Category Paving the Way for Apollo 11

On 26 August 1966 the command module of CSM-012 arrived at the Cape in a container prominently labelled ‘Apollo One’.

North American Aviation was to have shipped it several weeks earlier, but the failure of a glycol pump in the environmental control system had led to the exchange of this unit with its CSM-014 counterpart. Although the customer acceptance review identified other ‘‘eleventh-hour problems’’ associated with the environmental control system, NASA had taken receipt.

The Office of Manned Space Flight held the AS-204 design certification review on 7 October, and declared that the launch vehicle and the spacecraft ‘‘conformed to design requirements’’ and would be flightworthy once a number of deficiencies had been overcome. Sam Phillips issued a list of these deficiencies to Lee B. James at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Joseph Shea at the Manned Spacecraft Center, and John G. Shinkle, Apollo Program Manager at the Kennedy Space Center, requiring speedy compliance. On 11 October Phillips was informed by Carroll Bolender of a report he had received the previous day from Shinkle detailing increasing delays in the preparation of CSM-012. When the spacecraft was delivered, 164 ‘engineering orders’ had been identified as ‘open work’ – despite the fact that the accompanying data package had listed only 126 such items. By 24 September the list had grown to 377, and Shinkle ventured that about 150 of the 213 additional orders ought to have been identifiable by the manufacturer prior to the customer acceptance review. The issues included the environmental control system (which had failed again), problems with the reaction control system, a leak in the service propulsion system, and even design deficiencies with the couches that had obliged the company to send engineers to the Cape. On 12 October Phillips wrote to Mark E. Bradley, Vice President of the Garrett Group, whose AiResearch Division had supplied the environmental control system under subcontract to North American Aviation, explaining that its reliability threatened a “major delay” to the AS-204 mission. To Phillips, the problems seemed “to lie in two categories: those arising from inadequate development testing, and those related to poor workmanship”. A replacement was delivered on 2 November, and testing resumed as soon as it was in place. However, the unit malfunctioned and had to be returned to the company.

On 25 October the propellant tanks of the service module for CSM-017, assigned to AS-501, failed catastrophically in a test at North American Aviation. The normal operating pressure was 175 psi, but it had failed after 100 minutes at the maximum requirement of 240 psi. The test had been ordered following the discovery of cracks in the tanks of CSM-101, assigned to AS-207. The failure was particularly puzzling because the tanks of CSM-017 had been subjected to 320 psi for several minutes in ‘proof testing’. ASPO set up an investigation, which was to report by 4 November. As SM-012 had been through the same test regime, Shea grounded it pending this report. The problem was determined to be stress corrosion in the titanium resulting from the use of methyl alcohol as a test liquid. The point of the test was to verify the integrity of the tanks, and because the hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants were toxic another fluid had been used – and unfortunately this had caused damage! The remedy was to switch to a fluid that was compatible with titanium, and it was decided to use freon in the oxidiser tank and isopropyl alcohol in the fuel tank, with the additional stipulations that the systems must not have been previously exposed to the actual propellants and that after the tests the system must be purged by gaseous nitrogen. With the issue resolved, the tanks of SM-012 were removed for inspection and confirmed to be free of cracks.

The crew for the CSM-014 mission was announced on 29 September 1966. Wally Schirra would be in command, flying with Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham. They would be backed up by Frank Borman, Tom Stafford and Michael Collins. Schirra was the only experienced man of the prime crew, but all the backup astronauts were veterans. In fact, Deke Slayton had given Schirra and Borman these assignments in March, on their return from an international ‘goodwill tour’ after the rendezvous of Gemini 6/7. Stafford and Collins had been assigned following Gemini 9 in June and Gemini 10 in July, respectively. Slayton had actually earmarked the rookies Eisele and Chaffee to Grissom’s crew, but in late 1965 Eisele had injured his shoulder in weightlessness training in a KC-135 aircraft and dropped out of training, prompting Slayton to swap Eisele with Ed White, whom Slayton had earmarked for Schirra’s crew. This Apollo 2 mission was to be a straightforward rerun of Apollo 1 to further evaluate the spacecraft’s systems.

In early December 1966, accepting that Apollo 1 would not fly that year, George Mueller postponed it to February 1967 and also deleted the Block f reflight in order to prevent the slippage of CSM-012 from impacting the Block II missions scheduled for later in 1967. Schirra had hoped to put his crew first in line for the dual mission, but Slayton imposed a rule that the man who would operate the CSM alone while his colleagues flew the LM must be experienced in rendezvous, since if the LM were to become crippled he would have to perform a rescue. Eisele was a rookie but Scott had performed a rendezvous on Gemini 8, so Slayton exchanged Schirra’s crew with McDivitt’s crew. Schirra was not pleased at being given the backup role, but Slayton had always intended to assign McDivitt the dual mission.

On the new schedule, AS-206 would launch LM-1 for an unmanned test as soon as possible after Apollo 1, and if this was satisfactory McDivitt’s crew would fly the dual mission (which was now AS-205/208 because deleting CSM-014 had released AS-205) as the revised Apollo 2 in August. This revision was publicly announced on 22 December, together with the assignment of Tom Stafford, John Young and Gene Cernan to backup McDivitt’s crew. Also, if two unmanned tests proved sufficient to ‘man rate’ the Saturn V, the intention was to launch AS-503 with a CSM and LM. The crew for this mission would be Frank Borman, Michael Collins and Bill Anders, backed up by Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon and Clifton Williams. These assignments had been made after Young flew Gemini 10 in July, Conrad and Gordon flew Gemini 11 in September, and Cernan backed up Gemini 12 in November.

The Gemini missions had demonstrated that for an astronaut on a spacewalk to be able to work effectively he must be provided with mobility and stability aids. On 6 December 1966 Slayton warned Joseph Shea that without handholds and tethering points, a transfer from the forward hatch of the LM to the CSM’s hatch would not be feasible. On 26 December Slayton recommended that a spacewalk be scheduled 100 hours into AS-503, after the two firings of the LM’s descent propulsion system but prior to the descent stage being jettisoned. One of the two astronauts would egress from the forward hatch and stand on the ‘front porch’ to assess the environmental control system in the LM during depressurisation, using the hatch, the performance of the life-support backpack, and the egress procedure for the emergency transfer. In addition, whilst outside, the spacewalker was to photograph the exterior of the LM to verify that it had not been damaged during its retrieval from the S-IVB. He would then re-enter the LM and the cabin repressurisation system would be tested, simulating the end of a moonwalk.

On 26 January 1967 Schirra’s crew made a ‘full up’ systems test of CSM-012 on its AS-204 launch vehicle. But the spacecraft drew its power from the pad, and the capsule was not pressurised with pure oxygen. It had not been a very productive day. ‘‘Frankly, Gus,’’ Schirra said in the debriefing with Grissom and Shea, ‘‘I don’t like it. You’re going to be in there with full oxygen tomorrow, and if you have the same feeling I do, I suggest you get out.’’ But there was a determination to catch up on the several-times-delayed schedule.

The next day, Friday, 27 January, Grissom’s crew attempted the ‘plugs out’ test in which the spacecraft would be on internal power and pressurised with pure oxygen at 16 psi (i. e. slightly above ambient) for an integrity check. If successful, this would clear the spacecraft for flight. After a simulated countdown, they were to end the day with an emergency egress drill.

In Houston, Flight Director John Hodge was monitoring progress, but the action was at the Cape. Slayton was in the Pad 34 blockhouse talking to Director of Launch Operations, Rocco Petrone. Also present was Stu Roosa, a rookie astronaut serving as the primary communications link with the crew. The Spacecraft Test Conductor, Clarence ‘Skip’ Chauvin, was in the Automated Checkout Equipment facility of the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building.

‘‘Fire!!’’ yelled Grissom at 18:31 local time, in a hold at T-10 minutes. ‘‘We’ve got a fire in the cockpit.’’

In all, there were 25 technicians on Level A8 of Pad 34’s service structure, and five more either on the access arm or in the White Room. Henry Rogers, NASA’s Inspector of Quality Control, was in the elevator, ascending the service structure. Systems technician L. D. Reece was waiting for the ‘Go’ to disconnect the spacecraft for the ‘plugs out’ test, which had been delayed by problems with communications, most notably the whistle from an ‘open’ microphone that could not be located.

‘‘Get them out of there!’’ commanded Donald Babbitt, North American Aviation’s Pad Leader, on hearing Grissom’s call. Mechanical technician James Gleaves was closest, but a spout of flame burst from the capsule before he could react, and he was beaten back by the flame and smoke.

Gary Propst, a technician of the Radio Corporation of America, was on the first level of the pad monitoring a TV camera located in the White Room pointing at the window in the spacecraft’s hatch. On hearing Grissom’s call, he looked up and saw a brilliant light in the window and gloved hands moving about within.

As soon as Slayton realised what had happened, he sent medics Fred Kelly and Alan Harter to the pad. ‘‘You know what I’ll find,’’ Kelly observed pointedly. The best that they would be able to do would be to supervise the retrieval of the bodies. On reflection, Slayton decided to accompany them. ‘‘We were the first guys from the blockhouse to reach the pad,’’ he later pointed out. Despite the intensity of the fire, Grissom, White and Chaffee had died by asphyxiation as a result of the toxic fumes created by the incomplete combustion of the synthetic materials in the cabin. They had received second and third degree burns, but these in themselves would not have been fatal. After several minutes Slayton left the White Room to call Houston, to report the situation. Shea had just arrived back in Houston and was briefing George Low when the news came through.

The Astronaut Office in Houston was very quiet. All the ‘old hands’ were absent. With Slayton away, Don Gregory, his assistant, ran the routine Friday staffmeeting. The meeting had only just convened when the red phone on Slayton’s desk rang. Gregory answered, then reported, ‘‘There has been a fire in the spacecraft.’’ Michael Collins was the senior astronaut present. He arranged for Al Bean to track down the wives. In each case, the news had to be broken by an astronaut who was also a close friend of the family. Charles Berry and Marge Slayton went to see Betty Grissom. Pete Conrad was sent to track down Pat White. Gene Cernan would have been ideal for Martha Chaffee because they lived next door, but he was in Downey with Tom Stafford and John Young, so Collins went to give her the bad news himself.

Al Shepard was in Dallas, Texas, about to deliver a speech at a dinner. He was taken aside and told of the fire. Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham
were flying home from the Cape, and were told upon touching down at Ellington Air Force Base. Schirra immediately called Slayton at the Cape, who filled him in on the details. James Webb, Robert Seamans, Robert Gilruth, George Mueller, Kurt Debus, Sam Phillips and Wernher von Braun were at the International Club in Washington with corporate officials, including Leland Atwood of North American Aviation, to mark the transition from Gemini to Apollo. Webb immediately ordered Seamans and Phillips to the Cape to investigate. As Webb observed to newsmen shortly thereafter, “Although everyone realised that some day space pilots would die, who would have thought the first tragedy would be on the ground?”

The Board of Inquiry was chaired by Floyd L. Thompson, Director of the Langley Research Center, with Frank Borman as the Astronaut Office’s representative. The origin of the fire was near the foot of Grissom’s couch, where components of the environmental control system had repeatedly been removed and replaced in testing. Although the investigation did not identify the specific ignition source, it did find physical indications of electrical arcing in a wiring harness. ft was concluded that at some time during either manufacturing or testing an unnoticed incidental contact had scraped the insulation from a wire and thereby created the opportunity for a spark. This had ignited nearby flammable material, and in the super-pressurised pure-oxygen situation the result had been a brief but intense ‘flash’ fire. fn fact, there had been some 32 kg of nylon netting, polyurethane foam and velcro – all of it flammable in such conditions. fn retrospect, the worst flaw was the inward-opening hatch, which even under ideal conditions took several minutes to open, and would have been impossible to open with the internal pressure above ambient. Because neither the launch vehicle nor the spacecraft had been loaded with propellants, the ‘plugs out’ test had not been judged hazardous. Nevertheless, the launch escape system was directly above the spacecraft, and if the heat from the fire had ignited the solid propellant of this rocket the White Room crew would almost certainly have been killed as well.

fn an Associated Press interview in December 1966 Grissom had told Howard Benedict: ‘‘ff we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business and we hope that if anything happens to us it won’t delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.’’

fn an effort to reduce the risk of a fire during ground testing, it was decided to use an atmosphere comprising 65 per cent oxygen and 35 per cent nitrogen. After liftoff, the nitrogen would be purged and the pressure reduced to the originally planned 100 per cent oxygen at about 5 psi.

Although the investigation into the fire would take months, on 31 January NASA headquarters directed the Manned Spacecraft Center, Marshall Space Flight Center and Kennedy Space Center to proceed as planned with preparations for AS-501 with CSM-017 and LTA-10R, except that the command module was not to be pressurised with oxygen without specific authorisation.9 On 2 February CSM-014 was delivered

LTA-10R was a refurbished LM test article serving as a mass-model.

The exterior of the fire-damaged Apollo 1 command module in which Grissom, White and Chaffee died (top left); a view through the hatch; the crew positions, with the hatch above the center couch; the vicinity of the environmental control unit, where the ignition source is believed to have been; and its disassembled outer structures. Glenn, Cooper and Young escort Grissom’s coffin.

to the Cape to assist in training the technicians who were to disassemble CM-012 for the investigation. On 3 February George Mueller announced that although manned flights were grounded indefinitely, the unmanned AS-206, AS-501 and AS-502 were to proceed as soon as delivery of the hardware allowed. While the investigation into the fire was underway, Mueller suggested that when the Block II spacecraft became available the CSM-only flight should be deleted and the effort switched to combined testing with the LM, but Robert Gilruth warned that it would not be wise to test two new vehicles at once. In March it was decided to fly an 11-day CSM-only mission, in effect to perform Grissom’s mission with the upgraded model, and Slayton tipped off Schirra that his crew would fly it, backed up by Stafford’s crew. On 21 February, the day that Apollo 1 had been scheduled to launch, Floyd Thompson gave Mueller a preliminary briefing on the investigation’s findings, and several days later Robert Seamans sent a memo to James Webb listing Thompson’s early recommendations.10

On 15 March Deke Slayton proposed that a rendezvous with the S-IVB stage be a primary objective of Schirra’s flight, and said that this should occur “after the third period of orbital darkness’’. On 5 April Sam Phillips told the Manned Spacecraft Center, Marshall Space Flight Center and Kennedy Space Center that the profile for the first manned flight would be based on that developed for Grissom’s flight, dated November 1966. As the complexity of the mission was not to exceed that previously planned, and as no rendezvous had been planned, the rendezvous exercise should be assessed in terms of how it would complicate the mission rather than how it would advance the program. As the flight was to focus on evaluating the spacecraft’s systems, Chris Kraft pointed out on 18 April that if a problem were to develop that would require the cancellation of the rendezvous, then any manoeuvres which had already been made would complicate the nominal contingency de-orbit procedures. The rendezvous should not be initiated until “after a minimum of one day of orbital flight’’ and should be “limited to a simple equi-period exercise with a target carried into orbit by the spacecraft’’. On 2 June Phillips agreed with George Low that there should be a rendezvous but insisted that this should not be listed as a primary objective. The double-hatch of the Block I had been replaced on the Block II by a single ‘unified hatch’ on a hinge that swung outward. It had a manual release for either internal or external use, could be opened in 60 seconds irrespective of the differential in pressure, and was capable of being opened in order to conduct a spacewalk. But Phillips directed that there ‘‘be no additions that require major new commitments such as opening the command module hatch in space or exercising the docking subsystem’’.

NASA announced on 20 March 1967 that the unmanned LM-1 flight would be transferred from AS-206 to AS-204, which had become available. The rationale for the AS-205/208 dual mission with CSM-101 and LM-2 had been to ensure that testing of the LM would not be held up by the Saturn V development problems. The AS-501 and AS-502 development flights were to carry refurbished LM test articles, but unless

The final report of the Apollo 204 Review Board was submitted on 5 April 1967.

the pace of LM development dramatically picked up, the heavy launcher would become available ahead of the LM, thus rendering the ad hoc dual mission redundant. It was therefore decided that if the LM-1 test flight proved unsatisfactory, AS-206 would launch LM-2 unmanned to address the remaining test objectives. On 25 March George Mueller directed that missions be numbered in the order of their launch, regardless of whether they employed the Saturn IB or Saturn V and whether they were manned or unmanned – previously only the manned missions were to be counted. On the 1966 plan, Apollo 2 was to be CSM-014 (Schirra) and Apollo 3 was to be CSM-101 (McDivitt) flying the dual mission. The cancellation of the Block I reflight advanced CSM-101 to Apollo 2. After the fire, the desire not to reassign the name Apollo 1 had resulted in CSM-101 (Schirra) being seen as Apollo 2. But with paperwork in circulation for a variety of mission plans numbered up to Apollo 3, Mueller precluded the possibility of administrative confusion by directing that the first scheduled mission, AS-501, be named Apollo 4.[47]

On 7 April 1967 Joseph Shea was transferred to Washington as Deputy Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, and Low succeeded him as ASPO Manager at the Manned Spacecraft Center. Several days later, Everett Christensen resigned as Director of Mission Operations at headquarters.

A joint meeting of the Manned Spacecraft Center’s Flight Operations Directorate and Mission Operations Division announced on 17 April that: (1) successful firings by the descent and ascent stages of an unmanned LM, including a ‘fire in the hole’ separation of the two stages, should be prerequisites to a manned LM being allotted these functions; (2) a demonstration of EVA transfer should not be a prerequisite to manned independent flight of the LM; (3) the Saturn V should be ‘man rated’ as rapidly as possible; (4) three manned Earth orbit flights involving both the CSM and the LM should be the minimum requirement prior to attempting a lunar landing; and (5) although a lunar orbit mission should not be a formal step in the program, this should be planned as a contingency in the event of the CSM achieving lunar-mission capability ahead of the LM.

ASPO sent the Block II Redefinition Task Team, led by Frank Borman, to North American Aviation on 27 April. Having the authority to make on-the-spot decisions which previously would have required referral to the Configuration Control Board, it was to oversee the ‘redefinition’ of the Block II spacecraft, responding promptly to questions regarding detail design, quality and reliability, test and checkout, baseline specifications, configuration control, and scheduling. Meanwhile, the company had hired William D. Bergen from the Martin Company to supersede Harrison A. Storms as Apollo Project Manager. Bergen brought with him John P. Healy to manage the production of the first Block II at Downey, and Bastian Hello to run the company’s operations at the Cape.

On 8 May 1967 George Low reaffirmed that AS-205 would launch CSM-101 on an open-ended mission of up to 11 days to evaluate its systems. The next day, James Webb told a Senate committee that this mission would be flown by Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham. When Webb canvassed suggestions for how to impress upon Congress that the Apollo program was recovering from the setback of the fire, George Mueller urged that the Saturn V be flown as soon as possible.

Grove Karl Gilbert was born in Rochester, New York, in 1843. After conducting a number of surveys as a field geologist, he was made Senior Geologist when the US Geological Survey was founded in 1879. Over 18 nights during August, September and October 1892, Gilbert used the 26-inch refractor of the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC to study the Moon. Pointing out that lunar craters have floors lying generally below rather than above the level of the adjacent terrain, he rejected the

volcanic interpretation and argued that craters must be the result of impacts. He further proposed that the arcuate chains of mountains at the periphery of the ‘circular maria’ are the walls of craters produced by vast impacts. As evidence, Gilbert cited what he called ‘sculpture’ as the fall of ejecta thrown out during the formation of Imbrium. He announced his results in The Moon’s Face: A Study of its Origin and its Surface Features, a paper presented orally to the Philosophical Society of Washington on 10 December to mark his retirement as its president. The paper was published in the Bulletin in 1893, but as this was not a publication on the reading list of astronomers his remarkable intrusion into their bailiwick passed unnoticed.

In 1946 Harvard geologist R. A. Daly rejected the endogenic origin of craters and, argued in favour of impact, citing Gilbert’s paper. Also in 1946, geologist R. S. Dietz expanded on the subject, listing several criteria that showed how lunar craters differ from terrestrial volcanic craters.

The American geologist J. E. Spurr began to study the Moon in 1937, having been inspired by the photographs taken by Francis Pease using the 100-inch telescope on Mount Wilson. He presumed that the Moon could be described in terrestrial terms, and between 1944 and 1949 wrote up his systematic analysis in four volumes under the general title Geology Applied to Selenology, offering volcanic explanations for a wide variety of lunar features. In particular, he said that early in lunar history large calderas left cavities which were later flooded by lava to make the ‘irregular maria’, and subsequently the better preserved ‘circular maria’. Critics of the impact origin of craters pointed out that whilst there were many examples of small craters on the rims of larger ones, there were no cases of large craters overlapping smaller ones. Spurr said craters were volcanic, and were produced with progressively smaller diameters. He interpreted faults and ridges as evidence of lines of weakness in the crust. Since he mapped these up the meridian and around the limb regions, he said they were due to stresses imparted as the Moon’s rotation synchronised with its orbital period. He

claimed this ‘lunar grid system’ had significantly controlled the formation of craters. This thesis was eagerly accepted by those who believed volcanism played the main role in shaping the lunar surface. In particular, it was claimed that lines of weakness had prompted eruptions that produced ‘chains’ of large craters whose members were isolated from one other by significant distances. But critics argued that the lines of weakness were illusory, since relief highlighted by the sunrise or sunset terminator will favour north-south trends and not east-west trends. And, of course, any pair of craters can be said to be related if an observer is so inclined.

It was not until Ralph B. Baldwin made an analysis of bomb craters in the Second World War that the impact origin of lunar craters began to make real headway. As a businessman trained in physics, he developed an interest in the Moon in 1941 during a visit to a planetarium when, in viewing the pictures on display, he independently noticed Imbrium sculpture. On later reading up and finding no explanation (since he did not happen across Gilbert’s paper) Baldwin decided to conduct his own study. In an article published in the magazine Popular Astronomy in 1942 he argued that the ridges and grooves were “caused by material ejected radially from the point of explosion’’ by the impact which formed Imbrium – although, like everyone else, he presumed that the impact formed the mare itself. In a follow-up in 1943 he reasoned that the projectile had been “flattened” by the shock and had excavated the cavity in a lateral manner, which was why the nearest sculpture consisted of grooves rather than chains of craters made by plunging debris – the latter occurred further out. He published in a popular outlet because his work was rejected by professional journals – evidently the Moon was not an object for worthwhile study. In his book The Face of the Moon, published in 1949 by the University of Chicago, Baldwin reported his observations, experiments and analyses, and included a review of the literature (by now he knew of Gilbert). His own contribution as a physicist drew upon an analysis of bomb craters in which he showed that the greater the deceleration on impact, the greater the energy released. He reasoned that although the weak lunar gravity would enable an explosion to throw ejecta to a greater distance, it would not actually make the crater larger. He logarithmically plotted the relationship between the diameters and depths of explosive craters on Earth, the craters on Earth accepted to have been made by cosmic impacts, and ‘fresh-looking’ lunar craters (those which had not yet slumped and distorted the ratio that he utilised). He compiled 300 measurements of lunar craters from the literature, and measured several dozen others himself. There was a clear trend.

Significantly, Baldwin realised that although most sculpture could be attributed to Imbrium, there was some which seemed to be associated with other ‘circular maria’, from which he concluded that they resulted from individual impacts. Furthermore, the mountains peripheral to Serenitatis must have formed prior to the impact that etched the Haemus with Imbrium sculpture, yet before lava flooded the Serenitatis cavity. This established that Mare Serenitatis formed a significant interval after the impact had excavated the cavity in which it resides. Baldwin (as had Gilbert) believed all the maria to have been formed at the same time and to be associated with Imbrium, which at that time was presumed to have been the greatest impact in lunar history. However, whereas Gilbert envisaged the Imbrium impact splashing out liquid ejecta which pooled in low-lying areas to form the various maria, Baldwin saw there had been a significant interval between the formation of the Imbrium cavity and its being filled in. He proposed that the impact raised a vast dome which remained inflated for long enough to be cratered (for example by Archimedes), then collapsed (forming a system of peripheral arcuate faults) and released a pulse of extremely low viscosity lava that not only filled in the cavity but also burst through the containing walls to spread across the surface and fill in other cavities to create the maria. Irrespective of whether the maria were liquid ejecta or erupted lava, it was evident that the large circular cavities were made by individual impacts over a period of time and that there was a significant interval before the formation of the maria.

Astronomers were not impressed by Baldwin’s arguments, however, and for many years continued to associate the maria with the cavities they occupied.

After reading Baldwin’s book, Harold C. Urey developed an interest in the Moon. But Urey was not particularly interested in the surface features – as a chemist at the University of Chicago who gained the 1934 Nobel Prize for chemistry, he was more interested in the Moon’s composition. He accepted that the craters were impacts and the maria were the by-product of a giant impact, but rejected Baldwin’s inference of a significant interval between the Imbrium impact and the formation of the maria. Urey agreed with Gilbert that the maria were splashes of impact melt, and said that because they were molten they could not have preserved sculpture. He also made the remarkable suggestion that the semicircular Sinus Iridum on the northern margin of Mare Imbrium marked the ‘entry hole’ of the asteroidal body whose impact created the Imbrium cavity.

In 1943 Gerard P. Kuiper began to exploit recent technical developments to make observations of bodies in the solar system. He essentially had the field to himself, at least in professional circles, and was able to make a series of discoveries. In 1953 he turned his attention to the Moon. Although photography was the norm, he mounted a binocular eye-piece on the 82-inch reflector of the McDonald Observatory in Texas to exploit moments of exceptional ‘seeing’ to discern details of the lunar surface that

would have been blurred in photographs. In his first paper on the subject, in 1954, he argued that in the case of a body of the Moon’s size, radiogenic heating would have caused sufficient melting for dense minerals to sink to create a core and lightweight minerals to rise to form a crust. This thermal differentiation would become known as the ‘hot Moon’ hypothesis. As volcanism is a means of enabling heat to escape from the interior, Kuiper argued that the maria were formed by lava upwelling at various times from deep fractures in the floors of the cavities excavated by major impacts.

In 1891, while studying the desert between Flagstaff and Winslow in Arizona in which the Canyon Diablo meteorites had been recovered, G. K. Gilbert inspected the circular hole known as Coon Butte. It was 1.2 km in diameter, had a rim which rose 45 metres above its surroundings, and a floor lying 200 metres below the rim. If it marked the site of an impact, then, he reasoned, there might be a large iron meteorite beneath its floor. A buried iron mass should be detectable by its magnetic signature, but there was no such indication. He concluded that the hole was a marr, made some 50,000 years ago when magma caused underground ice to flash to steam and blast a hole in the overlying rock. Nevertheless, in 1903 mining engineer D. M. Barringer began to drill in search of the meteorite, to no effect. In 1916 E. J. Opik realised that a cosmic impact was such a violent event that the projectile would be vaporised, but he published in an Estonian journal and his insight passed unnoticed. In 1924 A. C.

Gifford independently came to the same conclusion and published in a New Zealand journal that had a broader readership. Opik and Gifford both realised that high­speed impacts always create circular craters because whilst momentum is a vector, energy is not, and as the projectile hits the surface it essentially explodes, liberating energy in a symmetric manner and forming a circular crater. Furthermore, they realised, the crater is always much larger than the projectile. If Coon Butte was an impact crater, then the only relic of the projectile was the field of Canyon Diablo meteorites which littered the surrounding desert.

When Eugene M. Shoemaker joined the US Geological Survey in 1948 he already had an interest in the Moon. In 1949 he made a review of the literature and turned up both Gilbert’s paper and Baldwin’s recently released book, both of which advocated the impact hypothesis. In 1955 he studied two craters about 100 metres in diameter created by underground nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site to investigate how such explosions shocked and dispersed rock. He was impressed by their resemblance to lunar craters. In 1957, with Gilbert’s analysis in mind, he began a study of Coon Butte. He had already done the field work for his PhD thesis on salt structures, but had never gotten around to writing it up. After hearing Shoemaker give a seminar on his study of Coon Butte, his advisor at Princeton, Harry Hess, suggested that he use that as the basis of his thesis. Shoemaker put in some more field work, wrote it up, and, despite it being rather on the short side for the purpose, submitted it in 1959. The fact that the crater was recent and in a desert environment made the manner in which it was excavated readily evident. In particular, the strike had not just penetrated the surface and pushed the rock aside, as Gilbert imagined; the process, as Opik and Gifford had inferred, was explosive. Significantly, Shoemaker found that two shock waves were involved: one vaporised the projectile, and the other propagated into the ‘target rock’, compressing it so thoroughly that the rock reacted just as if an explosion had occurred beneath it. In his field work Shoemaker methodically traced how the rim and the ejecta blanket formed by the stratigraphy being flipped into an inverted sequence around a circular ‘hinge’, in the process making a hole much wider than the projectile.[5]

Early in 1960 L. R. Stieff of the US Geological Survey in Washington DC set out to obtain NASA funding for an investigation of lunar geology. NASA deliberated. In 1953 Loring Coes had produced a new very dense mineral using a hydraulic press to squeeze quartz. This ‘shocked quartz’ was named coesite. In 1956 H. H. Nininger had suggested searching for coesite at Coon Butte, but this was not done. In 1960 Stieff obtained samples of rock taken from Coon Butte which were in the archive of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC to enable him to say to NASA that the Survey was already at work on craters. Ed Chao identified coesite using X-ray diffraction, which proved Coon Butte to be an impact crater. A press statement was released to this effect on 20 June. When Chao wrote the scientific paper, the Survey

added Shoemaker and his assistant Beth Madsen as co-authors to imply that it had a team of specialists at work. When the paper was published in Science in July I960, Shoemaker was on his way to present a paper about Coon Butte to the Geological Congress in Copenhagen. The Rieskessel in Bavaria is a 24-km-diameter structure with the town of Nordlingen at its centre. Although widely believed to be volcanic, a study in 1904 had suggested that the circular structure might mark an impact, and its characteristics had led Baldwin to classify it as such. Shoemaker examined samples of quartz from a quarry. To his trained eye, using no more than a hand-lens, the rock showed evidence of shock. The next day he airmailed samples to Chao, who called straight back to confirm that coesite was present. In giving his paper in Copenhagen about Coon Butte, Shoemaker announced the Rieskessel finding.

With the two structures having been shown to be impacts, NASA finally released the funding to enable the Survey to undertake its lunar studies, and on 25 August the Astrogeologic Studies Group was established at the Menlo Park office, south of San Francisco, with Shoemaker in charge. A year later, in 1961, it became the Branch of Astrogeology. In March 1962 Shoemaker decided to move his team to Flagstaff. The move began in December, but some people refused to relocate and were allowed to remain at Menlo Park.

STRANDED

After Ranger 1 passed its qualification tests at JPL in May 1961, Oran Nicks, Chief of Lunar Flight Systems at NASA headquarters, authorised its transportation to Cape Canaveral, where the Air Force had assigned Hangar AE to the project. The launch window ran from 26 July to 2 August. In late June the Atlas was erected on Pad 12, the Agena added, and the spacecraft in its aerodynamic shroud installed to complete the stack. The combined systems tests of the fully assembled space vehicle were concluded on 13 July.

The countdown was delayed three days by a variety of problems, and was unable to start until the evening of 28 July with the intention of launching at dawn the next day, but a problem with the Cape’s electrical power supply meant that the clock had to be halted with 28 minutes remaining. After two other counts were frustrated, the attempt to launch on 2 August was abandoned when, as high voltage was applied to the spacecraft’s scientific instruments for calibration purposes, an electrical failure caused the explosive bolts to fire to deploy the solar panels inside the shroud. The spacecraft had to be retrieved and returned to the hangar. It was concluded that there had been an electrical arc to the spacecraft’s frame, but the precise source was not evident. The damaged parts were replaced. The launch was rescheduled for the start of the window for the next lunation.

The countdown began on the evening of 22 August and ran smoothly to liftoff at 10:04:10 GMT the next morning. With Ranger 1 on its way, James Burke became Mission Director at the Hangar AE command post.

The Atlas ignited its sustainer, the two side-mounted boosters and the two vernier control engines, and was held on the pad until verified to be running satisfactorily. For the first 2 seconds the vehicle rose vertically, and then it rolled for 13 seconds to swing its guidance system onto the flight azimuth. After 15 seconds the autopilot pitched the vehicle in that direction so as to arc out over the Atlantic. When a sensor detected that the acceleration had reached 5.7 times that of

Earth gravity,[20] about 142 seconds into the flight, the Atlas shut off its boosters, and 3 seconds later jettisoned its tail to shed 6,000 pounds of ‘dead weight’. The sustainer engine continued to fire. In the boost phase, the vehicle had been tracked by a radar at the Cape to enable the Air Force to calculate its initial trajectory, and as the sustainer flew on it acted upon steering commands radioed by the ground. When the sustainer shut down, the two verniers on the side of the Atlas fired as appropriate to refine the final velocity. As it did not have the power to insert the Agena directly into orbit, the upper stage was to be released on a high ballistic arc. Once free, the Agena, now above the dense lower atmosphere, jettisoned the aerodynamic shroud to shed dead weight, and ignited its engine. ft then achieved the desired circular parking orbit at an altitude of 160 km. Meanwhile, the Air Force’s computer processed the tracking provided by the radars of the downrange stations of the Eastern Test Range in order to calculate the length of time the Agena should spend in parking orbit and the parameters required for its second manoeuvre. This information was transmitted to the vehicle.

The plan for this test flight was for the Agena В to use its second burn to enter an elliptical orbit with an apogee of 1 million km, far beyond the orbit of the Moon, and for simplicity the orbit would be oriented not to venture near the Moon. The primary objective was to evaluate the spacecraft’s systems in the deep-space environment, in particular its 3-axis stabilisation using Earth, Sun and star sensors, the pointing of its high-gain antenna, and the performance of the solar panels. Each Block f Ranger was expected to have an operating life of several months, and to provide worthwhile data for the sky scientists.

After its second burn, the Agena was to fire explosive bolts in order to release the spacecraft, which would be pushed away by springs. Then the spent stage was to use its thrusters to make its trajectory diverge. Radio interference prevented the tracking site at Ascension fsland in the South Atlantic from monitoring the reignition. When Johannesburg reported detecting the spacecraft several minutes ahead of schedule, it became evident that the second burn had failed and the spacecraft was still in a low orbit. When Goldstone picked it up, the orbit was calculated to have a perigee of 168 km and an apogee of 500 km. Although the Agena had reignited, it had shut down prematurely and then released the spacecraft. ft was encouraging that the spacecraft had deployed its solar panels, locked onto the Sun, rolled to acquire Earth and then deployed its antenna, but because it was ‘stranded’ in a low orbit it soon entered the Earth’s shadow and lost both power and attitude lock. On re-emerging into sunlight it fired its thrusters to restabilise itself. This occurred on every shadow passage, with the result that after only one day the nitrogen was exhausted and, unable to stabilise itself to face its solar panels to the Sun, the battery, intended only for launch and the brief midcourse manoeuvre, expired. The inert spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere on 30 August.

A study of the telemetry tapes confirmed that the Agena reignition sequence had started at the proper time, but almost immediately the flow of oxidiser had ceased. The small amount of oxidiser which had entered the engine gave the 70-m/s velocity

increment that slightly raised the apogee. The premature cutoff was classified as a one-off failure.

Although Ranger 1 flew in an environment different to that intended, its designers were encouraged that it had correctly deployed its appendages and (repeatedly) been able to adopt cruise attitude. But the sky scientists received nothing of value from the mission.

On 5 October, as a result of lessons learned from Ranger 1 when various lines of authority had penetrated the Space Flight Operations Center, Marshall Johnson was appointed Chief of the Space Flight Operations Section and, with it, sole authority to direct the control team while a mission was underway.

The launch window for Ranger 2 was 20-28 October 1961. The tests on the fully assembled space vehicle on Pad 12 were completed on 11 October. The countdown began on time in the evening of 19 October, but was scrubbed with 40 minutes on the clock owing to a fault with the Atlas. Although this was readily repaired, the fact that another Atlas was due to leave from another pad the next day meant Ranger 2 had to wait. The countdown on 23 October was abandoned because of another issue with the Atlas. At this point, a Thor-Agena B launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was lost as a result of the failure of the hydraulics of the Agena’s engine, and NASA decided to await the outcome of that investigation. The problem was diagnosed and fixed in time for the next window, and Ranger 2 lifted off on the first attempt at 08:12 GMT on 18 November. As before, the spacecraft rose above the horizon at Johannesburg early, indicating that the second burn had failed – this time without even producing a modest apogee. Ranger 2 performed perfectly, but it was doomed and re-entered the atmosphere on 19 November.

An Air Force analysis of the telemetry indicated that the roll gyroscope of the Agena B’s guidance system had been inoperative at liftoff, most probably due to a faulty relay in its power supply. The attitude control system had compensated for the roll control failure by using its thrusters, and in so doing had exhausted the supply of gas. As a result, the Agena had tumbled in parking orbit. This caused the propellants to slosh in their tanks, which in turn prevented them from flowing into the engine when it tried to reignite. On 4 December 1961 the Air Force informed NASA of its findings, and Lockheed promised to report within a month on how it would fix the fault. When NASA decided in December 1959 to use the Agena B, it had presumed the Air Force would have worked the bugs out of the vehicle by the time it was needed, but only one had been launched prior to Ranger 1 and, in effect, NASA was testing it for the Air Force!

Although some aspects of the Block I tests had not been achieved, the engineers at JPL were encouraged that on both occasions the spacecraft had worked as well as could be expected in the circumstances. If the Agena was fixed as soon as Lockheed hoped, then it should be possible to proceed with Ranger 3 as planned.

Since Surveyor 2 was essentially complete at the time of the first mission, it was identical to its predecessor. Upon the surprising success of Surveyor 1, NASA opted not to postpone the second mission to install scientific instruments. It duly lifted off from Pad 36A at 12:32:00 GMT on 20 September 1966 on a direct-ascent trajectory with the objective of landing in Sinus Medii.5 In general, this was much rougher – looking than the area in Oceanus Procellarum assigned to Surveyor 1. This time, it was intended to operate the downward-looking TV camera during the approach in order to gain a sense of perspective of the landing site.

The translunar injection trajectory would intercept the Moon just northeast of the crater Mosting on the western margin of Sinus Medii, 142 km from the centre of the 60-km target circle. The sequence for the 31.5-ft/sec midcourse manoeuvre began at T+15h 42m with an interrogation to verify the readiness of the vehicle’s systems. At 16h 12m the spacecraft initiated a roll of +75.3 degrees, followed 5 minutes later by a yaw of +11.5 degrees. This successfully oriented the vehicle for the burn. The burn was started on command at 16h 28m but vernier no. 3 failed to ignite. After the specified duration of 9.8 seconds, the system shut down. The asymmetric thrust had left the vehicle spinning about one axis at 1.22 revolutions per second, with this axis precessing in 12 seconds. This saturated the gyros in the minus pitch, plus yaw and minus roll directions. The flight control system set about regaining stability utilising the attitude control thrusters. After 7 minutes the precession had been cancelled. But after 14 minutes, with a residual spin around the main axis of 0.85 revolutions per second and with the jets having consumed half of the nitrogen supply, a command was sent from Earth to inhibit the system and save the remaining gas for use in the event that the problem involving vernier no. 3 could be overcome, at which time the verniers would be used to stabilise the vehicle.

In fact, this was site I-P-5 on Lunar Orbiter 1’s target list.

Deep Space Instrumentation Facility automatic gain control variations served to document the initial tumbling of the Surveyor 2 spacecraft.

SOLENOID-OPERATED PROPELLANT VALVE

OXIDIZER TANKS

HELIUM TANK

RELIEF VALVE

FUEL TANKS

A simplified depiction of the Surveyor spacecraft’s vernier propulsion system.

Detail of an engine of the Surveyor spacecraft’s vernier propulsion system.

The solar panel was unable to provide power while the vehicle was tumbling, so time was of the essence. It was apparent that verniers no. 1 and 2 had delivered the specified thrust during the manoeuvre, but no. 3 had delivered no thrust at all. It was decided to command a 2-second firing in an effort to clear vernier no. 3. This was done at 18h 56m and again at 19h 18m, but without success. In case the fault was a stuck flow regulator valve, the system was commanded to pulse five times for a duration of 0.2 seconds at 5 minute intervals starting at 31h 12m and then attempt another 2-second firing – again in vain. This sequence was repeated at 26h 28m, 37h 29m, 38h 45m and 39h 45m – each time with no effect. At 41h 11m an attempt was made to fire the engine at a ‘harder’ start and a higher thrust for 2 seconds. Because the other two verniers were participating in these tests, by this point the spin rate had increased to 1.54 revolutions per second. At 43h 13m a new sequence was initiated in which the engines were pulsed five times for 0.2 second with 1 minute between firings, as a preliminary to a 20-second firing. Although this time the temperature of vernier no. 3 increased somewhat, the engine did not respond properly.

Although the spacecraft was tumbling out of control, it was decided to undertake a series of tests to obtain engineering data on its subsystems, concluding at 45h 02m with a command to trigger the retro sequence. Contact was lost 30 seconds into the retro-rocket’s burn. The inert vehicle would have struck the Moon several hundred kilometres southeast of Copernicus.

The post-flight investigation by propulsion engineers of JPL, NASA, Hughes and Thiokol decided that there had been no combustion in vernier no. 3 at the attempted midcourse manoeuvre, and that although fuel had flowed into the engine the oxidiser had not. As it was not possible to determine the root cause of the failure, a number of revisions were introduced for Surveyor 3 designed to provide better diagnostics of the vernier propulsion system, both during pre-flight testing and in flight.

MOON ROCKET

On 19 January 1959 NASA took over the Air Force’s contract with Rocketdyne for the development of the F-1 kerosene-burning engine. The prototype was test fired on

10 February 1961. By sustaining 1.55 million pounds of thrust for several seconds, it broke the record for a single-chamber engine by a considerable margin. On 9 April 1961 it was announced that the engine had achieved 1.64 million pounds of thrust. On 26 May 1962 the engine was fired at full power for its intended operating time of 150 seconds. Meanwhile, Rocketdyne began the development of the 200,000-pound- thrust hydrogen-burning J-2 engine that was to power the upper stages of the Saturn launch vehicle. The first full-duration test of this engine was on 27 November 1963. The Douglas Aircraft Corporation fired an S-IVB stage utilising a single J-2 engine at full power for 10 seconds on a static rig at its Sacramento facility on 4 December 1964. But it was a ‘battleship’ variant (equivalent to a ‘boilerplate’ for a spacecraft) having tankage made of thick stainless steel instead of the lightweight aluminium of the operational vehicle. On 7 December 1964 the first S-IVB mockup – which was accurate in terms of mass, centre of gravity and structural stiffness, but with models of the engine and other systems – was delivered to the Marshall Space Flight Center for stress testing. On 16 April 1965 the first S-IC stage utilising five F-1 engines was test fired for several seconds at NASA’s Mississippi Test Facility. On 24 April the S-

11 stage utilising five J-2 engines was test fired at Rocketdyne’s facility at Santa Susana in California. On 5 August the S-IC made a full-duration test during which it responded to steering commands provided by the blockhouse. On 9 August the S-II made its first full-duration firing. That same day the first production version of the S-IVB was tested, and on 20 August it was fired for 3 minutes, shut down for half an hour and reignited for almost 6 minutes in a simulation of its role on a lunar mission.

Unfortunately, by early 1966 the development of the S-II had slipped. In an effort to recover, North American Aviation hired a new manager, Robert E. Greer, who took a team of engineers to the Mississippi Test Facility. On 23 April 1966 the S-II was successfully fired for 15 seconds, but faulty instrumentation caused premature

cutoffs on 10, 11 and 16 May. It fired for 150 and 350 seconds in tests on 17 and 20 May. But fires broke out in two places on the vehicle in a test on 25 May, and as the stage was being removed from the stand three days later its hydrogen tank exploded, damaging the facility and injuring five people. George Mueller in Washington began to send weekly progress reports on the S-II to company president Leland Atwood, at one point advising him that the S-II had an excellent chance of replacing the LM as the ‘pacing item’ in the program.

But then the fire that killed the Apollo 1 crew during a supposedly routine test of the spacecraft on 27 January 1967 halted the program in its tracks. Nevertheless, the time taken to redesign the CSM provided the opportunity for the development of the Saturn V and the LM to catch up.

On 17 April 1967 the Manned Spacecraft Center proposed a minimum of three manned Saturn V missions involving both the CSM and the LM prior to attempting the lunar landing. When George Mueller advocated landing on the third mission, Chris Kraft warned George Low that a landing should not be tried ‘‘on the first flight which leaves the Earth’s gravitational field’’ because flying to the Moon was such a great step forward in terms of operational capability that this should be demonstrated separately, to enable the landing crew to focus on activities associated with landing. Accepting Kraft’s argument, on 20 September Low led a delegation to Washington. Owen E. Maynard, Chief of the Systems Engineering Division in Houston, outlined a step-by-step sequence: (A) Saturn V and unmanned CSM development; (B) Saturn IB and unmanned LM development; (C) Saturn IB and manned CSM evaluation; (D) Saturn V and manned CSM/LM joint development; (E) CSM/LM trials in an Earth orbit involving a ‘high’ apogee; (F) CSM/LM trials in lunar orbit; (G) the first lunar landing; (H) further ‘minimalist’ landings; (I) reconnaissance surveys in lunar orbit; and (J) ‘enhanced capability’ landings.[48] This alphabetically labelled series was not a list of flights, as several flights might be required to achieve one mission. Two Saturn V development flights were already scheduled as Apollo 4 and Apollo 6, and the LM-1 flight as Apollo 5. Sam Phillips asked whether a second Saturn V test was really necessary, and Wernher von Braun said the second would serve to confirm the data from the first. If the Saturn V development were to prove to be protracted, then the ‘D’ mission would be done by reinstating the plan in which the CSM and LM would be launched individually by Saturn IBs and rendezvous in orbit. Most of the discussion was devoted to the proposal for a lunar orbital flight ‘‘to evaluate the deep space environment and to develop procedures for the entire lunar landing mission short of LM descent, ascent and surface operations’’. When Mueller argued ‘‘Apollo should not go to the Moon to develop procedures’’, Low said that developing crew operations would not be the

main reason for the mission; there was actually still a lot to be learned about navigation, thermal control and communications in deep space. Although the meeting left this matter undecided, the alphabetic labels soon became common shorthand.

Sam Phillips confirmed on 2 October 1967 that LM-2 should be configured for an unmanned test flight, and directed that LM-3 be paired with CSM-103 for the first manned mission of the complete Apollo configuration.2 Grumman’s latest schedule called for LM-2 to be delivered in February 1968, LM-3 in April and LM-4 in June. On 4 November George Mueller issued the schedule for 1968: AS-204 with LM-1; then AS-502 as the second unmanned test; AS-503 as the third unmanned test, if this proved necessary; AS-206 with LM-2, if required; AS-205 with CSM-101, manned; and AS-504 with CSM-103 and LM-3, manned. On 15 November George Low said that in the event of AS-503 being unmanned, the payload should be the ‘boilerplate’ spacecraft BP-30 and lunar module test article LTA-B.