The Birth of the Apollo Applications Program

Even as NASA strove to keep the fast-paced schedule necessary to meet Ken­nedy’s deadline and beat the Soviet Union, there were those who realized that NASA needed to look past that mandate to the future. Since Apollo was a program with an established and concrete goal, Mueller and others believed that NASA needed to begin thinking about what the agency would do after the moon landing was achieved. In order to keep the space program going after the goal of Apollo was reached, NASA would need to begin planning years in advance to preserve continuity. Any new space program, any new missions, would need years of preparation. However, with around 5 per­cent of the national budget being funneled into NASA at the height of Apol­lo spending, they knew it would be difficult to win approval for another simultaneous space program. Basing that program around already-designed hardware would reduce the funding needed and would also make it easier to win support for the program. In July 1963 NASA headquarters commis­sioned a study by aircraft manufacturer North American Aviation of extend­ed flight possibilities, including modifications to an Apollo Command and Service Module to support longer duration flights, creation of a small work – area module that could be used in connection with the Apollo capsule, and development of an independent laboratory module.

In 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson asked NASA to report to him on its plans for the post-Apollo era. NASA administrator James Webb created a Future Programs Task Group to prepare a response to the president’s request. The group’s conclusion was that the agency should continue studies leading to flying extended Apollo missions by 1968 and continue long-range plan­ning for space stations and human Mars missions in the 1970 s.

While Webb was pleased by the report, others, including many in Con­gress, were not. It was criticized as insufficiently detailed and insufficient­ly ambitious. Mueller worked to address those concerns with the creation in August 1965 of the Saturn-Apollo Applications Program office at NASA headquarters. The office was to take the ideas generated during Extend­ed Apollo research and use those as the foundation for a concrete program, including the development of a space station. The program name was short­ened to the Apollo Applications Program (aap), and the effort to find new uses for lunar-mission hardware began.

Mueller realized that he needed to act quickly to preserve the incredi­ble team that was making it possible to reach the moon. In the latter half of the i960 s, while the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston was still very much in the midst of the Apollo program, many of the engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center were completing their part of the Apollo pro­gram — the mighty Saturn v moon rocket. Unless something could be done to find new tasks for the team, NASA risked beginning to lose the expertise that had made the Saturn boosters possible. As other teams completed their Apollo duties as well, they would be in the same situation. But at Marshall the critical point was already rapidly approaching.

That difference in timetable was to be a key factor in the development of the orbital workshop, according to George Hardy, who was the chief of Pro­gram Engineering and Integration at Marshall and later the center’s direc­tor of operations. “As time went on, and the idea of a follow-on to Apollo came up, I think von Braun and Mueller spent a lot of time together. [The Manned Spacecraft Center] was still busy with the lunar missions, and Mar­shall had pretty much delivered all their hardware, and certainly complet­ed all the development work. And because of that, and I think also because von Braun’s vision of the space station had been there for many, many, many years, Mueller and von Braun sort of collaborated on some of the early con­cepts of what could be done.”

Mueller had one other goal in mind for Apollo Applications. For many within NASA, there was no question what the next major step should be after the flag had been planted on the moon. However, Mueller knew that before a flag could be planted in the red terrain of Mars, there were things that needed to be done. Apollo Applications would be the tool that would provide NASA with the knowledge and experience needed to forge onward to the Red Planet.

“The evolution really started with building something to go to the moon, and then, having built it, what do we do with it besides go to the moon,” Mueller said. “We wanted to really lay the foundation for the future of space activities and really look at whether we can use that hardware to develop an understanding of what the next generation needs. So we looked at almost everything we can do in space. And one of the things that meant was the development of the space station.”

The challenge of building a program around the Apollo equipment was made easier by the great potential that the hardware presented. Three major components made up the Apollo architecture. Of those the Lunar Module was the component most specifically designed for its Apollo task, landing men on the moon. Its thin, lightweight body was not designed for opera­tions on Earth or for flight within the planet’s atmosphere, and its propul­sion system was engineered for the task of landing on and taking off from the surface of the moon. Despite the fact that its design was the most task – focused of the three major components, alternative uses for the Lunar Mod­ule were considered in the Apollo Applications Program.

Also developed specifically for Apollo but more easily lending itself to applications beyond carrying men to the moon was the Command and Ser­vice Module. Though relatively small compared to the American spacecraft that followed it, the Apollo capsule was downright roomy compared to its predecessors, the one-man Mercury vehicle and the two-seat Gemini. In addition to the three couches in which the crew members sat, the spacecraft featured a lower equipment bay that provided room for the astronauts to get out of their seats and move around. Attached to the rear of the Command Module was the cylindrical Service Module, which housed the spacecraft’s primary propulsion system and four “quads” of maneuvering thrusters, each consisting of four thrusters at right angles to each other.

Rounding out these three components was the only one to predate, in concept at least, the Apollo program. More accurately, though, the final item was actually two—the Saturn IB and Saturn v launch vehicles. Work on the Saturn rockets had begun in the late 1950 s, years before Kennedy had issued his challenge to Congress. So rather than designing them specifical­ly to send men to the moon, von Braun had a broader goal in mind for the powerful launch vehicles: these would be the rockets that would open up the solar system for exploration. Mueller knew that the Saturns as well as the other hardware that had been developed for the Apollo program would lend themselves to a variety of applications beyond their original purpose.

Under Apollo Applications, the space station was given a new lease on life. The orbital workshop fit perfectly with several goals of the program. With

its large volume and ability to remain in orbit for an extended period of time, such a workshop would be an ideal test bed for learning more about the effects of long-duration spaceflight and conducting microgravity science experiments. In addition, thanks to a concept that had been floating around NASA for several years, it was an excellent fit for another reason.

Well before Apollo Applications was created to find new uses for the hard­ware developed to go to the moon, that same idea had already occurred to Douglas Aircraft, the contractor responsible for the construction of the s-ivb, used as the upper stage of both the Saturn v and the smaller Saturn IB boost­er. The company suggested that the rocket stage they manufactured could be modified for use as a space station. While NASA would latch onto the Apollo Applications concept as an affordable means of developing new programs, Douglas of course proposed the idea in hopes of increasing business.

“That came from Douglas,” Mueller said. “They were the ones that were pushing that. They had the s-ivb stage, and they were trying to figure out how to use it in the future.” As early as 1959 von Braun had also advocated the spent-stage station concept. Many in the agency, including Mueller, sup­ported the idea, which provided solutions to two major challenges in devel­oping a space station. The proposal not only solved the issue of how to con­struct a facility with a large volume where astronauts could live and work, it also provided a convenient way for launching the structure by integrating it into the booster that would carry it.

The space station would also play an important part in pursuing Muel­ler’s other goal for Apollo Applications, preparing the way to Mars. Muel­ler realized that an immediate post-Apollo manned flight to Mars would be impossible. There was yet too much to be learned before such a mission could be mounted since it would involve astronauts living away from Earth for months or even years. At the end of Apollo, NASA’s longest spaceflight was the fourteen days astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell had spent aboard Gemini 7 in December 1965, a record at the time but extremely brief when compared with the time needed to travel to a neighboring planet. NASA needed two things before it could even consider sending missions to the Red Planet. The agency would have to have long-duration spaceflight experi­ence, and it would need a space transportation infrastructure. A space sta­tion would easily accomplish the former and would lay important ground­work for the latter.

“The decision back then was to get ready to go to Mars,” Mueller said of NASA’s response to a 1964 mandate by President Lyndon B. Johnson that the agency reveal its plans for the future. “All of this was really aimed at eventual Martian spaceflight. That was the real purpose of Skylab—to learn how to live in space for a year. That was really the drive behind Skylab, and really is the drive behind the Space Station. It’s the only reason to build a space sta­tion, as a way-point, or to prove that you can live in space, or to find out how to live in space.” While there were a few voices in the agency that wanted to press on to Mars immediately after Apollo, Mueller said that most realized that the agency would not be ready, that more experience would be needed before that goal would be attainable. “I don’t know if there was any serious talk [of going straight to Mars] anywhere else, but there wasn’t in Manned Space Flight,” he said. “There was a great deal of concern in our scientif­ic community dealing with human life, whether or not man could in fact operate and live and return safely from a trip to Mars. And that was really the incentive for the development of the Skylab program.”

Working in the shadow of Apollo was to have advantages to go along with the disadvantages. The fact that the public and the powers that be were focused on aap’s older and sexier sibling often meant that support, both polit­ical and financial, could be hard to come by. But it also gave those involved in the program an opportunity rare in the world of government projects: the freedom to develop the program the way they felt it should be developed, largely free of bureaucratic involvement.

George Hardy, chief of Program Engineering and Integration at Marshall explained, “I always referred to Skylab initially as the little redheaded bas­tard out behind the barn because there were obvious political overtones to starting a new program. Skylab got started as a utilization of existing hard­ware as opposed to a congressionally endorsed program. That brought it a little more legitimacy, with people recognizing this makes a lot of sense.

“It was an evolutionary thing. It was something talked about, and con­cept studies were done. Compared to the way they do things today—with a lot of formal study, with various contractors competing, with different ideas, which is good, I’m not criticizing that—this was all done principally by the government, by Marshall and msc. Studies were made, but it evolved. I can’t tell you a single time, beyond [one], where there was some official direc­tion. The program just evolved into doing it that way. It was different from programs before that or even programs after that. It was a program that was put together by people that were working on it as opposed to oral direction coming down from on high with a long set of objectives.

“This is somewhat of an exaggeration, but it was almost like, ‘Look, we’ve got all this hardware and stuff here, we ought to figure out something to do with it.’ And of course that’s what they did, but they figured out something to do with it that was quite impressive.

“Once we got a program that was out in the open, so to speak, on Sky – lab, we were able to implement it because it was still not the primary focus of the space program for this country. The lunar landings were still occur­ring, and that obviously was the primary focus. The initial implementation of Skylab was what I felt was an absolute ideal situation. We had support of Mueller and others, the three manned space centers, but at the same time we had a lot of flexibility that other programs didn’t have.”