Ahotrod Forthesolar System

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Ahotrod forthesolar system

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APUBLICATIONOFTHEAMERICANINSTITUTEOFAERONAUTICSANDASTRONAUTICS FourtestflightsthatboostedApollo11

THE DAY APOLLO 11 LANDED, 40 YEARS service module (CSM) design had to be biting crew stranded in space. Cunning- ago this July, my Baltimore family was in reviewed and revalidated. Astronaut Walt ham reports that before Apollo 7, Wally southern California, halfway through a Cunningham, originally assigned to Schirra had insisted on an extra ground cross-country road trip. Fresh from the Apollo 2 with Wally Schirra and Don test firing of the SPS; no one was taking beach, the six of us skipped the camp- Eisele, had backed up Apollo 1’s Virgil any chances. ground that night and clustered around Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Once in orbit, the crew ran docking our motel room TV, watching the Chaffee. “We on Apollo 7 were benefi- approaches to the Saturn IB’s expended ghostly shapes of Neil and Buzz bound ciaries of that thorough scrub—any pos- S-IVB second stage. The SPS then got a across the lunar surface. With billions of sible defect related to the fire was elimi- thorough workout, passing with flying others, we witnessed the culminating nated,” he says. Earlier, unmanned flight colors, as did every systems test. moment in a series of daring steps tests had proven some of the Apollo “I never heard of a test flight that had mounted by the U.S. since the shocking CSM systems, but Schirra, Eisele, and so little go wrong,” says Cunningham to- blow delivered by the 1967 Apollo fire. Cunningham would fly what was practi- day. “It was confirmation of what we’d In fewer than 10 months beginning in cally a brand new spaceship. all done to get ready.” Their face-to-face the fall of 1968, NASA undertook four Their 11-day mission, launched Oc- debrief to the Apollo 8 crew took just a challenging test flights whose successes tober 11, 1968 from the same pad single day, and it was mostly “negative led directly to the achievement of Presi- where the Apollo 1 crew had perished reporting,” he says—“we mostly told dent Kennedy’s Moon-landing goal. 21 months before, tested fuel cells, life them what didn’t go wrong.” Apollo 11’s triumph did not occur in support systems, computers, navigation isolation. It built on a string of ambitious systems, and the all-important service A lunar gamble missions of ever-increasing complexity, propulsion system (SPS) engine. The In August 1968, two months before each venturing into unexplored dimen- 20,500-lb-thrust SPS would get future Apollo 7 flew, Apollo spacecraft pro- sions of operational risk. A serious fail- crews into and out of lunar orbit, and it gram manager George Low proposed to ure in any of the four Apollo missions had to work: A failure could leave an or- his colleagues that Apollo 8 should fly a preceding the landing would probably lunar orbit mission. The audacious idea have caused NASA to miss JFK’s 1970 Technicians move the Apollo 7 CSM into position was based on three factors. First, the lu- deadline. Consider: Had events gone for mating with the spacecraft LM adapter. nar module (LM) was behind schedule only slightly differently, the USSR might and would not be ready to fly with Apollo have notched the first manned flight 8; why waste a mission repeating the around the Moon, and made a more vig- Apollo 7 mission profile? Second, intelli- orous bid to preempt Apollo with a ro- gence reports indicated the Soviets were botic sample return and an eventual manned landing. Instead, the Soviets The crew of Apollo 7, ready for takeoff: Don Eisele, could do little but watch as NASA Wally Schirra, and Walt Cunningham (l.-r.). marched inexorably toward its lunar goal. The lessons of that test flight series are useful today as the agency grapples with technical and managerial challenges every bit as daunting as Apollo’s.

Rising from the ashes The January 1967 Apollo 1 ﬁre brought NASA’s new lunar program to a stand- still. The entire Apollo command and

20 AEROSPACE AMERICA/JULY-AUGUST 2009 In the new book, Apollo: Through the Eyes of the Astronauts, Frank Bor- man recalls that first lunar orbit: “…The first view of the Moon was mesmerizing, as we were aware that no other humans had seen the far side of the Moon directly. The Earth, however, captured my attention. It was the only object in the universe that we could see that had color. It was beautiful—blue with white clouds— serene, and majestic. It was home.” The Apollo 8 crewmembers stand in the doorway For nearly an entire day the crew of their recovery helicopter aboard USS Yorktown, following their splashdown on December 27, 1968. scrutinized landing sites, proved out Left to right are Frank Borman, James A. Lovell communication and navigation routines, Jr., and William A. Anders. and later televised a moving Christmas Eve broadcast, reading from the Book of early November: Apollo 8 would shoot Genesis. Just after midnight on Christ- Apollo 8 launches from Kennedy Space Center, December 21, 1968. for the Moon. mas Day, on the lunar far side, the crew On December 21, 1968, Borman, fired the CSM’s SPS engine for the burn Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders thundered that had to work. When Apollo 8 reap- readying a revamped Soyuz for launch, moonward on the first manned Saturn V peared from behind the Moon’s trailing perhaps to loop around the Moon. Such launch. The previous Saturn V test, limb, Jim Lovell’s voice confirmed that a success by the Russians would undercut Apollo 6, had barely staggered into or- the SPS had done its job: “Houston, the prestige of a later Apollo lunar mis- bit, suffering multiple engine failures. Apollo 8….Please be informed there is a sion, even one that entered lunar orbit. Worse, its third stage had failed to Santa Claus.” Finally, sending Apollo 8 to the Moon reignite for a simulated translunar injec- would prove software, navigation, and tion. But Wernher von Braun’s booster Gumdrop and Spider operations techniques for the later land- team at Marshall stated confidently they Apollo 8’s safe return removed any wor- ing missions, an invaluable jump in deep understood the failures—and fixed them ries about a Soviet Moon surprise and space experience. in time for Apollo 8. proved the Apollo spacecraft and ground Some thought the risks too great. Late in their second Earth orbit, 186 team could handle lunar operations. But When Chris Kraft’s flight control team km up, Apollo 8’s crew commanded ig- a landing still depended on a crucial test met in August to weigh the mission’s nition of the S-IVB’s J-2 engine. For 5 pros and cons, someone objected that min 18 sec, it powered the stack out of the flight plan’s timing dictated a night Earth orbit, building its speed to 10.82 splashdown. According to A Man on the km/sec on a free-return path around the Moon author Andrew Chaikin, com- Moon. Chris Kraft radioed the crew: mander Frank Borman answered with “You’re on your way—you’re really on characteristic bluntness: “What the hell your way now!” difference does it make?...If the para- The rest of the mission unfolded like chutes don’t open, we’re dead anyway, clockwork. On December 24, Apollo 8 whether it’s day or night.” swung behind the Moon, firing the SPS In a series of such frank discussions, to slow into an initial 311 x 112-km or- The Apollo 9 crew, James McDivitt, David R. Scott, managers hammered out a decision in bit. Each revolution took 2 hr. and Russell L. Schweickart, smile for the camera.

AEROSPACE AMERICA/JULY-AUGUST 2009 21 would be disastrous. Schweickart was crestfallen, but the next morning, he recalls, “based on my looking fine, and following a very brief discussion, Jim [Mc- Divitt] pressed the transmit button and said ‘Houston, we’re going ahead with the EVA.’” He calls McDivitt’s move “the most courageous command decision I’ve ever seen in operations.” Schweickart’s hour-long spacewalk proved the life support backpack would perform under lunar conditions; CSM pilot Dave Scott, using umbilical suit connections, monitored and photo- graphed Schweickart while standing in Apollo 9 LM pilot Rusty Schweickart stands in Gumdrop’s open hatch. “golden slippers” on the LM porch on March 6, 1969. The next day, Schweickart and Mc- Divitt powered away from Gumdrop in of a spacecraft that had never carried as- the LM, the first independent flight of a tronauts: the lunar module. piloted spacecraft without a heat shield Flown unmanned just once, the LM for Earth return. For nearly 7 hr the men would now get a workout in LEO from wrung out the LM systems, easing out to the Apollo 9 crew: Jim McDivitt, Rusty more than 179 km from Gumdrop. Schweickart, and Dave Scott. Aboard Both Spider’s descent and ascent en- their command ship Gumdrop, they gines functioned well, as did the staging were hurled into orbit by the fourth Sat- mechanisms to cut loose the lower stage urn V on March 3, 1969. Three hours of the lander. The pair returned in the after orbit insertion, the crew turned the ascent stage to dock with Gumdrop, Snoopy is moved for mating with the spacecraft lunar module adapter. CSM around and docked gently with the proving the LM was ready. Schweickart LM, named Spider, nestled inside the says proudly that “Apollo 9 was rightly top of the S-IVB third stage. Extracting called the great engineering test flight of Young, and Gene Cernan embarked on the LM from the Saturn, the crew con- the program.” a lunar orbital flight that was to rehearse ducted test firings of the SPS engine to every aspect of a Moon landing except evaluate the structural integrity of the Snooping the Moon the final descent and touchdown. Flight joined spacecraft. NASA launched Apollo 10 on May 18, controllers would work simultaneously Schweickart recalls: “We did a some- 1969, the fourth Apollo test in seven with the CSM and LM in lunar orbit. what hairy structural test of the CSM/ months. Astronauts Tom Stafford, John Swooping low over the Moon in their LM tunnel by purposely ‘sawtoothing’ the SPS engine back and forth during a burn. We also fully tested the ability of the LM to control the docked CSM/LM configuration...although that was never intended to be used.” Schweickart finds it ironic that just over a year later, “many of the things we tested which seemed ei- ther incidental or even somewhat silly turned out to be essential to Apollo 13’s successful return.” On the fourth flight day, he and Mc- Divitt in the LM donned their lunar surface suits. Schweickart opened Spider’s forward hatch, gingerly exiting onto the “front porch” platform for the EVA. His spacewalk almost didn’t happen. Schweickart had experienced space mo- tion sickness on flight day 3, and the In June 1969, the crews of Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 conduct a debriefing session in Houston on crew prudently canceled the planned the Apollo 10 “dress rehearsal” flight results. Clockwise, from left foreground, are Michael Collins, EVA—getting sick inside a space helmet Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., Eugene A. Cernan, Thomas P. Stafford, Neil A. Armstrong, and John W. Young.

22 AEROSPACE AMERICA/JULY-AUGUST 2009 LM, Snoopy, astronauts Stafford and with the engineers, looked at the draw- Cernan would reconnoiter the planned ings, sat on all the change boards, and landing site for Apollo 11. made our inputs. We were amazingly The command and service module, well-listened-to. Everyone was interested Charlie Brown, with Snoopy attached, in our thinking.” dropped smoothly into lunar orbit three During 1968-1969, the fast-moving days after launch. On May 22, John Apollo test series was based on reasoned Young backed away in Charlie Brown decisions by a NASA leadership that suc- while Stafford and Cernan prepared cessfully weighed risk against the na- Snoopy for the simulated landing ap- tional directive to accomplish a landing proach. The pair fired the LM descent before 1970. During that time, NASA’s engine for 27 sec, dropping their per- managers made all the right calls, meas- ilune to only 15.7 km, or 50,000 ft uring the length of each forward step above the Moon (an overburn of just 2 against that presidential deadline, oppor- sec would have sent the LM crashing tunities enabled by previous successes into the surface). and, to some extent, what the Soviets From the cockpit they watched the might do. landscape rise impressively toward them: The NASA Constellation team is The stark rims of impact craters loomed preparing its first flight, the Ares I-X above the horizon, and gigantic boulders flight, for early this fall. Pending the re- dotted the rugged hills of the lunar high- sults of the Augustine review panel and lands. To capcom Charlie Duke, Cernan the administration’s budget choices, radioed his excitement: “We is GO and Apollo 10 approaches splashdown. NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission we is down among ’em, Charlie!” Directorate will mount future Ares/ Stafford reported that Apollo 11’s Orion tests to support the new space- landing area looked acceptably smooth, craft’s first piloted orbital mission. but much as he and Cernan might have within a couple of miles of the recovery The value of the clear-eyed approach wanted to pull off that first touchdown, ship, the USS Princeton.” taken by Apollo’s managers, flight con- Snoopy was too heavy to make the at- Cernan says his crew was never dis- trollers, engineers, and crews is inescap- tempt. Completing their reconnaissance, appointed at not being assigned the first able. Their decisions are a model for suc- they prepared to jettison the descent lunar landing. In Apollo, stage and fire up the ascent engine for he argues that “…we rendezvous. painted the white line in Aboard Charlie Brown, Young was the sky so Neil [Arm- enjoying his solo piloting stint. He had strong] wouldn’t get lost!” tracked Snoopy in his sextant, pho- tographed landing sites, and studied the Testing NASA Moon’s geology. “The back side of the Armstrong, Aldrin, and Moon is an incredible sight, full of im- Collins indeed found their pact craters,” Young says. On Charlie way to the Moon and Brown, he had readied a backup ren- back, following the trail dezvous maneuver, just in case Staf-ford blazed by the preceding and Cernan were stranded down low. “I four flights. Apollos 7 was set up to go get ’em,” he recalls. through 11 followed a For a few seconds it looked as if he building-block approach might have to do just that. Just before toward the ultimate goal, Stafford jettisoned the descent section, each flight building on the the LM gyrated wildly. “Son of a lessons of the last. Every piece of vital cess today, and a reminder that testing bitch!...What the hell happened?” asked hardware was thoroughly tested, as were shortcuts, whether imposed by con- Cernan. But the scare, the result of a the people and their complex, far-flung strained budgets or demands to shorten bad switch setting, was momentary: organization. “the gap,” are counterproductive. Now Stafford regained control within 20 sec. Walt Cunningham hopes that today’s more than ever, it is essential to remem- The rendezvous and docking with John astronauts will participate as closely in ber that thorough testing and prudent Young were normal. Racing home after the design and testing of Orion as his decision-making will be keys to making nearly 62 hr in lunar orbit, Apollo 10 hit crew did in the dark days after the our next giant leap successful. Earth’s atmosphere at a record-setting Apollo fire. “I believe Apollo was so suc- Tom Jones 11.08 km/sec. “We made the fastest en- cessful because the astronauts lived with [email protected] try in Apollo,” says Young, “and landed their spacecraft. We worked constantly www.AstronautTomJones.com

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