It's Just My Job: A different path for Apollo in the 1960s

[prolemasses]

It’s Just My Job

April 28, 1962

NASA Administrator Hugh Dryden lazily looked over papers on his desk as he watched the TV and waited. An empty podium was on display. The speech that the President was about to give would define American spaceflight for the coming decade, and was the culmination of several months of frantic memos, late night conferences, and terse calls between Dryden and the President. The President wanted to know why the United States, the most powerful nation in the world, was losing in a Space Race that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars had been dedicated towards. Dryden picked up a folder on his desk labeled “Possible Methods of Human Lunar Exploration”, and tossed it aside. Suddenly, President Richard Nixon appeared on camera, followed by three familiar men. After the usual circumstance and introductions, the President stepped behind the podium and began to speak.

“My fellow Americans, today I stand here with you with three American heroes. Alan Shepard, Virgil Grissom, and John Glenn, like Christopher Columbus, and Vasco de Gama before them, have ventured into the unknown for the benefit of all mankind. They have helped open the doors to a new frontier, one greater, and more daunting than any in human history. But this new frontier will be America's proving ground. The United States shall venture out into space, not in conquest, but in peaceful exploration. We will face this new challenge head on, because our the American people are brave, intelligent, and innovative. And when the American people put their minds to a challenge, nothing is too difficult. America will pave a peaceful path in space, and ride the seas of the cosmos to greatness. It is with these ideals in mind that I am announcing today that the United States will build and launch a manned orbiting space station before the end of this decade. This permanent outpost in space will allow astronauts to live in space for weeks at a time, allowing for unprecedented scientific feats to be achieved. The brave pioneers that explored the West proved that if you want to really settle a frontier, you can not use just a wagon or campsite. You must build a home.”

 

[Kloka]

A space station? Awesome. Space stations are cool, and when NASA decides on a moon mission in the future a space station can be a launching post for one.

Watched.

 

[prolemasses]

The Election of 1960

 

[SirHalifax]

Interesting. As a lurker on the site, I read NASA’s Waterloo, so I am excited for a new TL

 

[prolemasses]

Chapter 1
Since the start of the space race, the United States had felt like it was always playing catch up to the Soviet Union. They had lost out on putting the first satellite in orbit, sending the first probe to the Moon, and putting the first man into space. Even when Alan Shepard had flown into space aboard his Mercury capsule Freedom 7 on May 5, 1961, his flight was a small suborbital hop. In contrast, Yuri Gagarin had circled the Earth in his Vostok capsule three weeks prior, a feat that the United States would not duplicate for almost a year with John Glenn aboard Friendship 7. All of these second place finishes left the Mercury program a bittersweet success. It had managed to place the first Americans into space, but not before the Reds. And so, when newly elected President Richard Nixon was asked to define a follow up program to Mercury, he had a few stipulations before he would offer his support. He wanted assurances that this new program would be able to demonstrate the technological superiority of American spaceflight, and put a stop to the game of catch up. However, despite Nixon’s conditions, NASA’s plans to succeed Mercury predated his assuming office. Feasibility studies had been conducted, and a few early contracts had been issued in the last years of the Eisenhower administration. This had been in service of project Apollo.

Apollo planned as a three man, multi-role spacecraft. It was designed by Max Faget, the same man behind the Mercury capsule. It would be used to test a variety of technologies in Earth Orbit, and there were even some plans for circumlunar flight. Apollo would be a much more capable spacecraft than Mercury. Aside from having triple the crew, Apollo would be able to support them for a long period of time in orbit, up to two weeks. In fact, the three man crew had been selected to allow for the possibility of each crew member to have an eight hour sleeping shift each day. The spacecraft would also have advanced maneuvering capabilities. While Mercury had only been equipped with small attitude control thrusters, Apollo would be able to change its orbit in space. This would allow for complex maneuvers, including rendezvous with another spacecraft. This capability would be critical for Earth orbiting space stations, which Apollo was designed to be able to support. Apollo was designed to be launched on the upcoming Saturn I booster. By the time Nixon took office, Apollo was part of the way through its primary feasibility study. Nixon initially did little to change NASA’s course, continuing the previous administration's momentum. It was only when the preliminary studies were complete, and it was time for Apollo to be given the go ahead and a defined mission that Nixon put his foot down. He wanted to know that Apollo would help close the space gap, and he wanted to know how. NASA went to the drawing board, and presented Nixon with two defined options.

The Apollo Capsule

The first would be to use Apollo to support a manned lunar mission. Here, Apollo would fly its normal Earth orbit development flights, but by 1967, would flyby the Moon on a manned circumlunar flight. This mission could be performed with a new launcher or using multiple flights of the Saturn I and Earth Orbit Rendezvous. Later, a new large heavy lift vehicle would be developed leading to a manned landing on the Moon around 1970. This program would be hugely expensive, but NASA was confident that this goal would be one they could beat the Russians at. The second option was to use Apollo to support a manned orbiting space station. Apollo had originally been designed partially as a space station ferry, and so this would be right up its alley. A station could extend the on orbit lifespan of Apollo from two weeks to several months, and would allow a huge variety of science to be performed. Studies could be performed on the effects of zero g on the biology of humans and other organisms, on space based astronomical observations, on studies of Earth from orbit, among many others. Developing a space station would also allow the United States to perfect the technologies of orbital rendezvous and assembly. These skills were considered important to any future missions to the Moon or beyond. Thus a space station could be seen, not as turning at a fork in the road away from interplanetary missions, but as taking the longer, more stable road, and maybe investing in a more fuel efficient vehicle on the way. When presented with his options, the choice was obvious for Nixon. A space station would be a significantly cheaper program than a manned lunar mission, would be likely to fly by 1967, and it also synergized well with the military’s plans for manned spaceflight. NASA was also confident that the new Saturn I booster they were developing would be heavier than anything the Soviets had, and would allow them to beat the Soviets to the punch. And so, in early 1962, NASA was given approval and funding to develop Apollo and a space station. Nixon also authorized funding and studies for manned circumlunar flights using Apollo sometime around 1970.

 

[prolemasses]

Chapter 2
In order to lift Apollo into orbit, a new, heavy lift rocket would have to be built, something far exceeding the capabilities of any rocket on either side of the iron curtain. The rocket to fill this role would be the Saturn I. The Saturn I had its origins with a project by ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) to develop a lifter for the military with the capability of lifting more than 20,000 lb to low Earth orbit. Wernher Von Braun, the pioneering German rocket scientist and former nazi, who was behind the V-2 missile, and Explorer 1, America’s first satellite, was tasked with designing this vehicle. Von Braun’s initial design was for a rocket known as the “Super Jupiter”, which would achieve the desired performance by clustering together tanks from the Redstone rocket to create a new large first stage. The design evolved many times over the course of studies, using various engines and upper stages. At one point, it was planned that the first stage would use 4 of the new 425,000 lbf E-1 engine Rocketdyne was researching, and a Titan I missile would be used as the upper stage. However, as both the requirements for the booster and the political landscape changed, the rocket drifted away from that design, instead opting to use 8 H-1 engines, which were similar to the original Redstone engine. By now the rocket was known as the Juno V. The upper stage evolved too, eventually incorporating the new technology of liquid hydrogen engines. This would allow unparalleled performance, and much greater evolutionary capabilities. The name of the rocket was changed a final time to “Saturn”, referencing “the one after Jupiter”. The Saturn would use the RL-10 engines being developed for the new hydrolox Centaur stage, with six of them being clustered together for the second stage, and the Centaur itself being used as the third stage. Just as the design was changing, so was the mission of the Saturn. It started as a Department of Defense project, was nearly cancelled, and ended up at NASA. Finally, in 1961, Saturn was finally given the purpose of being the lifter for the new Apollo spacecraft.

Saturn I Launch Vehicle [a]

Saturn was planned as a new family of boosters that would enable a large variety of missions. The initial Saturn design, the Saturn C-1, would use the S-IV upper stage with six RL-10s, and a Centaur third stage, to place around 10 tons into orbit, and around 6 tons onto a trans-lunar injection. The Saturn C-2 would add a new stage, the S-II, powered by two to four new engines in the 150,000-200,000 lbf class, with the S-IV and Centaur staying on top. This vehicle would be able to lift more than 20 tons to orbit. The C-3 would replace the S-I clustered first stage with a new larger one, powered by the planned 1.5 million lbf F-1 engine, to lift 50 or more tons to orbit. This would be succeeded by the even larger C-4 and C-5 designs that would be capable of lifting 100 tons or more, and were intended for missions to the Moon. The modular design of the Saturn family would allow the rocket to be developed gradually, and for it to be mission flexible. However, with plans for a lunar landing placed on hold for the foreseeable future, all later variants of the Saturn were seen as unnecessary. The F-1 engine needed for the C-4, C-4 and C-5 would need a huge amount of funding to finish its development, and so these designs would remain on paper. The other rockets in the Saturn family would prove very valuable to NASA’s future endeavours however. The C-1 would be able to lift Apollo into Low Earth Orbit, while the C-2 would be able to lift space station components, and perhaps throw a stripped down Apollo onto a lunar flyby. Best of all, both would use technology that was well into development. Only minimal modifications to the C-1 would be needed to make it suitable for lifting Apollo, and the C-2 would only require development of the S-II stage. Thus, the United States would have the most powerful rockets in the world, and without requiring development of any costly new engines or clean sheet designs. President Nixon made sure that the 1963 budget included funding for the development of the Saturn C-2. Meanwhile, the C-1, now referred to simply as “Saturn I”, was already getting ready to take flight.

Saturn C-2

On October 27, 1961, the first Saturn rocket lifted off. The flight, referred to as “SA-1” was a suborbital test flight of the Saturn I first stage. Dummy models of the S-IV and Centaur upper stages were mounted atop it, capped off with a Jupiter nose cone, all weighed down to properly simulate the launch conditions a full stack would endure. The new first stage, dubbed “Cluster’s Last Stand”, due to its haphazard looking design, was the most powerful rocket stage ever built, and with 8 engines, was for more complex than any US rocket before it. For this flight, the S-I stage was only partially loaded with propellant. Observers at the SA-1 flight took bets on how long the rocket would last before exploding, many expecting the test to end in a rain twisted metal into the Atlantic. There were some minor weather delays, but in the end the rocket lifted off only an hour behind schedule. To the surprise of some, SA-1 flew beautifully. The S-I first stage performed almost perfectly, the only issue being an engine cutoff 1.6 seconds ahead of schedule. SA-1 would leave the atmosphere on its suborbital arc, reaching an apogee of 135 km, before crashing into the ocean 345 km down range. The successful flight was seen as a good omen for the Apollo program, with the vehicle intended to carry it to the heavens seemingly on track. Three more suborbital test flights with dummy upper stages would take place over the next few years, all successful.

Launch of SA-1 [c]

In November of 1963, the first launch of a Saturn I with a live upper stage was conducted. This flight, SA-5 would be the first deployment of a full scale Saturn launch vehicle. Vice President Henry Cabot Lodge would attend the launch, and noted the special significance of this flight, as the US finally had a rocket more powerful than any that the Soviet Union had operational. Much like the “missile gap” that had been such a big concern in the late 50s and early 60s, a “launcher gap” had existed between the US and the USSR. Ever since the launch of Sputnik I, the family of rockets derived from the R-7 rocket had provided the Soviets with an advantage in launch capability, which had given them a serious leg up in the early days of the space race. The Saturn I could lift more than 11,000 kg to Low Earth Orbit, almost an order of magnitude improvement over the Atlas, and more than twice as much payload as the largest extant Soviet rocket. The SA-5 launch saw many different changes compared to the previous flights of the Saturn rocket. The first stage was fully loaded with propellant for the first time, and the engines had been upgraded, with increased thrust and efficiency. The first stage also saw the addition of 8 small fins at its base, for stability and control, and the guidance hardware was moved to atop the S-IV stage. A Jupiter nose cone and a mass simulator for the Centaur stage was mounted atop the S-IV. The addition of the S-IV introduced several new layers of complexity to the launch. The flight sequence would now include a separation event. Failure of the S-IV to properly detach or ignite, would result in mission failure. The 6 RL-10 engines of the stage provided a layer of redundancy, but a failure in more than one engine would also introduce the possibility of failure. The hydrogen fuel of the S-IV presented enormous engineering challenges. To remain liquid, hydrogen had to be chilled below 33 Kelvin, and then kept below that temperature to prevent it from evaporating and boiling off. Several layers of insulating foam would help forestall this, but the introduction of liquid hydrogen created a more urgent time pressure during the launch procedure. Any serious delay that occurred after propellant loading would result in too much hydrogen boiling off, requiring the attempt to be aborted, and the tanks to be drained and then refueled. There was a lot of anxiety surrounding the debut of the S-IV. Previous attempts to launch the smaller Centaur hydrolox stage had ended in failure. Centaur used the same RL-10 engines as the S-IV, but it also used the unique weight saving “balloon tank” method of construction, which made it particularly fragile. S-IV was a more solidly built stage, but was also far more complex than the Centaur.

As launch day approached for SA-5, everyone watching waited with bated breath, hoping for the best. Some minor delays postponed the launch, including one aborted attempt due to propellant leakage, but finally on November 23, 1963, the Saturn I lifted off, lighting up the early morning sky around Cape Canaveral. Birds scattered as the eight H-1 engines roared to life, and the rocket began to lumber skywards. The first few minutes of the Saturn’s flight went much the same as previous missions, but lasted a minute or so longer, due to the larger propellant load. When the first stage burned out, the moment of truth arrived. Ground controllers watched the telemetry, holding their breath. Cheers erupted when separation of the stages was confirmed, both from the signal transmitted by the rocket, and by ground observers with telescopic lenses, the tracking camera catching the moment. The ullage rockets, small solid rocket motors mounted on the side of the S-IV, lit up, pushing the upper stage away from the S-I, and settling the propellant at the bottom of the tanks. Simultaneously, solid motors decelerated the first stage, pulling it away. After the two stages had drifted a sufficient distance apart, the six RL-10 engines on the S-IV ignited, pushing the upper stage towards Earth Orbit. Unlike the previous suborbital flights, SA-5 was bound for LEO. The S-IV performed nominally, its burn lasting a lot longer than that of the lower stage. The thrust of the RL-10s pushed the S-IV sideways, driving up its lateral velocity, and increasing its ballistic arc, throwing it towards an orbit. After eight minutes, the engines cut out, leaving the upper stage in an elliptical orbit, one that grazed the atmosphere, and would decay after just a few days. Uproarious cheer and applause filled the control room when ground stations confirmed that orbit had been achieved, as ground crew, engineers, and administrators celebrated their many hard years of work coming to fruition. The Saturn had succeeded! America now had a heavy launch vehicle, capable of supporting its future in space.

Launch of SA-5


a) - Photo credit Wikimedia Commons
b) - Photo credit Astronautix.com
c) - Photo credit Drewexmachina.com

 

[prolemasses]

Chapter 3

While Apollo was the center of NASAs manned space flight efforts, it was not the only effort underway. Not wanting to be left out, the US Air Force had been developing the Dyna-Soar manned spacecraft. The Dyna-Soar was a completely different beast from Mercury and Apollo. While those two were small conical capsules, Dyna-Soar was a full fledged space plane. While the capsules were designed to be the most efficient shape to survive atmospheric entry, Dyna-Soar would be able to not only reenter the atmosphere, but skip off it, and glide through it. Its name was a shortening of “Dynamic-Soarer”, a reference to the spaceplane’s projected ability to not only maneuver during its descent path, but also to dip into the atmosphere while in orbit, and use its aerodynamic lift to adjust its orbital inclination. This synergistic plane change maneuver would give Dyna-Soar unprecedented range in orbit, allowing it to overfly multiple targets at unexpected times, and saving a huge amount of maneuvering propellant. While capsules like Mercury and Vostok landed in the ocean under a parachute, Dyna-Soar touched down on a runway like a plane. This seemed more up the Air Force’s alley, with real pilots actually flying the plane, as opposed to NASA astronauts, who were essentially passengers during reentry. And unlike the disposable capsules, the Dyna-Soar glider was intended to be reusable, allowing for the whole program to be flown with three or four spacecraft, instead of requiring a new one for each flight. Dyna-Soar was intended more as an experimental test vehicle than as an operational military aircraft, proving the capabilities of a reusable orbital spaceplane, and demonstrating the necessary support facilities to operate one. After an initial series of demonstration flights, both orbital and suborbital, an operational vehicle could be developed from the initial prototype.

Dyna-Soar had its origins in German scientist Eugen Saengar’s Silbervogel, or “Silver Bird'' intercontinental skip-glide rocket bomber concept, designed to lift off from Germany and be able to bomb New York during World War Two. After many former Nazi scientists were brought to the US after the war, as part of Operation Paperclip, they brought the idea with them, many going to Bell Laboratories. A long range rocket glide bomber was eventually proposed by Bell Laboratories in the early 1950s by many of the same Germans that had been behind the Silbervogel. These hypothetical rocket bombers, referred as BOMI (BOmber MIssile) and ROBO (ROcket BOmber) were intended as nuclear first strike delivery systems against the Soviet Union. Both BOMI and ROBO dispensed with the original horizontally launched “rocket sled” of the Silbervogel, instead going with vertically launched expendable rocket boosters. Eventually, this evolved into the Dyna-Soar. Dyna-Soar was planned to be developed in three distinct phases. In Phase I, the vehicle would be a suborbital test vehicle, launched to 100 kilometers altitude and hypersonic speeds by a rocket booster. This would evolve into Phase II, an orbital test vehicle, capable of military surveillance. Finally, in Phase III, Dyna-Soar would become an operational manned, globally capable, strategic strike aircraft. The first official request for contracts for the design of the Dyna-Soar glider was issued in 1958. A wide variety of designs were submitted by every major aerospace contractor. North American proposed a vehicle based on their X-15 suborbital rocket plane, Lockheed put forth a suborbital vehicle launched atop a modified Atlas ICBM and, Convair proposed an air breathing hypersonic aircraft, but the majority of the designs were for a small orbital glider launched atop a large rocket booster, either one derived from the Titan or Minuteman missiles, or an entirely new one. The main debate was over the aerodynamic designs of the glider. Boeing, McDonnell, and Douglas proposed a swept, arrow winged glider, while Northrop and Bell proposed delta winged designs.

Bell's Dyna-Soar Proposal [a]

Eventually, the proposals were whittled down to Boeing and Bell’s proposals. It was expected that Bell would have an advantage, despite being the smaller company, given their long experience and multitude of studies in this area. In addition to their studies on BOMI and ROBO, Bell had built the rocket powered X-1, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier. Bell’s original plan for the booster, in collaboration with Martin, was to use the Titan I ICBM for Phase I suborbital flights, and an upgraded Titan derived booster for Phase II. Boeing's proposals were more vague, to use the Atlas-Centaur rocket for suborbital flights, and some new booster, that was yet undefined, for orbital flights. Indeed, when the air force decided to use Titan based rockets as the booster for Dyna-Soar, it was seen as a sign that Bell was favored. However, during the period of additional study, something strange happened. Boeing’s original design, with swept wings and fins, evolved by 1959, into something very much resembling Bell’s design, with delta wings, and a flat bottom for atmospheric reentry. The two spacecraft were almost identical in appearance. The main difference seemed to be in the thermal cooling system. Bell proposed an active cooling system, using liquid coolants to prevent overheating during atmospheric entry. Meanwhile, Boeing incorporated a passive cooling system, using new metal alloys, insulation sheets covering the bottom of the glider, and “water walls” encasing internal components. In late 1959, Boeing was selected as the primary contractor for the Dyna-Soar program. This caused outrage amongst those at Bell, and there was some talk that Boeing had been awarded the contract to make up for the fact that they had lost out in the competition to develop the B-70 bomber in 1957. However, internal sources reported that the decision mainly came down to the military preferring their cooling system design. Despite mutterings against them, Boeing now began working at full speed on development of the X-20. By this point, the idea of dropping bombs from a manned space plane seemed antiquated, with the advent of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Thus, Phase III was dropped, and the role of Dyna-Soar changed from a bomber to an orbital spacecraft, capable of orbital reconnaissance, satellite inspection and servicing, research, and resupply of space stations. The timeline now called for aerial drop tests by 1963, suborbital flights by the next year, and orbital flights before 1966.

Boeing Dyna-Soar Proposal (b)

While the contract had been issued to Boeing, debate over the launch vehicle continued within the airforce. With weight growth in the glider anticipated, the original launch vehicle would no longer be sufficient to carry it to orbit. The SLV-4 (Space Launch Vehicle 4) program, as the booster for the Dyna-Soar was called, had a turbulent history. The original plan was for a rocket called Titan C, which would use an upgraded Titan II first stage, and a large hydrogen powered upper stage. These plans advanced far enough that it was decided to use the Titan II as the suborbital booster rather than Titan I. However, with the Titan C no longer an option, other options were now explored. There was serious consideration given to using the Saturn I as a booster. The huge rocket would be more than capable of lifting Dyna-Soar to orbit, but it would be very expensive, with 8 first stage engines, and a hydrogen upper stage. In addition, Saturn was NASA’s rocket, and the Air Force wanted their own independent launch capability. In early 1961, the air force decided to recommend the development of the Space Launching System, a series of rocket designs they had been studying since the mid 1950s, as the SLV-4 rocket. SLS consisted of a core hydrogen powered stage, with solid rockets strapped on the outside. The solid rockets would serve as a first stage, the core remaining unlit at takeoff, and then igniting just before booster jettison, acting as stage two. By adding additional boosters and upper stages, the SLS allowed for a capable, flexible, highly advanced family of launch vehicles that would have applications outside of launching Dyna-Soar. Despite its many advantages, SLS would involve extensive, costly new development, possibly leading to delays. Some within the Department of Defense noted that if large segmented solid rocket boosters were developed, that instead of attaching them to a brand new SLS core, they could simply be strapped onto the side of a Titan II to create a perfectly capable launch vehicle. The per flight costs of this upgraded Titan were projected to be equal to or lower than that of SLS, and development costs would be far lower. Thus, just three months after the selection of SLS for SLV-4, it was ditched in favor of this new “Titan III”.

SLS with Dyna-Soar [c]

A month after the selection of Titan III, another momentous shift occurred when it was announced that all Phase I suborbital flights would be dropped from the program. Instead, Dyna-Soar would jump straight from B-52 drop tests to flights at orbital velocity. A few of the drop tests would incorporate a booster rocket to get the test vehicle up to high speed, in order to test high speed maneuvering and thermal protections. However, this could not get it close to the speeds and temperatures to be expected when entering the atmosphere at orbital velocities. Instead, at least two unmanned orbital flights would precede any manned flights. The first of these manned flights would not technically be orbital, as the rocket would not make a full orbit around the planet, lifting off from Cape Canaveral, and landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California, but it would reach the same speeds as an orbital flight. In 1960, NASA began work on developing a subscale mockup of the Dyna-Soar that could be launched on suborbital test flights to test the heat shield and demonstrate the basic aerodynamic properties of the heat shield. The test vehicle, named ASSET (Aerothermodynamic Elastic Structural Systems Environmental Tests) would be launched atop a Thor missile, starting in 1963. After the cancellation of suborbital flights, the ASSET program was expanded, in order to perform many of the tests planned for suborbital flights. A variety of reasons were given for dropping the suborbital flights. Some said it was to accelerate the time schedule, some argued that the pilots would be just as much at risk in a suborbital flight as an orbital one, so there was no point in incrementalism, others pointed to the difficulty in rating the Dyna-Soar for flight on both the Titan II and III, which despite their common origins, were fundamentally different rockets. Whatever the reasons, the suborbital flights were dropped, and the program marched forward.

Launch and landing of the Dyna-Soar [d]

In April of 1960, seven astronauts were secretly chosen for the Dyna-Soar program. These men were chosen from the top ranks of military test pilots, and many were already involved with the X-15 rocket plane program. The astronauts selected were:
-Neil Armstrong
-Bill Dana
-Henry C. Gordon
-Pete Knight
-Russell L. Rogers
-Milt Thompson
-James W. Wood
All were highly qualified and began training in secret shortly after selection. In mid 1962, Dana decided to leave the Dyna-Soar program[e] in order to focus more on his role in the X-15 program, and Albert Crews was brought on as his replacement. The test pilots were announced to the public in September of 1962. Shortly afterwards, Dyna-Soar was officially designated the X-21[f] Dyna-Soar. By the end of 1962, the first drop tests of the X-21 were just over a year away. The program was feeling more and more real everyday.

(a) Image Credit: http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=9880
(b) Image Credit: wikipedia.com
(c) Image Credit: astronautix.com
(d) Image Credit: https://flipboard.com/@CargoMagazin/the-boeing-x-20-dyna-soar-spaceplane-launching-on-a-titan-iiic-concept/a-TVLeRh7SQ-KBFHgrvFsaPg:a:1691014565-60fb3796f0/youtube.com
(e) In OTL, Bill Dana and Armstrong left the program in 1962. Armstrong left to join Gemini. Here, butterflies around the differences between Gemini and Apollo lead to Armstrong staying with the Dyna-Soar.
(f) This was given to another X-plane designed to test laminar flow in OTL. Here, that vehicle is called X-20, and Dyna-Soar is called X-21. Butterflies!

 

[prolemasses]

I am now planning weekly updates every Wednesday from here on out. Hope you guys are enjoying it so far, I know it isn't too far diverged from OTL, but some serious changes are coming.

 

[Kloka]

How far do you plan for this timeline to go?

 

[Thoresby]

Fascinating, subscribed. A space station is a much more affordably goal than a moon landing even if it still requires a considerable amount of technological development but even more importantly unlike OTL Apollo where at the certain point you can say "been there, done that, time to go home" and wind up the program once you have a permanent manned orbital presence it is a politically much harder to retreat back to earth. Which might protect NASA from the it's OTL budget problems in the 1970's.

 

[prolemasses]

How far do you plan for this timeline to go?

Not sure yet. I have plans up until 1970 or so. I have a rough idea in my head of how the space program develops until then, and I got bored one day and mocked up all the Presidential election wikiboxes until 1972.

 

[prolemasses]

If anyone hasn't guessed the inspiration for the timeline's title yet:
And all this science
I don't understand
It's just my job five days a week
A rocket man
A rocket man

 

[CrazyGeorge]

This is really good.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

The biggest problem with choosing a Space Station as your 'beat the Russkies' goal, is that the Soviets could easily slap together a minimal station, launch it on a Proton, and beat you.

 

[prolemasses]

The biggest problem with choosing a Space Station as your 'beat the Russkies' goal, is that the Soviets could easily slap together a minimal station, launch it on a Proton, and beat you.

Well, the Proton doesn't exist yet, and the US doesn't know its being worked on.

 

[prolemasses]

Sorry for the brief delay! Here is chapter 4.

Chapter 4
While development of Apollo and the rocket intended to launch it continued, work continued in parallel on the space station it was intended for. Studies for an orbital space station preceded Apollo, and a variety of proposals had been put forward. With President Nixon’s support behind the program, these studies were now competing to be the basis for NASA’s central program for the next decade. One of the earliest, and also the most ambitious proposals was Werhner Von Braun’s giant wheel shaped station from his Man Will Conquer Space Soon series of articles in Collier’s magazine in the mid 1950s. Von Braun’s station was absolutely massive, with a diameter of 75 meters, and a crew of 80. The station would slowly rotate, providing the crew with one third of Earth’s gravity, and would serve as a platform for Earth observation, and a hub for interplanetary missions. The station would be constructed by hundreds of flights by Von Braun’s proposed ferry rocket. Such a plan was far beyond the scope of what NASA was planning for their own space station. Instead, NASA began to look into developing a station that could be launched as one module, aboard a single Saturn rocket. Such a station would not be suitable as a permanent outpost, but would be able to support multiple weeks to months long visits by different visiting crews. This initial simplistic station would serve as a testbed for long term life support technology, allow for a large amount of experiments to be conducted in orbit, and serve to develop the necessary expertise for the operation of a future, large, permanent station.

By 1962, with NASA being focused on the space station as its central objective, all the disparate studies were consolidated into one program, the Manned Orbiting Research Laboratory, or MORL. The central tenet of the MORL program was that the station would be launched fully stocked and as one integrated module. The baseline assumption was that the first station would be able to support a crew of three for up to 120 days, or three 60 day missions. After this, the station would be retired, and another launched. It was hoped that each successive station would be able to support longer and longer crew stays, and eventually, on orbit resupply, and a permanent human presence. The primary engineering concern involved in developing MORL was how to fit the weight of the station’s structure, life support systems, station keeping propellant, internal fittings, scientific equipment, crew gear, and consumables onto a single rocket. One early and popular proposal, championed by Werhner Von Braun, was the “Wet Workshop” design. This would use the empty liquid hydrogen tank on the S-IV upper stage of a Saturn I as the primary living quarters for the crew. A “Support Module” would be attached to the top of the S-IV, containing a docking port, power and propulsion, and all of the life support equipment for the station. Once the wet workshop MORL reached orbit, any excess hydrogen would be drained from the tank, and a crew in an Apollo would dock to the Support Module. They would then proceed to retrofit the empty tank into a space station. Though this design seemed a little ramshackle, reusing the propellant tank would allow for a huge amount of on-orbit living space, and for the entire station to be launched on the 10,000 kg capabilities of a single Saturn I. A pressure vessel designed to hold liquid hydrogen under high pressure would naturally lend itself to containing a breathable atmosphere, but converting the tank to an actual livable space would require solving a large number of technical challenges. The tank needed to be 100% drained of hydrogen, as having stray hydrogen fumes drifting about in an oxygen rich environment where electrical components would be operating was a disaster waiting to happen. All of the equipment that was planned for the interior of the station would have to be stored outside the tank and installed by the crew. Many other issues were raised during studies, like micrometeorite shielding, waste management, power supply, and plenty of others. These studies took precedence within NASA since, for the first half of 1962, the Wet Workshop served as the baseline internal reference design for MORL. However, when it became clear that funding would be provided for development of the Saturn C-2 (now simply termed Saturn II), suddenly a whole new world of possibilities opened up, one that obviated the need to live inside hydrogen tanks.

Model of the Saturn II [a]

The potential availability of larger launch vehicles had been considered when developing space station concepts, but the baseline plan just accounted for the Saturn I, the large launch vehicle that was planned to be operational by 1963. NASA’s newly planned heavy lift vehicle, the Saturn II, would be at least twice as capable as the Saturn I, which greatly eased the tight mass constraints that had shaped the program so far. The original Saturn C-2 it was based on consisted of a Saturn I first stage, with the S-IV as a third stage, and a new hydrogen powered second stage, the S-II, which was loaded with nearly half as much propellant as the S-I first stage. This design would be able to lift 21,500 kg to LEO. Several changes occurred on the path from the rough outline of the C-2 to the fully fleshed out design Saturn II though. The S-I stage had already been upgraded during development to allow the Saturn I to carry Apollo, and it was easy to imagine some additional minor engine improvements and fuel tank stretches further improving upon its capabilities. Similar changes to the S-IV were planned, and the S-II stage was never not evolving. The upgrades to the S-I and S-IV meant that when the two were stacked to create a Saturn I, the resulting rocket would have its payload capacity increased by up to 50%. And the Saturn II would be able to lift anywhere from 28-35 metric tons, depending on the final design of the S-II stage. This would be more than enough for a fully outfitted monolithic station to be launched in one go, removing the weight constraints that had led to the Wet Workshop.

With the Saturn II now as the cornerstone of the space station program, its development quickly became one of NASA’s central projects. As the design matured, it turned out that the Saturn II would be more of a family of launch vehicles than a singular one. The improvements to the S-I and S-IV stages had already resulted in an upgraded Saturn I (termed the Saturn IB), and now development of the S-II stage was shaping the development of the Saturn II. In 1962, in a close fought competition, the Aerojet LR97 was selected over the Rocketdyne J-2 as the primary engine for the hydrolox S-II stage. The LR97 was a hydrogen powered variant of the LR87 engine that powered the Titan rocket family's first stage. It was originally proposed as the upper stage of the Titan C design for the Dyna-Soar launcher. The LR-97 would have a thrust of around 667 kN, and four of them would be used on the S-II stage. The use of less dense liquid hydrogen meant that the S-II stage, which kept the same diameter as the first stage, was actually slightly larger in volume than the S-I, if less massive when fully loaded. One proposal drawn up during the design process was for a slightly less capable variant of the Saturn II, termed the Saturn IIB, which would use a two engined variant of the S-II, and omit the third stage. This version would be capable of lifting a little over 20 tons into orbit, and could be used for missions where the full 30+ ton capabilities of the baseline S-II were not needed. For the present, no such pressing desires existed, but perhaps they could in the future, such as the need to launch medium sized components for a larger space station.

Final design for MORL

With the payload capabilities of the Saturn II opening up a new realm of possibilities, the design of MORL continued to develop. In mid 1963, the program was given the presidentially directed name of “Spacelab”. President Nixon did not want his signature space directive going by an acronym. The overall program would adopt the name, but it was decided that each individual space station would receive its own name. A final design was finalized around early 1964, and construction soon began on the first American space station. But in order to get to a space station, you needed a spacecraft capable of docking with it. That’s where Apollo would come in.

(a) Image Credit: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/144-apollo-saturn-2-conversion-kit-245103772

 

[Thoresby]

This tl's Spacelab is obviously going to be inferior to OTL's Starlab but it should be a very useful first step though I am sad to see the wet workshop die, at least for now. Hopefully it's time will come.

 

[Kloka]

This tl's Spacelab is obviously going to be inferior to OTL's Starlab but it should be a very useful first step though I am sad to see the wet workshop die, at least for now. Hopefully it's time will come.

......don’t you mean Skylab?

 

[Thoresby]

......don’t you mean Skylab?

My memory is clearly fucked.

 

[Shevek23]

even more importantly unlike OTL Apollo where at the certain point you can say "been there, done that, time to go home" and wind up the program once you have a permanent manned orbital presence it is a politically much harder to retreat back to earth. Which might protect NASA from the it's OTL budget problems in the 1970's.

Why? Let's be cynical here. There is a wide consensus, which I dissent from seeing as "grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" thinking, that JFK's Moon Shot decision somehow "ruined" NASA by accustoming the agency to unsustainably high budgets, poisoning their ability to adjust their thinking to sustainable ones, and somehow burned the bridges to a realistic methodical step by step irreversible building of ever improving capability that would reach the Moon with a more economical and growable strategy in good due time.

Parts of this perception are well founded but I think the part where it falls down is precisely what you said, that for some unspecified reason "it is politically difficult to retreat back to Earth."

I don't think we can rely on that at all. At its most delirious mid-60s peak the NASA budget was not a really huge part of total Federal outlays, and if US political culture had a reason to sustain it for decades we clearly could have. I'll grant it was a lot of money, but the thing is, if you sustainably spend say 1/4 as much, that means the pork-barrel "heat shield" tending to keep funding going for the immediate benefit of this or that contractor/employee constituency is also much thinner.

My hunch is that actually, the more frugal and fiscally innocuous the space program is, the easier it is for a single political fluctuation to defund the whole thing, burn the bridge and never look back. The cost of restarting when another shift of political wind suddenly favors it again is considerably greater than just sustaining it year to year, but the political decision will not weigh that economic rationality highly. If some coalition of forces takes the view that the thing is superfluous and unnecessary and inappropriate, they won't be in the least moved by the argument that "when your mistaken judgement is overridden in the future, these savings from killing it now will be far offset by the higher costs of restarting." Their position now is that it shouldn't have been started, or that it has served its purpose, and that of course they are doing the right thing now and so any sane persons in the future will agree. And it is something of a Catch-22; having raised the price barrier to resume, that resumption is that much less likely.

Vice versa I suspect the sheer mass of OTL Lunar Apollo may have warped NASA (and contractor) mentalities, but at the same time the sheer magnitude of the commitment coupled with keeping the promises involved are what made NASA immune to total abolition. For ideological reasons, Ronald Reagan would quite likely have put the kibosh on government spending for peaceful scientific space exploration, except that the sheer magnitude of investment in STS and the general popular cachet of NASA as American Heroes dissuaded him from rocking the boat that much. David Stockman tried to do it anyway, as his mandate, and found the rug pulled out from under him.

By no means am I claiming a slow steady tortoise strategy of methodical step by step buildup of space infrastructure is a bad path. I just think it is a mistake to assume that NASA has some kind of fixed pot of money and that 1960s Lunar Apollo robbed the trust fund. And most of all, modest plodding success is no guarantee against adverse political winds; it makes the structure easier to sweep away completely when they shift.