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Brown's Lunar Exploration Working Group Michael's Paper on a "Parking Orbit" The Feelings Against Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous The Space Task Group's Early Skepticism President Kennedy's Commitment Houbolt's First Letter to Seamans
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Houbolt's First Letter to Seamans (continued)
Houbolt felt himself being caught in a bizarre trap of someone else's making. He was one of the strongest believers in rendezvous in the country—he was not against Earth-orbit rendezvous, he was also in favor of it. He had just returned from his well-received formal presentation on both mission modes at an international space flight symposium in France.83 But he and his Langley associates had conducted the analysis, and they knew that LOR would work even better than Earth-orbit rendezvous for a lunar landing. So he pleaded with Heaton that during the committee's study of rendezvous in Earth orbit, it also should study LOR in comparison. Heaton simply answered, "We're not going to do that, John. It's not in our charter." Then Heaton challenged, "If you feel strongly enough about it, write your own lunar-orbit [minority] report."84 Houbolt eventually did just that. Heaton's report, which was published in late August, concluded that Earth-orbit rendezvous "offers the earliest possibility for a successful manned lunar landing."85 In postulating the design of the spacecraft that would make that sort of lunar mission, however, the Heaton Committee previewed a baseline configuration that Houbolt regarded as a "beast." It involved "some five different pieces of hardware that were going to be assembled in the Earth-orbit rendezvous," Houbolt remembers. "It was a great big long cigar." In his opinion, such an unwieldy concept "would hurt the cause of rendezvous." NASA engineers, especially in the STG, would read the Heaton report and say, "Well, we knew it all the time; these rendezvous guys are nuts."86 Or they were being driven nuts. The summer of 1961 was the busiest in the lives of many NASA engineers, certainly in John Houbolt's. "I was living half the time in Washington, half the time on the road, dashing back and forth."87 In mid-July, he was to be in Washington again, to give a talk at the NASA-Industry Apollo Technical Conference. This important meeting was to include about 300 potential Project Apollo contractors. It was so important that Langley management, in association with the STG, in the tradition of the NACA-NASA annual inspections, was holding a formal rehearsal of all its presentations prior to the conference. Houbolt was to give his talk at the end of the day of rehearsals because he had another NASA meeting earlier that day in Washington. "I was to rush out to the airport at Washington National, get on the airplane, they were to pick me up here and then bring me to where they were having the rehearsals." However, when he arrived breathless at the airport, the airplane could not take off. In refueling the aircraft, the ground crew had spilled fuel on one of the tires, and the Federal Aviation Administration would not let the plane take off until the tire had been changed. That made Houbolt a little late—and the STG member waiting for him a little impatient. "They dashed me back to the conference room, and with all of the other rehearsals finished, "everybody was sort of twiddling their thumbs,"complaining "where the hell is Houbolt?" After a brief apology, Houbolt began his talk. Up until the end, he purposefully said nothing specifically about LOR and talked about rendezvous in general. Then he said he had three or four final slides. "There is a very interesting possibility that rendezvous offers,"Houbolt ventured, similar to a lawyer who was trying to slip in some evidence that he knew the judge would not allow, "and that is how to go to the moon in a very simplified way." He then described the whole LOR concept. People listened politely and thanked him when he had finished. "That's a damn good paper, John," offered Langley Associate Director Charles Donlan. "But throw out all that nonsense on lunar-orbit rendezvous." Houbolt remembers that Max Faget and several other members of the STG offered the same advice.88 This was "strike three." The Lundin Committee had been "strike one"against Houbolt—LOR was completely rejected. The Heaton Committee had been "strike two"—LOR would not even be considered. Houbolt's rehearsal talk was, in a sense, the "third strike." But at least all three had been "swinging strikes," so to speak. Houbolt had used each occasion to promote LOR, and he had given his best effort each time. Furthermore, he was to have a few more times "at bat." The "inning" was over but not the entire "ballgame." The next "inning" in fact came quickly, in August 1961, when Houbolt met with the so-called Golovin Committee—yet another of Bob Seamans' ad hoc task forces. Established on 7 July 1961, this joint Large Launch Vehicle Planning Group—co-chaired by Nicholas E. Golovin, Seamans' special technical assistant, and Lawrence L. Kavanau of the Department of Defense—was supposed to recommend not only a booster rocket for Project Apollo but also other launch vehicle configurations that would meet the anticipated needs of NASA and the Defense Department.89 The committee was to concern itself only with large launch vehicle systems, so nothing necessitated an inquiry into the LOR scheme. However, three members of the NASA headquarters staff working with this group—Eldon W. Hall, Harvey Hall, and Milton W. Rosen, all of the Office of Launch Vehicle Programs—asked that the LOR concept be presented for their consideration of a mission plan.90 This was to be done as part of a systematic comparative evaluation of three types of rendezvous operations (Earth orbit, lunar orbit, and lunar surface) and direct ascent for a piloted lunar landing. The Golovin Committee assigned the study of Earth-orbit rendezvous to the Marshall Space Flight Center, lunar-surface rendezvous to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and LOR to Langley. The NASA Office of Launch Vehicle Programs would provide the information on direct ascent.91 This commitment to a comparative evaluation of the mission modes, including LOR, constituted a critical turning point in the history of the tortuous intellectual and bureaucratic process by which NASA eventually decided on a mission mode for Project Apollo. This is not to say that the Golovin Committee would conclude in favor of LOR, because it would not. Its final, somewhat vacillating recommendation, made in mid-October after all the field centers had delivered their reports, was in favor of a hybrid rendezvous scheme that combined aspects of both Earth-orbit rendezvous and LOR. The committee's preference was clearly for some form of rendezvous. Lunar-surface rendezvous, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's deformed baby, had been ruled out, and direct ascent was fading as a possibility. The engineering calculations were showing clearly that any single rocket that had to carry all the fuel necessary for carrying out the entire lunar mission was just not a realistic option—especially if the mission was to be accomplished anywhere close to President Kennedy's timetable. The development of a rocket that mammoth would take too long, and the expense would be enormous. For Houbolt and the other LOR advocates, then, the work of the Golovin Committee meant the first meaningful opportunity to demonstrate the merits of LOR in a full-blown comparison with the other viable options. It was the kind of opportunity for which Houbolt had been asking in all of his previously unsuccessful briefings. When he appeared before the committee in August 1961, "they were damn impressed." They asked him, to his delight, whether the STG knew about it. Golovin turned to Aleck C. Bond, the STG's representative on the committee, and asked him to return to Langley and "check with your fellows on what they're doing about this." A few days later, Houbolt was again in front of the STG talking to them in a well-received presentation about the same thing that they had told him not to talk about just the month earlier.92 With the Shepard and Grissom flights accomplished and the Golovin Committee now urging them to study rendezvous, the STG members started to come around. Thus far, as other historians have noted, the STG had "seen little merit in any form of rendezvous for lunar missions" and had reserved "its greatest disdain for the lunar orbit version."93 Now at least some of its engineers were showing solid interest. In early September 1961, Jim Chamberlin, the STG recruit from Canada who asked for Houbolt's circular and other supporting material after hearing the proposals for MORAD and MALLIR five months earlier, talked to Gilruth about an LOR plan for a lunar landing program—and for a preparatory three-flight rendezvous experiment—that sounded much like the ideas Houbolt had been pushing. This was most significant. Never before had a member of the STG seriously offered any flight plan for a lunar landing involving any sort of rendezvous in lunar orbit. Although Gilruth was not convinced of the merits of such a scheme, he was open to further evaluation.94 Chamberlin's notion derived in part from the STG's August 1961 proposal for an accelerated circumlunar program; this proposal appeared as an appendix to its "Preliminary Project Development Plan for an Advanced Manned Space Program Utilizing the Mark II Two-Man Spacecraft." In essence, the larger document called for the start of what became known as Project Gemini, the series of two-astronaut rendezvous and docking missions in Earth’s orbit that NASA successfully carried out between March 1965 and November 1966.95 But the seed for Project Gemini, as planted by Chamberlin at least, must also have some important connection to Houbolt's April 1961 MORAD (Manned Orbital Rendezvous and Docking) proposal.96
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