On the shoulders of Apollo

Archibald

Banned
On the shoulders of Apollo

Prologue

The usual issue when writing extended Apollo TLs is to not get lost into the zillion paper studies that were made between 1959 and 1974.
There are the last three landings that were cancelled (the infamous Apollo 18, 19 and 20) and then what ?


As per JFK 1961 deadline, nothing, repeat, nothing was planned beyond Apollo 11 until early in the year 1968

!



The official, real-world sequel to Apollo was to be Apollo Applications.
And indeed there was a flight manifest issued circa 1966 that someone cleaned up many years ago (and if you look carefully, Apollo 12 AS-507 Saturn V was to fly a completely different mission !)


As you can see it is a total wreck; it is nearly impossible to build a valuable TL on that thing (by the way, soon thereafter the Apollo fire was the final nail in the coffin and what little left of AAP ultimately become Skylab)


So what ?



Fortunately there are a host of scattered documents (thanks David Portree for his detailed analysis at his Wired Blog BeyondApollo) that give a better idea about a possible extended Apollo program.
The challenge is to cobble the dates together into a coherent timetable.
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The background



Let's be clear before it starts: that TL budgetary and political background is not ours, nor even realistic.
If you want a realistic, honest-to-God political / budgetary post Apollo TL, go to Eyes Turned Skywards.
Unlike that TL authors, I'm forced to twist the political and budgetary background to fit the timetable (more on this later)
What matters here is the timetable of missions build from the documents I collected over the last five years. I pieced together what I consider to be the most realistic documents on hand (see below)
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What I intend to do with this TL


First, to build the ultimate timetable - Apollo and beyond in the 70's and the 80's. Think of an Apollo flexible path.
Then, to pick some missions in the list and of course post a summary of it.

And now let's the fun begin !

Bibliography

"Showing the Way; NASA, the NRO, and the Apollo Lunar Reconnaissance Program 1963 - 1967" by Vance Mitchell - Quest, November 2010

"Skylab B: Unflown Missions, Lost Opportunities" -Frieling, Thomas J, Quest, 1996, Volume 5, Issue 4, page 12.

Beyond Apollo - "US/USSR Cooperative Space Laboratory (Skylab/Salyut)", McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company Eastern Division, 23 June 1972

"Study of an Evolutionary Interim Earth Orbit Program", Memorandum Report MS-1, J. Anderson, L. Alton, R. Arno, J. Deerwester, L. Edsinger, K. Sinclair, W. Tindle, and R. Wood, Advanced Concepts and Missions Division, Office of Advanced Research and Technology, NASA Headquarters, 6 April 1971.

Beyond Apollo - "Manned Planetary Reconnaissance Mission Study: Venus/Mars Flyby", NASA TM X-53205, Harry O. Ruppe, Future Projects Office, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, 5 February 1965.

Beyond Apollo - “A Manned Flyby Mission to Eros,” Eugene A. Smith, Proceedings of the Third Space Congress, “The Challenge of Space,” pp. 137-155; paper presented at the Third Space Congress in Cocoa Beach, Florida, 7-10 March 1966.

Beyond Apollo - “Verification of the Existence of the 1978 Triple-Planet Flyby Opportunity – Case 720” A. Vanderveen, Bellcomm, Inc., Oct. 19, 1967.

"Manned Mars Landing - presentation to the Space Task Group" - slides used by Dr. Wernher von Braun - August 4, 1969.

"Definition of Experimental Tests for a Manned Mars Excursion Module", Rockwell project manager G. S. Canetti. January 12, 1968. Work was performed under contract NAS9-6464 for NASA Manned Spacecraft Center.

"Voyage" - Stephen Baxter, 1996 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_(novel)
 
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Hello Archibald,

I stand interested. Hard to say more without seeing what you have in mind.

A couple of your links (1966 flight manifests) don't work, by the way.
 

Archibald

Banned
Part I





MANNED MARS FLY-BY IS NEW SPACE GOAL !



Aviation Week, January 1967



... In the quest for a post-Apollo national space goal, industry / government planners now seem to be leaning in a new direction.



Where a manned landing no Mars circa 1985 once reigned as the most attractive goal, the favored concept now appears to be a manned fly-by of the planet without landing, possibly in the latter 1970s.



This is evident in a budget-support statement sent to Capitol Hill by NASA.

Outlining its contemplated advanced manned mission study program for the fiscal year 1968, NASA made no mention of Mars landing plans and emphasized the “Mars sample retrieval mission” as the only manned planetary flight to be studied.



The "sample retrieval" refers to a plan to dispatch an unmanned probe from the manned flyby spacecraft to the planet, to collect photos and soil samples and return to the main spacecraft. The studies will include preliminary definition of the mission spacecraft, associated propulsion stages and onboard experiments that might be conducted by the crew members during the mission.



The fly-by offers a number of advantages from the standpoint of gaining public and Administration approval. Leaving out the manned landing on the Martian surface substantially reduces the technological magnitude of the task. The fly-by could be made years earlier, an attractive psychological point; the public imagination is more likely to be stimulated by a near-term goal rather than one that is almost two decades down the pike.



And, of course, it would be cheaper.



Cost estimates vary considerably but consensus indicates that the fly-by would be accomplished, together with other contemplated programs, at an annual budget in the 70's of about $ 6.5 billion.

Assuming continuing growth of the Gross National Product, this would be something close to the current percentage of the GNP expended on space exploration. Estimates as to the Mars landing costs are even more vague, but best guess is that it would require an additional billion annually during the 70's.



Technically speaking, the fly-by program would involve many of the technological advances needed for the Mars landing and would provide a new developmental plateau from which the landing program could be initiated later. Tentatively known as Manned Voyager it offers greater scientific gain than its unmanned counterpart; in addition to man-monitored experiments in interplanetary space, it would have the capability of bringing back to earth close-up photos and surface and atmospheric samples.



A number of preliminary studies have been conducted on the Mars fly- by. Taking a composite view and leaving out the specifics, it would go something like this.



The spacecraft would be a three- module vehicle like Apollo, with a command module, service module and a mission module in which the multi-man crew would live and work. It would be boosted into orbit in two segments by two launches of Saturn V boosters. The merged sections would be injected in Mars trajectory by the nuclear stage.

In the vicinity of Mars, the manned spacecraft would launch a probe weighing about six or seven tons to the surface. The probe would include descent system for getting down to t surface, the sample retrieval syste and an ascent system. The latter will blast off with the samples and fly a redezvous with the manned ship.



pflyby1-660x385.jpg




(the manned Mars flyby ship as imagined in 1967)



The probe would include descent system for getting down to the surface, the sample retrieval system and an ascent system. The latter would blast off with the samples and fly a rendezvous with the manned spacecraft, which would then head for home.

The round trip would take about 700 days, a factor which would require environmental control system of a capability difficult to imagine today.



Voyager_concept_19672-660x518.jpg




The (unmanned) rival: Mars Voyager, the monster robotic probe to be launched by a Saturn V in 1973 and 1975. The following Mars Sample Return was to include the above manned flyby spacecraft... the crew would caretake those unreliable robots and precious Mars rocks !





There is some question as to when the fly-by could be undertaken. In statement to Congress, NASA listed target date, but in a recent speech E. Z. Gray, the agency's director advanced manned mission studies, postuled the mid-1970s, 1975.



In the public disclosure of the planetary mission, officially known in- house as Manned Voyager, space agency official Edward Z.Gray described the NASA advanced planning study to an aerospace sciences seminar at Stanford.



Gray said he does not expect a major new goal — such as the lunar-landing-before-1970 target of President Kennedy — to be staked out at least in the next two or three years. But he flatly predicted the Mars- Venus mission will ultimately be undertaken.



"I think you'll see it happen in the mid-1970's, even though there's not much acceptance of the idea now."



Gray said the fly-by mission could collect an enormous amount of data on the planets, interplanetary space and the Sun.



"We envision a spacecraft carrying a large telescope ... of 40 to 80 inch. And we think it might be feasible to send unmanned probes from the spacecraft down to the surface of the planets to pick up 2 to 10 lbs. of material, then rendezvous back with the spacecraft. The material could be analyzed on the way home. High-resolution stereo pictures of the Sun could be made to aid solar physics research."



Gray said the mission would take two years and could be accomplished with Saturn V hardware, probably rendezvousing two or more in Earth orbit. He went on describing a pretty ambition mission to be launched in ten years.



...



(more to come)
 
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Will you address the radiation shielding question?

Obviously NASA planners didn't appreciate these dangers in the 60's like we do today. But I will be curious to see how you deal with it here.
 
I’ve heard the “Mars Flyby” plan a few times, and frankly I don’t get it. The Moon flybys of Apollo before 11 made sense. That’s six days, round trip, in bleeding edge technology. Manageable.

A Mars flyby with the tech of the time would be over six months, one way. An entire year in space, completely unrescueable, unabortable, and with nothing to show for it. Travel 170,000,000 miles to give up… 200 miles away?! Where’s the sense in that?
 
I’ve heard the “Mars Flyby” plan a few times, and frankly I don’t get it. The Moon flybys of Apollo before 11 made sense. That’s six days, round trip, in bleeding edge technology. Manageable.

A Mars flyby with the tech of the time would be over six months, one way. An entire year in space, completely unrescueable, unabortable, and with nothing to show for it. Travel 170,000,000 miles to give up… 200 miles away?! Where’s the sense in that?

Because those extra 200 miles are a lot tougher - because that's a serious gravity well.
 
A Mars flyby with the tech of the time would be over six months, one way. An entire year in space, completely unrescueable, unabortable, and with nothing to show for it. Travel 170,000,000 miles to give up… 200 miles away?! Where’s the sense in that?
I guess the sense was that Congress at the time was very strikingly against anything that smacked of a Mars landing. Flybys were a way to sneak a lot of the planning for an actual Mars landing in without the requirement of actually planning a landing. (See: NERVA, cancellation of, which was largely related to it being clearly an engine for going BEO and mainly to Mars, which Congress wanted none of and thus shut down.) On the other hand, while I can get that, my prblem is...Congress was really against a Mars mission, and I don't think they'd be dim enough to fall for an "Oh, we're just going there to flyby and teleoperate rovers, I swear" mission plan as divorced from any future plans for a manned landing. I hope that's not where this is going, because I can't see that kind of backdoor "in" for Mars as viable without radically altering the intelligence of Congress in the negative or altering their vision for the future of spaceflight.

EDIT: Rereads OP:

Let's be clear before it starts: that TL budgetary and political background is not ours, nor even realistic.
If you want a realistic, honest-to-God political / budgetary post Apollo TL, go to Eyes Turned Skywards.
Unlike that TL authors, I'm forced to twist the political and budgetary background to fit the timetable (more on this later)

Okay, a couple things:
1) Thanks for the compliments. :)
2) In that case, on to Mars! :D
 
Because those extra 200 miles are a lot tougher - because that's a serious gravity well.

Having done the Moon (and, you know, Earth), the challenges of a gravity well only twice that of the Moon and a third of Earth’s don’t seem like something we wouldn’t be aware of.

When was it that the Martian fuel manufacturing process was first outlined and when was it that it was proven to work? I forget the decade…
 
When was it that the Martian fuel manufacturing process was first outlined and when was it that it was proven to work? I forget the decade…
While IIRC there were earlier suggestions, it was in the mid-to-late 80s that it got into serious consideration, then in the early and mid-90s when it was tested in lab environments. As for when it was "proven to work," that depends on your definition of "proven." It's been shown in various bench variants for more than 15 years now, but it's not "proven" on Mars, meaning it's only TRL 5 or 6, not TRL 7.
 
It's been shown in various bench variants for more than 15 years now, but it's not "proven" on Mars, meaning it's only TRL 5 or 6, not TRL 7.

If we know the composition and the means of extraction and can replicate it here, then that’s as close to doing it as can be had before launch, yeah?
 
If we know the composition and the means of extraction and can replicate it here, then that’s as close to doing it as can be had before launch, yeah?
Indeed! And that's TRL 6--demonstration in simulated environment. However, TRL 7 is demonstration in the applicable environment--for instance, flying a subscale ISRU plant to Mars and demonstrating it subscale there. A lot of manned projects want at least TRL 7 demonstration before acceptance of a concept as a key element of a mission plan, which is one reason you see a lot of manned Mars advocates these days calling for a sample return mission--not so much because there's a whole lot a sample return could give us that analysis there can't that's necessary before we send crew but because it'd be a TRL 7 demonstration of ISRU prior to the manned use of the concept.
 

Archibald

Banned
I’ve heard the “Mars Flyby” plan a few times, and frankly I don’t get it. The Moon flybys of Apollo before 11 made sense. That’s six days, round trip, in bleeding edge technology. Manageable.

A Mars flyby with the tech of the time would be over six months, one way. An entire year in space, completely unrescueable, unabortable, and with nothing to show for it. Travel 170,000,000 miles to give up… 200 miles away?! Where’s the sense in that?

Oh, you have a good point there. Many things will happen that will derail that plan just enough to make it a little more interesting, enough that it survives Congress in August 1967...

When was it that the Martian fuel manufacturing process was first outlined and when was it that it was proven to work? I forget the decade…

It wasn't even invented by Bob Zubrin - it was imagined for Mars Sample Return in 1978
 
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*reads bibliography*
*sees Skylab/Salyut station in the list*

Cold War-era proto-ISS?
Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseyessssssssss :D:D:D:D


Also, subscribed.
 

Archibald

Banned
Part 2

(inspired by David Portree blog entry)

"...According to Gray in exactly ten years - January, 23 1977 - a four-man piloted flyby spacecraft would leave Earth orbit.

Experiment operations for the two-year mission would commence with an Earth-to-Venus transfer spanning mission days one through 148. En route to Venus, the spacecraft would pass the asteroid 1566 Icarus at a distance of 4.46 million miles (11 May 1977). The astronauts would use the spacecraft’s one-meter telescope to measure the asteroid’s albedo (reflectivity).

At opportune times throughout the mission, they would conduct other astronomical observations, including studies of fluctuations in the radiation from quasars (now known to be the active cores of galaxies), zodiacal light (sunlight reflected from interplanetary dust), faint stars, the planet Mercury, and galaxy red shifts (evidence for an expanding universe).

On 16 June 1977, the piloted flyby spacecraft would release a 2.88-ton orbiter for relaying to Earth radio signals from the probes it would release during its first Venus flyby. The orbiter would fire rocket motors to slow down so that Venus’s gravity could capture it into a 4000-kilometer-high circular orbit.


PioneerVenus.jpg


Venus...


The piloted flyby spacecraft would zip past Venus for the first time on mission day 149 (21 June 1977), releasing 10 automated probes. These would include four “rough” landers, four bomb-shaped “photo sinker” probes, and two meteorological balloon probes with six balloons each. The automated landers would survive the planet’s heat and pressure for one hour after touchdown, while the sinkers would drop through the thick Venusian atmosphere for about 30 minutes and be destroyed on impact with the surface. The balloon probes would drift among the hot clouds of Venus for one month.

The flyby astronauts, meanwhile, would study Venus using their telescope and a cloud-penetrating radar. Closest approach would occur in sunlight 680 kilometers above the southern hemisphere, at which time the astronauts would fire the flyby spacecraft’s rocket motors briefly to help to bend its course toward Mars.

Flight from Venus to Mars would span mission days 150 through 344. The astronauts would measure the albedo of Mars-crossing asteroid 132 Aethra from a distance of 35.9 million miles on 5 December 1977, and would study radio emissions from Jupiter in collaboration with radio astronomers on Earth.


emily_rosetta_mars.jpg



Mars true colors... as an astronaut would see it, peering through a spcecraft cuppola...


The crew would release three 2.36-ton Mars Surface Sample Return (MSSR) landers on 30 December 1977, five days before closest Mars approach.

On 3 January 1978 (mission day 345), the flyby spacecraft would pass 3960 kilometers above the martian night hemisphere at a speed of 5.6 kilometers per second. As they approached the planet, the astronauts would photograph the martian moons Deimos and Phobos.

The MSSR landers would touch down between two and four hours before flyby spacecraft closest approach. Each would deploy a drill to collect a subsurface sample and an aerosol filter to gather airborne dust. Mortars would launch other collection devices at least 100 feet to sample beyond the zone contaminated by the MSSR probe landing rockets. Each lander would then load its samples into a “rendezvous rocket” and launch it to the passing flyby spacecraft. Geophysics and exobiology experiments on the MSSR landers would then radio data to Earth for up to two years.

The Mars-to-Venus leg of the mission would span days 346 through 573. The astronauts would use the flyby spacecraft’s biology laboratory to analyze the Mars samples collected by the MSSR landers.

They would also measure the albedo of three asteroids: 1192 Prisma, in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter, at a distance of 49.5 million miles (14 April 1978); 887 Alinda at 11.5 million miles (25 April 1978); and 1566 Icarus (again) at 62.3 million miles (5 August 1978).

eros_03.jpg


Asteroid Eros...

On 15 August 1978, the flyby spacecraft would release a second Venus radio-relay orbiter.

The flyby spacecraft would pass by Venus for the second time on mission day 574 (20 August 1978), releasing the same types and number of probes released during its first Venus flyby. The probes would be targeted based on data obtained during the first flyby. Closest approach would occur in darkness over Venus’s southern hemisphere at an altitude of 700 kilometers.

The Venus-to-Earth leg would span mission days 575 through 716. The astronauts would reenter Earth’s atmosphere with their cargo of samples and data in a modified Apollo Command Module on 9 January 1979.

One has to figure a planetary billiard, with the manned craft ricocheting against the planets gravity wells..."
 
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Archibald

Banned
And now in part three - the cold shower of politics... and scientists.

Tallest Skil opinion on manned planetary flybys was justified, to say the least.

If you read the previous post carefully, you will have a glance at the shape of things to come in that TL. They have something (BIG) in common.

ON THE SHOULDERS OF APOLLO - PART 3

"The most serious difficulty confronting the panels in attempting to delineate the specific steps the U.S should follow to emphasize planetary exploration in the 1970's has been the absence of integrated NASA planninng in this area.
Rather, the Panels have been presented with two distinct and apparently independant plans for planetary exploration.

On the one hand there is the Voyager program, centered around unmanned Saturn V launched missions to Mars in 1973 and 1975, with the intent to land Surveyor-type spacecraft capable of returning data from an automated payload.

On the other hand, the panels were presented with a detailed plan for a manned mission to fly to the immediate vicinity of Mars and return, possibly as early as 1975, which, if successful, could collect a massive amount of information about Mars, including the return of of small sample of Martian surface material.

In these latter presentations it was suggested that a single Mars flyby mission of this type might return a greater amount of useful information than is likely to be returned by the entire proposed program of Voyager automated spacecrafts.

In the separate presentations there was, however, little indication of joint studies to develop agreed comparisons of the two types of missions or to develop a possible mixed strategy in which manned and unmanned missions were both utilized Aside from this absence of integrated NASA planning the committee found weaknesses in the individual proposals. It believes, for one thing, that man man should ne utilized in a unique role in space exploration. In a Mars flyby, he wouldn't; the crew would be merely passengers.

"These remarks should make it clear that our serious reservations about a manned Mars flyby in 1975 do not stem from any doubts about the eventual utility of man in planetary exploration."

In fact we remain unconvinced that a manned Mars flyby is the most effective use of man, as compared, for example with a manned Mars orbital mission and also uncertain that estimated costs and time scales are meaningful at this early stage in our knowledge.

In addition to these questions we are concerned about the proposed use of Apollo technology necessarily implied by a Mars mission planned for 1975.

Much of this technology was necessarily frozen into 1961-63 state of the art by the tight time schedule of the Apollo program. By adopting a somewhat more leisurely schedule for a manned planetary flight, perhaps aimed at a mission late in the decade or in the 1980's, we might buy the time required for a vigorous development of new and more efficient onboard power supply systems and other critical subsystems, thus permitting an orderly increase in total space capability Most importantly, we would then have the necessary time to design man into the system rather than to have him be primarily a passenger.

(Excerpt from: The space program in the post-Apollo period: a report of the President's Science Advisory Committee, February 1967)

.......................

"The Arietids are a strong meteor shower that lasts from May 22 to July 2 each year, and peaks on June 7. The Arietids, along with the Zeta Perseids, are the most intense daylight meteor showers of the year.

The source of the shower is unknown, but scientists suspect that they come from the asteroid 1566 Icarus, although the orbit also corresponds similarly to 96P/Machholz.

First discovered at Jodrell Bank Observatory in England during the summer of 1947, the showers are caused when the Earth passes through a dense portion of two interplanetary meteoroid streams, producing an average of 60 shooting stars each hour, that originate in the sky from the constellation Aries and the constellation Perseus.

However, because both constellations are so close to the Sun when these showers reach their peak, the showers are difficult to view with the naked eye. Some of the early meteors are visible in the very early hours of the morning, usually an hour before dawn. The meteors strike Earth's atmosphere at speeds around 39 km/s..."

gemindwest06.jpg
 

Archibald

Banned
On the shoulders of Apollo - Part 4

"If you're going to San Fransisco..."

(Scott McKenzie)


"Monday, Monday, can't thrust that day"
(the mamas & papas)


"How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
...
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose"

"Once a hotel manager called me in my room and asked me to lower the volume on my cassette recorder because it made too much noise. In response I asked him up to his room, excused myself to go the bathroom, put a lit stick of dynamite in the toilet and shut the bathroom door. Upon returning, I asked the manager to stay since I wanted to explain something. After the explosion, I turned the recorder back on and said That was noise. This is The Who"
(Keith Moon)

"Look, Lisa! Daddy's in The Who."


"Pftt... Rules. I'm a rocker, I don't care for rules.
"Mr. Simpson, this is serious. If you take one more cannonball to
the gut, you will die.
"Die? Well, you don't scare me, doc, 'cause dying would be a
stone groove. Got any messages for Jimi Hendrix?


Monterey, near San Fransisco
Sunday 18 June 1967

... With each successive song, the intensity increased, building toward the grand finale. When the set was nearly finished, Jimmy Hendrix addressed the crowd for a final time:
"Man, it's so groovy to come back here this way and, you know, really get a chance to really play…. I can sit here all night and say thank you, thank you, thank you, but I could just as well grab you, man—but I just can't do that … so what I'm gonna do is sacrifice something here that I really love, OK…. Don't think I'm silly doing this 'cause I don't think I'm losing my mind…. There's nothing more I can do than this."

The Monterey International Pop Festival in Northern California was being held at the Monterey County Fairgrounds.


The roster of 30-plus acts was a who's-who of 1960s pop music greats. The musicians were primarily there to play for their fans and jam with one another.

The festival had gone off to a rousing start on Friday evening with the Association singing its hit, "Along Comes Mary." Lou Rawls and Johnny Rivers followed, and then, representing the second wave of the British invasion, Eric Burdon and the Animals. Closing the Friday night show were Simon and Garfunkel doing their "59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)."

Saturday afternoon showcased some of the best musicians of the San Francisco music scene, including Country Joe and the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Steve Miller Band, and, in a passionate performance that blew everyone away and stole the show, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. It was her first performance outside of San Francisco, and she would leap to international stardom.


Saturday night's roster had had the Jefferson Airplane flying high, the Byrds trying out their new country-rock sound, and soul singer Otis Redding. Redding drew such an ecstatic response from the largely white crowd that, as soon as he returned home to Georgia, he composed his smash hit "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" as a tribute to the audience that had made him feel so welcome.

By contrast Sunday's program had been fairly loose so far.

Ravi Shankar was set to be the sole artist that afternoon—the crowd initially grooved to his ragas, but after four hours of droning sitar, even the most avid fans of Indian music were sated and not many remained—and the Mamas and the Papas were to close the show that night.


The mood was bound to change, however, since the rest of the acts included nothing less than the Grateful Dead, the Who, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend, lead guitarist for the Who, knew each other well from the London music scene. Both were flamboyant, over-the-top performers who left their audiences gasping at their ability and their antics. Each usually finished up his set by smashing his guitar and trashing the stage. Figuring he would look like an idiot if he were to wreck his equipment after Hendrix had done the same thing, Townshend demanded that the Who play first.
Hendrix was equally adamant that he should not have to follow the Who.
Like two strutting roosters, the competitive musicians each insisted that the other should go on last.
Things got pretty heated until they were told that the toss of a coin would decide the matter. Whoever won would go on first, and that would be that.
Townshend won.
Fueled by anger and LSD, Hendrix vowed, "I'm going to pull out all the stops."
Rising to the challenge, the Who played its set with a vengeance. As the band began its final song, Townshend told the audience, "This is where it all ends." The song climaxed with explosions and smoke; then Townshend smashed his guitar against the microphone stand over and over until it was nothing but kindling.

The crowd went crazy.

Egged on by the response, Keith Moon began flinging his drumsticks, and then mike stands and amps were thrown. It was kind of a combination of wrestling and music.
As a sort of lull between two musical storms, the Grateful Dead played next, and Jerry Garcia mellowed the crowd with his soft melodies. Then Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones took the stage to announce the next act, introducing Hendrix as "a very good friend, a fellow countryman of yours," and "the most exciting performer I've ever heard."

Hendrix—stoked by adrenaline, pot, and acid—hit the stage carrying a Stratocaster guitar that he had hand-painted two days earlier. He was cloaked in psychedelic regalia: a gold-braided military jacket, a yellow ruffled shirt, red velvet pants, a feather boa, and hair in a wild, teased Afro.

The band launched into "Killing Floor" by blues great Howlin' Wolf, followed immediately by "Foxey Lady," the bump-and-grind first cut on its debut album, Are You Experienced. Hendrix charged through his act with unrestrained joy and unabashed theatricality—his large hands holding his guitar in every imaginable position, toying with feedback, bending the banshee notes pouring from his amps.

As Hendrix whipped into "Wild Thing" by the Troggs, his guitar shrieked, as if the devil were trying to drag it into hell. He had sworn that he was going to pull out all the stops, and did he ever, playing his guitar between his legs, with his teeth, on his knees, behind his back—all the while going for maximum feedback and frenzy.

As the final chords rang through the air, Hendrix grabbed something at the back of the stage, then came forward again. Out came a can of lighter fluid and matches.

After giving a scorching musical performance, he set his Stratocaster ablaze.

Kneeling, in transe, Hendrix wawed his hands as if he kind of encouraged the flames devouring his guitar. Then in a fit of rage and impatience at the slow combustion process, he grabbed the unfortunate instrument, smashed it, then threw the blackened, splintered pieces into the crowd and walked off the stage.


preorder_jimi_monterey_image.jpg


Jimmy Hendrix had forever cemented his legend and entered stardom.

And then... as the Mamas & Papas entered the scene to cool the extatic crowd, night briefly turned into day. Still stunned by Hendrix show a hundred thousand people turned they eyes skywards,.


'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night

And touched the sound of silence
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening


Within a split second all hell broke loose as a sound with an intensity never heard before blasted everybody eardrums. A powerful shockwave blasted car windows miles around.

Out of the Monterey festival frenzy it had been so far a very ordinary, late night over the west coast of the United States. Millions of people lived there, at the cultural and economic heart of America. The road and highways were not congested yet; it was one hour before dawn, before the frenzy of activity that come with every brand new day. Night workers were heading home; driving on mostly empty roads and streets. The silence of the late night, the overwheling fatigue were temporarily driven away by the cars and trucks on board radios delivering the morning news or the british invasion last songs.

That quietness was unexpectedly broken. The drivers attention was caught by a growing light that illuminated the dark skies. Within seconds the fireball grew brighter than the Sun, casting shadows on the deserted roads and streets. The light intensity rose again, to a point where the drivers had to slam the brakes and slow down or even park, blinded.

091015-fireball-explodes-netherlands-germany-picture_big.jpg


It didn't lasted long, but the worse was to come.

Ten seconds later come the noise of an explosion - a huge one, a powerful WHAAAAAM, BOOOOOOM strong enough to burst eardrums. All hell broke loose: windows and glass shattered in a deadly shower of shards, walls collapsed, cars slammed into each others. Panick stricken people roamed the streets, their faces stained with blood. Children were screaming.


At the White House President Johnson was awoken in a hurry.
"Big blast over San Fransisco Bay Area"

"No sign of radioactivity"

"No infrared trace of any Soviet ICBM launch"


"What was that, then ?"


As panick mounted in Monterey the musicians there definitively split into two opposite camps. The Who and Hendrix truly enjoyed the destructive, unexpected chaos that unravelled before their eyes.
Cool-headed musicians however tried to calm the crowd. To their amazement, some people were actually cheering, believing the event was some pyrotechnic trick coming along the music.

According to Keith Moon


"When fed up of smashing guitars and blasting drums, one of my favourite stunt was to flush powerful explosives down toilets. In 1965 I purchased a case of 500 cherry bombs, then I moved to M-80 fireworks and finally, to sticks of dynamite, which immediately became my explosive of choice. All that porcelain flying through the air was quite unforgettable - I never realised dynamite was so powerful. I'd been used to penny bangers before.
I quickly developed a reputation for destroying bathrooms and blowing up toilets. The destruction mesmerized me, enhanced my public image as rock's premier hell-raiser. From that moment on, no toilet in a hotel or changing room was safe until I had exhausted my supply of explosives.

"So you can see I loved dynamite. But that thing in Monterey... that noise was deafeaning, no dynamite could ever do that. It had been as if the doors of hell had opened before my eyes. It was kind of Altamont before Altamont, a true nightmare."

 
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