Richard Lawrence - The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

(9) the preservation of the United States preeminent position in aeronautics and space through research and technology development related to associated manufacturing processes.

(e) The Congress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the unique competence in scientific and engineering systems of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration also be directed toward ground propulsion systems research and development. Such development shall be conducted so as to contribute to the objectives of developing energy-and petroleum-conserving ground propulsion systems, and of minimizing the environmental degradation caused by such systems.

(f) The Congress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the unique competence of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in science and engineering systems be directed to assisting in bioengineering research, development, and demonstration programs designed to alleviate and minimize the effects of disability.

The head of NASA was the administrator, T. Keith Glennan, who asked for von Braun’s team to become part of the new agency. Whereas von Braun’s team and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) had been responsible for putting Explorer into orbit, the United States put Explorer II and Vanguard I into orbit in 1958.

But Sputnik III weighed over 3,000 pounds. Krushchev mocked the tiny US satellites the “size of oranges”.

It was clear to President Eisenhower that the Soviet successes were harming his administration’s political reputation and he wanted the Air Force’s Atlas to put a “spacecraft” into orbit, insisting that the prototypes be launched by normal ICBMs first. The Atlas was the product of innovative US development, completely independent of the V-2, but it wasn’t ready.

Buzz Aldrin described the launch of the Atlas prototype:

On December 18, 1958, the Air Force launched the Atlas prototype 10B from Launch Pad 11 at the Cape. Following the secret flight plan, the missile’s internal guidance system pitched the Atlas over parallel to the Atlantic at an altitude of 110 miles and the sustainer engine burned up the remaining tons of propellant. Five minutes later the entire 60-foot, four-ton aluminum shell was in orbit. The Defense Department proudly announced the success of Project SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment). A tiny transmitter inside the empty Atlas shell broadcast tape-recorded Christmas greetings from President Eisenhower to the world below. It was international showmanship worthy of Nikita Khrushchev.

President Eisenhower was informed by US intelligence services that the Soviets were trying to launch a “new communist man” into space, so von Braun’s team suggested a sub-orbital flight, using the tried and tested Redstone. It would be above the atmosphere but below orbital height.

The scheme was sold to the House of Representatives as the prelude to a rocket which could deliver troops to the battlefield. In August 1958 the President decided that NASA, not the military, should take responsibility for putting the first American into space. Abe Silverstein, the new director of space flight development chose “Mercury” as the name for the program of manned space flight. At that time Buzz Aldrin and Ed White were US Air Force fighter pilots stationed in West Germany. Buzz Aldrin took a keen interest in spacecraft development. Aldrin:

The Space Task Group’s first priority was to design an orbital vehicle that would protect a human passenger through all phases of a spaceflight “envelope”: launch acceleration, weightlessness above the atmosphere, reentry deceleration with its furnacelike heat, and descent to parachute deployment at about 10,000 feet. NASA designers had two basic choices: the first was a winged spaceplane like the rocket-powered X-15 and the futuristic Dyna-Soar space glider the Air Force wanted; the second was a wingless high-drag, blunt-body capsule. A capsule was the only design that met the weight limits imposed by the Atlas missile (the sole American booster capable of orbiting a manned spacecraft): approximately 3,000 pounds.

Buzz Aldrin described the design of the capsule:

Max Faget, Langley’s ablest designer, and his team proposed a variation of the existing conical missile warhead that looked like an upside-down badminton shuttlecock. The blunt bottom was a convex fiberglass heat shield that would point forward and disperse the reentry deceleration heat through a fiery meteor trail – a process known as “ablation.” A cluster of small solid retrorockets in the center of the heat shield would brake the capsule from its orbital speed and return it to Earth. The tiny cabin was a lopped-off cone topped by a squat cylinder that held radio antennas and the parachutes. On top of this cylinder was a girdered escape tower powered by solid rockets that would pull the capsule away from a stricken booster (no one really trusted the Atlas), lifting it to a safe altitude for parachute deployment. The whole thing was a far cry from the sleek, winged spacecraft that many popular scientific magazines had imagined.

I remember the guys in my squadron in Germany commenting that the Mercury capsule looked more like a diving bell than an aircraft. The pilot would lie flat on his back on a form-fitting couch. But even if the Mercury spacecraft wasn’t as fiercely beautiful as the supersonic fighters we flew, it was designed to “fly” higher and faster than any jet plane, in an entirely new environment, space. There was no need for swept wings to provide lift, or a raked tail for control. The velocity imparted by the booster would lift the Mercury spacecraft far above the atmosphere.

Early in 1959, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation won the prime Mercury development contract, worth $18 million. Given Project Mercury’s priority status, McDonnell (which had spent a lot of its own money on preliminary designs) quickly produced a full-scale mock-up of the spacecraft.

Reginald Turnhill was BBC correspondent at NASA from 1956 onwards. He described the different routes to the Moon and how NASA decided which one it would take:

It was only 18 days after Gagarin became the first human in orbit that President Kennedy announced, in May 1961, that the United States proposed to land a man on the Moon and bring him safely home before the end of that decade. He said that they would do it, not because it was easy, but because it was “hard”!

Too right, thought NASA’s top managers! At that time the youthful National Aeronautics and Space Administration had only vague theories as to how such a landing could be accomplished. Despite the confident 10-year programme which had so impressed me and many others, their scientists and technicians had actually achieved only one 15-minute manned space log; and while Project Apollo had been announced 10 months earlier, its stated aim was merely to fly men around the Moon – “a circumlunar mission” – without landing.

The President’s “deadline” led to some rather desperate planning. Sending men to the Moon was relatively easy; the difficult part was bringing them back again. Two Lockheed engineers proposed that an astronaut should be sent on a one-way trip and left there, with food, oxygen and other supplies being rocketed to him for several years while methods and equipment were devised for bringing him back. This solution was still being advocated in June 1962 by Bell Aerospace engineers, who pointed out that while he was waiting the astronaut could perform valuable scientific work. It would be a hazardous mission, they conceded, but “it would be cheaper, faster, and perhaps the only way to beat Russia.” NASA’s historians say there is no evidence that their administrators ever took such a plan seriously; but they did listen to it, and it is recorded.