BOEING WINS

On 25 June 1963 Floyd Thompson went to Washington to define the terms of the request for proposals. In particular, he did not wish it to be stated that the spacecraft should be spin stabilised; he wished to see what the bidders proposed. It was agreed to say only that the primary requirement was photographic data at medium and high resolution in order to facilitate the selection of sites for Surveyor and Apollo landers. The secondary objectives were to provide information on the size and shape of the Moon and the properties of its gravitational field. Information would also be sought on conditions near the Moon, including the micrometeoroid flux and total exposure to energetic particles and gamma rays – the latter having been shown by Ranger 3 to exist. A key requirement of the photographic system was that it identify the altitude of the orbiter at the time of an exposure, the orientation of the line of sight (relative to lunar north) and the angle of the Sun to the surface. In particular, it was desired to be able to determine the location of any surface feature to an accuracy of 1 km.

On 23 August Lee Scherer presented the request for proposals to Oran Nicks and Edgar Cortright, who duly reviewed it with Robert Seamans. The Project Approval Document signed by Seamans on 30 August officially initiated Langley’s first deep – space project. It was given the mundane name of Lunar Orbiter. The Lunar Orbiter Project Office was set up at Langley, with Clifford H. Nelson as Project Manager,2 William J. Boyer as Operations Manager and Israel Taback as Spacecraft Manager. In Newell’s office, Lee Scherer was appointed as Lunar Orbiter Program Director, Leon J. Kosofsky as Program Engineer and Martin J. Swetnick as Program Scientist.

On 30 August 1963 NASA invited bids from industry. In September the Lunar Orbiter Project Office established a Source Evaluation Board chaired by Eugene C. Draley of Langley. Five bids were received. The evaluations began in October and ran to late-November.

A key factor in the requirements was that, where possible, off-the-shelf hardware be used to minimise the development effort. The Hughes Aircraft Company, which was prime contractor for Surveyor and would have built the 3-axis-stabilised orbiter for that project, proposed a spin-stabilised spacecraft that would use a solid rocket

In October 1964 Langley recruited James S. Martin from Republic Aviation as Assistant Project Manager.

Boeing wins 147

motor to enter lunar orbit. The Space Technology Laboratories submitted a refined version of its spin-stabilised design. The Martin Company, which supplied the Titan missile to the Air Force but had limited experience of spacecraft systems, offered a 3- axis-stablised design. The Lockheed Missile and Space Company, which had built the Agena as a 3-axis-stablised vehicle and integrated various payloads into it for the Air Force, including reconnaissance cameras, suggested that the Agena be adapted to operate in lunar orbit. Eliminating the need to develop a new vehicle satisfied the desire for off-the-shelf hardware, but the operational concept was flawed because it would require a lot of propellant to insert such a heavy rocket stage into lunar orbit. The Boeing Company’s expertise was aircraft, but it wished to gain experience with spacecraft systems. It proposed a 3-axis-stabilised spacecraft with a mass of 360 kg that would enter lunar orbit using a liquid rocket (just developed by Marquardt as an attitude control thruster for the Apollo spacecraft) and be powered by solar panels. The Source Evaluation Board was particularly impressed by Boeing’s plan to use a lightweight form of a photographic system developed by Eastman Kodak in I960 for a reconnaissance satellite. The camera used two lenses in a configuration that would take wide-angle and narrow-angle frames simultaneously and interleave them onto a single strip of film.[27] The film would be developed and fixed using the ‘semi-dry’ Bimat process introduced by Kodak in 1961, as this obviated the complication of handling ‘wet’ chemicals in weightlessness.[28] The clinching argument in favour of Boeing was the proposal to use Kodak SO-243 fine-grain aerial film to obtain the required high resolution. This film had an exceedingly ‘slow’ rating of 1.6 ASA, whereas the other bidders intended to use ‘fast’ film. In the case of the spin – stabilised designs, a high-speed film was essential. But adding up the time spent flying to the Moon, the time spent in orbit preparatory to imaging, the 10 days spent imaging, and the time spent scanning and transmitting the film, a mission might last up to a month. During this time there was a fair chance of the particle radiation from a solar storm ‘fogging’ a high-speed film, and the heavy shielding to protect it would be prohibitive. Boeing’s proposal to use slow film showed that the company had a better understanding than its competitors of the mission requirements. The Source Evaluation Board strongly recommended in favour of Boeing, and this was accepted. On 20 December 1963 James Webb announced that the contract would be awarded to Boeing of Seattle, Washington.

Boeing appointed Robert J. Helberg to manage the development of Lunar Orbiter. George H. Hage was Chief Engineer. Carl A. Krafft, the Business Manager, led the contract negotiations that began on 6 January 1964 and involved both Langley and the merged Office of Space Sciences and Applications. Boeing subcontracted Kodak to provide the photographic system, and the Radio Corporation of America for the communications system. In March, Boeing

suggested that the photographic data be processed into pictorial format at Kodak in Rochester, New York, where there was already the necessary equipment, but NASA decided that the processing, handling and distribution of all scientific data provided by Lunar Orbiter should be done at Langley – in the case of photographic data by utilising equipment and technicians supplied by Kodak. Langley appointed Calvin Broome as Chief of the Photographic Subsystem Section.

The plan called for five Lunar Orbiter missions to be launched by Atlas-Agena D, with the first in either late 1965 or early 1966. They were to photograph the lunar surface from a perilune of 40 km. As in the case of Ranger at JPL, Langley would be responsible for overall systems integration of the spacecraft and the launch vehicle, as well as the necessary ground support, but, significantly, by this point NASA had gained control of both the procurement of launch vehicles and of launch operations. Because JPL had established the Deep Space Network to track and communicate with spacecraft, the Lunar Orbiters would be run from the Space Flight Operations Facility. In April 1964, Langley discussed this collaboration with Eberhardt Rechtin. This was the first time that JPL had provided another NASA centre with deep-space support, and so, in effect, a ‘contract’ had to be negotiated to define what JPL would do. But since trajectory design was closely related to the design of the spacecraft’s communications system, and JPL had neither the manpower nor the computer time available to involve itself in this, the transit trajectory and operations in lunar orbit

would have to be planned by Langley and Boeing after JPL had educated Boeing’s engineers in the capabilities and procedures of the Deep Space Network.

Langley and Boeing signed the detailed contract on 16 April 1964. It was sent to NASA headquarters for ratification. James Webb agreed on 7 May, and the formal contract was signed on 10 May.