of the Saturn I and IB may have looked like a plumber's nightmare, but it fit the criteria of conservative design and economy established early in the program. As Marshall engineers discovered, development of a new booster of Saturn I's size involved a number of design problems. Fabrication of the tankage was comparatively easy. Even though the former Redstone and Jupiter tanks had to be lengthened from 12 to 16 meters to carry added propellants, the basic diameters of the 178-centimeter Redstone and 267-centimeter Jupiter tanks were retained, so they could be fabricated from the tooling and welding equipment still available at Huntsville. The tank arrangement settled on by MSFC gave an alternate pattern of the four fuel and four oxidizer tanks, clustered around the 267-centimeter center oxidizer tank. The oxidizer tanks carried the load from the upper stages of the Saturn, the fuel tanks only contributing to the lateral stiffness of the cluster. When filled, the oxidizer tanks contracted 63.5 millimeters, which meant that the fuel tanks had to have slip joints at their upper ends to accommodate other structural elements that fluctuated with the tank shrinkage. All together, the Saturn I first stage carried 340 000 kilograms of propellants in its nine tanks. To keep the propellant in one tank from depleting too rapidly during flight, which would seriously unbalance the vehicle, the Saturn I incorporated an interconnecting pipe system, with regulating equipment to keep propellants at uniform level in all tanks during a mission. Each of the four outboard fuel tanks fed two engines, yet interconnected with the other tanks. The 267-centimeter center liquid-oxygen (LOX) tank provided series flow to the four outboard LOX tanks, which also fed two engines apiece.
Although the group of tanks eased the potential slosh tendencies of a single large tank, each separate cylinder contained fixed baffles, running accordionlike down the tank interiors. Pressurization for the LOX tanks was done by a heat exchanger, dumping it into the top of the LOX tanks as gaseous oxygen. Gaseous nitrogen from fiberglass spheres at the top of the booster pressurized the fuel tanks. The 48 spheres fixed to the top of the stage were curiously reminiscent of bunches of grapes.
The cluster of tanks was held together at the base by the tail section [78] and at the top by an aptly named structural component known as the "spider beam." The tail section consisted of the thrust structure assembly as well as the heat shield, shrouding for engine components, holddown points, stabilizing fins (on the later Saturn I first stages), and other components.
Assembly of the spider beam required a special fixture for precise alignment and joining of the heavy aluminum l beams, of which it was made. Starting with a hub assembly, eight radial beams were attached to it at 45-degree intervals. Then eight more cross beams were joined to the outer ends of the radials with splice plates. The spider beam played a dual role. Special hardware attached to it was used during the initial clustering of the tanks. In other words, the spider beam served as an assembly fixture, then remained as part of the stage's permanent structural assemblies, with each outboard oxidizer tank affixed to the beam. Because a smaller diameter upper stage of 5.6 meters was planned for the Saturn I, an upper shroud was incorporated as part of the structural transition from the larger 6.5-meter-diameter first stage. The upper shroud also enclosed telemetry equipment, umbilical connection points used in ground test and launch preparation, and space for the recovery system for the first stage. In the later versions (the Block II models), the shroud section was eliminated, and instruments were housed in a separate instrument segment atop the upper stage. The recovery section was no longer required; additional studies, completed by early 1962, indicated that the recovery scheme would require extensive modification to the stage, so the idea was finally dropped.40
In the process of refining the design of the Saturn I, two major problems emerged: stability and base heating. As with most large rockets, the Saturn I was highly unstable, with the overall center of gravity located on the heavy, lower-stage booster, while the center of lift, in most flight conditions, was high on the upper stages. The nature of the problem called for more advanced control processes than used on aircraft and rockets the size of ICBMs. The low natural frequency of the big vehicle was such that when the gimbaled engines moved to correct rocket motions, special care had to be taken not to amplify the motions because the control system frequency was close to that of the vehicle itself.
More worrisome, at least in the early design stage, was the problem of base heating. Even with a rocket powered by only one engine, the flow pattern at its base proved nearly impossible to predict for the various combinations of speed and altitude. Base heating occurred when the rocket exhaust interacted with the shock waves trailing behind the vehicle. This clash created unpredictable regions of dead air and zones of turbulent mixing. Heated by the rocket exhaust, the air trapped in these areas in turn raised the heat levels at the base of the rocket to undesirable temperatures. Worse, the fuel-rich exhaust flow from the engine turbopump could get caught in these "hot-spot" regions, causing fire or explosion.
[79] The base heating phenomenon became worse with multiengine rockets. The eight-engine Saturn I cluster began to look like a Pandora's box of base heating. To get an idea of what to expect, and to work out some fixes ahead of time, the Saturn design team ran some cold flow tests, using scale-model hardware, and called on NASA's Lewis Research Center, in Cleveland, to run some unusual wind tunnel tests. These investigations involved a booster model with eight operating engines, each putting out 1100 newtons (250 pounds) of thrust. Following the tests and extensive theoretical studies, designers in Huntsville came up with several ideas to cope with the base-heating situation. Arranged in a cross-shaped configuration, the engine pattern of the cluster was conceived to minimize dead air regions and turbulent zones. The four inner engines were bunched together in the center to reduce excessive heating in the central area, and the remaining four were positioned to avoid structural interference as the gimbaled engines swung on their mounts. The lower skirt was designed to direct large streams of high-energy air toward the four center engines in particular to prevent dead air regions from developing in their vicinity. A heavy fire wall was installed across the base of the booster near the throat of the engines, with flexible engine skirts to permit gimbaling and, at the same time, keep the super-heated gas from flowing back up to the turbopumps and propellant lines above. The problem of the exhaust from the turbopumps received special attention. For the four center engines, which were fixed, the fuel-rich exhaust gases were piped to the edge of the booster skirt and dumped overboard into a region of high-velocity air flow. In later vehicles, the exhaust gases were dumped exactly into the "centerstar" created by the four fixed engines. The gimbaled outboard engines required a different approach. The turbopump was fixed to the gimbaled engines; therefore an overboard duct for them would have required a flexible coupling that could withstand the high temperatures of the turbine exhaust gases. Instead, MSFC devised outboard engine attachments called aspirators, which forced the turbine exhaust into hoods around the engine exhaust area and mixed the turbopump exhaust with the engine's main exhaust flow.41
Successful ignition and operation of an eight-engine cluster of Saturn's dimensions required extensive testing beforehand. In December 1958, ARPA released funds for modifications to one side of a two-position Juno test tower in order to test-fire the Saturn I first stage. Preparations for these static tests, as they were called, required extensive reworking of the Saturn's side of the tower, including a new steel and concrete foundation down to bedrock, a steel overhead support structure and a 110-metric ton overhead crane, a new flame deflector and fire-control system, and much new instrumentation. The job took a whole year. By January 1959, ABMA crews installed a full-sized, high-fidelity [80] mockup of the first stage in the tower to check all the interfaces for service and test equipment. Satisfied, they took the mockup out, and put in the first static-test version. The test booster, SA-T, was installed during February, and late in March the first firing test, a timid one, burned only two engines for an eight-second run. Many skeptics still doubted that the eight-engine cluster would operate satisfactorily. "People at that time still had a lot of difficulty persuading individual rocket motors to fire up... reliably," von Braun explained, "and here we said we would fire up all eight simultaneously." There were a lot of jokes about "Cluster's Last Stand," von Braun chuckled. Still, the firing crew at Marshall proceeded cautiously. Not until the third run, on 29 April 1960, did test engineers fire up all eight barrels, and then only for an eight-second burst. By the middle of June, the first stage was roaring at full power for more than two minutes.
Reverberations of the Saturn tests were quickly felt. The acoustical impact was quite evident in the immediate area around the city of Huntsville, and the long-range sound propagation occurred at distances up to 160 kilometers. The result was a rash of accidental damage to windows and wall plaster, followed by a rash of damage claims (sometimes filed by citizens on days when no tests had been conducted). Aware that climatic conditions caused very pronounced differences in noise levels and long-range sound propagation, engineers began taking meteorological soundings and installed a huge acoustical horn atop a tower in the vicinity of the test area. No ordinary tooter, the horn was over 7.6 meters long and had a huge flared aperture over 4.6 meters high. Its sonorous gawps, bounced off a network of sound recorders, gave acoustical engineers a good idea whether it was safe to fire the big rockets on overcast days.42
To make the most use of the expensive test facilities, as soon as a booster completed its test-firing series and was shipped off to Cape Canaveral for launch, the SA-T booster was fastened back into place for further verification and testing of Saturn systems. The complex test instrumentation was complemented by the growing sophistication of automatic checkout systems used in the Saturn I first stage. Early hardware was designed for manual checkout. As more advanced electronics and computers became available, significant portions of the procedure were designed for automatic tests and checks. The scope of automatic test and checkout evolved into a complex network that tied together diverse geographic test and manufacturing locations. Later generations of Saturn vehicles and individual components were electronically monitored, literally, from the time of the first buildup on the shop floor until the mission was finished in outer space.
Because manufacturing tests of individual stages occurred separately at diverse locations, a specialized facility was required to verify the [81] physical interface design, system integration, and system operation of the total vehicle. During a flight, natural structural frequencies occurred-the result of vibrations of moving parts, aerodynamic forces, and soon. If the control-force input of gimbaling engines, for example, reinforced the structure's natural frequency, the amplification of such structural deflections could destroy the vehicle. So a dynamic test stand, large enough to surround a complete two-stage Saturn I, was begun at MSFC in the summer of 1960 and finished early in 1961. The dynamic test facility was designed to test the vehicle either in entirety or in separate flight configurations. Vibration loads could be applied to the vehicle in pitch, yaw, roll, or longitudinal axis to get data on resonance frequencies and bending modes. Saturn I tests uncovered several problem areas that were then solved before launch. Matching frequencies in the gimbal structure and hydraulic system were uncovered and "decoupled." Static tests revealed weaknesses in the heat-shield curtains around the engines, so the flexible curtains were redesigned. Structural failure of the outer liquid-oxygen tanks required a reworking of the propellant flow system.43
Historically, the style of ABMA operations emphasized in-house fabrication and production, as Army arsenals had traditionally done. As the scale of the Saturn program increased, MSFC made the obvious and logical choice to turn over fabrication and manufacture to private industry. At the same time, the center retained an unusually strong in-house capability, to keep abreast of the state of the art, undertake preliminary work on new prototype hardware, and to make sure that the contractor did the job properly (for management details, see chapter 9). The do-it-yourself idea was most strongly reflected in the development of the Saturn I first stage. Ten Saturn I vehicles were built and launched; the first eight used S-I first stages manufactured by MSFC, although the fifth flight vehicle carried a contractor-built second stage (the Douglas S-IV). The last two Saturn Is to be launched had both stages supplied by private industry. Douglas supplied the S-IV upper stage, and the Chrysler Corporation's Space Division supplied the S-I lower stage.
Late in the summer of 1961, while the first Saturn I was en route to Florida for launch, MSFC began plans to select the private contractor to take over its S-I stage. The manufacturing site at Michoud was announced on 7 September, and a preliminary conference for prospective bidders occurred in New Orleans on 26 September. The first Saturn I was launched successfully one month later (27 October), and on 17 November, Chrysler was selected from five candidates to produce the S-I first stage. The final contract called for the manufacture, checkout, and test of 20 first-stage boosters. Chrysler participated in the renovation of Michoud as it tooled up for production. In the meantime, the shops at Marshall turned out the last seven S-I boosters, progressively relinquishing the primary production responsibility. During December 1961, for example,.....
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....MSFC manufactured its last 1.78-meter and 2.67-meter tanks, turning over this job to Chance-Vought, of Dallas, which supplied both MSFC and Michoud as Chrysler took over the booster production.44
Chrysler, a major automotive manufacturer, was no novice to the production of rockets, having worked with the von Braun team since [83] 1954 producing Redstone rockets and their successor, the Jupiter. Chrysler easily shifted from the Saturn I to the larger Saturn IB. In July 1962, when NASA announced its intention to use the lunar orbit rendezvous, the space agency also released details on the two other Saturn vehicles. The three-stage Saturn V was planned for the lunar mission. A corollary decision called for development of an interim vehicle, the Saturn IB, to permit early testing of Apollo-Saturn hardware, such as the manned command and service modules, and the manned lunar excursion module in Earth orbit, as well as the S-IVB stage of the Saturn V. This decision permitted such flight testing a year before the Saturn V would be available. Chrysler's initial contract, completed late in 1962, called for 13 first-stage Saturn IB boosters and 8 Saturn I first-stage boosters.45
In most respects, the new S-IB first-stage booster retained the size and shape of its S-I predecessor. The upper area was modified to take the larger-diameter and heavier S-IVB upper stage, and the aerodynamic fins were redesigned for the longer and heavier vehicle. The Saturn IB mounted its eight H-I engines in the same cluster pattern as the Saturn I, although successive improvements raised the total thrust of each engine to 890 000 newtons (200 000 pounds) and then to 912 000 newtons (205 000 pounds). The thrust increase raised the overall performance of the Saturn IB; the performance was further enhanced by cutting some 9000 kilograms of weight from the stage cluster. A more compact fin design accounted for part of the reduction, along with modifications to the propellant tanks, spider beam, and other components and removal of various tubes and brackets no longer required. Additional weight savings accrued from changes in the instrument unit and S-IVB, and the insights gained from the operational flights of Saturn I. Many times, engineers came to realize designs had been too conservative-too heavy or unnecessarily redundant. The production techniques worked out for the Saturn S-I stage were directly applicable to the S-IB, so no major retooling or change in the manufacturing sequence was required. With so few basic changes in the booster configuration, existing checkout and test procedures could also be applied. At Huntsville, appropriate modifications were made to the dynamic test stand to account for the different payload configurations of the Saturn IB and the same static test stand served just as well for the S-IB first stage, although engineers reworked the stand's second test position to accept additional S-IB stages.46
During 1961-1962, several crucial decisions were completed to clarify configurations of the Saturn program and to agree on the mode to land astronauts on the moon. Once the idea of direct ascent via a Nova.....
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....vehicle was discarded, the major issue became Earth orbital rendezvous or lunar orbital rendezvous. One of the last holdouts against LOR, Marshall eventually opted for it because it averted the multiple launches of an EOR sequence and offered the best chances for a successful mission before the end of the 1960s.
Once the issue of the mission profile had been settled, the task of developing the resources for manufacturing and testing of the Saturns became paramount, and engineers finalized the design of the Saturn I's first stage, which evolved into the first stage of the Saturn IB as well.
At this point, in the early 1960s, development of the Saturn I and IB loomed large in press releases and news stories, with special attention on [85] the lower stages. The work in this area set the baselines for manufacturing procedures, static firing tests of the multibarrel cluster, and the first launches of the Saturn I, with a live lower stage and a dummy upper stage. Because NASA and MSFC planners put such special emphasis on early static-firing tests of each stage, the engines had to be ready. From the beginning, MSFC maintained a strong effort in research, development, and production of Saturn propulsion systems. Meanwhile, parallel work on other hardware of the Saturn program proceeded: R&D on the upper stages for the Saturn I and IB (to be modified for the Saturn V); R&D for the first two stages of the mammoth Saturn V; plans for unique tooling required for production and fabrication; schemes for guidance and control of the launch vehicle. The main effort leading to large launch vehicles for manned lunar voyages was just beginning to build momentum.

In the beginning, it was planned to send the order / service grid directly to the moon exhibition, which could be surrounded by three aircraft players; it was planned to apply the customizations of the sort of the grid for the grid exhibitionBilstein 1996, Chapter 2.2: "Aerospace Alphabet: ABMA, ARPA, MSFC". p. On June 11, 1962, in the state-of-the-art department, the design, improvement and testing of the line-of-the-art adaptations of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department of the department.