Part I Chapter 3:
“Zarya means ‘Dawn’ and the crew of Zarya captured an image of a dawn unlike any seen by human eyes, our own world rising above the horizon of another.”
-Caption below the Zarya-1 “Blue Dawn” photo in Time Magazine, December, 1968
The Zarya 1 flight generated outrage in the USA not seen since the launch of Sputnik. The Soviets had leaped ahead like it was 1961 again. The flight of Zarya 1 was the top story across the country, despite it being only a week after the presidential election. Though those in the know did not believe that the Soviets had a rocket large enough to send men even into lunar orbit, to the average layman, it seemed like the Soviets could land on the Moon tomorrow. The New York Times published a cartoon that showed a hammer and sickle emblazoned across the face of the Moon while an American rocket exploded in the foreground. Congress called a commision, demanding to know why A) No one had seen this coming, and B) Why America had been beaten to the Moon when the landing itself was now less than a year away. NASA officials called to testify carefully explained that they were doing everything they could, that an American circumlunar flight would have had have had little value to the landing program, and that they did not want to rush forward recklessly and cause another Apollo 1. One NASA official even asked contemptuously during the hearing if he could get back to Florida and keep working on putting men on the moon, or if the committee had more questions for him. Despite NASA’s insistences that this had changed nothing, there still was some dismay within the agency. Some Astronauts and officials noted that there had been concepts floated during the Gemini program that could have led to an American Lunar flyby as early as 1966. Nevertheless, NASA stuck to their schedule, marching towards their goal.
Apollo 8 lifted off from Cape Kennedy on December 21, 1968, and gave the ground controllers a Christmas present by performing perfectly. Each stage of the massive Saturn V flew just as planned, and pogo oscillations were kept to an absolute minimum. Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. The unmanned CSM of Apollo 8 flew by the Moon just as Zarya 1 had just a month earlier. Some Astronauts had semi-seriously offered to fly on Apollo 8 after the Zarya fiasco, but NASA was not risking any crew on a rocket that had yet to perform completely nominally. Two months later, the crew of Apollo 9 lifted off in their Saturn 1B to meet their LM in orbit, it having launched three days prior. They rendezvoused with the LM, and James McDivitt and Rusty Schweickart transferred into the vehicle. They separated from the CSM and performed tests of the lunar lander, simulating a landing abort and returning to the CSM a few hours later. The LM passed every test with flying colors. Schweickart commented on its maneuverability, comparing it to a fighter plane. After a week on orbit, the crew returned to Earth. The Apollo 9 mission was declared completely successful, but the public at large took little notice. NASA was really pushing for the Apollo 10 mission in May, as that would not only carry the first Americans to the Moon, but pave the way for the landing of Apollo 11 in July.
In March of 1969, the Soviets once again rubbed the noses of the Americans in their defeat with the launch of Zarya 2. Cosmonauts Yevgeny Khrunov and Viktor Gorbatko flew by the Moon again, essentially repeating the previous flight. After their capsule, named for the late Yuri Gagarin, landed, the Zarya program was declared officially over. However, this finality would not be made public, and the rest of the world continued to wait in anticipation for the next Soviet lunar flight.
Finally, after months of preparation, the Saturn V for the first American manned flight to the Moon was rolled out to the pad. On May 18, 1969, Gordon Cooper, John Young, and Gene Cernan boarded the Rocket, and at 4:49 PM, Apollo 10 launched them towards the Moon. The Astronauts could feel the power of the Saturn V as it carried them to orbit. After the first two stages burned out and dropped away, the S-IVB ignited to complete orbital insertion. The combined mass of Apollo 10’s CSM, LEM, and S-IVB made it the heaviest object ever put into orbit. After three orbits, ground control cleared Apollo 10 for trans-lunar injection, reigniting the S-IVB and propelling them towards the Moon. After TLI, Command Module Pilot John Young maneuvered the CSM in the transposition and docking maneuver that was required to extract the LM from the S-IVB stage. After the docking was complete, the crew of Apollo 10 settled in for the ride. Shortly after setting off to the Moon, they announced that they, inspired by the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey, that they had named their CSM “Discovery” and their LM “Aries”. NASA, hoping to be taken a little more seriously, issued a press release explaining the great ship of exploration, and constellation behind the names respectively, but both Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke reportedly found the situation amusing. Clarke even wrote a letter to NASA asking that if any “Anomalous Objects” were discovered on the Moon by Apollo 10, that they be publicly disclosed.
Like their Soviet precursors, the American astronauts marvelled at the Earth shrinking behind them and at seeing the Moon up close. However, after they passed into the shadow of the Moon, the SPS engine of their CSM ignited and placed the spacecraft into lunar orbit. After contact was regained and lunar orbit was confirmed, a massive cheer erupted in ground control. After a few orbits, a few hours to marvel at the beauty of the Moon, and to snap hundreds of historic photos, the “Dress Rehearsal” aspect of Apollo 10 began. Cooper and Cernan boarded Aries, and undocked, leaving Young alone. They began performing a descent, just as the crew of Apollo 11 would in a few months. However, late in the descent, the would simulate an aborted landing. The descent engine would stop firing, the ascent stage would separate, and they would fly back up to meet Discovery. To reduce the temptation, especially since this was Gordo Cooper’s last flight, the descent stage was specifically short fueled to make a safe landing impossible. Though the crew were experienced professionals, astronauts are nearly universally hotshots, and there was no way NASA was taking chances.
The descent went nominally, however, when the ascent stage separated, it began to spin out of control. The astronauts were caught swearing as they struggled to regain control. Luckily, after just seven rotations, the crew wrestled control back, and continued the flight. It was revealed later that the crew had forgotten to take the LM out of abort mode before performing the maneuver, which confused the computer, and led to the loss of control. After their crazy ride, Cooper and Cernan flew back up to join John Young once more. After the crew were all aboard Discovery, the ascent stage of Aries was restarted to crash it into the lunar surface. The crew would orbit the Moon for a few more days, waiting for the phase angles to line back up so that they could go home. The greater mass of the Apollo missions meant that unlike the crews of the Zarya flights, the crew of Apollo 10 could carry a TV camera aboard. The crew made live TV broadcasts from Lunar Orbit, while the Zarya 1 crew could only give a brief radio interview. The press lapped up the footage, which played on the nightly news across the globe. The Soviets issued a statement congratulating the Americans, but reminding them that, due to the free return trajectory used, the crew of Zarya 1 had traveled further from Earth than any other human beings. In addition to the public relations stunts, the crew of Apollo 10 also carried out scientific observations of the Moon from orbit, far superior to the meager gains of the Zarya program.
After a few days, Apollo 10 prepared to begin the Trans Earth Injection maneuver. This was a tense moment. If the SPS engine failed to ignite, the crew of Apollo 10 would be trapped in Lunar Orbit and left to die. Thankfully, it performed nominally, and the crew were launched on their way home, in the home stretch. The crew took photos of the Earth, and gave a live TV interview. Before they had even returned, the crew were heroes.
Just one day out from home, the crew was instructed to perform a small trajectory correction maneuver. They oriented the spacecraft and fired the RCS thrusters. Inside the service module, helium pressurised the propellant. Helium was used to pressurize the propellant, removing the need for any pumps, simplifying these essential engines. However, on the fuel tanks supporting one RCS quad, the teflon bladder that protected the Unsymmetrical Dimethylhydrazine propellant from the cold of the helium had a small imperfection. Some of the UDMH had frozen in the fuel lines. When the thruster was fired up, the propellant began to thaw, expanding, putting strain on the fuel lines, pushing it close to rupturing…
John Young slowly adjusted the trajectory of Apollo 10. He moved the stick ever so slowly. Suddenly a massive bang sounded through the spacecraft.
“What the hell was that?” Young asked.
“I don’t know” Cernan responded, “meteoroid?”
The electrical buses began going crazy, and lights started flashing all over the cabin. Cooper grabbed the radio and keyed up ground control.
“Houston, ten here, uh, we might have a situation up here.”
