alternatehistory.com
1972: NASA hell of a year (10)
back from Coventry (why Conventry ? I don't understand)
"Tucked away in last year’s NASA authorization act is a provision calling for a permanent group to review space science on a regular basis.
In fiscal year 1973 a NASA Science Missions Board will be set forth which shall contract with the National Academies for a review of the goals, core capabilities, and direction of human space science, using the goals set forth in the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, the goals set forth in this Act, and goals set forth in any existing statement of space policy issued by the President.
The study’s scope, timeframe and use of the National Academies has caused many people to liken this to the decadal surveys used in various space science disciplines, such as the recently-released planetary science decadal survey by Charles Townes.
The NASA Science Missions Board will be an advisory committee of outside scientists to succeed the disbanded Lunar and Planetary Missions Board and Astronomy Missions Board. Unlike those groups, which members were appointed by the administrator, board members will be picked up by the agency chief scientist - also head of the Office of Space Science and Applications. The executive director, as required by law, will be a NASA employee detailed from OSSA. Unlike the Academies Space Science Board, its members will have access to NASA internal documents..."
Excerpt from: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - May 10, 1972.
During Jerry's senior year at Cal Tech, Rob had held his nose, sighed, and taken the job of manager of the Advanced Maneuverable Bus project. "It's that or join the army of the unemployed" Rob insisted wanly. "Besides, it's not as if the damn thing doesn't have potential civilian applications"
The AMB was typical of the myriad low-profile cheap projects related to Star Wars. The AMB was basically an upscaling and redesign of the MX "Peacekeeper" ICBM fourth stage warhead bus, supposedly to be used to deploy scores of cheap little orbital interceptors, at least as far as Congress was concerned.
But what the Air Force had really commissioned behind that smoke screen was a platform that could be launched into LEO with a variable mixed payload of at least twenty reentry vehicles and/or boost-phase interceptors. It had to be able to station-keep for a year without refueling, change orbits up to a point, juke and jerk to avoid satellite killers, and launch its payloads with a high degree of accuracy.
"Shitcan the warheads and interceptors, give it a big fuel tank and corresponding thrusters, mount a pressure cabin on it, and you've got yourself a space jeep to take you from LEO to GEO. Rob would muse dreamily.
When Jerry graduated, Rob was able to hire him on as an entry-level wage slave on the AMB project. But even a naif like Jerry could see what Rob was doing once he got to Rockwell.
What was going on was that Rob , like the Air Force itself, was pursuing his own hidden agenda. He was using the Air Force funding to design a low orbit to geosynchronous orbit ferry with the capability to take crews to a GEO space station that didn't exist – in the guise of giving them their AMB.
The thrusters were far bigger than anything a warhead and interceptor bus needed. The so-called refuelling colar was being designed to take a large fuel tank neatly balanced along the long axis to handle a 1-G thrust. The bus platform itself was being designed to accomodate forty interceptors so that a pressure cabin have room atop it. And so forth.
Norman Spinrad, Russian Spring
As such high-energy propellants are no longer necessary.
NASA has published a new set of mission requirements. One of the most demanding missions is Large Space Telescope retrieval, servicing, and reboost, because the space tug has to be able to propel the 11-tonne observatory with unfurled solar arrays, constraining the propulsion system to 0-002g acceleration.
The other design reference missions were:
• payload placement; delivering 1,590kg to a 630km higher orbit and returning it in event of failure, with a 1° plane change each way;
• multiple payload; delivering a 2,268kg satellite 157km higher and then a 4,536kg payload 46km further;
• payload retrieval; returning a 4,990kg satellite from 408km higher with a 1° plane change;
• payload reboost; docking with a 11,340kg satellite 185km higher and boosting it 204km further;
• module transfer; raising a 22,680kg module 204km with a 0.5° plane change, and returning a similar module (this is a propulsion system driver);
• payload deorbit; docking with a 34,020kg payload in a 296km orbit and dispatching it towards re-entry (this defines propulsion system upper thrust limit);
• sub-satellite mission; Space Tug with 2,268kg payload becoming a free-flyer for up to seven days and 180° away from base in the same orbit;
• in situ servicing; where a 2,268kg servicing mission kit is flown 740km higher and returned;
• payload viewing; rendezvousing with and imaging a satellite 1,556km higher during a flyaround (this defines reactioncontrol- system propellant requirement)
Many expendable upper stages were considered for the role. Solid-fuel stages like the Burner lacked flexibility and performance; they couldn't be restarted.
That left four contenders. They were the Delta second stage; the Agena; the Transtage; and the Centaur.
After a brief hesitation NASA decided the space station would be in Earth orbit; a lunar orbit space station was a step too far and has no practical interest.
Because of that, the space tug role shrunk to ferrying space station modules around Earth – from an injection 100 miles high to a docking 300 miles high.
The Centaur is totally overkill for such job; it is fragile, and its cryogenic propellants are hard to handle.
This left only three hypergolic contenders. Among them the Transtage is the biggest; it takes a Titan III to haul it into orbit. Much like the Centaur the Transtage is just too big for the job.
The Agena and Delta stage 2 are much smaller, and they were retained as finalists in the competition.
The Transtage bid has an interesting backstory.
There, Martin Marietta teamed with Boeing. The two companies had their space tug proposal interwined with the manned spacecraft competition that ran in parallel – with Martin Marietta Transtage mated to Boeing DynaSoar space plane. While a Titan IIIC can orbit 30 000 pounds, the DynaSoar glider by itself barely weighs 15 000 pounds.
The difference is filled by Titan III partially fueled Transtage upper stage that remain attached to the DynaSoar "glider". It acts as an extremely powerful booster that allows for all kind of large orbital manoeuvers – such as climbs up to 1000 miles !
Boeing pitched a revamped DynaSoar as a “poor man's space shuttle” but NASA did not cared.
From 1962 onwards Lee Scherer had an impressive career with NASA. He was first Lunar Orbiter program manager at Headquarters until 1967, when the program ended. He was then director of George Mueller Apollo Lunar Exploration Office.
In spring 1971 Sherer become Director of the Dryden Flight Research Center, California. Then a set of events happened that changed Scherer career forever. The space shuttle was canned in the fall of 1971.
Because the now defunct shuttle had been the last piece in the 1969 Space Task Group plan to survive budget cuts, a whole new manned spacecraft program had to be rebuild from zero.
Unbestknown to the public, Scherer Lunar Orbiter was nothing less than a failed spy satellite. In the early 60's the highly secret National Reconnaissance Office had build the Samos E-1 satellite to image the Soviet Union at a very high resolution. But for a hosts of reasons, the Samos E-1 never worked properly, so the NRO tried to get ride of it.
In the end the very secretive military agency offered Samos to NASA. The failed spy satellite was still good enough to map the Moon at high resolution to pick Apollo landing sites from the frames. As the Lunar Orbiter manager Scherer knew its origins as a spysat. Of course he had been sworn to secrecy by the NRO. Scherer, however, could see how tense the military was.
They logically feared of NASA used of a spy satellite. They feared it might disclose the highlysecret NRO to the public – and Soviet – eye. Scherer however was an outstanding manager and he very skillfully handled those tensions, reassuring the NRO by all means.
That experience was to prove extremely useful a decade later, in 1972 when NASA picked up the Agena as its space tug against the Delta second stage. The military had hoped NASA would pick Delta stage 2 as a space tug; they had good reasons for that.
But NASA chose the Agena instead, triggering a storm of protests from the military. The issue was, well, that all of the NRO spy satellites – Corona and Gambit - had been designed around the Agena. As a result, massive use of the Agena by a public, civilian agency made the NRO extremely nervous.
This explain why, in spring 1972, new NASA administrator James Beggs hand-picked Lee Scherer from his post of Dryden director to the newly created Space Tug (later piloted science) Program Office.
Over the next decade, as use of the civilian Agena extended further and further from NASA to private companies, Scherer had once again to manage growing tensions with the NRO.
The Agena-based KH-4 Corona has been withdrawn from service in May 1972, so that was no longer an issue.
Yet the KH-8 Gambit, also based on the Agena, was to remain in service for years to come.
In the end the NRO chose to abruptly withdrawn the KH-8 early on (by the mid-70's) by fear civilian use of the Agena might disclose the Gambit to the public eye. Scherer had to manage that crisis from the civilian side, and he did it with talent. For the record, existence of the NRO was only made public after the Cold War ended, in the late 90's !
"Tucked away in last year’s NASA authorization act is a provision calling for a permanent group to review space science on a regular basis.
In fiscal year 1973 a NASA Science Missions Board will be set forth which shall contract with the National Academies for a review of the goals, core capabilities, and direction of human space science, using the goals set forth in the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, the goals set forth in this Act, and goals set forth in any existing statement of space policy issued by the President.
The study’s scope, timeframe and use of the National Academies has caused many people to liken this to the decadal surveys used in various space science disciplines, such as the recently-released planetary science decadal survey by Charles Townes.
The NASA Science Missions Board will be an advisory committee of outside scientists to succeed the disbanded Lunar and Planetary Missions Board and Astronomy Missions Board. Unlike those groups, which members were appointed by the administrator, board members will be picked up by the agency chief scientist - also head of the Office of Space Science and Applications. The executive director, as required by law, will be a NASA employee detailed from OSSA. Unlike the Academies Space Science Board, its members will have access to NASA internal documents..."
Excerpt from: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - May 10, 1972.
***
During Jerry's senior year at Cal Tech, Rob had held his nose, sighed, and taken the job of manager of the Advanced Maneuverable Bus project. "It's that or join the army of the unemployed" Rob insisted wanly. "Besides, it's not as if the damn thing doesn't have potential civilian applications"
The AMB was typical of the myriad low-profile cheap projects related to Star Wars. The AMB was basically an upscaling and redesign of the MX "Peacekeeper" ICBM fourth stage warhead bus, supposedly to be used to deploy scores of cheap little orbital interceptors, at least as far as Congress was concerned.
But what the Air Force had really commissioned behind that smoke screen was a platform that could be launched into LEO with a variable mixed payload of at least twenty reentry vehicles and/or boost-phase interceptors. It had to be able to station-keep for a year without refueling, change orbits up to a point, juke and jerk to avoid satellite killers, and launch its payloads with a high degree of accuracy.
"Shitcan the warheads and interceptors, give it a big fuel tank and corresponding thrusters, mount a pressure cabin on it, and you've got yourself a space jeep to take you from LEO to GEO. Rob would muse dreamily.
When Jerry graduated, Rob was able to hire him on as an entry-level wage slave on the AMB project. But even a naif like Jerry could see what Rob was doing once he got to Rockwell.
What was going on was that Rob , like the Air Force itself, was pursuing his own hidden agenda. He was using the Air Force funding to design a low orbit to geosynchronous orbit ferry with the capability to take crews to a GEO space station that didn't exist – in the guise of giving them their AMB.
The thrusters were far bigger than anything a warhead and interceptor bus needed. The so-called refuelling colar was being designed to take a large fuel tank neatly balanced along the long axis to handle a 1-G thrust. The bus platform itself was being designed to accomodate forty interceptors so that a pressure cabin have room atop it. And so forth.
Norman Spinrad, Russian Spring
***
"The space tug is undergoing a major shift in its possible roles. With the shuttle on the backburner satellite ferrying to geosynchronous orbit has been replaced by space station assembly in low Earth orbit. As such high-energy propellants are no longer necessary.
NASA has published a new set of mission requirements. One of the most demanding missions is Large Space Telescope retrieval, servicing, and reboost, because the space tug has to be able to propel the 11-tonne observatory with unfurled solar arrays, constraining the propulsion system to 0-002g acceleration.
The other design reference missions were:
• payload placement; delivering 1,590kg to a 630km higher orbit and returning it in event of failure, with a 1° plane change each way;
• multiple payload; delivering a 2,268kg satellite 157km higher and then a 4,536kg payload 46km further;
• payload retrieval; returning a 4,990kg satellite from 408km higher with a 1° plane change;
• payload reboost; docking with a 11,340kg satellite 185km higher and boosting it 204km further;
• module transfer; raising a 22,680kg module 204km with a 0.5° plane change, and returning a similar module (this is a propulsion system driver);
• payload deorbit; docking with a 34,020kg payload in a 296km orbit and dispatching it towards re-entry (this defines propulsion system upper thrust limit);
• sub-satellite mission; Space Tug with 2,268kg payload becoming a free-flyer for up to seven days and 180° away from base in the same orbit;
• in situ servicing; where a 2,268kg servicing mission kit is flown 740km higher and returned;
• payload viewing; rendezvousing with and imaging a satellite 1,556km higher during a flyaround (this defines reactioncontrol- system propellant requirement)
Many expendable upper stages were considered for the role. Solid-fuel stages like the Burner lacked flexibility and performance; they couldn't be restarted.
That left four contenders. They were the Delta second stage; the Agena; the Transtage; and the Centaur.
After a brief hesitation NASA decided the space station would be in Earth orbit; a lunar orbit space station was a step too far and has no practical interest.
Because of that, the space tug role shrunk to ferrying space station modules around Earth – from an injection 100 miles high to a docking 300 miles high.
The Centaur is totally overkill for such job; it is fragile, and its cryogenic propellants are hard to handle.
This left only three hypergolic contenders. Among them the Transtage is the biggest; it takes a Titan III to haul it into orbit. Much like the Centaur the Transtage is just too big for the job.
The Agena and Delta stage 2 are much smaller, and they were retained as finalists in the competition.
The Transtage bid has an interesting backstory.
There, Martin Marietta teamed with Boeing. The two companies had their space tug proposal interwined with the manned spacecraft competition that ran in parallel – with Martin Marietta Transtage mated to Boeing DynaSoar space plane. While a Titan IIIC can orbit 30 000 pounds, the DynaSoar glider by itself barely weighs 15 000 pounds.
The difference is filled by Titan III partially fueled Transtage upper stage that remain attached to the DynaSoar "glider". It acts as an extremely powerful booster that allows for all kind of large orbital manoeuvers – such as climbs up to 1000 miles !
Boeing pitched a revamped DynaSoar as a “poor man's space shuttle” but NASA did not cared.
From 1962 onwards Lee Scherer had an impressive career with NASA. He was first Lunar Orbiter program manager at Headquarters until 1967, when the program ended. He was then director of George Mueller Apollo Lunar Exploration Office.
In spring 1971 Sherer become Director of the Dryden Flight Research Center, California. Then a set of events happened that changed Scherer career forever. The space shuttle was canned in the fall of 1971.
Because the now defunct shuttle had been the last piece in the 1969 Space Task Group plan to survive budget cuts, a whole new manned spacecraft program had to be rebuild from zero.
Unbestknown to the public, Scherer Lunar Orbiter was nothing less than a failed spy satellite. In the early 60's the highly secret National Reconnaissance Office had build the Samos E-1 satellite to image the Soviet Union at a very high resolution. But for a hosts of reasons, the Samos E-1 never worked properly, so the NRO tried to get ride of it.
In the end the very secretive military agency offered Samos to NASA. The failed spy satellite was still good enough to map the Moon at high resolution to pick Apollo landing sites from the frames. As the Lunar Orbiter manager Scherer knew its origins as a spysat. Of course he had been sworn to secrecy by the NRO. Scherer, however, could see how tense the military was.
They logically feared of NASA used of a spy satellite. They feared it might disclose the highlysecret NRO to the public – and Soviet – eye. Scherer however was an outstanding manager and he very skillfully handled those tensions, reassuring the NRO by all means.
That experience was to prove extremely useful a decade later, in 1972 when NASA picked up the Agena as its space tug against the Delta second stage. The military had hoped NASA would pick Delta stage 2 as a space tug; they had good reasons for that.
But NASA chose the Agena instead, triggering a storm of protests from the military. The issue was, well, that all of the NRO spy satellites – Corona and Gambit - had been designed around the Agena. As a result, massive use of the Agena by a public, civilian agency made the NRO extremely nervous.
This explain why, in spring 1972, new NASA administrator James Beggs hand-picked Lee Scherer from his post of Dryden director to the newly created Space Tug (later piloted science) Program Office.
Over the next decade, as use of the civilian Agena extended further and further from NASA to private companies, Scherer had once again to manage growing tensions with the NRO.
The Agena-based KH-4 Corona has been withdrawn from service in May 1972, so that was no longer an issue.
Yet the KH-8 Gambit, also based on the Agena, was to remain in service for years to come.
In the end the NRO chose to abruptly withdrawn the KH-8 early on (by the mid-70's) by fear civilian use of the Agena might disclose the Gambit to the public eye. Scherer had to manage that crisis from the civilian side, and he did it with talent. For the record, existence of the NRO was only made public after the Cold War ended, in the late 90's !
- Archibald
- Word Count: 1.7k