“Unlocking the Secrets of the Moon: The Ingenious Strategies That Made NASA’s Historic Landing Possible”
Meanwhile, aerospace contractor McDonnell-Douglas had submitted a number of proposals for Direct Ascent mission profiles using their own 2-man Gemini capsule or a simplified, 2-man version of the Apollo spacecraft – missions which could very feasibly be flown by the end of the decade using a great deal of off-the-shelf hardware. However, by the end of 1961 all the major government contracts for Project Apollo had already been handed out, and neither NASA administrator James Webb nor U.S. Vice President Lyndon Johnson – chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council – were willing to take the main spacecraft contract away from North American Aviation. Both Wernher von Braun and Jerome Wiesner, science advisor to the President, fought tooth and nail to have McDonnell-Douglas’s proposal accepted, until finally being silenced by the Kennedy administration. Thus, despite the many logistical advantages of the two-man direct-ascent approach, all subsequent lunar landing proposals were locked in around the more sophisticated – but far heavier – 3-man Apollo spacecraft. The political shenanigans behind North American retaining the Apollo contract would later come to light in the wake of the January 27, 1967 Apollo 1 fire, when shoddy workmanship and questionable design choices led to astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee perishing in an oxygen fire during a routine dress rehearsal at Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 34.
The NASA administration soon split into two camps, each vehemently defending its favoured approach. In many cases preferences were driven by more than simply numbers; for example, Earth Orbit Rendezvous would require the construction of a space station, a lifelong dream of Wernher von Braun’s which would have many scientific applications beyond the moon landing. It would also require the construction of significantly more launch hardware – an attractive proposition for contractors seeking lucrative government contracts.
Post Comment