Beyond Apollo

Cancelled: Apollo 15 and Apollo 19 (1970)

Apollo 16 Lunar Module Pilot Charlie Duke uses a rake to collect small rocks. The Lunar Roving Vehicle is almost lost among boulders in the background. Image: NASA.

On Aug. 5 and 13, 1970, NASA Administrator Thomas Paine dispatched letters on the future of the U.S. lunar program to the Lunar and Planetary Missions Board (LPMB) and the Space Science Board (SSB) of the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council. In his letters, he outlined three options for curtailing Project Apollo. Of these, the first (Option I) would cancel one Apollo mission, while the others would nix two. The options he described were in part aimed at avoiding a delay in the Skylab Program, which constituted a step toward Paine’s favorite 1970s NASA goal: a 12-man Earth-orbiting space station that would be staffed and resupplied using a fully reusable Space Shuttle. Members of the LPMB and the SSB held an urgent meeting to develop a response to Paine’s letters on Aug. 15-16, 1970, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

By the time the LPMB and SSB met, NASA had flown three manned lunar landing missions: Apollo 11 (July 16-24, 1969), which landed off-target on Mare Tranquillitatis; Apollo 12  (Nov. 14-24, 1969), which landed close by the derelict Surveyor 3 automated lander on Oceanus Procellarum, thereby demonstrating the pinpoint landing capability essential for geologic traverse planning; and perilous Apollo 13 (Apr. 11-17, 1970), which suffered an oxygen tank explosion in its Command and Service Module (CSM) that scrubbed its planned landing at Fra Mauro. Of these, Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 were mainly engineering missions intended to prove the Apollo system, while Apollo 13 had been intended as the first science-focused mission. Paine had cancelled one Apollo mission, Apollo 20, in Jan. 1970 so that its Saturn V rocket could launch the Skylab Orbital Workshop into low-Earth orbit. That left six moon landings before the program concluded with Apollo 19. Continue Reading “Cancelled: Apollo 15 and Apollo 19 (1970)” »

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The Last Manned Mars Plan (1971)

As early as 1961, some within NASA proposed that a Mars expedition be made the space agency’s next goal after Apollo. NASA Administrator James Webb was loath to promote such a goal until after Apollo had achieved its politically motivated purpose of placing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. In Oct. 1968, Webb retired, leaving his inexperienced deputy Thomas Paine in charge. In Jan. 1969, as Apollo neared culmination, Richard Nixon entered the Oval Office. Nixon appointed the Space Task Group (STG), but otherwise placed a low priority on setting NASA’s future course.

In Oct. 1969, Mars supporters within NASA found comfort when the STG endorsed – with reservations – NASA’s own proposed blueprint for its future. The NASA plan was based on the Integrated Program Plan (IPP) developed by the NASA Headquarters Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF). NASA’s plan culminated in a Mars expedition in 1981, 1983, or 1986, while the STG report only called for a Mars expedition by the end of the 20th century.

NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight George E. Mueller. Image: NASA.

Nevertheless, many hoped that Nixon would follow the STG’s advice and declare a Mars expedition to be NASA’s next major goal. This optimism led OMSF to establish the Manned Planetary Missions Requirements Group (PMRG), which included representatives from NASA Headquarters and several NASA field centers. The PMRG can be seen as the successor to the Planetary Joint Action Group, which studied Mars landings and piloted Mars/Venus flybys between 1965 and 1967.

The PMRG first met formally in Dec. 1969. Not insignificantly, that same month OMSF chief George Mueller, the driving force behind the IPP, left NASA for private industry. Hoped-for White House support for Mars exploration never materialized, though the Nixon Administration paid lip service to a piloted Mars expedition by the end of the 20th century. At the same time, it slashed NASA’s budget, leading Paine to cut three manned lunar landings from the Apollo Program and cancel the Saturn V, the largest and most powerful rocket ever launched. By the  end of 1970, Paine also departed NASA, which subsequently shifted most of its efforts to reusable winged spacecraft development. Nixon made the Earth-orbital Space Shuttle NASA’s post-Apollo piloted program in Jan. 1972.

NASA’s Mars aspirations died with a whimper – a call to NASA centers participating in the PMRG for reports summing up their Mars study activities. PMRG work at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, Texas, resided in the Advanced Studies Office, Engineering and Development Directorate, under leadership of Morris Jenkins. The chief guiding principle of MSC PMRG work was “austerity.” According to Jenkins,

to improve the probability of a future [Mars] program. . .an austere version should be considered. . .[S]uch a concept would be consistent with an initial expedition. . .[E]verything has been done to make [this study] a useful point of departure when national priorities and economic considerations encourage the mounting of a manned Mars expedition.

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Capturing a Comet: Giotto II (1985)

Image: European Space Agency.

On the overcast morning of July 2, 1985, the eleventh Ariane 1 rocket launch (image above) took place at the Centre Spatial Guyanais in Kourou, French Guiana, an outpost of the European Community located a few degrees north of the equator on the northeast coast of South America. The last Ariane 1 to fly, it bore aloft Giotto, the first European Space Agency (ESA) interplanetary spacecraft. Giotto’s destination was Comet Halley.

A “dirty snowball” containing materials left over from the birth of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago, Halley needs about 76 years to revolve around the Sun once. Its elliptical orbit takes it as near to the Sun as between the orbits of Venus and Mercury and as far from the Sun as the cold emptiness beyond the orbit of Uranus.

Artist's concept of Giotto on approach to Halley's Comet. Image: European Space Agency.

Comet Halley has passed through the inner Solar System 30 times since its first verified recorded apparition in 240 BC. In 837, it passed just 5.1 million kilometers from Earth; during that apparition, its dust tail must have spanned nearly half the sky, and its bright coma – the roughly spherical dust and gas cloud surrounding its icy nucleus – may have appeared as large as the full moon. Shortly after its 1301 apparition, Italian artist Giotto di Bondone painted Comet Halley. The Giotto spacecraft was named for him.

Throughout most of its known apparitions, Comet Halley was not understood to be one comet repeatedly passing through the inner Solar System. Not until 1705 did English polymath Edmond Halley determine that comets seen in 1531, 1607, and 1682 were probably one comet orbiting the Sun. He predicted that, if his hypothesis was correct, the comet should reappear in 1758 (which it subsequently did).

The Ariane 1′s third stage injected 980-kilogram Giotto into a 198.5-by-36,000-kilometer orbit about the Earth. Thirty-two hours after launch, as it completed its third orbit, flight controllers in Darmstadt in the Federal Republic of Germany commanded drum-shaped Giotto to ignite its French-built Mage solid-propellant rocket motor. The aft-pointing motor burned 374 kilograms of propellant in 55 seconds to inject the spinning 2.85-meter-tall, 1.85-meter-diameter spacecraft into orbit about the Sun.

Two months before Giotto’s launch, Americans P. Tsou (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), D. Brownlee (University of Washington), and A. Albee (Caltech) proposed in a paper in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society that a second Giotto mission be launched to fly close by one of 13 candidate comets between 1988 and 1994. They proposed that the new spacecraft, which they dubbed Giotto II, might launch on an Ariane 3 or in the payload bay of a Space Shuttle. Giotto II’s “free-return” trajectory would take it as close as 80 kilometers from the target comet’s nucleus, then would return it to Earth. Near the comet, Giotto II would expose sample collectors to the dusty cometary environment. Near Earth, it would eject a sample-return capsule based on the proven General Electric (GE) Satellite Recovery Vehicle (SRV) design. The capsule would enter Earth’s atmosphere to deliver its precious cargo of comet dust to eager scientists. Continue Reading “Capturing a Comet: Giotto II (1985)” »

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Abort from Mars & Venus Missions (1970)

Apollo 13 Command Module Odyssey, scorched from reentry into Earth's atmosphere, bobs in the Pacific after a harrowing (but successful) mission abort. Image: NASA.

On April 13, 1970, an oxygen tank exploded in the Apollo 13 Command and Service Module Odyssey, badly damaging the spacecraft 200,000 miles from Earth. NASA had no choice but to scrub the planned third Apollo moon landing and return the Apollo 13 crew to Earth as quickly as possible. Astronauts James Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert used the Lunar Module Aquarius as a backup propulsion system and lifeboat, swung around the moon, and splashed down safely in Odyssey‘s Command Module on April 17, about three and a half days after the explosion.

Amidst the drama of Apollo 13′s mission abort, mathematician A. A. VanderVeen, with NASA planning contractor Bellcomm, drafted a memorandum. In it, he pointed out that the time needed to return to Earth following a malfunction during the outbound leg of a Mars or Venus mission would nearly always be measured in months. Continue Reading “Abort from Mars & Venus Missions (1970)” »

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Shuttle-Era Manned Mars Flyby (1985)

In the 1960s, NASA expended nearly as much study money and effort on manned Mars and Venus flyby mission planning as it did on its more widely known plans for manned Mars landings. Italian aviation and rocketry pioneer Gaetano Crocco had first described a free-return manned Mars/Venus flyby mission in 1956. Manned flyby studies within NASA began with the EMPIRE study the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Future Projects Office initiated in 1962 and culminated in the NASA-wide Planetary Joint Action Group (JAG) study of 1966-1967.

The Planetary JAG, led by the NASA Headquarters Office of Manned Space Flight, brought together engineers from MSFC, Kennedy Space Center, the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), and Washington, DC-based planning contractor Bellcomm. It issued a Phase I report in Oct. 1966 and continued Phase II study work in Fiscal Year (FY) 1967. The Phase I report emphasized a manned Mars flyby mission in 1975, but included Mars and Venus flyby opportunities through 1980. All would be based on hardware developed for the Apollo Program and for its planned successor, the Apollo Applications Program (AAP). The piloted flyby spacecraft would carry automated probes, including one type that would land on Mars, collect a sample of surface material (containing, it was hoped, evidence of life), and launch it back to the flyby spacecraft for immediate analysis.

According to Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neuman Ezell, writing in their 1984 history On Mars, MSC was largely responsible for the demise of 1960s manned flyby mission planning. On Aug. 3, 1967, the Houston-based center, home of the astronaut corps and Mission Control, distributed to 28 aerospace companies a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a manned Mars flyby spacecraft sample-returner design study. By doing this, MSC appeared to disregard warnings from Congress that no new NASA programs would be tolerated.

In the summer of 1967, NASA was preoccupied with recovery from the Jan. 27, 1967 Apollo 1 fire, which had killed astronauts Virgil Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White. Many in Congress felt that NASA had been lax in maintaining quality and safety standards, so deserved to be punished for the accident. They did not, however, wish to cut Apollo funding and endanger accomplishment of Apollo’s very public goal of a man on the moon by 1970. In addition, by August 1967, the Federal budget deficit for FY 1967 had reached $30 billion. Though negligible by modern standards, this was a shocking sum in 1967. The deficit was driven in large part by the cost of fighting in Indochina, which had reached more than $2 billion a month, or the entire Apollo Program budget of $25 billion every 10 months.

After learning of MSC’s RFP, long-time House Space Committee Chair and NASA supporter Joseph Karth declared angrily that “a manned mission to Mars or Venus by 1975 or 1977 is now and always has been out of the question – and anyone who persists in this kind of misallocation of resources … is going to be stopped.” On Aug. 16, the House cut all funding for advanced planning from NASA’s FY 1968 budget bill and slashed the budget for AAP from $455 million to $122 million. Total cuts to President Lyndon Johnson’s January 1967 NASA budget request amounted to more than $500 million, or about 10 percent of NASA’s FY 1967 budget total.

Though he opposed the cuts, President Johnson bowed to the inevitable and signed the budget into law. The Planetary JAG and Bellcomm tied up loose ends of the manned flyby study during FY 1968, but most work on the concept ended little more than a month after the Houston center issued its ill-timed RFP.

It is ironic, then, that NASA’s next piloted Mars flyby study took place in Houston, at Johnson Space Center (JSC), as MSC had been rechristened following President Johnson’s death in January 1973. Barney Roberts, of JSC’s Engineering Directorate, reported on the study to the joint NASA-Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Manned Mars Missions workshop in June 1985. Continue Reading “Shuttle-Era Manned Mars Flyby (1985)” »

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