Across the high frontier: a Big Gemini space TL
- Thread starter Archibald
- Start date
Europe in space (8)
Archibald
Banned
meanwhile in Europe
The period between October 1971 and September 1972 was hectic.
It saw the definitive burial of the space shuttle; a frantic selection of its capsule successor; and a return of the space station.
Unfortunately Europe was caught into that blizzard at a period that was one of the most difficult, too, in its young history. The Europa launcher had failed miserably while Europe desesperately tried to find a role in NASA uncertain post-Apollo future.
Of the three major space players – France, Great Britain and Germany – Germany was particularly affected by the never-ending changes in NASA post-Apollo future.
A turning point happened mid-June 1972. Up to this point NASA hasn't decided what contribution did it wanted from Europe. Two major elements were being considered.
Very early on NASA made clear that, of the shuttle orbiter itself there was nothing to share. Only the space tug and sortie lab were areas open to international collaboration. When the shuttle was canned, the sortie lab evolved into a full-blown space station module related to Big Gemini cargo section.
Option 1 turned Big Gemini cargo module into a 15 ft diameter “narrow” space station module.
Option 2 was the space tug, now a low-performance Agena to ferry space station modules.
As far as option 1 was concerned NASA had to rapidly froze a space station design, reviewing many options.
The space tug found a new role as a space station module ferry. Yet Germany was not entirely happy with the space tug, particularly when it was downrated to a Lockheed-build Agena. What Germany wanted was a space station module of their own. Germany was particularly interested in the Option A/B/C Big Gemini Cargo Module Laboratory. That was the true heir of the shuttle sortie lab; Germany hoped they could manufacture that under licence from Douglas, and outfit the cargo modules as makeshift European laboratories, with a dedicated astronaut corps.
Unfortunately for Germany a hard-pressed NASA rapidly moved away from the Cargo Module Laboratory. Instead they would build five - no more - 25 ft, Skylab-derived modules.
That number was tailored to the remaining Saturn IB. It couldn't be augmented. And the modules were too big, and of Skylab legacy, so Europe couldn't do them.
So on June 16, 1972 at a meeting with ESRO NASA told the Europeans they wouldn't build any space station module. They were given the space tug, or bust.
At the end of the day Germany had to swallow its pride and acept the space tug. But the tug wouldn't need a dedicated astronaut corps. German astronauts, if any, would be merely passengers aboard Big Gemini. There would be no European, German space station module.
That left a scar that was long to heal.
In fact that trauma pushed Germany into the arms of the French – in the sense of autonomous space flight independant of the American space station. The Agena space tug was typical of that trend.
Somewhat ironically, option 1 German cargo module laboratory flew in the second joint flight with the Soviets, in 1976.
Even more ironically, later in the 70's the Italian space agency had bilateral agreement with NASA to fly a truncated Big Gemini cargo module. It would be mated to the Agena space tug and use for logistics. That was called the MPLM – Multi-Purpose Logistic Module.
In the end Europe found itself in a strange quandary. They had been givent he Agena space tug, and that, by itself, was a mixed blessing.
Fundamentally, Europe was frustrated by the lack of an European module on Liberty. They felt excluded from the space station. Being an autonomous vehicle, the space tug somewhat comforted Europe in that position. Because they were excluded from the main space station, and because they had the space tug, Europe sought to complete Liberty with free-flying, co-orbiting platforms.
The next question was wether these platforms were to be man-tended or not. Should they feature a pressurised module or not ?
In the late 70's Italy MPLM initiative gave Europe experience in pressurised modules. There were many options on hand.
The co-orbiting platform could be unpressurised and operated via the space station robotic arm only. Or it could be pressurised, and dock with the space station. In both case the experiements would be retrieved by the space station crew, and brought back to Earth via Big Gemini.
France however saw things differently. The platform could very well fly on an orbit different from the space station, (a polar orbit) with the experiments brought back through a return vehicle – a capsule. And of course that capsule could later be used for manned spaceflight. But Europe had no experience with capsules. Somewhat incredibly, it was Rockwell that gave Europe a capsule on a silver plate, through their ill-fated space station lifeboat effort...
The period between October 1971 and September 1972 was hectic.
It saw the definitive burial of the space shuttle; a frantic selection of its capsule successor; and a return of the space station.
Unfortunately Europe was caught into that blizzard at a period that was one of the most difficult, too, in its young history. The Europa launcher had failed miserably while Europe desesperately tried to find a role in NASA uncertain post-Apollo future.
Of the three major space players – France, Great Britain and Germany – Germany was particularly affected by the never-ending changes in NASA post-Apollo future.
A turning point happened mid-June 1972. Up to this point NASA hasn't decided what contribution did it wanted from Europe. Two major elements were being considered.
Very early on NASA made clear that, of the shuttle orbiter itself there was nothing to share. Only the space tug and sortie lab were areas open to international collaboration. When the shuttle was canned, the sortie lab evolved into a full-blown space station module related to Big Gemini cargo section.
Option 1 turned Big Gemini cargo module into a 15 ft diameter “narrow” space station module.
Option 2 was the space tug, now a low-performance Agena to ferry space station modules.
As far as option 1 was concerned NASA had to rapidly froze a space station design, reviewing many options.
The space tug found a new role as a space station module ferry. Yet Germany was not entirely happy with the space tug, particularly when it was downrated to a Lockheed-build Agena. What Germany wanted was a space station module of their own. Germany was particularly interested in the Option A/B/C Big Gemini Cargo Module Laboratory. That was the true heir of the shuttle sortie lab; Germany hoped they could manufacture that under licence from Douglas, and outfit the cargo modules as makeshift European laboratories, with a dedicated astronaut corps.
Unfortunately for Germany a hard-pressed NASA rapidly moved away from the Cargo Module Laboratory. Instead they would build five - no more - 25 ft, Skylab-derived modules.
That number was tailored to the remaining Saturn IB. It couldn't be augmented. And the modules were too big, and of Skylab legacy, so Europe couldn't do them.
So on June 16, 1972 at a meeting with ESRO NASA told the Europeans they wouldn't build any space station module. They were given the space tug, or bust.
At the end of the day Germany had to swallow its pride and acept the space tug. But the tug wouldn't need a dedicated astronaut corps. German astronauts, if any, would be merely passengers aboard Big Gemini. There would be no European, German space station module.
That left a scar that was long to heal.
In fact that trauma pushed Germany into the arms of the French – in the sense of autonomous space flight independant of the American space station. The Agena space tug was typical of that trend.
Somewhat ironically, option 1 German cargo module laboratory flew in the second joint flight with the Soviets, in 1976.
Even more ironically, later in the 70's the Italian space agency had bilateral agreement with NASA to fly a truncated Big Gemini cargo module. It would be mated to the Agena space tug and use for logistics. That was called the MPLM – Multi-Purpose Logistic Module.
In the end Europe found itself in a strange quandary. They had been givent he Agena space tug, and that, by itself, was a mixed blessing.
Fundamentally, Europe was frustrated by the lack of an European module on Liberty. They felt excluded from the space station. Being an autonomous vehicle, the space tug somewhat comforted Europe in that position. Because they were excluded from the main space station, and because they had the space tug, Europe sought to complete Liberty with free-flying, co-orbiting platforms.
The next question was wether these platforms were to be man-tended or not. Should they feature a pressurised module or not ?
In the late 70's Italy MPLM initiative gave Europe experience in pressurised modules. There were many options on hand.
The co-orbiting platform could be unpressurised and operated via the space station robotic arm only. Or it could be pressurised, and dock with the space station. In both case the experiements would be retrieved by the space station crew, and brought back to Earth via Big Gemini.
France however saw things differently. The platform could very well fly on an orbit different from the space station, (a polar orbit) with the experiments brought back through a return vehicle – a capsule. And of course that capsule could later be used for manned spaceflight. But Europe had no experience with capsules. Somewhat incredibly, it was Rockwell that gave Europe a capsule on a silver plate, through their ill-fated space station lifeboat effort...
Last edited:
1972: NASA hell of a year (16)
Archibald
Banned
July 5, 1972
Downey, California
Harrison "Stormy" Storms made his way to Willard Rockwell office. Future of his space division was in limbo, a situation that couldn't last very long.
After the shuttle debacle Rockwell top management had made a 180 degree turn. They had been once an enthusiastic supporter of the Shuttle and a faithfull ally to NASA Johnson space center quest for that program.
But the shuttle had been canned and in the ensuing capsule race McDonnell Douglas Big Gemini had just beaten Rockwell's Apollo. Storms then learned that the company boss had decided to bet everything on an Apollo lifeboat rather than a shuttle revival, for a simple reason: Apollo was already flying when the shuttle was at best a plywood mockup.
So North American Rockwell would focuse on capsules rather than space planes, on Apollo before Shuttle.
The decision had already cost them a talented engineer.
His interestingWindjammer space plane project under his arm, Len Cormier had left to Boeing. Cormier had little interest in capsules, while his Windjammer space plane interested not only Boeing but the military - the all-powerful SAMSO, the ballistic missile organization brainchild of Bernard Schriever and Simon Ramo.
Len Cormier Windjammer, 1972 (more on this one later)
Storms felt that Boeing made a marked contrast to Rockwell. Not only had they lost the Supersonic Transport the year before, they had also been out of the shuttle business early on. Yet, even with that couple of failures, they had shown interested in Cormier Windjammer.
Harrison Storms slammed its fist on Willard Rockwell desk. “Damn it ! To think the fuckers preferred Helios to our Block III Apollo."
“Stormy, how did we lost our edge ? we were frontrunner for the orbiter contract, and Apollo is current NASA manned ship.”
“They preferred Helios because the goddam thing superficially looks like a space shuttle. A six-man cockpit landing on a runway at the end of the mission, a large cargo section you can adapt to the mission needs. To think it will cost them three or four billion dollars… a modified Apollo would have been barely over a billion. We would have introduced upgrades with blocks, up to 1980.
“Well, the hell with them: we won’t give up Apollo. Its shape is too good to be lost. We will flood NASA with Apollo-based projects, until they give us something to go along the S-II core station. I will lobby.”
Storms looked at Rockwell, a smile on his face.
“I know how we can continue Apollo, even with Helios. You know that with the shuttle dead NASA has an incremental program. Titan, spare Saturns, Skylab and S-II derived space station modules, F-1A and XLR-129 engine demonstrators. Well, we should add our Apollo command module to this shopping list. They forget an essential element in their space station plan.”
“Which is ?”
“Rescue. That Marooned movie scared the hell out of NASA, to the point we build a fourth Skylab Apollo and modified it with five couches, to rescue any crew stranded at the space station."
“do you suggest we turn Apollo into the space station lifeboat ?”
“Exactly. In fact the fun thing is that NASA actually gave us a contract for that ! We have been making a broad study entitled Safety in Earth orbit. The final report is to be published next week - how about that ? Look at the conclusion"
If there is a time period at the beginning of the shuttle program (or during the mature shuttle operational period) when shuttle rescue is not possible because of the non availability of a rescue shuttle , launch pad, orother reason, an Apollo command module (CM) should be carried inthe orbiter cargo bay as an escape vehicle.
This can be a refurbished comand module with up to six seats, and with capability for reentry from earth orbit and water landing. The CM should be pressurized at 8 psi to allow rapid shirtsleeve entry of the personnel without the danger of getting "bends." This escape CM is the most cost-effective of the escape and rescue vehicles considered.
"Damn, that's fine, and comes at the right moment." Rockwell smiled.
"You said it. Imagine a Command Module stripped to the bones, with every lunar gear gone and a thinner heatshield and no service module. The escape system can be deleted, because the crew reach the space station in Helios. My calculations show that even with heavier two gas atmosphere and land landing systems the command module mass can be cut to 10 000 pounds. Light enough to be launched by a beefed up Atlas.”
“Or a core-only Titan III-B. Excellent. Will we build new command modules ?”
“I don’t think its necessary. Look, they want an incremental program recycling past hardware ? Okay. We have some Apollos left, notably those of the two canned lunar missions Apollo 19 and Apollo 20. CSM-115 and CSM-115A were never completed.
“So let’s turn this into a handful of prototypes; one outfitted with land landing systems, another with a two gas atmosphere, the last with the new androgynous docking gear build for the joint flight with the soviets.
Ground-based mockups first, eventually launch one to the space station. Turning past Command Modules into ground-based mockups won’t cost a lot of money; then with a bit of lobby, and a foot in the door, we will convince NASA to buy new Apollos outfitted as lifeboats.
We will use this Apollo lifeboat as a kind of Trojan horse to gain access tothe 1980 space station, and one day beat the Douglas Company out of the manned spaceflight business.”
Storms grinned triumphantly.
“by the way, our Apollo lifeboat may bring payloads back to Earth if no emergency. Indeed four or five months in space surely will wear the thing out. So you need another Apollo to replace it. Send the used capsule back to Earth with any payload you like…”
"Sounds good."
North American lobby was paying up. They had now the space station core module, they would have the Apollo lifeboat.
“Stormy, we lost the race for the next manned ship. What is our situation in the front of the space station effort ?” Rockwell asked.
“Well, first I have to brief you over the space station history. A tipping point has been July 29, 1970. Before that day, massive 33ft diameter space stations would be launched by a truncated Saturn V, the INT-21.
But in that year 1970 the Saturn V was agonizing. Production had been suspended at the 15th vehicle in July 1968; then on January 1970 the production line had been definitively shut down.
So that day of July NASA decided that the future space station would be launched, by the shuttle, cutting the modules to 15 ft in diameter.
That was a setback in size, but worse things were also happening.
Unlike the Saturn V that was already in service, the shuttle was not to fly until 1978 at the earliest. The space station was to await the shuttle IOC, pushing it well into the 80's.
Then a year later the shuttle was canned and the space station was back to square one. A compromise has been found recently that Saturns would be back as space station launch vehicles – but only those boosters left by the Apollo program.
It amounts to a couple of Saturn Vs and a handful of Saturn Ibs – just enough Apollo boosters were left to build a multi-modular orbital outpost.
At some point McDonnel Douglas found itself in a situation of monopoly – with Big Gemini and Skylab. We protested about that and ultimately managed to steal the space station core – now designed around our S-II.
You know, I come across a short study we made two years ago about an interim space station. We called it “Spirit of 76' because it was to be launched in the bicentennary year. I think you will like it – we were rather prescient those days.
(note: the following has drawn inspiration from David Portree blog entry - linked above)
We proposed that NASA postponed Shuttle development and instead in 1976 launch a prototype Phase B Station on a two-stage Saturn V. I mean, not a goddam Skylab: a TRUE space station that would be manned permanently. Back then we did an analysis that, as of today, sounds pretty good.
We argued about a Station-first phased approach as superior to NASA Shuttle-first phased approach because the Shuttle would demand a much greater technological leap than would the Station. This meant that it might hit development roadblocks that would increase its estimated cost and delay its first launch.
In addition, the Spirit of '76 Station could better address the emerging post-Apollo space priorities of President Richard Nixon. These included international space cooperation and direct benefits to people on Earth.
Our Spirit of '76 Station was outwardly very similar to the Phase B Station, albeit we cut on the 10-year life orbital time.
After no NASA piloted flights in 1975, the Spirit of '76 Station would reach Earth orbit early the following year. As its name implies, it would be staffed during the U.S. Bicentennial festivities on 4 July 1976. The orbiting Station would stand as a "source of national pride" as the United States celebrated its 200th birthday. Four consecutive three-person crews would launch to the Station for overlapping six-month stays.
In the absence of a Shuttle Orbiter, we invoked two-stage Saturn IB rockets and modified Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) spacecraft as its Spirit of '76 crew transports. The Apollo would turn by 180 degree and picks a cylindrical cargo module on its nose, LM-style.
The second crew would arrive after three months, increasing the Spirit of '76 crew complement to six. Three months later, at the end of a six-month stay in space, the first crew would depart and the third crew would arrive. The fourth crew would replace the second crew three months after that. The third crew would return to Earth three months later.
And now the most interesting part – which was very prescient of the current situation we face.
We offered an Apollo – station bid based on solid numbers.
We offered two funding models for the Spirit of '76 Station.
Both would require a $2.3-billion Spirit of '76 Station, four Cargo Modules at a cost of $9 million each, and $220 million for experiments.
The first funding model, with a cost of $2.8 billion spread over six years, assumed use of re-purposed or leftover Apollo and Skylab rockets and spacecraft.
It would see the CSMs built for Apollo 18 (designated 114) and Apollo 19 (115) diverted from the lunar program. Along with the Skylab backup/rescue CSM (119) and 115A, which was committed to no program, they would be converted into Spirit of '76 Station ferries.
Ending Apollo with mission 17 would free up two Saturn V rockets (514 and 515, the last remaining of the original Apollo Program buy), one of which would launch the Spirit of '76 Station. The four CSMs would reach Earth orbit on the last remaining Saturn IBs (designated 209, 210, 211, and 212).
And now, things gets even more interesting. We created another Spirit of '76 funding model, with a total cost of $3.1 billion, would see lunar missions continue through Apollo 19 in the fourth quarter of 1974.
Most importantly, NASA would buy two new CSMs (120 and 121) and convert 119 and 115A for the Spirit of '76 program. A new two-stage Saturn V (516) for launching the Spirit of '76 Station would cost $260 million including launch operations.
Of course our spirit of 76' station could be mothballed in orbit and re-activated when the shuttle would enter service. To accelerate the schedule we suggested an external tank orbiter mated to an expendable S-IC, later to be replaced by a reusable flyback booster.
Willard (Rockwell) I think we should try and bid according to that document as a last ditch atempt." Harrison Storms concluded.
Downey, California
Harrison "Stormy" Storms made his way to Willard Rockwell office. Future of his space division was in limbo, a situation that couldn't last very long.
After the shuttle debacle Rockwell top management had made a 180 degree turn. They had been once an enthusiastic supporter of the Shuttle and a faithfull ally to NASA Johnson space center quest for that program.
But the shuttle had been canned and in the ensuing capsule race McDonnell Douglas Big Gemini had just beaten Rockwell's Apollo. Storms then learned that the company boss had decided to bet everything on an Apollo lifeboat rather than a shuttle revival, for a simple reason: Apollo was already flying when the shuttle was at best a plywood mockup.
So North American Rockwell would focuse on capsules rather than space planes, on Apollo before Shuttle.
The decision had already cost them a talented engineer.
His interestingWindjammer space plane project under his arm, Len Cormier had left to Boeing. Cormier had little interest in capsules, while his Windjammer space plane interested not only Boeing but the military - the all-powerful SAMSO, the ballistic missile organization brainchild of Bernard Schriever and Simon Ramo.
Len Cormier Windjammer, 1972 (more on this one later)
Storms felt that Boeing made a marked contrast to Rockwell. Not only had they lost the Supersonic Transport the year before, they had also been out of the shuttle business early on. Yet, even with that couple of failures, they had shown interested in Cormier Windjammer.
Harrison Storms slammed its fist on Willard Rockwell desk. “Damn it ! To think the fuckers preferred Helios to our Block III Apollo."
“Stormy, how did we lost our edge ? we were frontrunner for the orbiter contract, and Apollo is current NASA manned ship.”
“They preferred Helios because the goddam thing superficially looks like a space shuttle. A six-man cockpit landing on a runway at the end of the mission, a large cargo section you can adapt to the mission needs. To think it will cost them three or four billion dollars… a modified Apollo would have been barely over a billion. We would have introduced upgrades with blocks, up to 1980.
“Well, the hell with them: we won’t give up Apollo. Its shape is too good to be lost. We will flood NASA with Apollo-based projects, until they give us something to go along the S-II core station. I will lobby.”
Storms looked at Rockwell, a smile on his face.
“I know how we can continue Apollo, even with Helios. You know that with the shuttle dead NASA has an incremental program. Titan, spare Saturns, Skylab and S-II derived space station modules, F-1A and XLR-129 engine demonstrators. Well, we should add our Apollo command module to this shopping list. They forget an essential element in their space station plan.”
“Which is ?”
“Rescue. That Marooned movie scared the hell out of NASA, to the point we build a fourth Skylab Apollo and modified it with five couches, to rescue any crew stranded at the space station."
“do you suggest we turn Apollo into the space station lifeboat ?”
“Exactly. In fact the fun thing is that NASA actually gave us a contract for that ! We have been making a broad study entitled Safety in Earth orbit. The final report is to be published next week - how about that ? Look at the conclusion"
If there is a time period at the beginning of the shuttle program (or during the mature shuttle operational period) when shuttle rescue is not possible because of the non availability of a rescue shuttle , launch pad, orother reason, an Apollo command module (CM) should be carried inthe orbiter cargo bay as an escape vehicle.
This can be a refurbished comand module with up to six seats, and with capability for reentry from earth orbit and water landing. The CM should be pressurized at 8 psi to allow rapid shirtsleeve entry of the personnel without the danger of getting "bends." This escape CM is the most cost-effective of the escape and rescue vehicles considered.
"Damn, that's fine, and comes at the right moment." Rockwell smiled.
"You said it. Imagine a Command Module stripped to the bones, with every lunar gear gone and a thinner heatshield and no service module. The escape system can be deleted, because the crew reach the space station in Helios. My calculations show that even with heavier two gas atmosphere and land landing systems the command module mass can be cut to 10 000 pounds. Light enough to be launched by a beefed up Atlas.”
“Or a core-only Titan III-B. Excellent. Will we build new command modules ?”
“I don’t think its necessary. Look, they want an incremental program recycling past hardware ? Okay. We have some Apollos left, notably those of the two canned lunar missions Apollo 19 and Apollo 20. CSM-115 and CSM-115A were never completed.
“So let’s turn this into a handful of prototypes; one outfitted with land landing systems, another with a two gas atmosphere, the last with the new androgynous docking gear build for the joint flight with the soviets.
Ground-based mockups first, eventually launch one to the space station. Turning past Command Modules into ground-based mockups won’t cost a lot of money; then with a bit of lobby, and a foot in the door, we will convince NASA to buy new Apollos outfitted as lifeboats.
We will use this Apollo lifeboat as a kind of Trojan horse to gain access tothe 1980 space station, and one day beat the Douglas Company out of the manned spaceflight business.”
Storms grinned triumphantly.
“by the way, our Apollo lifeboat may bring payloads back to Earth if no emergency. Indeed four or five months in space surely will wear the thing out. So you need another Apollo to replace it. Send the used capsule back to Earth with any payload you like…”
"Sounds good."
North American lobby was paying up. They had now the space station core module, they would have the Apollo lifeboat.
“Stormy, we lost the race for the next manned ship. What is our situation in the front of the space station effort ?” Rockwell asked.
“Well, first I have to brief you over the space station history. A tipping point has been July 29, 1970. Before that day, massive 33ft diameter space stations would be launched by a truncated Saturn V, the INT-21.
But in that year 1970 the Saturn V was agonizing. Production had been suspended at the 15th vehicle in July 1968; then on January 1970 the production line had been definitively shut down.
So that day of July NASA decided that the future space station would be launched, by the shuttle, cutting the modules to 15 ft in diameter.
That was a setback in size, but worse things were also happening.
Unlike the Saturn V that was already in service, the shuttle was not to fly until 1978 at the earliest. The space station was to await the shuttle IOC, pushing it well into the 80's.
Then a year later the shuttle was canned and the space station was back to square one. A compromise has been found recently that Saturns would be back as space station launch vehicles – but only those boosters left by the Apollo program.
It amounts to a couple of Saturn Vs and a handful of Saturn Ibs – just enough Apollo boosters were left to build a multi-modular orbital outpost.
At some point McDonnel Douglas found itself in a situation of monopoly – with Big Gemini and Skylab. We protested about that and ultimately managed to steal the space station core – now designed around our S-II.
You know, I come across a short study we made two years ago about an interim space station. We called it “Spirit of 76' because it was to be launched in the bicentennary year. I think you will like it – we were rather prescient those days.
(note: the following has drawn inspiration from David Portree blog entry - linked above)
We proposed that NASA postponed Shuttle development and instead in 1976 launch a prototype Phase B Station on a two-stage Saturn V. I mean, not a goddam Skylab: a TRUE space station that would be manned permanently. Back then we did an analysis that, as of today, sounds pretty good.
We argued about a Station-first phased approach as superior to NASA Shuttle-first phased approach because the Shuttle would demand a much greater technological leap than would the Station. This meant that it might hit development roadblocks that would increase its estimated cost and delay its first launch.
In addition, the Spirit of '76 Station could better address the emerging post-Apollo space priorities of President Richard Nixon. These included international space cooperation and direct benefits to people on Earth.
Our Spirit of '76 Station was outwardly very similar to the Phase B Station, albeit we cut on the 10-year life orbital time.
After no NASA piloted flights in 1975, the Spirit of '76 Station would reach Earth orbit early the following year. As its name implies, it would be staffed during the U.S. Bicentennial festivities on 4 July 1976. The orbiting Station would stand as a "source of national pride" as the United States celebrated its 200th birthday. Four consecutive three-person crews would launch to the Station for overlapping six-month stays.
In the absence of a Shuttle Orbiter, we invoked two-stage Saturn IB rockets and modified Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) spacecraft as its Spirit of '76 crew transports. The Apollo would turn by 180 degree and picks a cylindrical cargo module on its nose, LM-style.
The second crew would arrive after three months, increasing the Spirit of '76 crew complement to six. Three months later, at the end of a six-month stay in space, the first crew would depart and the third crew would arrive. The fourth crew would replace the second crew three months after that. The third crew would return to Earth three months later.
And now the most interesting part – which was very prescient of the current situation we face.
We offered an Apollo – station bid based on solid numbers.
We offered two funding models for the Spirit of '76 Station.
Both would require a $2.3-billion Spirit of '76 Station, four Cargo Modules at a cost of $9 million each, and $220 million for experiments.
The first funding model, with a cost of $2.8 billion spread over six years, assumed use of re-purposed or leftover Apollo and Skylab rockets and spacecraft.
It would see the CSMs built for Apollo 18 (designated 114) and Apollo 19 (115) diverted from the lunar program. Along with the Skylab backup/rescue CSM (119) and 115A, which was committed to no program, they would be converted into Spirit of '76 Station ferries.
Ending Apollo with mission 17 would free up two Saturn V rockets (514 and 515, the last remaining of the original Apollo Program buy), one of which would launch the Spirit of '76 Station. The four CSMs would reach Earth orbit on the last remaining Saturn IBs (designated 209, 210, 211, and 212).
And now, things gets even more interesting. We created another Spirit of '76 funding model, with a total cost of $3.1 billion, would see lunar missions continue through Apollo 19 in the fourth quarter of 1974.
Most importantly, NASA would buy two new CSMs (120 and 121) and convert 119 and 115A for the Spirit of '76 program. A new two-stage Saturn V (516) for launching the Spirit of '76 Station would cost $260 million including launch operations.
Of course our spirit of 76' station could be mothballed in orbit and re-activated when the shuttle would enter service. To accelerate the schedule we suggested an external tank orbiter mated to an expendable S-IC, later to be replaced by a reusable flyback booster.
Willard (Rockwell) I think we should try and bid according to that document as a last ditch atempt." Harrison Storms concluded.
Last edited:
1972: NASA hell of a year (17)
Archibald
Banned
"Admittedly, Big Gemini will never match some projected shuttle abilities - for example, it will never bring massive payloads back to Earth surface. Another, more subtle loss is the ability to fly ordinary citizens in space - which mean, low accelerations at both take-off and landing.
Winged spacecrafts, unlike capsules, provided lift during reentry, because they fly like airplanes. The more the lift, the more comfortable the re-entry, the more ordinary citizens can be flown in space...
Apollo 7, for example, subjected its crew to three times the strength of gravity. The shuttle, however, would have cut that by fifty percent, a mere 1.5 G, so weak that crews could have stood on their feet during re-entry !
Under test pilot insistance, round chutes and retrorockets were recently discarded.
Pilots will actually land Big Gemini on a runway by steering a parafoil - an aerodynamic chute very different from the troublesome paraglider as tested in 1964. The capsule will glide to a gentle touchdown on outriggers and bicycles, a true undercarriage akin to a light aircraft."
NASA has now a robust program, probably for the next two decades. So what will happen in the near future ?
If all went well, the next two years will see two launches of Gemini B capsules atop Titan II launchers. These capsules were build for the Manned Orbital Laboratory, a military space station cancelled in 1969. These capsules will test a critical piece of hardware: the hatch through the heatshield.
Next step will be Big Gemini itself. There will be a pair of unmanned flights in 1975 before the first manned launch early 1976.
Meanwhile the Agena space tug has its own flight manifest. After 1975 and until 1978 there will be a handful of tests flights.
The Agena will be mated to Diamant L-17 first stage. The L-17, also called Amethyste, is an interesting vehicle.
First, it is the only pressure-fed rocket in service in the world. L-17 mean that the stage use liquid propulsion and contain 17 tons of ergols. When riding a L-17 the Agena will have to haul itself into orbit, with little propellant remaining in the tanks. The Diamant-Agena, for example, couldn't desorbit Skylab.
A more powerful rocket is needed anf there, the Agena versatility is playing handy. The Agena could be launched either by a Thorad, an Atlas, or a Titan IIIB. The Thorad however is on the brink of retirement, leaving only the Atlas and Titan.
In order to build the Agena space tug Lockheed enlisted the decade-old network of European F-104G contractors notably in Germany and Italy, but also in Belgium.
(excerpt from Aviation week, August 3 1972)
Secretary of the Air Force and former NASA Deputy administrator Robert Seamans, announced that General Joseph S. Bleymaier has joined the space agency headquarters in Washington DC. Bleymaier will have the rude task to repair a much damaged relation embittered by the shuttle fiasco.
Bleymaier credentials are interesting. A decade ago he successfully managed the Titan III program, a booster that NASA will be forced to use in the next future. After that he went to to lead the Manned Orbital Laboratory project that was ultimately cancelled in June 1969.
Rumours have been heard that the MOL could return via Big Gemini, the Air Force flying a handful of sensors or cameras placed in storage since the program cancellation in June 1969.
For the anecdote, General Bleymaier is also involved in the much discussed Project Harvest Moon – an atempt by a private consortia to buy one of the cancelled Apollo lunar landings to jumpstart human colonization of space...
SHUTTLE OR X-24: WHICH WAY TO FUTURE SPACE PLANES ?
Cancellation of the space shuttle, the end of the X-15 research and the winding down of the lifting body programs have left a huge void in aeronautical research. The development of a new hypersonic vehicle has wide appeal within both the Air Force and NASA.
The situation is considered serious enough that consideration has been given to return the last X-15 to service (the other X-15 crashed, killing Michael Adamas, while the X-15A2 is no longer flyable, since Pete Knight historic mach 6.7 flight damaged the structure).
But the X-15 is old technology; newer, more capable vehicles would be preferable.
The Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory (FDL) recently proposed a delta-wing test vehicle that would fly at speeds between Mach 3 to 5. Another proposal is called the Incremental Growth Vehicle, so named because it would initially fly at Mach 4.5, but then be upgraded to reach Mach 6, and finally Mach 9.
At the same time, Langley Research Center engineers have ideas of their own.
In October 1970 their initial vehicle concept was the Hypersonic Research Facility (HYFAC) which was designed to reach a top speed of Mach 12 – twice the X-15’s maximum speed.
This was followed by a proposal for a less exotic vehicle, called the High-Speed Research Aircraft (HSRA), with a top speed of Mach 8.
None of the concepts have received official support to begin development.
With the X-24B to make its first flights soon the Flight Dynamics Laboratory engineers, recently began studying a hypersonic version called the X-24C.
Two different vehicle concepts have been proposed – one with cheek inlets for an airbreathing engine, and a second powered by an XLR-99 rocket engine. The target speed would be Mach 5. X-24C program costs are estimated to be around $70 million.
The advantage of the X-24C proposal is that it is largely an “off-the-shelf”
design in terms of shape, equipment, and technology. This makes it a much more practical design than the more complex FDL and NASA proposals. The X-24C recently gained the support of Gen. Sam Phillips, the head of the Air Force Systems Command and a former senior official in the Apollo program.
During the year however the design has gradually grown more ambitious - somewhat returning to HYFAC / HSRA level of performance.
The vehicle would now have a modular configuration, with a removable
center section of the fuselage, to accommodate the different experiments. With the connection to the original X-24C vehicle now gone, the program has received a new name.
The traditional X-plane designation has been abandoned and replaced with the awkward “National Hypersonic Flight Research Facility,” (NHFRF, but pronounced “nerf”).
The planned performance of the NHFRF is impressive. After launch from the B-52B mothership, the vehicle could reach a maximum speed of Mach 8 under rocket power. It would be also designed to cruise at a speed of Mach 6+ for 40 seconds, an extremely demanding requirement. The project engineers envision construction of two NHFRF vehicles, to be used in a 200-flight research program beginning in 1983, and spanning a decade. This effort is estimated to cost $200 million.
It remain to be seen whether the cheap X-24C or the much more ambitious NHFRF will be build... or perhaps the dispute could be settled by a new, unexpected competitor born on the space shuttle ashes.
While Langley engineers hesitated between X-24 derivatives or more advanced vehicles, in 1971 Dryden engineers proposed construction of manned, flying, 11-meter versions of the Space Shuttle to study the most critical area of its flight, the deceleration from mach 5 through the landing.
Mach 1, 2, and 3 models were to be powered (respectively) by one, two, and three XLR- 11 engines of X-1 legacy; or a mach 5 model could be powered by an XLR-99.
Such research aircraft, air-launched from a B-52, could have flown in direct support of Space Shuttle development, especially by validating wind-tunnel predictions of stability, controllability, and performance at hypersonic, supersonic, transonic, and subsonic velocities. They could be used for astronaut training and for investigating launch abort maneuvers.
Even with the shuttle cancelled, this role remain attractive.
As with the earlier lifting bodies, Dryden advocates of the subscale shuttle planned on using components from a variety of existing aircraft, including the M2-F3, F-4, YF- 12, F- 15, and X- 15, as well as some Apollo hardware. It was hoped that, using this approach, costs could be kept down. An XLR-99-equipped mach 5 subscale shuttle was estimated to cost $19.7 million.
If NASA’s Office of Advanced Research and Technology (OART) and the Office of Manned Space Flight were to authorize immediate go-ahead, the mini-Shuttle could fly toward the end of 1975.
A major push for a subscale shuttle recently came [in July1972], with preparation of a well defined and detailed proposal. Following this, Milton Thompson, Joe Weil, and other mini-Shuttle proponents have traveled to the Manned Spacecraft Center and NASA Headquarters to make presentations for the vehicle.
It now has some high-level support - Robert Gilruth of MSC is a strong advocate - but critics have argued that the projected costs are far too low, that a realistic cost estimate would be more like $150 million. That would place the subscale shuttle exactly between of the X-24C $70 million and NHFRF $200 million.
So one can see that Langley X-24C and Dryden shuttle are on a collision course.
It is interesting to note that both subscale shuttle and X-24C would be powered by the proven X-15 rocket engine... an interesting factoid is that, while the X-15 is long, Tony Dupont Hypersonic Research Engine is still undergoing ground tests in hypersonic tunnels. The podded scramjet is still alive ad well, and the subscale shuttle might be a unique opportunity to fly the thing in the end, avenging the October 3, 1967 disaster... needeless to say, HRE father and maverick engineer Tony Du Pont is lobbying hard for a HRE flight test program." But what is the HRE exactly ?
There are a lot of persuasive arguments for committing Pioneer H to an out- of -the- ecliptic mission. The relatively low cost of such a mission, since the Pioneer H spacecraft is a spare for Pioneers 10 and G, and the considerable scientific value to be derived, argue very strongly in favor of the mission.
In fact, this kind of mission vas describedto the Space Science Board 1971 Woods Hole Summer Study by our Science Advisory Group.
Moreover, on 15 June 1972 our Outer Planets Science Advisory Group presented to NASA management their recommended strategy for exploring the outer planets, in which the Pioneer H out-of-the-ecliptic mission was an important item. The Pioneer H spare spacecraft, equipped with instruments identical with those carried on Pioneers 10 and 11, would make a polar pass through Jupiter's magnetosphere and then pass over one of the solar poles at a distance between 1 and 2 AU.
Winged spacecrafts, unlike capsules, provided lift during reentry, because they fly like airplanes. The more the lift, the more comfortable the re-entry, the more ordinary citizens can be flown in space...
Apollo 7, for example, subjected its crew to three times the strength of gravity. The shuttle, however, would have cut that by fifty percent, a mere 1.5 G, so weak that crews could have stood on their feet during re-entry !
Under test pilot insistance, round chutes and retrorockets were recently discarded.
Pilots will actually land Big Gemini on a runway by steering a parafoil - an aerodynamic chute very different from the troublesome paraglider as tested in 1964. The capsule will glide to a gentle touchdown on outriggers and bicycles, a true undercarriage akin to a light aircraft."
NASA has now a robust program, probably for the next two decades. So what will happen in the near future ?
If all went well, the next two years will see two launches of Gemini B capsules atop Titan II launchers. These capsules were build for the Manned Orbital Laboratory, a military space station cancelled in 1969. These capsules will test a critical piece of hardware: the hatch through the heatshield.
Next step will be Big Gemini itself. There will be a pair of unmanned flights in 1975 before the first manned launch early 1976.
Meanwhile the Agena space tug has its own flight manifest. After 1975 and until 1978 there will be a handful of tests flights.
The Agena will be mated to Diamant L-17 first stage. The L-17, also called Amethyste, is an interesting vehicle.
First, it is the only pressure-fed rocket in service in the world. L-17 mean that the stage use liquid propulsion and contain 17 tons of ergols. When riding a L-17 the Agena will have to haul itself into orbit, with little propellant remaining in the tanks. The Diamant-Agena, for example, couldn't desorbit Skylab.
A more powerful rocket is needed anf there, the Agena versatility is playing handy. The Agena could be launched either by a Thorad, an Atlas, or a Titan IIIB. The Thorad however is on the brink of retirement, leaving only the Atlas and Titan.
In order to build the Agena space tug Lockheed enlisted the decade-old network of European F-104G contractors notably in Germany and Italy, but also in Belgium.
(excerpt from Aviation week, August 3 1972)
***
Secretary of the Air Force and former NASA Deputy administrator Robert Seamans, announced that General Joseph S. Bleymaier has joined the space agency headquarters in Washington DC. Bleymaier will have the rude task to repair a much damaged relation embittered by the shuttle fiasco.
Bleymaier credentials are interesting. A decade ago he successfully managed the Titan III program, a booster that NASA will be forced to use in the next future. After that he went to to lead the Manned Orbital Laboratory project that was ultimately cancelled in June 1969.
Rumours have been heard that the MOL could return via Big Gemini, the Air Force flying a handful of sensors or cameras placed in storage since the program cancellation in June 1969.
For the anecdote, General Bleymaier is also involved in the much discussed Project Harvest Moon – an atempt by a private consortia to buy one of the cancelled Apollo lunar landings to jumpstart human colonization of space...
***
SHUTTLE OR X-24: WHICH WAY TO FUTURE SPACE PLANES ?
Cancellation of the space shuttle, the end of the X-15 research and the winding down of the lifting body programs have left a huge void in aeronautical research. The development of a new hypersonic vehicle has wide appeal within both the Air Force and NASA.
The situation is considered serious enough that consideration has been given to return the last X-15 to service (the other X-15 crashed, killing Michael Adamas, while the X-15A2 is no longer flyable, since Pete Knight historic mach 6.7 flight damaged the structure).
But the X-15 is old technology; newer, more capable vehicles would be preferable.
The Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory (FDL) recently proposed a delta-wing test vehicle that would fly at speeds between Mach 3 to 5. Another proposal is called the Incremental Growth Vehicle, so named because it would initially fly at Mach 4.5, but then be upgraded to reach Mach 6, and finally Mach 9.
At the same time, Langley Research Center engineers have ideas of their own.
In October 1970 their initial vehicle concept was the Hypersonic Research Facility (HYFAC) which was designed to reach a top speed of Mach 12 – twice the X-15’s maximum speed.
This was followed by a proposal for a less exotic vehicle, called the High-Speed Research Aircraft (HSRA), with a top speed of Mach 8.
None of the concepts have received official support to begin development.
With the X-24B to make its first flights soon the Flight Dynamics Laboratory engineers, recently began studying a hypersonic version called the X-24C.
Two different vehicle concepts have been proposed – one with cheek inlets for an airbreathing engine, and a second powered by an XLR-99 rocket engine. The target speed would be Mach 5. X-24C program costs are estimated to be around $70 million.
The advantage of the X-24C proposal is that it is largely an “off-the-shelf”
design in terms of shape, equipment, and technology. This makes it a much more practical design than the more complex FDL and NASA proposals. The X-24C recently gained the support of Gen. Sam Phillips, the head of the Air Force Systems Command and a former senior official in the Apollo program.
During the year however the design has gradually grown more ambitious - somewhat returning to HYFAC / HSRA level of performance.
The vehicle would now have a modular configuration, with a removable
center section of the fuselage, to accommodate the different experiments. With the connection to the original X-24C vehicle now gone, the program has received a new name.
The traditional X-plane designation has been abandoned and replaced with the awkward “National Hypersonic Flight Research Facility,” (NHFRF, but pronounced “nerf”).
The planned performance of the NHFRF is impressive. After launch from the B-52B mothership, the vehicle could reach a maximum speed of Mach 8 under rocket power. It would be also designed to cruise at a speed of Mach 6+ for 40 seconds, an extremely demanding requirement. The project engineers envision construction of two NHFRF vehicles, to be used in a 200-flight research program beginning in 1983, and spanning a decade. This effort is estimated to cost $200 million.
It remain to be seen whether the cheap X-24C or the much more ambitious NHFRF will be build... or perhaps the dispute could be settled by a new, unexpected competitor born on the space shuttle ashes.
While Langley engineers hesitated between X-24 derivatives or more advanced vehicles, in 1971 Dryden engineers proposed construction of manned, flying, 11-meter versions of the Space Shuttle to study the most critical area of its flight, the deceleration from mach 5 through the landing.
Mach 1, 2, and 3 models were to be powered (respectively) by one, two, and three XLR- 11 engines of X-1 legacy; or a mach 5 model could be powered by an XLR-99.
Such research aircraft, air-launched from a B-52, could have flown in direct support of Space Shuttle development, especially by validating wind-tunnel predictions of stability, controllability, and performance at hypersonic, supersonic, transonic, and subsonic velocities. They could be used for astronaut training and for investigating launch abort maneuvers.
Even with the shuttle cancelled, this role remain attractive.
As with the earlier lifting bodies, Dryden advocates of the subscale shuttle planned on using components from a variety of existing aircraft, including the M2-F3, F-4, YF- 12, F- 15, and X- 15, as well as some Apollo hardware. It was hoped that, using this approach, costs could be kept down. An XLR-99-equipped mach 5 subscale shuttle was estimated to cost $19.7 million.
If NASA’s Office of Advanced Research and Technology (OART) and the Office of Manned Space Flight were to authorize immediate go-ahead, the mini-Shuttle could fly toward the end of 1975.
A major push for a subscale shuttle recently came [in July1972], with preparation of a well defined and detailed proposal. Following this, Milton Thompson, Joe Weil, and other mini-Shuttle proponents have traveled to the Manned Spacecraft Center and NASA Headquarters to make presentations for the vehicle.
It now has some high-level support - Robert Gilruth of MSC is a strong advocate - but critics have argued that the projected costs are far too low, that a realistic cost estimate would be more like $150 million. That would place the subscale shuttle exactly between of the X-24C $70 million and NHFRF $200 million.
So one can see that Langley X-24C and Dryden shuttle are on a collision course.
It is interesting to note that both subscale shuttle and X-24C would be powered by the proven X-15 rocket engine... an interesting factoid is that, while the X-15 is long, Tony Dupont Hypersonic Research Engine is still undergoing ground tests in hypersonic tunnels. The podded scramjet is still alive ad well, and the subscale shuttle might be a unique opportunity to fly the thing in the end, avenging the October 3, 1967 disaster... needeless to say, HRE father and maverick engineer Tony Du Pont is lobbying hard for a HRE flight test program." But what is the HRE exactly ?
***
There are a lot of persuasive arguments for committing Pioneer H to an out- of -the- ecliptic mission. The relatively low cost of such a mission, since the Pioneer H spacecraft is a spare for Pioneers 10 and G, and the considerable scientific value to be derived, argue very strongly in favor of the mission.
In fact, this kind of mission vas describedto the Space Science Board 1971 Woods Hole Summer Study by our Science Advisory Group.
Moreover, on 15 June 1972 our Outer Planets Science Advisory Group presented to NASA management their recommended strategy for exploring the outer planets, in which the Pioneer H out-of-the-ecliptic mission was an important item. The Pioneer H spare spacecraft, equipped with instruments identical with those carried on Pioneers 10 and 11, would make a polar pass through Jupiter's magnetosphere and then pass over one of the solar poles at a distance between 1 and 2 AU.
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1972: NASA hell of a year (18)
Archibald
Banned
the space station decision
Huntington Beach, California.
September 6 1972.
A special ceremony marked completion of the Orbital Workshop (OWS), the main section of the Skylab space station. The workshop, with a volume equivalent to that of a five-room house, was being readied for shipment to Cape Kennedy aboard the USNS Point Barrow. The trip would take thirteen days.
President Nixon, campaigning against George McGovern, was present.
The scope of the ceremony largely outpaced Skylab, itself the ultimate extension of Apollo. In George Low and James Beggs thinking, only a space station could replace the Shuttle as NASA main program of the 70’s.
Skylab represented a useful, but primitive step in this direction. The program was led by Marshall, a center which still sought a role in the post Apollo era.
Since 1969 aerospace industry people and other aerospace professionals frequently presented ideas for space stations at conferences. NASA had released a 42-pages long booklet entitled Space Station: Key to the Future even before agreement had been reached on the design of a shuttle.
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, an important forum for legitimizing new space program ideas, published a study favourable to space stations entitled The Manned Orbital Facility: A User's Guide.
It stimulated a lot discussion about the uses of a space station.
At the time of shuttle cancellation the America was a year away from electing a new president, meaning that if NASA wanted its station, it had to act in a hurry.
James Beggs early action as administrator had been to discretely ask three NASA centers – Houston, Marshall and Langley – their vision of a space station. He insisted on the fact that the station had to find a national objective if NASA wanted Congress to fund it.
Marshall submitted the “Manned Orbital Systems Concept” concept. In the MOSC study, emphasis was placed on space stations performing research programs directly related to the improvement of life on Earth.
“Earth observation would increase knowledge in meteorology, climatology, oceanography, and atmospheric phenomena, while research on the behaviour of materials in the absence of gravity offered the chance to manufacture new medicines and materials not possible on Earth. By using remote sensing aboard a space station, NASA was quick to point out that nations could be alerted to impending droughts, harmful agricultural practices, and over- development.”
Marshall MOSC evidently looked similar to Skylab. In fact the center had worked with Douglas, adding some photos of a hastily build model.
It was basically a stripped-down Revell Skylab A with two Helios docked to an enlarged workshop. The whole think looked similar to a picture found in an old Douglas Big Gemini brochure.
Houston proposal was a simplified Modular Space Station, which Phase B contractor studies had been issued on February, 1.
Langley proposal was a rehash of their old Manned Orbital Research Laboratory, essentially an American Salyut that had been killed by Apollo peak funding in 1965.
Cancellation of the Shuttle had been a terrible blow for the aerospace industry. The shuttle followed the SuperSonic Transport, which had been cancelled in spring 1971.
Nixon died very hard on the supersonic transport and he had been terribly troubled to go to an international conference and have the French president Pompidou arrive in a Concorde.
In an attempt to recoup, Nixon senior advisors tried to launch an effort called the New Technology Opportunities Program (NTOP), which sought to define specific projects that might be ripe for federal support. It was no surprise that the key man in this effort, William Magruder, had been Nixon's head of the supersonic transport program. The NTOP was to be Nixon own New Frontier and Great Society. It dealt with clean energy, war against cancer and drug and control of natural disasters.
One important proposal called for full-scale development of high-speed rail transportation in the Northeast, laying new rail and refurbishing passenger stations.
Another proposal envisioned the development of two-way television. Two-way TV would allow individual citizens to communicate directly with city social-service agencies, including health, welfare, and police-protection programs.
Another concept promised to develop integrated utilities, which would combine sewage and solid-waste disposal, power, heat, and light within a single system.
The Atomic Energy Commission had a long-running interest in peaceful uses of nuclear explosives. Its officials endorsed a demonstration project that would use multiple detonations to fracture impermeable rock formations that held natural gas. Another plan proposed to build offshore terminals for deep-draft supertankers that drew too much water to enter conventional ports. Such terminals promised to cut shipping costs by eliminating the need to route the supertankers to the Caribbean, where they would transfer their cargoes of oil to smaller tankers of lesser draft.
Soon however the reviewers discovered that the prospective domestic initiatives carried difficulties that ranged well beyond the merely technical. So they declined to endorse any of Magruder's proposals, and the main reason was that in the course of the NTOP exercise, key people had come to realize that they truly knew little about the process of technological innovation. The New Technology Opportunities Program did not survived the shuttle for long, yet represented a serious White House attempt to redirect the resources of aerospace toward new domestic priorities.
When the attempt faltered late 1971, it soon became clear that Nixon would not try to help the beleaguered aerospace industry by having its people work on mass transit or pollution control.
Instead, he would give them an election-year gift by keeping that industry's resources within the realm of aerospace. Helios represented only a minor step in this area; something as bigger as the shuttle was obviously needed.
The twin demises of the SST and space shuttle, only six months appart, evidently worried the aerospace industry. There were real fears that America might lost its technological edge to Europe or, even worse, to the Soviet Union.
The Supersonic transport and the shuttle represented both end of the high-speed spectrum - mach 2.5 and Mach 25 respectively. As a result the President Science Advisory Committe was tasked with defining a program of "global research in high speed aircrafts" that of course would involve NASA.
Coincidentally, as the shuttle agonized early November 1971 the Langley research center, Hampton, Virginia, had hold a big conference - Vehicle technology for civil aviation, the seventies and beyond.
Many options were considered that involved many past, present and future vehicles.
Consideration was given to completion and test flight a Boeing supersonic transport prototype, assembly of a third XB-70 Walkyrie as a testbed for the SST engine, extended flight tests of Lockheed A-12s and SR-71s, returning a X-15 to flight status, launching subscale space shuttle models, or building more lifting bodies. The SST program had also led a couple of 300 ft long full scale mockups the FAA was very interested in. The A-12 fleet of a dozen aircrafts had been mothballed in 1968.
The X-15 option was given serious consideration, but was ultimately scrapped. The X-15A-2 had nearly melted itself, another X-15 had been destroyed leaving the older, less performing bird as the sole survivor.
Instead what was preferred was to try and build a subscale shuttle orbiter... powered by the very X-15 XLR-99 engine. Incidentally, while the X-15 was long gone, a little piece of harware had survived and was still undergoing ground test in hypersonic wind tunnels. That was the HRE - the Hypersonic Research Engine, a podded scramjet the brainchild of Tony Du Pont.
That October 3, 1967 when the X-15A-2 had both flown at Mach 6.7 and melted, it carried a HRE mockup clung to a rear fuselage pylon. It had been that very pylon that caused disturbances in the superheated airflow, somewhat destroying the X-15 in the process.
Langley was already studying post-Shuttle space transportation. Veteran lifting body manager Eugene Love was chief of the Center's Space Systems Division, which had recently been formed to support the Space Shuttle program by conducting aerodynamic analysis and tests of the design concepts to determine the vehicle's overall configuration, that is, would it be a single-stage or a two-stage vehicle? Or would it be a stage-and-a-half vehicle (the current configuration)?
Those contractors vying for the Shuttle contract submitted their design concepts to Langley for testing, and NASA Headquarters turned to Langley for an objective aerodynamic analysis of those design concepts.
Gene Love realized that NASA would require a launch vehicle after the Space Shuttle, so he formed a small group to look at possible post-Shuttle (Shuttle II) vehicles. Love was influenced by a program called C/SGT, Continental/SemiGlobal Transport.
The C/SGT vehicle would take off, almost attain orbit, then land, the object being to take people or cargo from any place on Earth to any other place on Earth in less than two hours. Gene Love realized that the C/SGT vehicle, with modifications, might become a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle. However, research would be necessary before that could take place.
So, a small group in the Vehicle Analysis Branch of the Space Systems Division began studying single-stage-to-orbit vehicles, as well as two-stage vehicles, to determine what technologies were needed. Every five years or so, as new technologies became available, such as composite materials in airframes, cryogenic fuel tanks made of composites and other advanced materials (such as titanium aluminides), and new thermal protection systems, the Vehicle Analysis Branch redid these vehicle design studies. They had no complex exploring exotic concepts.
Among NASA centers Houston had its hands full with the crew transportation system and the future space station. Marshall future was threatened.
In this context, Langley, Gene Love and his Vehicle Analysis Branch become the shuttle last stronghold - and more.
Boeing's 2707 SST was dead, the shuttle was dead, the X-15 was gone, and that left Langley and Dryden lifting bodies as the last high-speed testbed on hand.
Speed, however, was no longer fashionable; there was a profund move toward slower, more fuel efficient and environment friendly aircrafts.
The PSAC ultimate recommendation was a mix of sustained lifting body research and subscale shuttle models.
Meanwhile debate focused on what America wanted from its space program, what it could afford, and what could be achieved. Many agencies, organizations, and U.S. leaders had been called upon to form positions on the subject.
Public debate was to prove healthy for NASA. With momentum building, the space agency decided to make a major push for a space station, and by this time it was ready to talk the language of national objectives.
On the wake of Beggs request to the three centers, NASA created an intercenter Space Station Task Force in February 1972. It would have the difficult task to lay a firm foundation for justifying the expense of a space station program.
Instead of the old NASA pattern of first studying what a space station could do and then how it might be built, the Task Force asked industry and the scientific community to focus on what American national objectives the space station could satisfy. Many were asked the following question:
“If the United States were to acquire an initial civilian ‘space station’ complex in low- Earth-orbit in the 1980’s, who could use it, how could they use it, what attributes, capabilities, and types of components should it therefore have, what would it cost, when could it become available, and what benefits could its use provide?”
The design would be molded around these conclusions. George Mueller summed up the philosophy to Beggs and Low in May 1972.
“It’s easy to design a space station.... What’s not so easy is putting together all the elements in a design that is useful to the nation and realistic in terms of today’s economic conditions.”
Results had been published in July 1972. From the study, three U.S. national objectives were defined:
1. to solve world problems through research
2. to support space infrastructure
3. to serve as a staging base and testbed for Mars and/or lunar missions.
Of course Moon and Mars were out of the question, thus Beggs quietly dropped Point 3. The others two sounded valid.
Then eight mission objectives—essentially Willy Ley’s list from 1944—were identified to support the remaining national objectives.
1. An on-orbit National Laboratory supporting research on a wide range of life, materials, and other science topics, and the development of new technology
2. Permanent observatories for astronomy and Earth remote sensing
3. A facility for microgravity materials processing and manufacturing of products
4. Servicing of satellites and platforms
5. A transportation hub to assemble, check out, and launch space vehicles
6. An assembly facility for large space structures
7. A storage depot for spare parts, fuel, and supplies for use by satellites, platforms, vehicles, and people
8. A staging base for more ambitious future projects and travel (e.g., a lunar settlement or a human voyage to Mars)
Points 1 and 2 were controversial. Indeed NASA – at least the human spaceflight side of the agency - had conflicting relations with science, as demonstrated in the Apollo program.
When created by Eisenhower in 1958, NASA was supposed to be science-driven. That idea did not lasted long, however. First, NASA inherited from NACA a large a large engineering bureaucracy, as well as a symbolic mission to accomplish impressive tasks and symbolize American technological progress.
Then, Kennedy started Apollo as a politically-driven adventure and the single goal of humiliating the Soviets.
In the scheme of things science only came a distant third - although, with the political goal accomplished beyond the wildest expectations, the last landings and Skylab had more room for experiments. But science alone could not save Apollo, and Skylab proved to be a dead-end.
As for the shuttle - the shuttle was to be developed as a space truck to haul payloads in and out of Earth orbit. These included scientific payloads, some of which were operated in the shuttle’s payload bay, such as dedicated life sciences missions. But science did not really justified the shuttle.
The scientist community was slightly more interested by the space station. Indeed the eight points in the list could be broadly grouped into four categories.
1&2 obviously represented science.
3 represented commerce, while the science “old enemy”, engineering, was present in points 4, 5, 6, 7.
Point 8 had essentially died with the Space Task Group proposals.
So at first glance it looked that engineering had once again an edge over science. This failed to consider the lack of shuttle… concepts of microgravity materials processing, satellite servicing, large structure assembly, space hub and orbital storage all implied a cheap access to low-Earth-orbit, precisely the space shuttle main promise.
In the absence of a reusable launch vehicle, and in the wake of Skylab, science was left to prevail.
It has been a masterstroke from the returning George Mueller.
But the battle had been hard fought.
As shown in the Apollo era, a fracture was tearing NASA apart: the scientists and engineers just hated each others.
JPL and Goddard were fighting Marshall and Johnson.
As the director of the Office of Manned Space Flight at times Mueller had found himself at odds with the Office of Space Science and Applications boss Homer Newell.
Clearly there was cultural rift there, and lot of uncomprehension between the two sides, resulting in years long mutual bickering and bitterness.
But Apollo, and most of all Skylab, had taught lessons. The two rival offices and culture had learned to work together - from the Lunar Orbiter robots imaging future Apollo landing sites to Skylab telescope mount. If they ever tried to create a joint OSSA / OMSF within either office, or at a NASA center like Houston or Langley or Goddard, Mueller reasoned his chairman would be as impotent as a Nevada boxing commissioner.
So Mueller first decision was to setup the mixed committee in Washington, out of the inter-center rivalries. Then, he tried to have the space station concept transcend the old engineering / science rivalry. Using the Space Station Task Force as basis, Mueller created what was looked like an eleventh NASA center dedicated to the space station and nothing else. He essentially recycled Apollo proven structures, such as Lee Scherer Lunar Exploration Board.
In the Apollo days Scherer's appointment had been considered a management masterstroke by Mueller. Having managed the highly successful Lunar Orbiter Program Scherer was well liked and trusted by John Naugle, the head of the science side of NASA. Yet the close connection of Scherer's Lunar Orbiter to Apollo made him well known to the manned, engineering side.
Mueller wanted Scherer to manage the space tug office.
Scherer, however, was on leave from Apollo to Edwards AFB, California, where NASA had one of his four aeronautic centers. Mueller had Beggs cancelling the assignment, on behalf that Paul Bikle would be more needed than ever, since the lack of space shuttle would make Edwards lifting bodies even more important.
To go along Scherer Mueller picked-up a host of Ranger, Lunar Orbiter, Surveyor and Apollo scientists to join the new organization he called the CASIS - the Committee for Advancement of Science at the International Station.
Of course Houston was furious because they had not been given the space station, at least not completely. Mueller keep them at bait through various arguments and means; first and foremost they had to make Big Gemini operational, if only to secure manned space flight.
Secondly, there would be a backup, twin station core module build as an insurance against a possible launch failure. Mueller strategy was to committ Houston to engineering -driven grandiose studies of that second station.
In the 80's we will have the shuttle and it will help building a formidable orbital facility.
It will be a transportation hub to assemble, check out, and launch space vehicles, an assembly facility for large space structures, a storage depot for spare parts, fuel, and supplies for use by satellites, platforms, vehicles, and people and ultimately a staging base for more ambitious future projects and travel (e.g., a lunar settlement or a human voyage to Mars.
That kind of discourse evidently stroke a nerve in Houston, Texas.
Mueller happily let Houston churning paper study after paper study. Lastly was a clear warning to Houston: adapt to the tight budget, or you'll be cut. Noone is safe. Manned spaceflight can still be cut altogether.
Thanks to Mueller harrowing efforts when James Beggs finally reported to the Senate Committee on Appropriations, he described an on-orbit laboratory supporting research on a wide range of life, materials, and other science topics, and the development of new technology. He spoke about permanent observatories for astronomy and Earth remote sensing. About general space science research, remote Earth sensing, and - eventually - microgravity research.
To this point, the debate had been fruitful : the future space station had now two national objectives, and its role would fall in three major categories. Then come the unavoidable question. Could a space station be funded in parallel ? And how much would it cost?
Changing Helios cargo module into a bare-bone station would cost $0.7 billion. Helios spacecrafts could be docked to an uprated Skylab, each mission adding a module to the complex. In comparison, Skylab had a cost of $2.6 billion only, with a huge internal volume. This explained by the fact it had been built from spare S-IVBs with Apollo subsystems. Skylab was also a dead-end, in the sense it had no thrusters to keep it in orbit; its life supportsystem was outdated; and it was not built for resupply nor long duration in space. Three missions and 18 months in space would worn it out definitively. As a result Marshall had conducted a study on more Skylabs, and found the unit cost would drop to $2 billion each. But of course each Skylab took a massive Saturn V to reach orbit, and that ruinous rocket was no longer available.
The MORL and EOSS paper space stations from the mid-60’s looked more promising. Back in 1968, another study had compared their respective costs, in relation with the forthcoming Skylab. The 3-men MORL was very, very similar to the soviet Salyut, for a cost of $3 billion. The EOSS, a 6 men Skylab/ MORL hybrid, rose to $4.2 billion. Last but not least, costs estimations for the Modular Space Station had been issued on February 1 1972. It had been estimated that a six-men crew modular space station would cost $4.5 billion. Twelve men brought this to $6.4 billion.
From all this, it seemed that a modular space station would roughly cost $5 billions. Compared to the shuttle, overall cost could be spread over a long period – or cut, by dropping modules if needed.
Now the President was to be convinced. 1972 was an election year, Nixon campaigning against George McGovern. In September he toured California, visiting Lockheed Palmdale, North American Downey and Douglas Huntington Beach, among others. Downey had been home of Apollo; Shuttle orbiters would probably have rolled down their production line had the Shuttle not been cancelled. Nixon needed to keep people employed in key states, including California.
Low and Beggs were now lobbying to Nixon with the following arguments
“NASA will soon have a temporary space station in Skylab. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has begun putting up its Salyut space stations last year, and will continuing to use them in the next future. Technologies for a much better space station than Salyut or Skylab are within US reach.”
Late August Nixon finally gave a go-ahead to a space station program. However he balked at the cost, and his staff picked away element out of the orbital facility. George Mueller was forced to watch, helpless, his cherished space station cut. All talk of artificial gravity and nuclear power was dropped, and the twelve men crew extending to a hundred was cut to a definitive six astronauts.
This September 6, 1972 Nixon addressed Douglas employees. John Ehrlichman, and George M. Low and James Beggs were present. Politics for a space station decision were right now. Low and Beggs flew out to California, editing two NASA statements along the way.
Nixon greeted him at the Douglas plant, as did John Ehrlichman. Though the President had planned to spend only fifteen minutes at the plant, the meeting ran well beyond a half-hour as he showed strong interest in Helios and the space station. Low had brought Marshall’s model of the space station, and Ehrlichman would remember "Nixon's fascination with the model. And he held it and, in fact, I wasn't sure that Low was going to be able to get it away from him when the thing was over."
Nixon greeted the workers and engineers, promised he would preserve their jobs, and finally disclosed the space station project with these words
“ I have decided today that the United States should proceed at once with the development of an entirely new type of space infrastructure; designed to help transform the space frontier of the 1970s into familiar territory, easily accessible for human endeavour in the 1980s and '90s.
I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade. This system will center on a space station that can support science in space. It will introduce business in space, by routinizing it. It will take the astronomical costs out of astronautics. In short, it will go a long way toward delivering the rich benefits of practical space utilization and the valuable spin-offs from space efforts into the daily lives of Americans and all people...
Views of the earth from space have shown us how small and fragile our home planet truly is. We are learning the imperatives of universal brotherhood and global ecology-learning to think and act as guardians of one tiny blue and green island in the trackless oceans of the universe. This new program will give more people more access to the liberating perspectives of space....
"We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, "but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor." So with man's epic voyage into space-a voyage the United States of America has led and still shall lead.
“Skylab is only a first step into this new area. Obviously the next step should be a permanently manned space station with a crew of 6 or more in 1980. We will build a Skylab follow-on, a first step in the colonization of space”.
The space station decision was made at least.
The last few months had seen George Low once again take a pivotal role in a major national decision with at stake national prestige, tens of billions of dollars spread across many years, and hundreds of high-profile careers in politics, industry, the military.
Someday he was going to write a book about all of it. Yes, he would have to do that - writting his memories, perhaps from his own personal notes. Although the very concept of memories ran counter to his extreme discretion; he was no von Braun, he just hated anything that looked like a spotlight...
George Low felt exhausted, like never before. He used to be a workalcoholic, and to endure 80 or even 90 hours of work per week, and his body used to take it well. But this time... damn, I think I've pushed a little too far.
From the start of the year, Low and his new boss Jim Beggs had started to put it about that the aerospace industry might not be able to survive another year of diminished space work. Low spoke particularly to congressmen from states like California, Texas, and Florida, where aerospace depression was an acute electoral issue. And he quietly encouraged the contractors contributing to the various program studies to talk up their estimates of the employment the various options would stimulate. It was all designed to keep the pressure on the White House.
Nineteen seventy-two is an election year !
We need a space program to keep the aerospace guys in work !
It had come to a head, at last, today. Beggs had been asked to a meeting with Ed David, other Presidential aides, and representatives of the Office of Management and Budget.
Ed David, Beggs told Low, had opened the meeting briskly. “You’re going to get your space package, Jim - a space taxi together with a space station, a scaled-down Grand Tour, more funds for Viking and the Large Telescope together with Skylab and the last two Apollo lunar landings. All this against my better judgement.”
“The President’s approving the program.”
“Yes.” Ed David shuffled papers. “There are still some decisions to be made about size and cost…”
Beggs grunted. “What decided him?”
“A number of factors. The point that we can’t afford to forgo manned spaceflight altogether, for our prestige at home and abroad.” He sounded rueful. “We’re stuck with you, Jim. That the space taxi / space station mission is the only option we have that is meaningful and could be accomplished on a modest budget. That we were only thinking of cutting NASA anyway because we could. That not starting the program would be damaging to the aerospace industry…”
The meeting had started haggling over details, the wording of a Presidential announcement.
But the decision was made.
He supposed he ought to be feeling triumph. Exultation. We’ve got what we wanted, by God. Another huge boondoggle, a program that ought to keep thousands of NASA employees gainfully employed for a decade or more.
But the truth was, he felt too beat-up to care.
He was having a little trouble focusing his eyes.
He’d been chained to his desk and phone for weeks, working in support of Begg’s machinations. And there were still a hundred and one things to be finished up.
The next day he had a meeting in Houston, and he had to catch a flight very early in the morning. It was exhausting, but he had promised himself some holidays as soon as possible; after all the space station decision was now secured, and manned spaceflight with it.
He felt a brief surge of emotion as he passed the space center gate. The meeting was a two-hour affair, after that he would return Washington and eventually, his home. On the way back he passed near his old office, full of memories. Marylin Bockting was gone, but he was pleased to meet Judy Wyatt, and to discuss James Bond movies with her. She knew he was a notable fan of 007.
In fact, Judy Wyatt thought, this is the only thing I really know about that enigmatic man. Who are you, George Low ? noone knew.
Noone knew that George Low, as a teenager, had fled from Austria with its parents; they were jews, and the nazis were on their heels. But a man like Von Braun – an aristocratic German – had actually been a member of the nazi party, although certainly not by conviction. Did Low resented that ? Noone knew.
George Low waved Wyatt goodbye, and went to the stairs, and suddendly at the last degree he felt the fatigue, like an enormous weight falling on him.
His legs betrayed him without a warning.
He missed the last step, and fell heavily.
For a fraction of second everything seemed to go still; memories from his parents, his youth in Austria, the flee away from the nazis, his wife, NACA, NASA, Kennedy, Apollo, the Fire, Joe Shea, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, Borman, Lovell and Anders... all flashed, vanished, and gone within that fraction of second. A pragmatic to the very end, all he could do was to wrap his arms around his head, if only to minimize the force of the impact with that solid ground that rushed toward his eyes...
As he lost consciouness everything turned black
Huntington Beach, California.
September 6 1972.
A special ceremony marked completion of the Orbital Workshop (OWS), the main section of the Skylab space station. The workshop, with a volume equivalent to that of a five-room house, was being readied for shipment to Cape Kennedy aboard the USNS Point Barrow. The trip would take thirteen days.
President Nixon, campaigning against George McGovern, was present.
The scope of the ceremony largely outpaced Skylab, itself the ultimate extension of Apollo. In George Low and James Beggs thinking, only a space station could replace the Shuttle as NASA main program of the 70’s.
Skylab represented a useful, but primitive step in this direction. The program was led by Marshall, a center which still sought a role in the post Apollo era.
Since 1969 aerospace industry people and other aerospace professionals frequently presented ideas for space stations at conferences. NASA had released a 42-pages long booklet entitled Space Station: Key to the Future even before agreement had been reached on the design of a shuttle.
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, an important forum for legitimizing new space program ideas, published a study favourable to space stations entitled The Manned Orbital Facility: A User's Guide.
It stimulated a lot discussion about the uses of a space station.
At the time of shuttle cancellation the America was a year away from electing a new president, meaning that if NASA wanted its station, it had to act in a hurry.
James Beggs early action as administrator had been to discretely ask three NASA centers – Houston, Marshall and Langley – their vision of a space station. He insisted on the fact that the station had to find a national objective if NASA wanted Congress to fund it.
Marshall submitted the “Manned Orbital Systems Concept” concept. In the MOSC study, emphasis was placed on space stations performing research programs directly related to the improvement of life on Earth.
“Earth observation would increase knowledge in meteorology, climatology, oceanography, and atmospheric phenomena, while research on the behaviour of materials in the absence of gravity offered the chance to manufacture new medicines and materials not possible on Earth. By using remote sensing aboard a space station, NASA was quick to point out that nations could be alerted to impending droughts, harmful agricultural practices, and over- development.”
Marshall MOSC evidently looked similar to Skylab. In fact the center had worked with Douglas, adding some photos of a hastily build model.
It was basically a stripped-down Revell Skylab A with two Helios docked to an enlarged workshop. The whole think looked similar to a picture found in an old Douglas Big Gemini brochure.
Houston proposal was a simplified Modular Space Station, which Phase B contractor studies had been issued on February, 1.
Langley proposal was a rehash of their old Manned Orbital Research Laboratory, essentially an American Salyut that had been killed by Apollo peak funding in 1965.
Cancellation of the Shuttle had been a terrible blow for the aerospace industry. The shuttle followed the SuperSonic Transport, which had been cancelled in spring 1971.
Nixon died very hard on the supersonic transport and he had been terribly troubled to go to an international conference and have the French president Pompidou arrive in a Concorde.
In an attempt to recoup, Nixon senior advisors tried to launch an effort called the New Technology Opportunities Program (NTOP), which sought to define specific projects that might be ripe for federal support. It was no surprise that the key man in this effort, William Magruder, had been Nixon's head of the supersonic transport program. The NTOP was to be Nixon own New Frontier and Great Society. It dealt with clean energy, war against cancer and drug and control of natural disasters.
One important proposal called for full-scale development of high-speed rail transportation in the Northeast, laying new rail and refurbishing passenger stations.
Another proposal envisioned the development of two-way television. Two-way TV would allow individual citizens to communicate directly with city social-service agencies, including health, welfare, and police-protection programs.
Another concept promised to develop integrated utilities, which would combine sewage and solid-waste disposal, power, heat, and light within a single system.
The Atomic Energy Commission had a long-running interest in peaceful uses of nuclear explosives. Its officials endorsed a demonstration project that would use multiple detonations to fracture impermeable rock formations that held natural gas. Another plan proposed to build offshore terminals for deep-draft supertankers that drew too much water to enter conventional ports. Such terminals promised to cut shipping costs by eliminating the need to route the supertankers to the Caribbean, where they would transfer their cargoes of oil to smaller tankers of lesser draft.
Soon however the reviewers discovered that the prospective domestic initiatives carried difficulties that ranged well beyond the merely technical. So they declined to endorse any of Magruder's proposals, and the main reason was that in the course of the NTOP exercise, key people had come to realize that they truly knew little about the process of technological innovation. The New Technology Opportunities Program did not survived the shuttle for long, yet represented a serious White House attempt to redirect the resources of aerospace toward new domestic priorities.
When the attempt faltered late 1971, it soon became clear that Nixon would not try to help the beleaguered aerospace industry by having its people work on mass transit or pollution control.
Instead, he would give them an election-year gift by keeping that industry's resources within the realm of aerospace. Helios represented only a minor step in this area; something as bigger as the shuttle was obviously needed.
The twin demises of the SST and space shuttle, only six months appart, evidently worried the aerospace industry. There were real fears that America might lost its technological edge to Europe or, even worse, to the Soviet Union.
The Supersonic transport and the shuttle represented both end of the high-speed spectrum - mach 2.5 and Mach 25 respectively. As a result the President Science Advisory Committe was tasked with defining a program of "global research in high speed aircrafts" that of course would involve NASA.
Coincidentally, as the shuttle agonized early November 1971 the Langley research center, Hampton, Virginia, had hold a big conference - Vehicle technology for civil aviation, the seventies and beyond.
Many options were considered that involved many past, present and future vehicles.
Consideration was given to completion and test flight a Boeing supersonic transport prototype, assembly of a third XB-70 Walkyrie as a testbed for the SST engine, extended flight tests of Lockheed A-12s and SR-71s, returning a X-15 to flight status, launching subscale space shuttle models, or building more lifting bodies. The SST program had also led a couple of 300 ft long full scale mockups the FAA was very interested in. The A-12 fleet of a dozen aircrafts had been mothballed in 1968.
The X-15 option was given serious consideration, but was ultimately scrapped. The X-15A-2 had nearly melted itself, another X-15 had been destroyed leaving the older, less performing bird as the sole survivor.
Instead what was preferred was to try and build a subscale shuttle orbiter... powered by the very X-15 XLR-99 engine. Incidentally, while the X-15 was long gone, a little piece of harware had survived and was still undergoing ground test in hypersonic wind tunnels. That was the HRE - the Hypersonic Research Engine, a podded scramjet the brainchild of Tony Du Pont.
That October 3, 1967 when the X-15A-2 had both flown at Mach 6.7 and melted, it carried a HRE mockup clung to a rear fuselage pylon. It had been that very pylon that caused disturbances in the superheated airflow, somewhat destroying the X-15 in the process.
Langley was already studying post-Shuttle space transportation. Veteran lifting body manager Eugene Love was chief of the Center's Space Systems Division, which had recently been formed to support the Space Shuttle program by conducting aerodynamic analysis and tests of the design concepts to determine the vehicle's overall configuration, that is, would it be a single-stage or a two-stage vehicle? Or would it be a stage-and-a-half vehicle (the current configuration)?
Those contractors vying for the Shuttle contract submitted their design concepts to Langley for testing, and NASA Headquarters turned to Langley for an objective aerodynamic analysis of those design concepts.
Gene Love realized that NASA would require a launch vehicle after the Space Shuttle, so he formed a small group to look at possible post-Shuttle (Shuttle II) vehicles. Love was influenced by a program called C/SGT, Continental/SemiGlobal Transport.
The C/SGT vehicle would take off, almost attain orbit, then land, the object being to take people or cargo from any place on Earth to any other place on Earth in less than two hours. Gene Love realized that the C/SGT vehicle, with modifications, might become a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle. However, research would be necessary before that could take place.
So, a small group in the Vehicle Analysis Branch of the Space Systems Division began studying single-stage-to-orbit vehicles, as well as two-stage vehicles, to determine what technologies were needed. Every five years or so, as new technologies became available, such as composite materials in airframes, cryogenic fuel tanks made of composites and other advanced materials (such as titanium aluminides), and new thermal protection systems, the Vehicle Analysis Branch redid these vehicle design studies. They had no complex exploring exotic concepts.
Among NASA centers Houston had its hands full with the crew transportation system and the future space station. Marshall future was threatened.
In this context, Langley, Gene Love and his Vehicle Analysis Branch become the shuttle last stronghold - and more.
Boeing's 2707 SST was dead, the shuttle was dead, the X-15 was gone, and that left Langley and Dryden lifting bodies as the last high-speed testbed on hand.
Speed, however, was no longer fashionable; there was a profund move toward slower, more fuel efficient and environment friendly aircrafts.
The PSAC ultimate recommendation was a mix of sustained lifting body research and subscale shuttle models.
Meanwhile debate focused on what America wanted from its space program, what it could afford, and what could be achieved. Many agencies, organizations, and U.S. leaders had been called upon to form positions on the subject.
Public debate was to prove healthy for NASA. With momentum building, the space agency decided to make a major push for a space station, and by this time it was ready to talk the language of national objectives.
On the wake of Beggs request to the three centers, NASA created an intercenter Space Station Task Force in February 1972. It would have the difficult task to lay a firm foundation for justifying the expense of a space station program.
Instead of the old NASA pattern of first studying what a space station could do and then how it might be built, the Task Force asked industry and the scientific community to focus on what American national objectives the space station could satisfy. Many were asked the following question:
“If the United States were to acquire an initial civilian ‘space station’ complex in low- Earth-orbit in the 1980’s, who could use it, how could they use it, what attributes, capabilities, and types of components should it therefore have, what would it cost, when could it become available, and what benefits could its use provide?”
The design would be molded around these conclusions. George Mueller summed up the philosophy to Beggs and Low in May 1972.
“It’s easy to design a space station.... What’s not so easy is putting together all the elements in a design that is useful to the nation and realistic in terms of today’s economic conditions.”
Results had been published in July 1972. From the study, three U.S. national objectives were defined:
1. to solve world problems through research
2. to support space infrastructure
3. to serve as a staging base and testbed for Mars and/or lunar missions.
Of course Moon and Mars were out of the question, thus Beggs quietly dropped Point 3. The others two sounded valid.
Then eight mission objectives—essentially Willy Ley’s list from 1944—were identified to support the remaining national objectives.
1. An on-orbit National Laboratory supporting research on a wide range of life, materials, and other science topics, and the development of new technology
2. Permanent observatories for astronomy and Earth remote sensing
3. A facility for microgravity materials processing and manufacturing of products
4. Servicing of satellites and platforms
5. A transportation hub to assemble, check out, and launch space vehicles
6. An assembly facility for large space structures
7. A storage depot for spare parts, fuel, and supplies for use by satellites, platforms, vehicles, and people
8. A staging base for more ambitious future projects and travel (e.g., a lunar settlement or a human voyage to Mars)
Points 1 and 2 were controversial. Indeed NASA – at least the human spaceflight side of the agency - had conflicting relations with science, as demonstrated in the Apollo program.
When created by Eisenhower in 1958, NASA was supposed to be science-driven. That idea did not lasted long, however. First, NASA inherited from NACA a large a large engineering bureaucracy, as well as a symbolic mission to accomplish impressive tasks and symbolize American technological progress.
Then, Kennedy started Apollo as a politically-driven adventure and the single goal of humiliating the Soviets.
In the scheme of things science only came a distant third - although, with the political goal accomplished beyond the wildest expectations, the last landings and Skylab had more room for experiments. But science alone could not save Apollo, and Skylab proved to be a dead-end.
As for the shuttle - the shuttle was to be developed as a space truck to haul payloads in and out of Earth orbit. These included scientific payloads, some of which were operated in the shuttle’s payload bay, such as dedicated life sciences missions. But science did not really justified the shuttle.
The scientist community was slightly more interested by the space station. Indeed the eight points in the list could be broadly grouped into four categories.
1&2 obviously represented science.
3 represented commerce, while the science “old enemy”, engineering, was present in points 4, 5, 6, 7.
Point 8 had essentially died with the Space Task Group proposals.
So at first glance it looked that engineering had once again an edge over science. This failed to consider the lack of shuttle… concepts of microgravity materials processing, satellite servicing, large structure assembly, space hub and orbital storage all implied a cheap access to low-Earth-orbit, precisely the space shuttle main promise.
In the absence of a reusable launch vehicle, and in the wake of Skylab, science was left to prevail.
It has been a masterstroke from the returning George Mueller.
But the battle had been hard fought.
As shown in the Apollo era, a fracture was tearing NASA apart: the scientists and engineers just hated each others.
JPL and Goddard were fighting Marshall and Johnson.
As the director of the Office of Manned Space Flight at times Mueller had found himself at odds with the Office of Space Science and Applications boss Homer Newell.
Clearly there was cultural rift there, and lot of uncomprehension between the two sides, resulting in years long mutual bickering and bitterness.
But Apollo, and most of all Skylab, had taught lessons. The two rival offices and culture had learned to work together - from the Lunar Orbiter robots imaging future Apollo landing sites to Skylab telescope mount. If they ever tried to create a joint OSSA / OMSF within either office, or at a NASA center like Houston or Langley or Goddard, Mueller reasoned his chairman would be as impotent as a Nevada boxing commissioner.
So Mueller first decision was to setup the mixed committee in Washington, out of the inter-center rivalries. Then, he tried to have the space station concept transcend the old engineering / science rivalry. Using the Space Station Task Force as basis, Mueller created what was looked like an eleventh NASA center dedicated to the space station and nothing else. He essentially recycled Apollo proven structures, such as Lee Scherer Lunar Exploration Board.
In the Apollo days Scherer's appointment had been considered a management masterstroke by Mueller. Having managed the highly successful Lunar Orbiter Program Scherer was well liked and trusted by John Naugle, the head of the science side of NASA. Yet the close connection of Scherer's Lunar Orbiter to Apollo made him well known to the manned, engineering side.
Mueller wanted Scherer to manage the space tug office.
Scherer, however, was on leave from Apollo to Edwards AFB, California, where NASA had one of his four aeronautic centers. Mueller had Beggs cancelling the assignment, on behalf that Paul Bikle would be more needed than ever, since the lack of space shuttle would make Edwards lifting bodies even more important.
To go along Scherer Mueller picked-up a host of Ranger, Lunar Orbiter, Surveyor and Apollo scientists to join the new organization he called the CASIS - the Committee for Advancement of Science at the International Station.
Of course Houston was furious because they had not been given the space station, at least not completely. Mueller keep them at bait through various arguments and means; first and foremost they had to make Big Gemini operational, if only to secure manned space flight.
Secondly, there would be a backup, twin station core module build as an insurance against a possible launch failure. Mueller strategy was to committ Houston to engineering -driven grandiose studies of that second station.
In the 80's we will have the shuttle and it will help building a formidable orbital facility.
It will be a transportation hub to assemble, check out, and launch space vehicles, an assembly facility for large space structures, a storage depot for spare parts, fuel, and supplies for use by satellites, platforms, vehicles, and people and ultimately a staging base for more ambitious future projects and travel (e.g., a lunar settlement or a human voyage to Mars.
That kind of discourse evidently stroke a nerve in Houston, Texas.
Mueller happily let Houston churning paper study after paper study. Lastly was a clear warning to Houston: adapt to the tight budget, or you'll be cut. Noone is safe. Manned spaceflight can still be cut altogether.
Thanks to Mueller harrowing efforts when James Beggs finally reported to the Senate Committee on Appropriations, he described an on-orbit laboratory supporting research on a wide range of life, materials, and other science topics, and the development of new technology. He spoke about permanent observatories for astronomy and Earth remote sensing. About general space science research, remote Earth sensing, and - eventually - microgravity research.
To this point, the debate had been fruitful : the future space station had now two national objectives, and its role would fall in three major categories. Then come the unavoidable question. Could a space station be funded in parallel ? And how much would it cost?
Changing Helios cargo module into a bare-bone station would cost $0.7 billion. Helios spacecrafts could be docked to an uprated Skylab, each mission adding a module to the complex. In comparison, Skylab had a cost of $2.6 billion only, with a huge internal volume. This explained by the fact it had been built from spare S-IVBs with Apollo subsystems. Skylab was also a dead-end, in the sense it had no thrusters to keep it in orbit; its life supportsystem was outdated; and it was not built for resupply nor long duration in space. Three missions and 18 months in space would worn it out definitively. As a result Marshall had conducted a study on more Skylabs, and found the unit cost would drop to $2 billion each. But of course each Skylab took a massive Saturn V to reach orbit, and that ruinous rocket was no longer available.
The MORL and EOSS paper space stations from the mid-60’s looked more promising. Back in 1968, another study had compared their respective costs, in relation with the forthcoming Skylab. The 3-men MORL was very, very similar to the soviet Salyut, for a cost of $3 billion. The EOSS, a 6 men Skylab/ MORL hybrid, rose to $4.2 billion. Last but not least, costs estimations for the Modular Space Station had been issued on February 1 1972. It had been estimated that a six-men crew modular space station would cost $4.5 billion. Twelve men brought this to $6.4 billion.
From all this, it seemed that a modular space station would roughly cost $5 billions. Compared to the shuttle, overall cost could be spread over a long period – or cut, by dropping modules if needed.
Now the President was to be convinced. 1972 was an election year, Nixon campaigning against George McGovern. In September he toured California, visiting Lockheed Palmdale, North American Downey and Douglas Huntington Beach, among others. Downey had been home of Apollo; Shuttle orbiters would probably have rolled down their production line had the Shuttle not been cancelled. Nixon needed to keep people employed in key states, including California.
Low and Beggs were now lobbying to Nixon with the following arguments
“NASA will soon have a temporary space station in Skylab. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has begun putting up its Salyut space stations last year, and will continuing to use them in the next future. Technologies for a much better space station than Salyut or Skylab are within US reach.”
Late August Nixon finally gave a go-ahead to a space station program. However he balked at the cost, and his staff picked away element out of the orbital facility. George Mueller was forced to watch, helpless, his cherished space station cut. All talk of artificial gravity and nuclear power was dropped, and the twelve men crew extending to a hundred was cut to a definitive six astronauts.
This September 6, 1972 Nixon addressed Douglas employees. John Ehrlichman, and George M. Low and James Beggs were present. Politics for a space station decision were right now. Low and Beggs flew out to California, editing two NASA statements along the way.
Nixon greeted him at the Douglas plant, as did John Ehrlichman. Though the President had planned to spend only fifteen minutes at the plant, the meeting ran well beyond a half-hour as he showed strong interest in Helios and the space station. Low had brought Marshall’s model of the space station, and Ehrlichman would remember "Nixon's fascination with the model. And he held it and, in fact, I wasn't sure that Low was going to be able to get it away from him when the thing was over."
Nixon greeted the workers and engineers, promised he would preserve their jobs, and finally disclosed the space station project with these words
“ I have decided today that the United States should proceed at once with the development of an entirely new type of space infrastructure; designed to help transform the space frontier of the 1970s into familiar territory, easily accessible for human endeavour in the 1980s and '90s.
I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade. This system will center on a space station that can support science in space. It will introduce business in space, by routinizing it. It will take the astronomical costs out of astronautics. In short, it will go a long way toward delivering the rich benefits of practical space utilization and the valuable spin-offs from space efforts into the daily lives of Americans and all people...
Views of the earth from space have shown us how small and fragile our home planet truly is. We are learning the imperatives of universal brotherhood and global ecology-learning to think and act as guardians of one tiny blue and green island in the trackless oceans of the universe. This new program will give more people more access to the liberating perspectives of space....
"We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, "but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor." So with man's epic voyage into space-a voyage the United States of America has led and still shall lead.
“Skylab is only a first step into this new area. Obviously the next step should be a permanently manned space station with a crew of 6 or more in 1980. We will build a Skylab follow-on, a first step in the colonization of space”.
The space station decision was made at least.
The last few months had seen George Low once again take a pivotal role in a major national decision with at stake national prestige, tens of billions of dollars spread across many years, and hundreds of high-profile careers in politics, industry, the military.
Someday he was going to write a book about all of it. Yes, he would have to do that - writting his memories, perhaps from his own personal notes. Although the very concept of memories ran counter to his extreme discretion; he was no von Braun, he just hated anything that looked like a spotlight...
George Low felt exhausted, like never before. He used to be a workalcoholic, and to endure 80 or even 90 hours of work per week, and his body used to take it well. But this time... damn, I think I've pushed a little too far.
From the start of the year, Low and his new boss Jim Beggs had started to put it about that the aerospace industry might not be able to survive another year of diminished space work. Low spoke particularly to congressmen from states like California, Texas, and Florida, where aerospace depression was an acute electoral issue. And he quietly encouraged the contractors contributing to the various program studies to talk up their estimates of the employment the various options would stimulate. It was all designed to keep the pressure on the White House.
Nineteen seventy-two is an election year !
We need a space program to keep the aerospace guys in work !
It had come to a head, at last, today. Beggs had been asked to a meeting with Ed David, other Presidential aides, and representatives of the Office of Management and Budget.
Ed David, Beggs told Low, had opened the meeting briskly. “You’re going to get your space package, Jim - a space taxi together with a space station, a scaled-down Grand Tour, more funds for Viking and the Large Telescope together with Skylab and the last two Apollo lunar landings. All this against my better judgement.”
“The President’s approving the program.”
“Yes.” Ed David shuffled papers. “There are still some decisions to be made about size and cost…”
Beggs grunted. “What decided him?”
“A number of factors. The point that we can’t afford to forgo manned spaceflight altogether, for our prestige at home and abroad.” He sounded rueful. “We’re stuck with you, Jim. That the space taxi / space station mission is the only option we have that is meaningful and could be accomplished on a modest budget. That we were only thinking of cutting NASA anyway because we could. That not starting the program would be damaging to the aerospace industry…”
The meeting had started haggling over details, the wording of a Presidential announcement.
But the decision was made.
He supposed he ought to be feeling triumph. Exultation. We’ve got what we wanted, by God. Another huge boondoggle, a program that ought to keep thousands of NASA employees gainfully employed for a decade or more.
But the truth was, he felt too beat-up to care.
He was having a little trouble focusing his eyes.
He’d been chained to his desk and phone for weeks, working in support of Begg’s machinations. And there were still a hundred and one things to be finished up.
The next day he had a meeting in Houston, and he had to catch a flight very early in the morning. It was exhausting, but he had promised himself some holidays as soon as possible; after all the space station decision was now secured, and manned spaceflight with it.
He felt a brief surge of emotion as he passed the space center gate. The meeting was a two-hour affair, after that he would return Washington and eventually, his home. On the way back he passed near his old office, full of memories. Marylin Bockting was gone, but he was pleased to meet Judy Wyatt, and to discuss James Bond movies with her. She knew he was a notable fan of 007.
In fact, Judy Wyatt thought, this is the only thing I really know about that enigmatic man. Who are you, George Low ? noone knew.
Noone knew that George Low, as a teenager, had fled from Austria with its parents; they were jews, and the nazis were on their heels. But a man like Von Braun – an aristocratic German – had actually been a member of the nazi party, although certainly not by conviction. Did Low resented that ? Noone knew.
George Low waved Wyatt goodbye, and went to the stairs, and suddendly at the last degree he felt the fatigue, like an enormous weight falling on him.
His legs betrayed him without a warning.
He missed the last step, and fell heavily.
For a fraction of second everything seemed to go still; memories from his parents, his youth in Austria, the flee away from the nazis, his wife, NACA, NASA, Kennedy, Apollo, the Fire, Joe Shea, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, Borman, Lovell and Anders... all flashed, vanished, and gone within that fraction of second. A pragmatic to the very end, all he could do was to wrap his arms around his head, if only to minimize the force of the impact with that solid ground that rushed toward his eyes...
As he lost consciouness everything turned black
Last edited:
Archibald
Banned
I have a personal grudge against cancer (the bastard illness claimed a family member years ago), and George Low actually died of it in 1984. Then one of the much-touted NASA spinoff is cancer research in zero-G through cell growth studies. So how about NASA helping cancer research through a space national laboratory ?
1972: NASA hell of a year (19)
Archibald
Banned
Asnys, Delta Force - this one is for you !
"The year 1972 was hectic; it marked a rocky transition from Apollo to an undefined future. After losing every piece of the Space Task Group plan - Mars, the Moon and the space station - we thought the space shuttle was to be the next big program; but it was shot down by the Bureau of Budget.
At the start of the year 1972 there was a real threat manned spaceflight would stop after Skylab or an eventual joint flight with the Soviets. Fortunately my veteran deputy George Low come with a Plan B: a capsule, a space station, and a small space tug.
From February we struggled to expand that baseline we called the Manned Spaceflight Package, or MSP. But things were not carved in stone, and behind the scenes we examined many options as varied as a return of Saturn V to production status; a lunar orbit station; and even a nuclear space tug.
The latter, however, literally blew in our faces. We already knew, God forbid, the growing opposition to nuclear power by environmentalists. Still, I noted that the 17 years old NERVA had a very strong political coalition behind it in Congress. I did my best trying to siphon that political support into the space station program; but my lobby nearly backfired disastrously.
It happened that the nuclear space tug was briefly discussed at lower levels, notably the vague idea of sending a prototype NERVA in orbit atop a Titan III. I later tried to track the roots of that idea, and found it originated at Marshall.
Rees had realized he had made a major blunder. He had forgotten the existence of the last two Saturn IB , vehicles -215 and -216. These rockets lacked any S-IVB second stage which had never been build. Rees decided to keep his mistake under wraps from NASA Headquarters; only Marshall would know, and plans were made to use the two clusters. Rees had two interesting proposals. First was to use the two rockets as the first step toward a second generation of Saturn IB. The old J-2 would be replaced by a high performance XLR-129. Rees however briefly mentionned the use a scaled-down NERVA as a nuclear second stage. That was called RIFT – Reactor In Flight Test, a 1962 project.
The RIFT was tied to a long range plan by Rees, who had formed the vision of a lunar roundtrip by a nuclear shuttle - perhaps after watching Kubrick 2001 ?
A NERVA tug would be launched to Skylab orbit and pick a crew there. Then it would fly into lunar orbit and drop a Lunar Module to the surface. After the crew returned the nuclear tug would fly back to Earth orbit - to Skylab. Remaining Apollo missions would be flown once a year until 1976, when the nuclear tug would be ready.
Unfortunately the mention of RIFT somewhat leaked in the press, which immediately titled in capital letters NASA TO TEST NUCLEAR REACTOR IN SPACE.
Unfortunately that vague plan somewhat leaked in the press, which immediately titled in capital letters NASA TO TEST NUCLEAR REACTOR IN SPACE.
Amazingly it seems that someone had its Huntsville wrong - Huntsville, Tennessee (the home of Senator Howard Baker, not too far away from the Oak Ridge nuclear laboratory) and Hunstville, Alabama (where Marshall stands) two cities that are 200 miles apart !
Needless to say, the day after were pickets of excited environmentalists protesting at The Cape, in Houston, at Headquarters in Washington.
Ralf Nader of course was among them, and that could be devastating... it took weeks to clear that mess. It was one hell of mediatic storm !"
(excerpt from The space station: a personal journey by James Beggs, 1985)
"And indeed the year 1972 was hectic; I'd never lived something like this before, and it never happened to me again. The shuttle had been killed, and replaced by the so-called Manned Spaceflight Package.
Yet Fletcher, his successor Beggs and I were caught amid a titanic struggle.
Let's try to put things into perspective.
The struggle opposed the Grand Tour to NERVA, each with their entrenched supporters, with manned spaceflight in the balance.
The cost of the unnecessary nuclear rocket essentially prevented funding of Grand Tour. Bluntly, we no longer had interest in NERVA, unfortunately we couldn't cancell that program because of Senator Clinton Anderson power and vested interests.
If we tried to defund NERVA and transfer the money to the Grand Tour, then Clinton Anderson would avenge by killing manned spaceflight ! We had to find a solution to placate the damn Senator. Here, a little examination of what was the Grand Tour is necessary.
The Grand Tour probes were to reach as far as Pluto, unfortunately there were doubts that they could last past Saturn and past ten year of life. The planetary scientists felt a massive computer was necessary, and that was called the TOPS. TOPS was extremely expensive, but without it, the probes would died after Saturn. At least that was the general opinion at the time - JPL excellence largely proved it wrong. But at the time we could not guess the Voyagers could live that long (although I feel some guys at JPL already knew how to build a long lasting probe without a TOPS computer).
The solution imagined by Fletcher and that I explained to Beggs was to cancell TOPS, which meant killing Grand Tour since the probes theorically would not live past Saturn - unless they flew much faster, reaching Neptune or Pluto within their ten year life - read, before the non-TOPS computer died of exhaustion.
And how do you cut transit times ? with a much powerful rocket. Which, incidentally, was just what Clinton Anderson NERVA was.
So the bargain was that we essentially obtained half of the Grand Tour immediately - Mariner probes to Jupiter and Saturn, later known as Voyager.
As for the second half, similar short-lived Mariners would reach Uranus and beyond in time thanks to Clinton Anderson much faster nuclear rocket. Of course, as I mentionned before, the JPL guys did in fact build the Mariner strong enough so they survived past Saturn and ultimately accomplished Grand Tour objective without the nuclear rocket.
Was Anderson furious when he discovered that dirty trick, that we had fooled him ? Perhaps, but it ultimately did not mattered much. Because of ill health Anderson retired in 1973, while Voyager did not reached Saturn (revealing our trick!) before 1981. It was way too late for our beloved Senator to enact its vengence.
Still, we had another near miss. As I was on leave, struggling with skin cancer, Beggs went too far with the small nuke, with the second half of Grand Tour if you prefers. Vague rumours that we might test it on a Titan III leaked into the press, leading to a media firestorm against us. Beggs barely saved his head, and that was the final nail in the nuclear engine coffin..."
Excerpt from: Fifty years on the space frontier - by George M. Low, 1998
He painfully awoke, feeling as weak as a newborn. He had a bandaged leg, and an arm also, although he reassured himself thinking his writting hand was functionnal. It was fortunate, since his mind was already racing, as usual: at least he could translate his thinking into memos, as he had always done.
He was surprised to see a familiar face beside the bed - astronaut Joe Allen. "Joe ?" his voice was weak, damn it. "What happened ?"
"Hello, George. You just burned yourself at work so that someday I could enjoy the confort of a space laboratory up there, in orbit... you pushed too hard, and your body just said a definite no".
"What's this place ?"
"I can't tell you, but there come the doctor. Take care of him, doc. He is a good man." Joe Allen got out of the room.
"doctor, where am I ?" Low tone was blunt.
"You are at the M.D Anderson clinic."
Anderson ?
"So that's not only a matter of exhaustion or broken bones."
The doctor sighed. He couldn't hide anything to that guy. He was thinking faster than him, damn it. "No, it is not just that. You guessed, it is matter of cancer."
"What cancer ?"
"We found a melanoma. A skin cancer. The good news is that it is at an early stage of his development, making your chance of survival rather good. Depends from the tumour thickness, you see; the deeper the worse, and of course it get worse with time."
It took George Low little time to digest the new. Then he overcome it, and started making arrangements to continue his job as much as he could, even from his hospital bed. He had to stay in touch there was no question about that
And then, on the nuclear front... the old Atomic Energy Commission is crumbling.
“In response to the dramatic increase in reactor sizes, the Atomic Energy Commission had mandated the additional installation of the so-called emergency core cooling system (ECCS). The ECCS was to reflood the reactor core if the primary cooling was interrupted. Its failing would have disastrous consequences: the core could overheat and melt through the reactor vessel, and the resulting high pressure could burst the containment walls and release large amounts of radioactivity. As concerned Atomic Energy Commission reactor safety experts leaked to the press in 1971, all previous experiments on ECCS had failed.
At the same time, the Union of Concerned Scientists had begun to study the ECCS issue in the context of an individual licensing intervention. Becoming aware of an internal AEC controversy, Union of Concerned Scientists activists arranged informal meetings with Atomic Energy Commission scientists and internal critics at various nuclear research laboratories around the country, "under often adventurous circumstances," as UCS Daniel Ford later reported.
The UCS issued two major reports in 1971, which evaluated the implications of the test failures and particularly attacked the computer simulation methods employed by AEC researchers. Based on these revelations, the UCS demanded a "total halt to the issuance of operating licenses for nuclear power reactors under construction, until safeguards of assured performance can be provided."
Aimed at a wide lay audience, the studies stirred considerable attention, including CBS and NBC evening news reports.
The Atomic Energy Commission tried to contain the mounting controversy by holding generic rule-making hearings. Scheduled to last six weeks, they dragged on for more than a year, revealing dramatic disagreements among the government's own nuclear experts.
The Freedom of Information Act of 1971 forced the AEC to release a continual stream of staff memos and communications with its research laboratories that raised serious questions about reactor safety. It became evident that the Atomic Energy Commission had censored and suppressed the critical findings of its own reactor experts. Many of them openly attacked the Atomic bureaucracy during testimony, often at the cost of losing their jobs.
In a letter to Hans Bethe, Nobel laureate professor at Cornell University, and former director of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory's Theoretical Division, Oak Ridge Director Alvin Weinberg pointed out that emergency cooling systems provided a final defense against melting of fuel in the case of a loss-of-coolant accident in the largest light-water nuclear reactors. "And it makes me all the more unhappy," Weinberg concluded, "that certain quarters in the AEC have refused to take it seriously until forced by intervenors who are often intent on destroying nuclear energy!"
The ECCS hearings became a serious public relations debacle for the Atomic commission. As the industry newsletter Nucleonics Week observed, the hearings "opened up a Pandora's Box of scientific doubts and bureaucratic heavy-handedness."
The battered AEC never recovered from the ECCS disaster, and the atomic commission was dissolved in 1974.
Most importantly for the nascent movement, consumer advocate Ralph Nader became attentive to the nuclear issue. His intervention would switch the antinuclear crusade to high gear.
"The year 1972 was hectic; it marked a rocky transition from Apollo to an undefined future. After losing every piece of the Space Task Group plan - Mars, the Moon and the space station - we thought the space shuttle was to be the next big program; but it was shot down by the Bureau of Budget.
At the start of the year 1972 there was a real threat manned spaceflight would stop after Skylab or an eventual joint flight with the Soviets. Fortunately my veteran deputy George Low come with a Plan B: a capsule, a space station, and a small space tug.
From February we struggled to expand that baseline we called the Manned Spaceflight Package, or MSP. But things were not carved in stone, and behind the scenes we examined many options as varied as a return of Saturn V to production status; a lunar orbit station; and even a nuclear space tug.
The latter, however, literally blew in our faces. We already knew, God forbid, the growing opposition to nuclear power by environmentalists. Still, I noted that the 17 years old NERVA had a very strong political coalition behind it in Congress. I did my best trying to siphon that political support into the space station program; but my lobby nearly backfired disastrously.
It happened that the nuclear space tug was briefly discussed at lower levels, notably the vague idea of sending a prototype NERVA in orbit atop a Titan III. I later tried to track the roots of that idea, and found it originated at Marshall.
Rees had realized he had made a major blunder. He had forgotten the existence of the last two Saturn IB , vehicles -215 and -216. These rockets lacked any S-IVB second stage which had never been build. Rees decided to keep his mistake under wraps from NASA Headquarters; only Marshall would know, and plans were made to use the two clusters. Rees had two interesting proposals. First was to use the two rockets as the first step toward a second generation of Saturn IB. The old J-2 would be replaced by a high performance XLR-129. Rees however briefly mentionned the use a scaled-down NERVA as a nuclear second stage. That was called RIFT – Reactor In Flight Test, a 1962 project.
The RIFT was tied to a long range plan by Rees, who had formed the vision of a lunar roundtrip by a nuclear shuttle - perhaps after watching Kubrick 2001 ?
A NERVA tug would be launched to Skylab orbit and pick a crew there. Then it would fly into lunar orbit and drop a Lunar Module to the surface. After the crew returned the nuclear tug would fly back to Earth orbit - to Skylab. Remaining Apollo missions would be flown once a year until 1976, when the nuclear tug would be ready.
Unfortunately the mention of RIFT somewhat leaked in the press, which immediately titled in capital letters NASA TO TEST NUCLEAR REACTOR IN SPACE.
Unfortunately that vague plan somewhat leaked in the press, which immediately titled in capital letters NASA TO TEST NUCLEAR REACTOR IN SPACE.
Amazingly it seems that someone had its Huntsville wrong - Huntsville, Tennessee (the home of Senator Howard Baker, not too far away from the Oak Ridge nuclear laboratory) and Hunstville, Alabama (where Marshall stands) two cities that are 200 miles apart !
Needless to say, the day after were pickets of excited environmentalists protesting at The Cape, in Houston, at Headquarters in Washington.
Ralf Nader of course was among them, and that could be devastating... it took weeks to clear that mess. It was one hell of mediatic storm !"
(excerpt from The space station: a personal journey by James Beggs, 1985)
***
"And indeed the year 1972 was hectic; I'd never lived something like this before, and it never happened to me again. The shuttle had been killed, and replaced by the so-called Manned Spaceflight Package.
Yet Fletcher, his successor Beggs and I were caught amid a titanic struggle.
Let's try to put things into perspective.
The struggle opposed the Grand Tour to NERVA, each with their entrenched supporters, with manned spaceflight in the balance.
The cost of the unnecessary nuclear rocket essentially prevented funding of Grand Tour. Bluntly, we no longer had interest in NERVA, unfortunately we couldn't cancell that program because of Senator Clinton Anderson power and vested interests.
If we tried to defund NERVA and transfer the money to the Grand Tour, then Clinton Anderson would avenge by killing manned spaceflight ! We had to find a solution to placate the damn Senator. Here, a little examination of what was the Grand Tour is necessary.
The Grand Tour probes were to reach as far as Pluto, unfortunately there were doubts that they could last past Saturn and past ten year of life. The planetary scientists felt a massive computer was necessary, and that was called the TOPS. TOPS was extremely expensive, but without it, the probes would died after Saturn. At least that was the general opinion at the time - JPL excellence largely proved it wrong. But at the time we could not guess the Voyagers could live that long (although I feel some guys at JPL already knew how to build a long lasting probe without a TOPS computer).
The solution imagined by Fletcher and that I explained to Beggs was to cancell TOPS, which meant killing Grand Tour since the probes theorically would not live past Saturn - unless they flew much faster, reaching Neptune or Pluto within their ten year life - read, before the non-TOPS computer died of exhaustion.
And how do you cut transit times ? with a much powerful rocket. Which, incidentally, was just what Clinton Anderson NERVA was.
So the bargain was that we essentially obtained half of the Grand Tour immediately - Mariner probes to Jupiter and Saturn, later known as Voyager.
As for the second half, similar short-lived Mariners would reach Uranus and beyond in time thanks to Clinton Anderson much faster nuclear rocket. Of course, as I mentionned before, the JPL guys did in fact build the Mariner strong enough so they survived past Saturn and ultimately accomplished Grand Tour objective without the nuclear rocket.
Was Anderson furious when he discovered that dirty trick, that we had fooled him ? Perhaps, but it ultimately did not mattered much. Because of ill health Anderson retired in 1973, while Voyager did not reached Saturn (revealing our trick!) before 1981. It was way too late for our beloved Senator to enact its vengence.
Still, we had another near miss. As I was on leave, struggling with skin cancer, Beggs went too far with the small nuke, with the second half of Grand Tour if you prefers. Vague rumours that we might test it on a Titan III leaked into the press, leading to a media firestorm against us. Beggs barely saved his head, and that was the final nail in the nuclear engine coffin..."
Excerpt from: Fifty years on the space frontier - by George M. Low, 1998
***
He painfully awoke, feeling as weak as a newborn. He had a bandaged leg, and an arm also, although he reassured himself thinking his writting hand was functionnal. It was fortunate, since his mind was already racing, as usual: at least he could translate his thinking into memos, as he had always done.
He was surprised to see a familiar face beside the bed - astronaut Joe Allen. "Joe ?" his voice was weak, damn it. "What happened ?"
"Hello, George. You just burned yourself at work so that someday I could enjoy the confort of a space laboratory up there, in orbit... you pushed too hard, and your body just said a definite no".
"What's this place ?"
"I can't tell you, but there come the doctor. Take care of him, doc. He is a good man." Joe Allen got out of the room.
"doctor, where am I ?" Low tone was blunt.
"You are at the M.D Anderson clinic."
Anderson ?
"So that's not only a matter of exhaustion or broken bones."
The doctor sighed. He couldn't hide anything to that guy. He was thinking faster than him, damn it. "No, it is not just that. You guessed, it is matter of cancer."
"What cancer ?"
"We found a melanoma. A skin cancer. The good news is that it is at an early stage of his development, making your chance of survival rather good. Depends from the tumour thickness, you see; the deeper the worse, and of course it get worse with time."
It took George Low little time to digest the new. Then he overcome it, and started making arrangements to continue his job as much as he could, even from his hospital bed. He had to stay in touch there was no question about that
***
And then, on the nuclear front... the old Atomic Energy Commission is crumbling.
“In response to the dramatic increase in reactor sizes, the Atomic Energy Commission had mandated the additional installation of the so-called emergency core cooling system (ECCS). The ECCS was to reflood the reactor core if the primary cooling was interrupted. Its failing would have disastrous consequences: the core could overheat and melt through the reactor vessel, and the resulting high pressure could burst the containment walls and release large amounts of radioactivity. As concerned Atomic Energy Commission reactor safety experts leaked to the press in 1971, all previous experiments on ECCS had failed.
At the same time, the Union of Concerned Scientists had begun to study the ECCS issue in the context of an individual licensing intervention. Becoming aware of an internal AEC controversy, Union of Concerned Scientists activists arranged informal meetings with Atomic Energy Commission scientists and internal critics at various nuclear research laboratories around the country, "under often adventurous circumstances," as UCS Daniel Ford later reported.
The UCS issued two major reports in 1971, which evaluated the implications of the test failures and particularly attacked the computer simulation methods employed by AEC researchers. Based on these revelations, the UCS demanded a "total halt to the issuance of operating licenses for nuclear power reactors under construction, until safeguards of assured performance can be provided."
Aimed at a wide lay audience, the studies stirred considerable attention, including CBS and NBC evening news reports.
The Atomic Energy Commission tried to contain the mounting controversy by holding generic rule-making hearings. Scheduled to last six weeks, they dragged on for more than a year, revealing dramatic disagreements among the government's own nuclear experts.
The Freedom of Information Act of 1971 forced the AEC to release a continual stream of staff memos and communications with its research laboratories that raised serious questions about reactor safety. It became evident that the Atomic Energy Commission had censored and suppressed the critical findings of its own reactor experts. Many of them openly attacked the Atomic bureaucracy during testimony, often at the cost of losing their jobs.
In a letter to Hans Bethe, Nobel laureate professor at Cornell University, and former director of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory's Theoretical Division, Oak Ridge Director Alvin Weinberg pointed out that emergency cooling systems provided a final defense against melting of fuel in the case of a loss-of-coolant accident in the largest light-water nuclear reactors. "And it makes me all the more unhappy," Weinberg concluded, "that certain quarters in the AEC have refused to take it seriously until forced by intervenors who are often intent on destroying nuclear energy!"
The ECCS hearings became a serious public relations debacle for the Atomic commission. As the industry newsletter Nucleonics Week observed, the hearings "opened up a Pandora's Box of scientific doubts and bureaucratic heavy-handedness."
The battered AEC never recovered from the ECCS disaster, and the atomic commission was dissolved in 1974.
Most importantly for the nascent movement, consumer advocate Ralph Nader became attentive to the nuclear issue. His intervention would switch the antinuclear crusade to high gear.
Last edited:
Delta Force
Banned
Have you seen the JIMO concepts? They are very similar to this, except the space probe itself is nuclear powered.
Also, did the ECCS really have those difficulties with development? I haven't read much on it, but that would definitely be something to mention in the nuclear history paper I'm writing.
Also, did the ECCS really have those difficulties with development? I haven't read much on it, but that would definitely be something to mention in the nuclear history paper I'm writing.
A tug with Ion engine power by Nuclear reactor could do trick, either as Probe (JIMO) or tug with long flight time.
but i afraid that the this concept will have same OTL problems in This TL
Cost for R&D on Reactor and Ion engine are very expensive
especial that needed Ion engine and Reactor in 1970s USA are new ground for NASA and far to ambitious !
The environmentalists would scream murder and mayhem about 200 kWe fission reactor on top of a Titan IIIF.
in contrast the Agena Tug is cheap, easy and flight proven.
1972: NASA hell of a year (20)
Archibald
Banned
enter Alvin Weinberg
"It happened that I was caught amid a perfect storm, a storm started by NASA, an agency I had never worked with.
The space agency had made the unfortunate decision to fly a nuclear reactor in space, to try and seduce the nuclear lobby in Congress.
Unfortunately their bargain somewhat leaked in the press, and then to antinuclear activist Ralph Nader. Needless to say, a force 12 mediatic storm soon engulfed NASA, the AEC and people like Chet Holifield, Howard Cannon and Clinton Anderson.
As much as I disliked Nader opinions, he voiced evident concerns about the safety of flying a nuclear pile above our heads.
What happened was that Nader concerns echoed similar worries I had with ground-based nuclear powerplants; and, against my own will, the storm started to blow in my direction.
Things reached a point when Chet Holifield summoned myself into his office.
He just sat and told me, bluntly
"Alvin, if you are concerned about the safety of reactors, then I think it may be time for you to leave nuclear energy"
I was speechless, and so angry that, at some point I considered having dinner with Ralph Nader, which sister Claire I knew very well (she worked at Oak Ridge).
But Claire told me Ralph was quite buzy blasting NASA at Cape Canaveral.
The day Apollo 16 launched there was a march and protest rally by campaigners at Kennedy, people with kids and hostile banners. The Cape security people kept them well away from the launch site and from the main public viewing areas.
The protests were repeated for Apollo 17 launch in December.
Of course Ralph Nader was there all the time. Shouting and passing anti-NERVA brochures.
“Someday they will be a nuclear runaway above our heads - because NASA space reactors are designed with a positive temperature coefficient.
Just pretend I don’t know what I’m talking you about ? Yeah, It took me a while to figure this stuff out.
Look: suppose the temperature of your core rises. And suppose that the core is designed so that when it heats up, the reactivity drops — that is, the reaction rate automatically falls.
That’s what’s meant by a ‘negative temperature coefficient. In that case you have a negative feedback loop, and your reaction falls off, and the temperature is damped down. It’s kind of self-correcting; the whole thing is stable.
But in the case of NERVA, that coefficient is positive, at least for some of the temperature range.
So when the temperature goes up, the reactivity goes up, too, and the rate of fission increased, leading to a further temperature rise.
And so on, until – KABOOM ! a nuclear inferno orbiting only a hundred kilometer above our heads…”
Nader then passed brochures to the excited crowd. Frightening brochures – Claire send me one.
And here’s what the brochure was telling the reader.
“It is an ordinary day in the nuclear space program, with a NERVA rocket quietly orbiting Earth at a height of two-hundred miles.
The engine is getting started. Liquid hydrogen is gushing out of the big fuel tank and pumping into the cladding of pressure shell and engine bell, and will be reaching the radioactive core about now, where it will be flashed to vapor as hot as the surface of a star.
The core temperature begin to climb, following the curve laid out in the manuals – and no, it doesn’t. The rise is too fast.
Down on the ground the computers work constantly to update the numbers; then, a mismatch in numbers of different vintages, fifteen or thirty seconds old… the NERVA core is overheating.
More hydrogen is brought through the core, that is supposed to take away some of the excess heat.
Still no respons, maybe there is a problem with a hydrogen feed line; or maybe a pump has failed; or maybe it is cavitation, somewhere in the propellant flow cylinders.
Whatever the cause it is already too late, and the core’s temperature continues to rise.
Let’s send a command to the engine’s moderator control to slow the reaction in the NERVA core, reduce the temperature that way.
Still no response. Now the temperature has gotten high enough that the fuel elements have been distorted or even melted, and it would be impossible to insert the control elements into the core.
It now unravels with astonishing speed. Power surge through the overheating core. The resistance to hydrogen flow through the core sharply increase. Bubbles build up everywhere.
The nuclear fuel assemblies are starting to break up. Pressure rise abruptly in the propellant channels, which are also beginning to disintegrate.
The whole structure of the core is now collapsing. The pressure in the reactor begin to rise, at more than fifteen atmospheres a second. And, because of the massive temperatures, chemical and exothermic reactions are starting in the core. The increased pressure inside the reactor backs up to the pumps, and the pumps’ feedback valves burst. With the pumps disabled, the flow of hydrogen through the core stops altogether. Cooling is dead.
The reactor’s main relief valves triggers, venting hydrogen to space. That offers some respite. But the discharge is brief; unable to cope with the enormous pressures and flow rate, the valves themselves are soon destroyed.
And then the massive pressure starts working on the structure of the pressure shell itself. The reactor control has been lost, and it is now melting away… then a big hydrogen explosion ruptures the pressure shell.
Now is an out-of-control glowing radioactive core that has to be abandoned in orbit !”
I never knew how on hell Nader imagined such scenario, which was rather sci-fi that realistic. Still he had at least something right: the temperature coefficient thing. And that brought me once again to the Molten Salt Reactor, which had a hugelely negative temperature coefficient. In no way could it melt... hell, perhaps NASA should rebuild his NERVA as a Molten Salt Reactor. After all, early on my favourite reactor had had an aerospace background, being invented for the infamous nuclear-powered bomber...
Whatever, as of spring 1972 Claire Nader repeatedly told me her brother was too buzzy organizing the protest rallies at the Cape - he was definitively not available to me. Neither was he over the next weeks, until a disgusted space agency ultimately dropped any talk about a NERVA orbital test. Nader just had not a single minute to give me, and much less an evening.
With perfect hindsight, that was fortunate.
Nader extremism was, and still is distasteful, its attacks on nuclear energy being, in my own opinion, irresponsible. Incidentally, he was no better attacking NASA, which he presented as a bunch of morons flying flawed nuclear piles above our heads. My reputation would certainly have been damaged !
With or without Nader, however, it was clear that I was out of tune with the power within the Atomic Energy Commission such as Holifield and Hyman Rickover protégé Milton Shaw.
I had an example in my mind: that of poor Karl Ziegler Morgan, the chief of Oak Ridge health division. He had resigned in anger the year before, when he had expressed aloud negative feelings about nuclear safety - the same feelings I felt. I was torn as much as he had probably been.
Yet I kept my anger inside and, as time passed, it happened it was the right thing to do. I saved my head and stuck as Oak Ridge director until retirement age - 65, in 1980. I in fact retired slightly before that date, in 1979.
Instead of going to the Naders (Claire or Ralph), I confessed my anger to a good friend – Senator Howard Baker.
I had become friendly with Baker, the junior senator from Tennessee. He lived in Huntsville about fifty miles from Oak Ridge, and would visit the laboratory often. I enjoyed talking to him about our work, especially since he had a good layman's grasp of science and engineering - he had studied engineering before becoming a lawyer.)
Baker, too, had hard times with the atomic lobby – but in Congress, not with the Atomic Energy Commission.
Baker had just joined the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE) and suffered a little against veterans like Clinton Anderson and Holifield.
At one of our Huntsville meeting he told me
"You see, Chet Holifield has set a good example for me, or bad, depending on the outcome, but his tenacity in seeing that liquid metal reactor becomes a reality has affected me. I am trying to emulate his example for the molten salt breeder, which might prove or disprove its feasibility."
I just approved that point of view.
Baker also told me about his difficult relations with Rickover.
"You have done a good bit of work on the breeder concept." he had told the admiral, to which the later replied "We are working on a light water breeder. Your favorite lab [Oak Ridge] is working on a molten salt type." an outrageous answer.
Baker was left to answer "Not my favorite. It is the only one I know anything about. This is a material distinction that I intend to supply one day."
He had felt humiliated. He told me funding for the Molten Salt Reactor was going to be cut in 1973, and that he would fought that decision to the very end but had little clout. He also told me to stay quiet, because he would need my services more than ever.
Well, he proved to be right.
Only weeks after my summoning by Holified things started to change at an accelerated pace.
The fire NASA had lit reached such proportions that it eventually accelerated the dismantling of the old Atomic Energy Commission by newcomers like Dixie Lee Ray.
As of 1973 the AEC was agonizing and, to the surprise of many, my old foe Milton Shaw was sacked by Ray. Meanwhile I went into a kind of stealth mode, waiting for the end of the storm.
When it finally stopped, I was still the happy director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory... until my retirement in 1980, aged 65."
(from: The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer - Alvin Weinberg)
"It happened that I was caught amid a perfect storm, a storm started by NASA, an agency I had never worked with.
The space agency had made the unfortunate decision to fly a nuclear reactor in space, to try and seduce the nuclear lobby in Congress.
Unfortunately their bargain somewhat leaked in the press, and then to antinuclear activist Ralph Nader. Needless to say, a force 12 mediatic storm soon engulfed NASA, the AEC and people like Chet Holifield, Howard Cannon and Clinton Anderson.
As much as I disliked Nader opinions, he voiced evident concerns about the safety of flying a nuclear pile above our heads.
What happened was that Nader concerns echoed similar worries I had with ground-based nuclear powerplants; and, against my own will, the storm started to blow in my direction.
Things reached a point when Chet Holifield summoned myself into his office.
He just sat and told me, bluntly
"Alvin, if you are concerned about the safety of reactors, then I think it may be time for you to leave nuclear energy"
I was speechless, and so angry that, at some point I considered having dinner with Ralph Nader, which sister Claire I knew very well (she worked at Oak Ridge).
But Claire told me Ralph was quite buzy blasting NASA at Cape Canaveral.
The day Apollo 16 launched there was a march and protest rally by campaigners at Kennedy, people with kids and hostile banners. The Cape security people kept them well away from the launch site and from the main public viewing areas.
The protests were repeated for Apollo 17 launch in December.
Of course Ralph Nader was there all the time. Shouting and passing anti-NERVA brochures.
“Someday they will be a nuclear runaway above our heads - because NASA space reactors are designed with a positive temperature coefficient.
Just pretend I don’t know what I’m talking you about ? Yeah, It took me a while to figure this stuff out.
Look: suppose the temperature of your core rises. And suppose that the core is designed so that when it heats up, the reactivity drops — that is, the reaction rate automatically falls.
That’s what’s meant by a ‘negative temperature coefficient. In that case you have a negative feedback loop, and your reaction falls off, and the temperature is damped down. It’s kind of self-correcting; the whole thing is stable.
But in the case of NERVA, that coefficient is positive, at least for some of the temperature range.
So when the temperature goes up, the reactivity goes up, too, and the rate of fission increased, leading to a further temperature rise.
And so on, until – KABOOM ! a nuclear inferno orbiting only a hundred kilometer above our heads…”
Nader then passed brochures to the excited crowd. Frightening brochures – Claire send me one.
And here’s what the brochure was telling the reader.
“It is an ordinary day in the nuclear space program, with a NERVA rocket quietly orbiting Earth at a height of two-hundred miles.
The engine is getting started. Liquid hydrogen is gushing out of the big fuel tank and pumping into the cladding of pressure shell and engine bell, and will be reaching the radioactive core about now, where it will be flashed to vapor as hot as the surface of a star.
The core temperature begin to climb, following the curve laid out in the manuals – and no, it doesn’t. The rise is too fast.
Down on the ground the computers work constantly to update the numbers; then, a mismatch in numbers of different vintages, fifteen or thirty seconds old… the NERVA core is overheating.
More hydrogen is brought through the core, that is supposed to take away some of the excess heat.
Still no respons, maybe there is a problem with a hydrogen feed line; or maybe a pump has failed; or maybe it is cavitation, somewhere in the propellant flow cylinders.
Whatever the cause it is already too late, and the core’s temperature continues to rise.
Let’s send a command to the engine’s moderator control to slow the reaction in the NERVA core, reduce the temperature that way.
Still no response. Now the temperature has gotten high enough that the fuel elements have been distorted or even melted, and it would be impossible to insert the control elements into the core.
It now unravels with astonishing speed. Power surge through the overheating core. The resistance to hydrogen flow through the core sharply increase. Bubbles build up everywhere.
The nuclear fuel assemblies are starting to break up. Pressure rise abruptly in the propellant channels, which are also beginning to disintegrate.
The whole structure of the core is now collapsing. The pressure in the reactor begin to rise, at more than fifteen atmospheres a second. And, because of the massive temperatures, chemical and exothermic reactions are starting in the core. The increased pressure inside the reactor backs up to the pumps, and the pumps’ feedback valves burst. With the pumps disabled, the flow of hydrogen through the core stops altogether. Cooling is dead.
The reactor’s main relief valves triggers, venting hydrogen to space. That offers some respite. But the discharge is brief; unable to cope with the enormous pressures and flow rate, the valves themselves are soon destroyed.
And then the massive pressure starts working on the structure of the pressure shell itself. The reactor control has been lost, and it is now melting away… then a big hydrogen explosion ruptures the pressure shell.
Now is an out-of-control glowing radioactive core that has to be abandoned in orbit !”
I never knew how on hell Nader imagined such scenario, which was rather sci-fi that realistic. Still he had at least something right: the temperature coefficient thing. And that brought me once again to the Molten Salt Reactor, which had a hugelely negative temperature coefficient. In no way could it melt... hell, perhaps NASA should rebuild his NERVA as a Molten Salt Reactor. After all, early on my favourite reactor had had an aerospace background, being invented for the infamous nuclear-powered bomber...
Whatever, as of spring 1972 Claire Nader repeatedly told me her brother was too buzzy organizing the protest rallies at the Cape - he was definitively not available to me. Neither was he over the next weeks, until a disgusted space agency ultimately dropped any talk about a NERVA orbital test. Nader just had not a single minute to give me, and much less an evening.
With perfect hindsight, that was fortunate.
Nader extremism was, and still is distasteful, its attacks on nuclear energy being, in my own opinion, irresponsible. Incidentally, he was no better attacking NASA, which he presented as a bunch of morons flying flawed nuclear piles above our heads. My reputation would certainly have been damaged !
With or without Nader, however, it was clear that I was out of tune with the power within the Atomic Energy Commission such as Holifield and Hyman Rickover protégé Milton Shaw.
I had an example in my mind: that of poor Karl Ziegler Morgan, the chief of Oak Ridge health division. He had resigned in anger the year before, when he had expressed aloud negative feelings about nuclear safety - the same feelings I felt. I was torn as much as he had probably been.
Yet I kept my anger inside and, as time passed, it happened it was the right thing to do. I saved my head and stuck as Oak Ridge director until retirement age - 65, in 1980. I in fact retired slightly before that date, in 1979.
Instead of going to the Naders (Claire or Ralph), I confessed my anger to a good friend – Senator Howard Baker.
I had become friendly with Baker, the junior senator from Tennessee. He lived in Huntsville about fifty miles from Oak Ridge, and would visit the laboratory often. I enjoyed talking to him about our work, especially since he had a good layman's grasp of science and engineering - he had studied engineering before becoming a lawyer.)
Baker, too, had hard times with the atomic lobby – but in Congress, not with the Atomic Energy Commission.
Baker had just joined the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE) and suffered a little against veterans like Clinton Anderson and Holifield.
At one of our Huntsville meeting he told me
"You see, Chet Holifield has set a good example for me, or bad, depending on the outcome, but his tenacity in seeing that liquid metal reactor becomes a reality has affected me. I am trying to emulate his example for the molten salt breeder, which might prove or disprove its feasibility."
I just approved that point of view.
Baker also told me about his difficult relations with Rickover.
"You have done a good bit of work on the breeder concept." he had told the admiral, to which the later replied "We are working on a light water breeder. Your favorite lab [Oak Ridge] is working on a molten salt type." an outrageous answer.
Baker was left to answer "Not my favorite. It is the only one I know anything about. This is a material distinction that I intend to supply one day."
He had felt humiliated. He told me funding for the Molten Salt Reactor was going to be cut in 1973, and that he would fought that decision to the very end but had little clout. He also told me to stay quiet, because he would need my services more than ever.
Well, he proved to be right.
Only weeks after my summoning by Holified things started to change at an accelerated pace.
The fire NASA had lit reached such proportions that it eventually accelerated the dismantling of the old Atomic Energy Commission by newcomers like Dixie Lee Ray.
As of 1973 the AEC was agonizing and, to the surprise of many, my old foe Milton Shaw was sacked by Ray. Meanwhile I went into a kind of stealth mode, waiting for the end of the storm.
When it finally stopped, I was still the happy director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory... until my retirement in 1980, aged 65."
(from: The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer - Alvin Weinberg)
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Hilliarus this Ralph Nader brochure
He not understand the schematic of NERVA engine, that more of pressurized-water reactor he gabble about.
just scare tactics for mobilize the masses against it
The NERVA positive coefficient is real
Los Alamos work on that problem on several levels, i thing they had bring it under control until Reactor In Flight Test (RIFT)
NERVA is a hard case, if the problems are solve, you get a hell of workhorse in space, that carry big loads to Moon and true the solar system!
for prize that crew has to fly inside a Radiation bunker....
He not understand the schematic of NERVA engine, that more of pressurized-water reactor he gabble about.
just scare tactics for mobilize the masses against it
The NERVA positive coefficient is real
Los Alamos work on that problem on several levels, i thing they had bring it under control until Reactor In Flight Test (RIFT)
NERVA is a hard case, if the problems are solve, you get a hell of workhorse in space, that carry big loads to Moon and true the solar system!
for prize that crew has to fly inside a Radiation bunker....
I forget to say that my TL is more or less an utopia - the space program for the good of mankind.
There are too much dystopias on this forum.
I second that
Some time to much darkness or cruelties in this Forum...
Nader never really (apparently) felt the need to "understand" the actual working of just about anything he was against
Similarly Baxter's understanding is less than I would have expected of him. Neither "accident" is plausible even with the positive coefficient, which was a "feature" not a bug BTW as one can point to several runs where the core temperature actually exceeded the structural limitations of the materials and the core remained basically intact. The temperature however warped the elements enough to slow the chain reaction which was the main point of the positive coefficient Of course since there are no actual "control rods" (he got that from commercial reactors) but surrounding control drums which didn't require actually being IN the reactor but around it so that they were unaffected by the heating, but then how would he (and Baxter) get their accidents? Considering how much serious engineering and design work had to go into making a reactor, it wasn't actually a NERVA engine anymore despite being called one (Kiwi-TNT), actually explode you would think that it should be pretty easy to "sell" their safety. But that was in a good part due to the entire confidential nature of nuclear anything really. On the other hand the entire exercise of having a "nuclear rocket engine" explode on the pad was directed by the fact that CHEMICAL rockets exploded all the time so the thinking was what if that happens with YOUR rocket engine? Engineers of various types can be very myopic about certain things and stubborn when they don't understand why it can't happen in other disciplines
Radiation was also not as much of an issue as most think, you just need to ensure that the crew is adequately protected from direct line-of-sight exposure. So a absorbent plate "shadow shield" and keeping the main propellant tank between the crew and the reactor was plenty of protection.
See: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/radiation.php
Randy
Canada in space (1)
Archibald
Banned
back into business
Oh, Canada...
In 1969, Canada was invited by the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to participate in the Space Shuttle program. At the time what that participation would entail had not yet been decided but a manipulator system was identified as an important component.
A little-known, small canadian company, DSMA Atcon had developed a robot that attracted NASA's attention. DSMA Atcon had a deep involvement in the CANDU nuclear program, having designed, built and tested the remote control fuelling machines for the original CANDU reactors. "Atcon" stood for "Advanced Technology consultants".
In 1970 Lloyd Secord, CEO of DSMA Atcon approached NASA looking for work on another project which did not eventuate. Because of the DSMA Atcon experience with remote manipulators the remote arm for the shuttle came up in conversation.
NASA was interested in outsourcing the arm but only to a "national" level entity. Lloyd took this back to Canada where a consortium of 4 companies was formed to make the bid.
There was a history between DSMA and SPAR as competitors in the nuclear engineering. Because of the "national" requirement the Canadian government had to be involved.
Politics and concern that DSMA Atcon was too small lead to a decision that SPAR would have the lead role.
The relationship between DSMA and SPAR was somewhat strained because of this. Also, the problem of how to grab a spinning satellite had to be resolved. DSMA Atcon designed a lot of the testing equipment for qualifying the arm. This was a difficult problem as the arm was too light and flexible to operate under full Earth gravity.
A solution was proposed to support the arm on air bearings and test it in the horizontal plane normal to the gravitational effect. But it would take a large facility with a very smooth floor for the air bearings and testing of the arm joints.
NASA, of course, had a solution.
Far from Canada icy temperatures – in very hot Houston, Texas - Caldwell Johnson proposed that astronauts test prototype Space Shuttle manipulators during Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) missions in Earth orbit.
(from there - inspiration taken from David Portree blog Beyond Apollo)
Caldwell was co-holder with Maxime Faget of the Mercury capsule patent and chief of the Spacecraft Design Division at NASA’s Houston.
In a February 1971 memorandum to Faget Johnson described the manipulator test mission as a worthwhile alternative to the Earth survey, space rescue, and joint US/Soviet CSM missions then under study.
Johnson envisioned Shuttle manipulators capable of bending and gripping much as do human arms and hands, thus enabling them to hold onto virtually anything. He suggested that a pair of prototype arms be mounted in a CSM Scientific Instrument Module (SIM) Bay, and that the CSM “pretend to be a Shuttle” in operations with the derelict Skylab space station.
The CSM’s three-man crew could, he told Faget, use the manipulators to grip and move Skylab. They might also use them to demonstrate a space rescue, capture an “errant satellite,” or remove film from SIM Bay cameras and pass it to the astronauts through a special airlock installed in place of the docking unit in the CSM’s nose.
Faget enthusiastically received Johnson’s proposal. The proposal generated less enthusiasm elsewhere, however.
After the shuttle cancellation the robotic arm was transferred to the new space station.
In spring 1972 as the space station slowly took shape Caldwell Johnson renewed his pledge for testing of the robotic arm during the Apollo Soyuz Test Program flight in July 1975.
The robotic manipulator demonstration would take place after CSM-111 had undocked from the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft and moved away to perform independent maneuvers and experiments.
The astronauts in the CSM would first use a TV camera mounted on the arm’s wrist to inspect the CSM and DM, then would use the end effector to manipulate “some device” on the DM. They would then command the end effector to grip a handle on the DM, undock the DM from the CSM, and use the manipulator to redock the DM to the CSM. Finally, they would undock the DM and repeatedly capture it with the manipulator.
Johnson estimated that new hardware for the manipulator demonstration would add 168 pounds to the CM and 553 pounds to the SM. He expected that concept studies and pre-design would be completed in January 1973.Detail design would commence in October 1972 and be completed by July 1, 1973, at which time CSM-111 would undergo modification for the manipulator demonstration. Johnson envisioned that MSC would build two manipulators in house. The first, for testing and training, would be completed in January 1974. The flight unit would be completed in May 1974, tested and checked out by August 1974, and launched into orbit attached to CSM-111 in July 1975. Johnson optimistically placed the cost of the manipulator arm demonstration at just $25 million.
That's the moment when Canada entered the arena. An agreement was found with NASA to build the robotic arm in Canada. There was some issues with testing the arm under Earth 1-G – against the 0-G background.
As Caldwell initially suggested, Skylab would make an excellent target. Another issue was, what spacecraft to ferry the arm near Skylab ?
In the summer of 1972 Apollo-Soyuz was ruled out.
Competition was between unmanned Agena and manned Big Gemini.
The risk with the battered workshop however reduced the Big Gemini mission to a fly around without any connection, a mission that happened in 1977.
Instead an Agena would use the Canadarm to grapple the old workshop and dock to its front port so that it could be properly desorbited.
Then the issue of the launch vehicle was also heavily discussed. Many rockets did carried Agena as their upper stage. But how about a rocket from Canada ?
For two decades Canadair had build thousands of combat aircrafts for the RCAF - T-33, F-86, F-104, and F-5 American jets assembled under licence. The last CF-5 Tiger had rolled out of the production line in September 1971, marking the end of an era, and much like De Havilland Canada, the company was in trouble.
The popular CL-215 water bomber was only a niche, unable to secure the future of the company. The situation was so bad that DHC and Canadair foreign owners (British and American, respectively) were on the brink to jettison the companies. The situation was so bad that the Canadian government, remembering the Arrow debacle of 1959, had to buy both companies in 1973, saving thousands of high-skilled jobs.
(…)
When Europe dropped Europa II they also ditched the Blue Streak.
General Dynamics / Convair considered the Blue Streak as Atlas little brother – they had transferred Atlas technology to De Havilland back in 1956.
In 1972 General Dynamics bought back the Blue Streak from the moribund ELDO at a bargain price.
They bought the F12 vehicle that had already been shipped to Kourou. Boosters F13 to F18 were at varied stages of fabrication, and General Dynamics obtained them all at a bargain price.
They then proposed two variants, each to a different country.
To Europe they proposed a Blue Streak – Centaur, to no avail.
To Canada they proposed a Blue Streak Agena, with limited success, at least initially.
It happened that Canadair was a filial of GD-Convair since 1952. Canadian Blue Streak could be build under licence. With or without the Canadian government GD would market the Blue Streak Agena as a low-cost competitor to Thorad, Delta, and Titan IIIB.
That's the moment when a man called John Herbert Chapman stepped in.
...
On September 29, 1962 the Canadian-built Alouette I satellite was launched into orbit aboard a Thor-Agena launch vehicle from the U.S. Pacific Missile Test Range in California. It was the first satellite launched into space which was built entirely by a country other that the U.S. or the U.S.S.R.
The Alouette/ISIS Program consisted of four satellites and associated ground-based data analysis equipment. After the successful launch of Alouette I, Alouette II was launched in 1965, ISIS-I in 1969 and ISIS-II in 1971 (ISIS is an acronym for "International Satellite for Ionospheric Studies").
Both Alouette satellites were used for ten years, and the ISIS satellites were used until 1984, when the program was concluded.
Early in the history of space exploration, Canadian researchers in space science concentrated on the study of the earth's upper atmosphere and the ionosphere. This was due to the need to understand the characteristics of radio communication in the Canadian North. This area of study was not as predominant a component of the space science effort of other countries and therefore the Alouette/ISIS Program was able to make a major and unique contribution.
This effort led to the realization that a satellite communications system would be the best way to provide a communications infrastructure for all of Canada, including the North.
A very concrete result of this was the launch by NASA for Telesat Canada of Anik A1, a telecommunications satellite designed to satisfy Canada's domestic communications requirements
John Herbert Chapman was convinced of the need to develop the capability to design and build space hardware in Canadian industry and to move away from the practice of relying solely on the expertise of the government laboratories. As a result, Alouette II and the ISIS satellites were built, with steadily increasing participation by Canadian industry.
TELECOMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES
In 1967, a report was produced by a committee chaired by John Chapman, which recommended a redirection of Canada's effort in space from space science and toward telecommunications and land survey. The culmination of this was the launch in 1972 of Anik A1.
With the successful placement of this satellite on station, approximately 36,000 km above the equator, Canada became the first country to have a domestic geostationary communications satellite system. The Anik A series of satellites was built by Hughes Aircraft Corporation of the United States.
In 1972, in the wake of the American space shuttle cancellation the visionary Chapman manage to sold a “space package” to the Trudeau government.
It consisted of the Anik A and B communication satellites; ISIS sensors on a new platform (either an Agena or the American space station); the Agena space tug carrying the Canadarm; and the Blue Streak launch vehicle, the latter two build by Canadair under a licence from Convair and Lockheed.
In 1972 General Dynamics Convair retrieved the British Blue Streak rocket from the ruin of the Europa program. Since the early 50's General Dynamics owned part of Canadair, and Chapman saw an opportunity.
General Dynamics atempt to sell the Blue Streak on the U.S launch market were doomed from the beginning – even as a little brother to Convair's Atlas it faced the Delta and Titan IIIB vehicles.
Chapman went to General Dynamic headquarters and proposed the Blue Streak should be build by Canadair in Valquartier.
Chapman real stroke of genius was the integration of the Agena ontop of the Blue Streak. Chapman arguments was that the Blue Streak Agena was powerful enough to launch the Anik communication satellites; and, as a space tug the Agena would fly canadian payloads to NASA coming space station. The Agena would be outfitted with the Canadarm, another major Canadian program. The Agena would use the Canadarm to grab a space station and haul itself to docking.
The astute Chapman suggested to reuse sensors from the ISIS satellite ( ISIS stands for International Satellite for Ionospheric Studies). The ISIS sensors could be carried by either a fly alone Agena or, more interestingly, be integrated into the U.S space station science package. Chapman noted that, from its vantage point 200 miles high the space station was well placed to study the iniosphere three layers.
The D layer is the innermost layer, 60 km (37 mi) to 90 km (56 mi) above the surface of the Earth. The E layer is the middle layer, 90 km (56 mi) to 150 km (93 mi) above the surface of the Earth. The F layer or region, also known as the Appleton-Barnett layer, extends from about 150 km (93 mi) to more than 500 km (310 mi) above the surface of Earth.
Chapman proposed that an Agena outfitted with ISIS sensors be launched in a 100 miles orbit, then dive into the ionosphere D layer.
General Dynamics proposed the Canadian government flew its Blue Streak Agena out of Atlas launch complexes at The Cape.
Yet consideration was also given to build a dedicated Canadian launch pad at the Churchill Rocket Research Range, in the Far North.
The Blue Streak Agena come too late to launch the first two Anik satellites, so they rode to orbit atop Delta rockets from The Cape late 1972 and early 1973.
After 1975 the third Anik A and the experimental Hermès / CTS flew on the Canadian launcher. The unique Anik B followed in 1978.
Oh, Canada...
In 1969, Canada was invited by the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to participate in the Space Shuttle program. At the time what that participation would entail had not yet been decided but a manipulator system was identified as an important component.
A little-known, small canadian company, DSMA Atcon had developed a robot that attracted NASA's attention. DSMA Atcon had a deep involvement in the CANDU nuclear program, having designed, built and tested the remote control fuelling machines for the original CANDU reactors. "Atcon" stood for "Advanced Technology consultants".
In 1970 Lloyd Secord, CEO of DSMA Atcon approached NASA looking for work on another project which did not eventuate. Because of the DSMA Atcon experience with remote manipulators the remote arm for the shuttle came up in conversation.
NASA was interested in outsourcing the arm but only to a "national" level entity. Lloyd took this back to Canada where a consortium of 4 companies was formed to make the bid.
There was a history between DSMA and SPAR as competitors in the nuclear engineering. Because of the "national" requirement the Canadian government had to be involved.
Politics and concern that DSMA Atcon was too small lead to a decision that SPAR would have the lead role.
The relationship between DSMA and SPAR was somewhat strained because of this. Also, the problem of how to grab a spinning satellite had to be resolved. DSMA Atcon designed a lot of the testing equipment for qualifying the arm. This was a difficult problem as the arm was too light and flexible to operate under full Earth gravity.
A solution was proposed to support the arm on air bearings and test it in the horizontal plane normal to the gravitational effect. But it would take a large facility with a very smooth floor for the air bearings and testing of the arm joints.
NASA, of course, had a solution.
Far from Canada icy temperatures – in very hot Houston, Texas - Caldwell Johnson proposed that astronauts test prototype Space Shuttle manipulators during Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) missions in Earth orbit.
(from there - inspiration taken from David Portree blog Beyond Apollo)
Caldwell was co-holder with Maxime Faget of the Mercury capsule patent and chief of the Spacecraft Design Division at NASA’s Houston.
In a February 1971 memorandum to Faget Johnson described the manipulator test mission as a worthwhile alternative to the Earth survey, space rescue, and joint US/Soviet CSM missions then under study.
Johnson envisioned Shuttle manipulators capable of bending and gripping much as do human arms and hands, thus enabling them to hold onto virtually anything. He suggested that a pair of prototype arms be mounted in a CSM Scientific Instrument Module (SIM) Bay, and that the CSM “pretend to be a Shuttle” in operations with the derelict Skylab space station.
The CSM’s three-man crew could, he told Faget, use the manipulators to grip and move Skylab. They might also use them to demonstrate a space rescue, capture an “errant satellite,” or remove film from SIM Bay cameras and pass it to the astronauts through a special airlock installed in place of the docking unit in the CSM’s nose.
Faget enthusiastically received Johnson’s proposal. The proposal generated less enthusiasm elsewhere, however.
After the shuttle cancellation the robotic arm was transferred to the new space station.
In spring 1972 as the space station slowly took shape Caldwell Johnson renewed his pledge for testing of the robotic arm during the Apollo Soyuz Test Program flight in July 1975.
The robotic manipulator demonstration would take place after CSM-111 had undocked from the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft and moved away to perform independent maneuvers and experiments.
The astronauts in the CSM would first use a TV camera mounted on the arm’s wrist to inspect the CSM and DM, then would use the end effector to manipulate “some device” on the DM. They would then command the end effector to grip a handle on the DM, undock the DM from the CSM, and use the manipulator to redock the DM to the CSM. Finally, they would undock the DM and repeatedly capture it with the manipulator.
Johnson estimated that new hardware for the manipulator demonstration would add 168 pounds to the CM and 553 pounds to the SM. He expected that concept studies and pre-design would be completed in January 1973.Detail design would commence in October 1972 and be completed by July 1, 1973, at which time CSM-111 would undergo modification for the manipulator demonstration. Johnson envisioned that MSC would build two manipulators in house. The first, for testing and training, would be completed in January 1974. The flight unit would be completed in May 1974, tested and checked out by August 1974, and launched into orbit attached to CSM-111 in July 1975. Johnson optimistically placed the cost of the manipulator arm demonstration at just $25 million.
That's the moment when Canada entered the arena. An agreement was found with NASA to build the robotic arm in Canada. There was some issues with testing the arm under Earth 1-G – against the 0-G background.
As Caldwell initially suggested, Skylab would make an excellent target. Another issue was, what spacecraft to ferry the arm near Skylab ?
In the summer of 1972 Apollo-Soyuz was ruled out.
Competition was between unmanned Agena and manned Big Gemini.
The risk with the battered workshop however reduced the Big Gemini mission to a fly around without any connection, a mission that happened in 1977.
Instead an Agena would use the Canadarm to grapple the old workshop and dock to its front port so that it could be properly desorbited.
Then the issue of the launch vehicle was also heavily discussed. Many rockets did carried Agena as their upper stage. But how about a rocket from Canada ?
For two decades Canadair had build thousands of combat aircrafts for the RCAF - T-33, F-86, F-104, and F-5 American jets assembled under licence. The last CF-5 Tiger had rolled out of the production line in September 1971, marking the end of an era, and much like De Havilland Canada, the company was in trouble.
The popular CL-215 water bomber was only a niche, unable to secure the future of the company. The situation was so bad that DHC and Canadair foreign owners (British and American, respectively) were on the brink to jettison the companies. The situation was so bad that the Canadian government, remembering the Arrow debacle of 1959, had to buy both companies in 1973, saving thousands of high-skilled jobs.
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When Europe dropped Europa II they also ditched the Blue Streak.
General Dynamics / Convair considered the Blue Streak as Atlas little brother – they had transferred Atlas technology to De Havilland back in 1956.
In 1972 General Dynamics bought back the Blue Streak from the moribund ELDO at a bargain price.
They bought the F12 vehicle that had already been shipped to Kourou. Boosters F13 to F18 were at varied stages of fabrication, and General Dynamics obtained them all at a bargain price.
They then proposed two variants, each to a different country.
To Europe they proposed a Blue Streak – Centaur, to no avail.
To Canada they proposed a Blue Streak Agena, with limited success, at least initially.
It happened that Canadair was a filial of GD-Convair since 1952. Canadian Blue Streak could be build under licence. With or without the Canadian government GD would market the Blue Streak Agena as a low-cost competitor to Thorad, Delta, and Titan IIIB.
That's the moment when a man called John Herbert Chapman stepped in.
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On September 29, 1962 the Canadian-built Alouette I satellite was launched into orbit aboard a Thor-Agena launch vehicle from the U.S. Pacific Missile Test Range in California. It was the first satellite launched into space which was built entirely by a country other that the U.S. or the U.S.S.R.
The Alouette/ISIS Program consisted of four satellites and associated ground-based data analysis equipment. After the successful launch of Alouette I, Alouette II was launched in 1965, ISIS-I in 1969 and ISIS-II in 1971 (ISIS is an acronym for "International Satellite for Ionospheric Studies").
Both Alouette satellites were used for ten years, and the ISIS satellites were used until 1984, when the program was concluded.
Early in the history of space exploration, Canadian researchers in space science concentrated on the study of the earth's upper atmosphere and the ionosphere. This was due to the need to understand the characteristics of radio communication in the Canadian North. This area of study was not as predominant a component of the space science effort of other countries and therefore the Alouette/ISIS Program was able to make a major and unique contribution.
This effort led to the realization that a satellite communications system would be the best way to provide a communications infrastructure for all of Canada, including the North.
A very concrete result of this was the launch by NASA for Telesat Canada of Anik A1, a telecommunications satellite designed to satisfy Canada's domestic communications requirements
John Herbert Chapman was convinced of the need to develop the capability to design and build space hardware in Canadian industry and to move away from the practice of relying solely on the expertise of the government laboratories. As a result, Alouette II and the ISIS satellites were built, with steadily increasing participation by Canadian industry.
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In 1967, a report was produced by a committee chaired by John Chapman, which recommended a redirection of Canada's effort in space from space science and toward telecommunications and land survey. The culmination of this was the launch in 1972 of Anik A1.
With the successful placement of this satellite on station, approximately 36,000 km above the equator, Canada became the first country to have a domestic geostationary communications satellite system. The Anik A series of satellites was built by Hughes Aircraft Corporation of the United States.
In 1972, in the wake of the American space shuttle cancellation the visionary Chapman manage to sold a “space package” to the Trudeau government.
It consisted of the Anik A and B communication satellites; ISIS sensors on a new platform (either an Agena or the American space station); the Agena space tug carrying the Canadarm; and the Blue Streak launch vehicle, the latter two build by Canadair under a licence from Convair and Lockheed.
In 1972 General Dynamics Convair retrieved the British Blue Streak rocket from the ruin of the Europa program. Since the early 50's General Dynamics owned part of Canadair, and Chapman saw an opportunity.
General Dynamics atempt to sell the Blue Streak on the U.S launch market were doomed from the beginning – even as a little brother to Convair's Atlas it faced the Delta and Titan IIIB vehicles.
Chapman went to General Dynamic headquarters and proposed the Blue Streak should be build by Canadair in Valquartier.
Chapman real stroke of genius was the integration of the Agena ontop of the Blue Streak. Chapman arguments was that the Blue Streak Agena was powerful enough to launch the Anik communication satellites; and, as a space tug the Agena would fly canadian payloads to NASA coming space station. The Agena would be outfitted with the Canadarm, another major Canadian program. The Agena would use the Canadarm to grab a space station and haul itself to docking.
The astute Chapman suggested to reuse sensors from the ISIS satellite ( ISIS stands for International Satellite for Ionospheric Studies). The ISIS sensors could be carried by either a fly alone Agena or, more interestingly, be integrated into the U.S space station science package. Chapman noted that, from its vantage point 200 miles high the space station was well placed to study the iniosphere three layers.
The D layer is the innermost layer, 60 km (37 mi) to 90 km (56 mi) above the surface of the Earth. The E layer is the middle layer, 90 km (56 mi) to 150 km (93 mi) above the surface of the Earth. The F layer or region, also known as the Appleton-Barnett layer, extends from about 150 km (93 mi) to more than 500 km (310 mi) above the surface of Earth.
Chapman proposed that an Agena outfitted with ISIS sensors be launched in a 100 miles orbit, then dive into the ionosphere D layer.
General Dynamics proposed the Canadian government flew its Blue Streak Agena out of Atlas launch complexes at The Cape.
Yet consideration was also given to build a dedicated Canadian launch pad at the Churchill Rocket Research Range, in the Far North.
The Blue Streak Agena come too late to launch the first two Anik satellites, so they rode to orbit atop Delta rockets from The Cape late 1972 and early 1973.
After 1975 the third Anik A and the experimental Hermès / CTS flew on the Canadian launcher. The unique Anik B followed in 1978.