The Bleeding Edge: An Alternate History of NASA

[Earthy05]

The Bleeding Edge
Chapter 1: Let's Get This Thing Started
​

Pasadena, California, 2019
*Click*

“Ok can you say your name and occupation then let’s get this thing started”
“My name is Judy Leslieson, former NASA astronaut and geologist professor”
“Thank you Ms. Leslieson, let us get underway. Why don’t you tell me your story”

Well i was born here in California, in 1948. My childhood was pretty uneventful, especially compared with the events of my adult life, and you’re here to document my NASA career so I’ll skip the unnecessary details. I began studying geology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1967, with the hopes of becoming a geology professor someday. I have always had an interest in space, an interest helped by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory being in sight of where I lived, and when President Kennedy challenged the United States to go to the Moon in 1961, I watched along with the rest of the nation and dreamed of what kind of geology could be studied up there (I was 13, that’s a good representation of how much of a geology nerd I was). As it happened, the first geologist on the moon was a Caltech graduate, Harrison Schmitt, who flew on Apollo 18 in 1973, the final lunar landing of the Apollo program, but that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves. My true path to space began on November 20th 1969, when i didn’t even know it. On that day I had just made myself breakfast in the cafeteria on campus, and had sat down with a friend to watch TV when, during a joint session of Congress, President Richard Nixon emerged to give a speech, one of the most famous of his presidency, some would say the one that won him a second term in office.

“Recently this nation did something incredible, we landed a man on the surface of the Moon, achieving the dream that people all over the world have had for tens of thousands of years. And now we can not afford to stop, to lose the momentum of reaching out into the heavens and confine ourselves to Earth orbit with the proposed Space Shuttle. I have spoken with the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as well as the Director of the Marshall Space Flight Center. And we all have agreed on a method of how to continue man’s exploration of space. So I am challenging you, and by extension NASA, to allow the funding and resources to put a man on the surface of the planet Mars, by the year 1984”

Not only was this a bold proclamation, it was an unexpected one. Nixon had been the classic pro-space, pro-exploration president to the press and to the public, but everyone knew that behind closed doors he had been trying to slash NASA’s funding to pieces since before Apollo 11 even touched down in the Sea of Tranquility. So to hear him challenge Congress to set the United States off to Mars, and more than that to denounce the Space Shuttle, a program that he had supported fully up to this point, means Wernher Von Braun must’ve finally gotten through to him.

Slurping on his cereal, my friend and fellow geologist student said:
“Imagine studying geology up there”
“Huh?” I replied
“I mean, with all the tools we have down here to study Earth’s geology, just imagine how we could apply that to Mars. Who knows what secrets we could find up there”

That statement set into motion my entire life events, in that moment i knew that whatever it would take, whatever i had to sacrifice in my life, I was going to Mars someday.

After Nixon’s pledge to send people to Mars in November ‘69, people pondered about the method NASA would use to get there. Many options were considered, ranging from single launch missions to ones that required up to 20 launches. In March 1970, ahead of the Apollo 13 moonshot, NASA finally announced their plan for a crewed Mars mission. Each mission would be conducted like this: two Saturn V’s would launch drop tanks, no engines, into orbit, then a Mars lander on a brand new Saturn IX rocket, equipped with 4 Solid Rocket Boosters, would be launched. The Mars lander module, S-IVB and S-II stages would then dock with the drop tanks and head to Mars orbit. Two more drop tanks would be launched followed by a four person crew launching on a Saturn IX inside an upgraded Command and Service Module (CSM), along with an upgraded S-IVC stage, that would have almost half of the stage be taken up by living quarters for the crew.

After a rendezvous with the drop tanks and trans Mars injection burn just like the Mars lander, the crew would live for six months inside the living quarters. After arriving they would rendezvous with the landing module, transfer over to it in the CSM, then land on the surface spending up to two weeks on Mars. Following this they would launch off the surface and return to the mothership waiting in Mars orbit. After discarding the landing module they would head home. Many people were surprised that NASA would not be going with what seemed like the obvious method for Mars travel, nuclear propulsion. The “NERVA” program to develop a nuclear propelled rocket was showing promising results and many were hoping for that to be used over traditional rocket propulsion. But NASA explained that nuclear propulsion was too high of a cost risk for the program and that it was easier to fly to Mars on technology derived from the Apollo program, which was likely a cover for Nixon not wanting to spend a single penny more then he had to.

The patch of the Ares program (credit: @MonadoBoy64 on Twitter)

NASA announcing the Ares program to members of the press, March 21st 1970

 

[jon]

Well i was born here in California, in 1948. My childhood was pretty uneventful, especially compared with the events of my adult life, and you’re here to document my NASA career so I’ll skip the unnecessary details. I began studying geology at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) in 1967, with the hopes of becoming a geology professor someday.

You've already got a POD here before Nixon's speech, since IRL Caltech did not admit female undergraduates until 1970 (also, it is properly capitalized as I have it, but that's a nit).

N.b. I was fortunate to take a course on Asteroids & Comets at Tech co-taught by Gene Shoemaker, Apollo program geologist and well known for his work on cratering dynamics. One of the best three classes I ever took. The field trip to the Barringer Meteor Crater definitely helped. Also, we learned that field geologists in their late 50s were in much better condition than most grad students

 

[Earthy05]

You've already got a POD here before Nixon's speech, since IRL Caltech did not admit female undergraduates until 1970 (also, it is properly capitalized as I have it, but that's a nit).

N.b. I was fortunate to take a course on Asteroids & Comets at Tech co-taught by Gene Shoemaker, Apollo program geologist and well known for his work on cratering dynamics. One of the best three classes I ever took. The field trip to the Barringer Meteor Crater definitely helped. Also, we learned that field geologists in their late 50s were in much better condition than most grad students

For the sake of convince I'm going to say that Caltech accepted female undergrads around 1968 (when Judy started), but thanks for the correction and for the correction on the spelling of Caltech!

 

[Earthy05]

The Bleeding Edge
Chapter 2: Change of Plans​

As soon as NASA received the necessary funding to begin the Ares program, and after they had announced their plans on how to accomplish it, a shift was visible at NASA, a shift even visible by me, who was at that time merely a member of the public watching the events unfold on TV. This change of plans for NASA was unexpected within the agency, as they had planned originally to continue with the Apollo program, then think about Mars later. New research offices and devisions were set up, new programs for sending robotic landers to Mars, ahead of the crewed missions, were conceived. Launch Complex 34, originally shut down after Apollo 7, was reactivated to launch crews for the upcoming Skylab space station, instead of these crews being launched from LC-39B as planned. NASA’s cancellation of Apollo 19 and 20 had freed up even more money to be funnelled into Ares. And not just money, also hardware, which could be used to build the first two “Saturn IX” rockets. With its four solid rocket boosters, the Saturn IX would be the first ever human rated launch vehicle to have SRBs, which couldn’t be shut down or throttled once ignited, however NASA felt confident enough coming out of the Apollo program to take the risks.

Such risks almost turned into disaster in April 1970 when Apollo 13 returned from the Moon, and it was found that a liquid oxygen tank had come incredibly close to rupturing, which would have caused a complete loss of electrical power and most likely the loss of the crew. And if such a catastrophe had’ve taken place much of the confidence in the Ares program may have immediately fallen. Luckily a potential disaster on Apollo 13 was only a near miss, and the public confidence in the program remained intact. Even larger developments at NASA took place over the next few years, as they built two new launch pads, Launch Complex 39C and 39D, and constructed a second Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) right next to the current one to accommodate the two new pads. In the present day a second VAB might seem rather unnecessary, but each Ares mission called for six launches, four Saturn V’s and two Saturn IX’s, and a single VAB could not support building all of those at the same time. This new VAB also essentially doubled most of NASA’s workforce at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

(Aerial view of the fully assembled VAB 2 and Launch Complex's 39C and 39D)

While NASA set to work building new launch pads and buildings, contractors such as North American Rockwell began designing the spacecraft that would launch from these pads, Rockwell decided to go the route of using an Apollo based design for the Ares Command and Service Module (CSM), stretching the existing CSM to 4.5 meters (14.7 feet) in diameter, and 12 meters (39 feet) in length, they updated the existing control elements and panels, they moved the astronaut couches and added a fourth couch. The spacecraft was given far better radiation protection so that it could safely take a crew into deep space. They updated the CSM power supply so that it could be dormant for as long as a year in space and be successfully powered back up. It could also draw energy from the solar panels on the crew habitation section being designed by McDonnell Douglas, based on the design of Skylab. the CSM would serve three main tasks: being the spacecraft the crew would launch inside, the spacecraft they’d use once in Mars orbit to transfer over to the Ares lander, and finally the spacecraft that they would reenter the atmosphere and land back on Earth in.

1973 was one of the busiest years for NASA in a long time, in March, Apollo 18 launched as the final lunar landing flight of the Apollo program. And even as it launched from pad 39B, Skylab, America’s first space station, stood ready on 39A. In May, Skylab launched, but suffered damage to the main solar panels and micrometeoroid shield which needed to be fixed by Pete Conrad, Paul Weitz and Joe Kerwin on an improvised rescue mission done by the crew of the first Skylab mission only two days later, launching from LC-34. Two more missions to Skylab launched in 1973, the last one being extended to four months. In 1974, Skylab 5 launched as the fourth and final mission to Skylab, an ambitious six month long flight to the orbiting laboratory. The flight was commanded by Tom Kingston—a veteran of Apollo 16, as well as science pilot Phillip Chapman, the first Australian-American in space, and pilot Bill Walter. The mission tested if the human body could survive the long term habitation in space that would be required of a trip to Mars. And it proved a success, with even the famously rowdy Kingston becoming quite accustomed to the record time in space.

(Skylab 5 mission patch, keeping in line with previous missions, the patch displayed one number less than the actual mission number, due to mission number of "five" accounting for the launch of Skylab itself)

View from the launch tower at pad 39B, showing the Apollo 18 spacecraft sitting on the pad with Skylab on pad 39A ready to launch two months later.

As for me, i continued to study geology at Caltech, and received my bachelors degree in 1971. I still had dreams of becoming an astronaut someday, but as NASA clearly wasn’t going to Mars just yet then neither would I, so i became a geology professor at Caltech in 1974. And my dream of going to Mars began to fade, slowly, and I became more preoccupied with the rocks down here on Earth than the ones up there. I never lost the sense of wanting to be up there, but eventually realism began to set in and i started to think that I’d never get the chance to join NASA, or go to Mars.

 

[jon]

And my dream of going to Mars began to fade, slowly, and I became more preoccupied with the rocks down here on Earth than the ones up there.​

Perhaps they'll be the first discoverer of the linkage between SNC meteorites and Martian origins.

Martian meteorite - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Kloka]

You’re forgetting something,OP........

Space Shuttle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Earthy05]

The Bleeding Edge
Chapter 3: "More Boosters"​

The Ares program was to bring about many innovations in the spaceflight industry, one of these was the construction of the most powerful launch vehicle in the world, the Saturn IX. The launcher was criticised at first for merely being a Saturn V moon rocket with just “more boosters”, as well as questions of safety about using dangerous Solid Rocket Boosters. But NASA didn’t have the time or the budget to develop an entirely new launch vehicle of this magnitude, so the Saturn IX was the best way to go.

After the cancellation of Apollo 19 and 20, NASA decided to use the two leftover Saturn V’s for conversion into SA-901 and SA-902, the first Saturn IX’s, and originally targeted the launch date of SA-901 for mid 1974, but it was then that NASA was hit with it’s first major delay in the Ares program. The contract for building the new SRB’s was given to the Utah based Morton Thiokol, NASA and the U.S Military’s go to manufacture of Solid Rockets, but the new SRB’s were being troublesome for Thiokol to develop. Many of the early development boosters exploded due to poor manufacturing, bad fuel mixtures. In one test firing the aft ring at the bottom of the booster just detached. And the launch date for SA-901 slipped from 1974, to 1975, and eventually to 1976.

While all of this was going on, NASA embarked on an ambitious peace mission in space. Known as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the flight was a joint US/USSR mission where a US Apollo CSM would rendezvous with a Soviet Soyuz in Earth orbit, and the two would dock via an adapter launched with Apollo. This flight was to be the final launch of the Apollo CSM, and its crew consisted of commander Tom Stafford, command module pilot Jack Swigert, and docking module pilot Jack Lousma. And they would dock with the Soyuz 19 spacecraft crewed by commander Alexei Leonov and flight engineer Valeri Kubasov. Deke Slayton, who had been grounded for heart issues, had been originally slated as the Apollo docking module pilot, when he picked himself for the flight in 1972 following a medical clearance. But in 1973 he was forced to step down from the flight and NASA after his heart issues flared up. NASA considered cancelling Apollo-Soyuz all together in order to divert funding to the Ares program, but the political will was too strong and the mission went ahead in July 1975, with the Apollo spacecraft launching from pad 39B as VAB 2 was under construction nearby.

Patch of the Apollo-Soyuz mission (Credit: @MonadoBoy64 on Twitter)

The U.S crew of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

The delays with the SRB’s had pushed the first Saturn IX test flights into the 1976 Mars launch window, and NASA decided to use the second Saturn IX, SA-902, for “Ares 1” the first uncrewed flight of the Ares program. Nonetheless NASA and Thiokol were eventually able to overcome the delays, and SA-901 lifted off on June 14th 1976, and flew perfectly, demonstrating that a vehicle as powerful as the Saturn IX was possible. On August 5th, 1976, the second Saturn IX lifted off in a similar fashion on the Ares 1 mission, however this Saturn was carrying a payload, a dummy “boilerplate” version of the Ares CSM, and a boilerplate of the crew habitation section. This was the first official flight of the Ares program, and the mission was simply an uncrewed test flight of the spacecraft on a trajectory out to Mars. Without enough fuel to capture into orbit, the spacecraft did a fly-by of the red planet on February 29th 1977 before entering a permanent orbit around the Sun, with all the required data of the mission collected.

Saturn IX SA-901 sitting on Pad 39A, 1976

Meanwhile, North American Aviation was hard at work developing the Mars lander, which was named the Mars Excursion Module (MEM). The MEM turned out to also be a challenge, the lander was a completely new design not derived from anything before it, and North American engineers were having a hard time trying to fix the many hundreds of problems with the lander. The plan for landing the MEM called for it to descend on engine power to the surface following atmospheric entry, and during the descent deploy two side panels exposing the ascent stage and airlock, it took the engineers six months to work out this problem, eventually settling on deploying the panels once on the surface. But this caused its own problems because there were concerns that the panels might pop off and land under the ladder that the astronauts would access the surface with, so they had to devise a whole new system of explosive bolts that would seperate the panels to a safe distance, and also not be so powerful that they would damage any part of the lander.

Diagram of the Mars Excursion Module (MEM)

There were seemingly problems with everything in the MEM design, the new revolutionary “aerospike” engines, the deployment of the ladder, the separation from the airlock/laboratory module before ascent from the surface, the landing legs being embedded as part of the heat shield. Every component seemed to be causing trouble for the North American engineers, but somehow all the problems were fixed and MEM-1 was shipped to the KSC in 1977 for the first uncrewed test flight of the vehicle in space. Earlier that year Wernher Von Braun, the visionary who first conceived of the MEM and helped convince Nixon to support the Ares program in the first place, passed away. And a plaque in his memory was placed inside MEM-1 before launch.

 

[Earthy05]

The Bleeding Edge
Chapter 4: "Moving The Goalpost"
​

MEM-1 lifted off successfully on March 19th 1978, and the lander was sent on a direct trajectory to Mars, before entering the atmosphere at a high velocity and then crashing into the surface. MEM-1’s sacrifice provided NASA with all the data they wanted from the flight, and proved the rigidity of the heat shield. Even as MEM-1 launched from pad 39A, pads 39B, 39C and 39D were being readied to launch Ares 2, the second flight of the program, which would again be uncrewed. First the two drop tanks lifted off into low earth orbit on modified Saturn V’s only 12 hours apart from Pad 39C and 39D. They then performed a rendezvous in orbit and a tether/diagnostic cable was extended to connect the two, leaving a 5 meter gap between them.

Ares 2 drop tank lifting off from Pad 39D, 1978.

Then the Ares 2 spacecraft launched from pad 39B on a Saturn IX, and the stack consisting of the S-II stage, the upgraded S-IVC stage and the uncrewed Ares CSM itself met up with the drop tanks and carefully slid in between them allowing the drop tanks to connect with the S-II. After an apogee raising burn and Trans Mars Injection (TMI) burn, the drop tanks separated and the spacecraft coasted to Mars. Seven months later it slung-shot around Mars and fired the remainder of the S-II stage and the S-IVC stage and it began its five month trip back to Earth. Scheduled to arrive in early-mid 1979.

Many people questioned the overall pace of the Ares program, some saying they were working way too fast to achieve a goal that had a deadline a whole six years away. In fact many people suspected that NASA knew of some secret Soviet plan to send people to Mars before the United States, and speculated that the space race of the 1960’s was back on. These claims however were largely unfounded and had been conceived from thin air because not many people understood the real reason NASA was moving so fast with the program. A launch window to Mars only opens every two years, so in fact the seemingly six years until the 1984 deadline were more like three. The rushed schedule of the Ares program was looking to be a success, with NASA estimating in April 1978 that it may in fact put people on Mars as early as 1982, a mostly unofficial statement that ended up catching on in the public, which put pressure on NASA to get to Mars by this new date. And as the press was saying, NASA seemed to be “moving the goalpost in the wrong direction”.

Newspaper clipping talking about NASA's unofficial proposal for a Mars landing two years early.

During all of this, I had continued working at Caltech and had been comfortable doing that job for four years, somewhat content with the thought of never getting the chance to travel to Mars. In late May, I was sitting at home and reading the morning newspaper when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, an advertisement stating that NASA was looking for new astronauts. One line in particular caught my eye:

“Astronaut candidates being requested include biologists and geologists”

I stared at this line for what was probably about 30 seconds, but felt like hours. At that moment I was taken back to what my friend had said in November 1969 after Nixon gave his famous speech.

But was I really about to change my entire life course to attempt to become an astronaut? I mean I could always go back to Caltech if it didn’t work out, but I’ve always been someone who’s been disappointed with trying and failing at something, and this was something that would take me years to forgive myself for if I failed. But this was my dream, and I realised that if I didn’t try it now I might never get another chance to. After sitting down with friends and writing the most extensive and impressive resume of my entire life, I mailed it to NASA. And so began the longest and most stressful wait of my entire life.

In July 1978 it was finally time to launch the first crewed flight of the Ares program. Ares 3 would launch on a Saturn IB from pad 39A and the crew would spend two weeks performing a shakedown test of the advanced CSM in Earth orbit. The crew consisted of commander Fred Haise, a veteran of the Apollo 13 mission, mission specialist Henry Hartsfield, science pilot Joe Allen, and command module pilot Karol Bobko. NASA had planned to launch Ares 3 from LC-34, same as the Skylab crew flights, however the launch pad was forced to be deactivated in 1975 following the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, so NASA had to use the existing facilities at the 39 launch complex. They constructed a “milk stool” that the Saturn IB would sit on top of so that it could be launched using the existing Saturn V/IX launch tower.

Mission patch for Ares 3 (Credit: @MonadoBoy64 on Twitter)

President Jimmy Carter wanted the Ares 3 launch to occur on July 4th, as an independence day celebration. However due to persistent problems with the onboard computers, the launch was forced to slip to July 6th, And on that hot July day the Ares crew suited up for the first four person spaceflight in history, and the first crewed US spaceflight since Apollo-Soyuz three years earlier. The later Ares missions were planned to use more advanced orange space suits, however due to the nature of Ares 3 only being a (relatively) simple low Earth orbit flight, they used a version of the A7-L suits from the Apollo and Skylab programs. Ares 3 lifted off at 11:15am on July 6th 1978, the final launch of the Saturn IB, and the one and only Saturn IB launch from launch complex 39. Following a successful liftoff, the crew spent two weeks testing every system and subsystem of the upgraded CSM, performing rendezvous tests with the S-IVB stage that placed them in orbit, raising their own orbit using the Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine on the service module, and shaking every bug out of the spacecraft in preparation for the future flights to Mars.

Liftoff of Ares 3, the first crewed flight of the Ares program. July 6th, 1978.

 

[Earthy05]

The Bleeding Edge
Chapter 5: Reentry
​

‘Surely at least one channel has something about Ares’

I thought as i flicked through the radio channels, driving home from work in my 1977 Chevrolet Camaro. The first crewed flight of the Ares program, Ares 3, was scheduled to return its four man crew to Earth that day after a three week mission in Low Earth Orbit to test the upgraded CSM. I was hoping to catch news of the reentry and splashdown on my way home but none of the radio channels were mentioning the flight or giving updates on it. Eventually i got home and, conceded, went to lie down for a couple of hours, thinking i’ll hear about the splashdown on the six o’clock news. I awoke just as the sun was setting and went into my living room to watch the nightly news, i turned on the TV as i went to cook myself dinner and was greeted by the stern face of Walter Cronkite. I stopped, i could tell by the look on his face that something terrible had happened.

“We have at this time the first reports coming in from the recovery teams in the Pacific ocean that no contact has been made with the crew of the Ares 3. We do not know yet the fate of the four men or their spacecraft but it’s very possible that the reentry path has taken them off course from their pre-planned splashdown point. However there is also the possibility that the worse may have come to pass, and that the crew did not make it through the fiery reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere”

Walter Cronkite delivering his news broadcast of the ill-fated reentry of Ares 3

Over the next few days the tragedy of the Ares 3 mission became clearer and clearer. A small crack in the spacecraft’s heat shield had led to the command module burning up as it reentered the atmosphere, killing the crew within a matter of minutes. It was unbelievable, these four men, one of whom had walked on the Moon on Apollo 13, were dead, all because of a tiny crack in their heat shield following an otherwise flawless mission. Funerals were held at Arlington Cemetery and at other crew members home towns all around the country. A Presidential Commission was started by President Jimmy Carter immediately after the accident and it found that tiny air bubbles that had gone unnoticed in the heat shield had caused the crack to form. Much of the blame fell to North American Rockwell, the manufactures of the spacecraft, but some blame also fell to NASA for having too little oversight of North American. Lucky for them Jimmy Carter was a pro-space president who asked for little budget cuts for NASA in the 1979 federal budget.

The front page of the Presidential commission into the Ares 3 disaster

The accident scarred NASA, both internally and in the eyes of the public. This was the worst United States space disaster since the Apollo 1 fire eleven years earlier. It was a public relations nightmare and the reputation of NASA was stained. Only thanks to the actions of president Carter was the Ares program not defunded and shut down entirely, something that made those few, like me, who still had faith in NASA and Ares, relieved. In the midst of all this, I didn’t expect my astronaut application to even be considered, and a few months after the accident I read in the newspaper that they were delaying the selection for their planned 1979 astronaut class. I felt depressed for months, and buried myself in my work to keep from thinking about the fact that this tragedy had taken place and potentially cost me my chance to do what I’d wanted to do for years.

As the months continued on into early 1979, the Ares 2 command module returned to Earth, the first ever spacecraft sent out on a Martian trajectory and be recovered, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean. While this was happening, NASA was looking to get back on track, many people called for a redo of the Ares 3 mission profile, saying that because the spacecraft and all of its scientific data was not recovered, NASA should test the spacecraft again, but NASA stuck to its mission plans, and that called for the next mission in the Ares program to be an Earth orbital test of the Ares spacecraft, crew habitation vehicle and MEM lander. But this could only be achieved once the Presidential commission certified the spacecraft safe to fly again, a battle between the board of inquiry and NASA that took a large part of 1979.

I’d confined myself to thinking that my one shot to get into the astronaut corps was blown, and was beginning to get my life back fully on track and forget the whole thing. but one day in January 1979, early in the evening, I got what is considered the life changing point of any astronaut. I got “the call”.

 

[Earthy05]

The Bleeding Edge
Chapter 6: The Call
​

As the phone rang, I picked it up as I would for any other call, of course, how could I have known who was on the other line. I picked up and was greeted by the voice of NASA’s chief astronaut, Alan Bean, a moonwalker who was stepping in as chief astronaut for John Young while he trained for Ares.

“Ms. Leslieson this is Al Bean, chief of the Astronaut office at NASA. It is my pleasure to inform you that you have been selected as an astronaut candidate and we would like for you to come down to Johnson Space Centre in Houston for round one of training”

I responded the only way I could: “Thank you sir, I will be happy to come down there”

My hands began trembling as I put the phone back on the wall, it was a rush of excitement and joy, I mean who wouldn’t feel the way I did after just getting a call from someone who walked on the Moon, telling me that I was an astronaut candidate. The next week I flew from my home in California to Houston, Texas and went to the Johnson Space Centre. I felt ecstatic as I walked the halls of this famous building, adorned with pictures and models of NASA past. But I could feel that the mood around me was grim, everyone around me were still recovering from the loss of Ares 3 and her crew, and that feeling of grief and sadness still in the air was palpable.

Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas

Then my training began, which is a lot like you’ve heard it be described before, but its ten thousand times harder than it sounds. We went through everything from medical examinations of every inch of our body, to being left alone in the desert with very few supplies and being told to survive, simulating a spacecraft landing in a remote region of the world miles from civilisation. It was like going back to school, although we were taught mathematics and engineering that was far more complicated than the stuff I learnt in high school, but I at least had a better grappling of it than the flying jocks in my class. Speaking of flying, we were trained in the T-38 aircraft, NASA’s go-to astronaut trainer. I had gotten a pilots license myself in 1976, to study geological formations from the above, so I had some experience in the air. But flying a Cessna 206 over the Mojave Desert was nothing like flying a T-38 over the Texan coast, that beast felt so fast I thought I was gonna be pushed through my seat. We went all over the country, from Texas to do basic training, to the rocky mountains to do rock climbing, to my favourite part of training, the Orocopia Mountains in Colorado to do Martian surface geology training.

While we were undergoing astronaut training, the Ares program finally got back on track. On October 18th 1979, Ares 4 lifted off with a crew consisting of commander William Pogue, landing module pilot Story Musgrave, science pilot William Lenoir and command module pilot Gordon Fullerton from Pad 39A on the first crewed flight of the Saturn IX. After arriving in Earth orbit, Fullerton piloted the command module (nicknamed “Yorktown”) to dock with the S-IVC stage that delivered them to orbit (also nicknamed “Yorktown” when the CSM is docked to it). Part of the fuel tank section of which had been replaced by a small crew habitable volume similar to the living quarters onboard Skylab, and an airlock/docking adapter for the CSM in the same place the Lunar Module was during launch of the Apollo missions. Three days into the mission, they fired the S-IVC’s twin J-2S engines to raise their orbit and rendezvous with MEM-2 (nicknamed “Adventure”), which was launched from pad 39B on October 12th. On October 21st, the crew brought Yorktown into a holding pattern with Adventure, the crew entered the CSM and undocked from the S-IVC, before turning around and docking with the MEM. Pogue, Musgrave and Lenoir transferred into Adventure while Fullerton flied Yorktown back to the S-IVC.

The mission patch for Ares 4, featuring four stars in memory of the Ares 3 crew (Credit: @MonadoBoy64 on Twitter)

The crew of Ares 4 (L-R: Pogue, Musgrave, Lenoir, Fullerton)

The crew of Adventure spent two and a half days taking their MEM for a test run in Earth orbit, firing the descent engine, separating from the descent stage and firing the ascent engine, before rendezvousing back with Yorktown and transferring back to the S-IVC using the CSM on October 23rd. After discarding the MEM the crew spent another week onboard Yorktown before it was finally time to come home. Sealing themselves inside the CSM, they abandoned the S-IVC in a decaying orbit around Earth, and performed the de-orbit burn to prepare for reentry.

My astronaut class briefly stopped training that day to watch the Ares 4 reentry and splashdown live, as did the entire country. A repeat of the Ares 3 disaster would spell the end of the program, and we all waited with bated breath as the spacecraft entered the radio blackout familiar with reentry. For three minutes there was total silence in the room, then we finally got word that the command module had been sighted with two drogue chutes out. Several seconds later, four big main parachutes sprung open and inflated, and commander William Pogue broke the radio silence.

“Recovery, this is Ares, we’re on four good mains and everything looks good here, we’re glad to be home”

There were cheers in mission control and in the astronaut candidate room as the gumdrop shaped command module splashed down safely in the ocean, the main parachutes falling into the sea around it as floatation devices were inflated to keep the vehicle upright. A short while later the crew walked off the recovery helicopter safe and sound, a remarkable sight to see after the tragic loss of the Ares 3 crew just more than a year earlier. The Ares program was officially back on track, the safety of the program out of doubt and the public’s confidence restored.

Ares 4's command module descending to the ocean on four main parachutes

 

[NHBL]

O...M...G...
I love this. I love the first person style, the highs and lows, and a TRIP TO MARS! WOW!
Followed!

 

[Earthy05]

The Bleeding Edge
Chapter 7: 19+80
​

On January 7th 1980, my astronaut class and I stood on top of VAB 1, gazing over launch complex 39, two tankers were already on pads 39C and 39D, to be used to take MEM-3 to Mars orbit. MEM-3 itself had been rolled out to pad 39B the previous day, awaiting launch. These vehicles were being prepped to support the most ambitious mission in the history of human spaceflight: Ares 5, a crewed flight to Mars orbit and back, testing the MEM (without actually landing) while they were there. The mission would essentially be a dry run for the much anticipated crewed landing on Mars, still scheduled for 1982. As part of our astronaut training we were there to watch the rollout of the Ares 5 spacecraft, in order for us to get more hands on with the hardware that might one day fly us to space. Our astronaut group had dropped from the initial 40 people we started out with, from 40 it dropped to 32, then to 25 and it was now at 22, with me still being in the running, I kept in the back of my mind the thought that this was a sign that I was going to make it as an astronaut, and I did my best not to let those thoughts surface, because the more I’d think I was going to make it, the more disappointed I knew I’d be if I was cut.

From 526 feet (160 meters) up, we could hear the sound of the crawler transporter as the Saturn IX left VAB 1, and the rocket slowly crept into view below us as it came into the sunlight. We watched this behemoth of a launch vehicle roll slowly to the pad for an hour, before we departed to visit pad 39B and the Saturn IX sitting there with MEM-3 on top, scheduled to launch in two months. We rode the elevator to the top of the launch tower and saw in front of us, the payload fairing that encased the lander, with the Saturn IX containing the Ares crew vehicle still rolling to pad 39A in the distance (the total roll out time took ~3 hours). The next day we were back in Houston and had been told we were going to receive a surprise visit. After a lecture on reentry procedures, the crew of Ares 5 walked in. Commander John Young, lander module pilot Joe Engle, science pilot Bob Crippen and command module pilot Dick Truly. These four men stood like larger than life figures in front of us, celebrities that I didn’t realise I’d be working with if I was selected. Crippen and Truly were not as well known as Young and Engle, both of whom had walked on the Moon on Apollo 16 and 17 respectively, but had still become known in the press as celebrities who would be venturing to Mars with them.

The crew of Ares 5 (L-R: Young, Engle, Crippen, Truly)

After a brief discussion between us and the Ares 5 crew they left, and a man in my group made a very interesting comment:

“We just met the crew of the first flight to Mars orbit, this has gotta be a sign that we’ve made it through training, I bet soon they’re gonna make the announcement soon”

And he was quite right about that, five weeks later three more people were, sadly, cut from our class, and Chief Astronaut Al Bean formally made the announcement

“Well folks, you’ve made it, I am glad to report that the nineteen of you have passed all the necessary training, and next week you will be announced as NASA’s ninth astronaut group”

There was a lot of commotion in the room, but I could barely hold it together at that moment, I felt like breaking down and crying and it was a miracle I held myself together. The others probably felt the same, though they certainly wouldn’t admit to it. Either way I had made it, I was an astronaut. The next week we were announced to the press as the ninth astronaut group, we called ourselves “19+80” in reference to the number of people in our group and the year we were selected in. Contrary to what the public thinks, our training doesn’t stop when we’re presented to the press as the new astronaut group, and we continued training up until the end of the year.

Astronaut portrait of Judy Leslieson (real photo depicts NASA astronaut Bonnie Dunbar)

In all, the training was one of the hardest, brutalist yet most fun and enjoyable things I have ever done in my life. It was hard to believe I had done it, that I’d really achieved what I had just achieved. I didn’t think of myself as someone who had “the right stuff” even though I would spend the months and years after being told I did. In truth, I have never thought there was some secret formula to become an astronaut, but if there was, I guess I have it. During my announcement as an astronaut and my final few months of training, the Ares 5 mission got underway, with MEM-3 launching in mid-April, and then being successfully put on its flight to Mars. Soon after, the Ares 5 crew vehicle prepared to launch, for what would be the most ambitious spaceflight in human history.

Ares 5 crew undergoing pad training in early 1980

 

[Talwar]

Fun read so far, look forward to more.

 

[NHBL]

This is fun, keep it up!
If I were around in this timeline, I'd question the decision to go to Mars, spend months in orbit, and yet not land. I'm not saying that it doesn't make sense, but I would think there would be some popular commentary about it.
On another note, is anything being left in Mars orbit in the way of facilities for future voyages, or even a long duration exposure experiment?

 

[steamboy]

Really enjoying this! Very well written Can't wait for more

 

[unclepatrick]

The distant of a Flight to Mars is enough that a Apollo style program of flights testing stuff would not work.
Would you learn anything from a Orbital flight around Mars ?
You have to have all the system in place for the long flight anyway.
So why not send a Lander?
You not going to do a Apollo 10 style flight with the lander not touching down.

 

[Kloka]

Where on Earth is the Space Shuttle?

 

[Earthy05]

This is fun, keep it up!
If I were around in this timeline, I'd question the decision to go to Mars, spend months in orbit, and yet not land. I'm not saying that it doesn't make sense, but I would think there would be some popular commentary about it.
On another note, is anything being left in Mars orbit in the way of facilities for future voyages, or even a long duration exposure experiment?

The distant of a Flight to Mars is enough that a Apollo style program of flights testing stuff would not work.
Would you learn anything from a Orbital flight around Mars ?
You have to have all the system in place for the long flight anyway.
So why not send a Lander?
You not going to do a Apollo 10 style flight with the lander not touching down.

An Apollo 10 style dress rehearsal mission would be needed in order to prepare for the actual landing itself, NASA would want to make absolutely sure that everything was ready

 

[unclepatrick]

An Apollo 10 style dress rehearsal mission would be needed in order to prepare for the actual landing itself, NASA would want to make absolutely sure that everything was ready

The ideal length of a journey to Mars mission if the orbit match is 9 months.
You can test thing on the Moon or Earth Orbit, but that length to get to Mars is going to prevent a Apollo style program in Mars Orbit.
Once you sent that first ship , things better be ready.
So no flight to just orbit Mars .
A nine month journey means that the first ship to Mars Orbit should have a Lander and land on Mars.
The distant is just too great.

How Long Does it Take to Get to Mars?

Crewed mission to Mars are coming, and interest in colonizing the Red Planet is growing. So how long will it take for missions to get there?

www.universetoday.com

 

[Earthy05]

The ideal length of a journey to Mars mission if the orbit match is 9 months.
You can test thing on the Moon or Earth Orbit, but that length to get to Mars is going to prevent a Apollo style program in Mars Orbit.
Once you sent that first ship , things better be ready.
So no flight to just orbit Mars .
A nine month journey means that the first ship to Mars Orbit should have a Lander and land on Mars.
The distant is just too great.

How Long Does it Take to Get to Mars?

Crewed mission to Mars are coming, and interest in colonizing the Red Planet is growing. So how long will it take for missions to get there?

www.universetoday.com

Perhaps, but at this point im too far in to change it now