​

Reaching For The Moon

v1.1.1 / chapter 19 of 26 / 01 apr 13 / greg goebel / public domain

* By the mid-1960s, the Americans had caught up with the USSR in space and seemed poised to beat the Soviets in the race to the Moon. The USSR was moving ahead on its own program, but it was underfunded and disorganized. The Soviets still seemed to have a chance to win, but then suffered a major setback with the death of Sergei Korolyev.

---

[19.1] APOLLO TAKES SHAPE
[19.2] BUILDING APOLLO / THE SCIENTIST ASTRONAUTS
[19.3] THE LEM WARRIOR / THE OUTER SPACE TREATY
[19.4] SOYUZ IN DEVELOPMENT / SOVIET MANNED MOON FLIGHT PLANS
[19.5] DEATH OF KOROLYEV

---

[19.1] APOLLO TAKES SHAPE

* While Gemini was being built and flown, Apollo went full speed ahead. By 1963, implementation of the Apollo program was in full gear, as it had to be to meet JFK's "end of the decade" deadline. North American was the prime contractor, with contracts totaling $6 billion USD.

North American was building the Apollo "command and service module (CSM)". Like Gemini, the Apollo CSM consisted of a capsule that provided crew quarters and was used as a reentry vehicle, plus a service module that provided propulsion, life-support, and other services.

The command module was a simple cone that accommodated three astronauts. It was 3.9 meters (12 feet 10 inches) across at the bottom and 3.2 meters (10 feet 7 inches) tall in its space cruise configuration. Its typical fully loaded weight was 5,940 kilograms (13,900 pounds), though this could vary from mission to mission. Twelve thrusters ringed the cone; there was a docking port on top, a hatch in the side, and a few small windows and portholes. Its walls consisted of an inner wall of aluminum, a center wall of steel, and an outer wall of steel, with the walls separated by metal honeycomb; there was an ablative heatshield on the bottom.

The astronauts lay on three couches, side by side, with each couch consisting of a metal frame holding a web of cloth straps. Since the astronauts would be weightless during most of the mission, there was no need to make the couches too comfortable, but they were designed to soak up the shock of a landing. There was a control panel 180 degrees across, with about 500 controls, with the critical controls protected by locks or guards so they couldn't be tripped by accident. There was a storage or "lower equipment" bay at the foot of the couches.

In launch configuration, the command module was covered by a conical shroud and topped by a 10.2 meter (33 feet 5 inch) long launch escape rocket tower that would blast the command module away from the booster should there be an accident at liftoff. The command module would then splash down into the ocean using its three-parachute recovery system.

The service module was a cylinder, with the command module mounted on top and a large rocket engine nozzle on the bottom. The engine, or "Service Propulsion System (SPS)", was powered by storable propellants, and generated 91.2 kN (9,300 kgp / 20,500 lbf) thrust. It was a pressure-fed engine, with no turbopumps and redundant subsystems. It was designed to be as simple and reliable as possible.

The service module was 7.4 meters (24 feet 4 inches) tall, 3.9 meters (12 feet 10 inches) in diameter, and had a typical fully loaded weight of about 24,530 kilograms (54,075 pounds). It was internally organized into six compartments, containing propulsion subsystems, life-support systems, a fuel-cell electric power system, and communications gear. One of the compartments was reserved for payloads. The service module was fitted with sixteen control thrusters, with four assemblies of four thrusters around the middle of the module, and the thrusters in each assembly mounted in a cross format -- fore and aft, left and right. An assembly of four small dish antennas pivoted out from the bottom for communications with Earth.

* Grumman was the contractor for the "Lunar Excursion Module (LEM)", which would take two astronauts down to the Moon's surface and return them to lunar orbit. Formally speaking, it was redesignated the "Lunar Module (LM)" in 1967, the brass having decided "Excursion" made a Moon mission sound like a joyride. However, almost everyone still called it the LEM anyway.

The LEM was a buglike machine, and in fact was sometimes nicknamed the "Bug". The astronauts would ride in a "cab" that consisted of tanks, panels, four thruster arrays with five thrusters each, and antennas, with a docking port on top and two windows up front. The cab sat on a base shaped like an octagonal box, with four pop-out landing legs arranged around the box. A ladder was mounted on top of the forward landing leg.

The landing legs looked like they were build using hydraulic or pneumatic shock absorbers, but to reduce weight the shock-absorbing cylinders were filled with a crushable material; they could only work once, but that's all that was needed. The entire LEM was built with an absolute eye to reducing weight, with the aluminum paneling on the cab described as about as sturdy as three layers of aluminum foil.

The base was known as the "descent stage", since it provided the propulsion system to allow landing on the Moon. The cab was known as the "ascent stage", since it had a propulsion system to put the two astronauts back into orbit, where they would link up with the CSM. The ascent stage was pressurized. Although the astronauts couldn't really take off their moonsuits inside the LEM, they could at least remove their helmets and gloves so they could eat, drink, and sleep.

The complete LEM was 6.98 meters (22 feet 11 inches) tall, 9.5 meters (31 feet 2 inches) across the landing legs when they were extended, and had a typical fully loaded weight at launch of 15,060 kilograms (33,205 pounds). The LEM rocket engines were pressure-fed and powered by storable propellants. The descent stage engine produced 44.5 kN (4,535 kgp / 10,000 lbf) thrust, while the ascent stage engine produced 15.6 kN (1,590 kgp / 3,500 lbf) thrust. Electrical power was provided by a set of four batteries.

* Incidentally, during 1963 North American conducted a paper study of alternate "Modified Apollo (MODAP)" configurations for the capsule, primarily for operations in support of a space station. Since MODAP wouldn't go to the Moon, it didn't need the expendables to support a long-duration mission, nor a propulsion system to get to the Moon and back. The service module would be fitted with batteries, not fuel cells, and the propulsion system would be based on the LEM descent engine, not the SPS; the space freed up in the service module would be used to haul cargo, removed via doors on the side of the module.

The MODAP would be launched on a Saturn 1B to carry six astronauts, lying on two rows of three seats, and up to 2,655 kilograms (5,855 pounds) of cargo. The MODAP would be unloaded in a "hanger" enclosure on the space station, with the service module then discarded to reenter and burn up. The command module would be able to remain on standby at the station for 44 days; When it came time to return, the MODAP command module would leave the station and reenter using a retropack somewhat along the lines of that of the Mercury capsule. MODAP was a very interesting idea, but of course it never happened.

* The Saturn V booster that launched the Apollo spacecraft consisted of three stages. They were discussed in a previous chapter, but are worth reviewing:

• The S-IC first stage, with five F-1 LOX-kerosene engines providing a total of 34,040 kN (3,470,000 kgp / 7,650,000 lbf) thrust. Boeing was the prime contractor; the stage was built at the NASA Michoud facility in Mississippi and transported to Cape Canaveral by barge.
  
  
• The S-II second stage, with five J-1 LOX-LH2 engines providing a total of 4,545 kN (454,000 kgp / 1,000,000 lbf) thrust. The fuel lines from the LH2 tank on top were routed to the engines on the bottom on the outside of the stage, since they would freeze the liquid oxygen if they were piped through the LOX tank. There were small "slosh rockets" around the base of the stage to provide a "kick start", giving a small acceleration to set up fuel flow for main engine ignition. There were also small solid-fuel retrorockets on the top of the stage to help separate from the third stage.
  
  The S-II was built by North American at the company's Los Angeles / Seal Beach plant. Transporting the stage to the harbor to be loaded on a barge meant shutting down traffic, since the S-II on its transporter took up all four lanes of the road. The barge then carried the stage down to the Panama Canal and to Florida.
  
  
• The S-IVB third stage, with one J-1 LOX-LH2 engine providing 890 kN (90,700 kgp / 200,000 lbf) thrust, built by Douglas at the company's Los Angeles / Huntington Beach plant. It was an improved version of the original S-IV second stage used on the Saturn I, which had been powered by six RL-10 LOX-LH2 engines.
  
  As with the S-II second stage, LH2 was piped to the engine along the outside of the stage, and there were slosh rockets to kickstart the main engine. The S-IVB mated to the CSM using an adapter consisting of four panels, which also enclosed the LEM in a "garage". The four panels originally hinged open, but worries about potential hangups led to a redesign where the panels were simply discarded instead.
  
  The S-IVB stage was transported to the Cape by air using the "Super Guppy", an old refurbished Boeing Stratocruiser piston-powered airliner fitted with a blimplike oversized fuselage and a swing-open nose. The Super Guppy was the brainchild of Pat Conroy, who had originally devised the less extreme "Pregnant Guppy" Stratocruiser modification for the transport of NASA rocket stages. The success of the Pregnant Guppy led to the Super Guppy and established the transport of large-bulk cargoes by air.

The LEM would be fitted inside a shroud on top of the S-IVB stage, with the CSM be placed on top of the shroud. Fully assembled, the Saturn V would be 110.6 meters (363 feet) tall and weigh 2,913 tonnes (6,423,000 pounds). It would be put together, checked out, and fueled in the "Vehicular Assembly Building (VAB)" being built on NASA's new Merritt Island territory.

The VAB was a huge box 205.5 meters (674 feet) long, 156.4 meters (513 feet) wide, and 160.4 meters (526 feet) high. It was capable of withstanding hurricane-force winds that would topple an unprotected Saturn V. The Saturn V would be set up inside the VAB on top of a platform mounting a support tower. When the booster was ready to go, a huge "crawler" would slide underneath the platform and then cart it out the VAB's enormous door. The crawler weighed 2,725 tonnes (3,000 tons) and had eight tread assemblies, each 12.2 meters (40 feet) long and three meters (10 feet) tall. It would grind its way to the launch pad, 4.8 kilometers (three miles) away, the trip taking three hours.

* On launch, the first two stages of the Saturn V would put the S-IVB third stage with its Apollo spacecraft into Earth orbit. After orbital checkout, the S-IVB would fire its J-1 engine and move out towards the Moon. While on the way to the Moon, the adapter on top of the S-IVB would be opened, releasing the CSM and exposing the LEM. The CSM would dock with the LEM and withdraw it from the stage, leaving the S-IVB to continue on its own to impact into the Moon.

On arrival at the Moon, the CSM would use its SPS main engine to brake into lunar orbit. After checkout, two of the astronauts would get into the LEM and take it down to the Moon. When they were finished with their explorations, they would return to the CSM with the LEM ascent stage, and then discard the ascent stage once they were safely back into the CSM with their cameras, rock samples, and other essentials.

The CSM would boost out of Moon orbit to head back to Earth. As the spacecraft approached the Earth, the command module would separate from the service module. The astronauts would ride the command module through the Earth's atmosphere, to splash down in the ocean with their parachutes for recovery. The capsule would actually reenter twice, coming in on an initial reentry, skipping back up from the atmosphere, and then performing a final reentry. As is obvious from simple experience, the higher something is thrown, the faster it comes back down. A spacecraft returning from the Moon had a much higher velocity than one returning from low Earth orbit, and the "skip" reentry burned off some of the velocity without imposing excessive gee forces on the astronauts and the capsule, allowing a safer final reentry.

BACK_TO_TOP

[19.2] BUILDING APOLLO / THE SCIENTIST ASTRONAUTS

* In the NASA bureaucracy, authority for the Apollo project flowed down from the Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF), headed by George Mueller, who had managed the Air Force Pioneer shots. Mueller had taken charge when Brainerd Holmes went back to private industry in September 1963 after a dispute with Jim Webb. The major players under OMSF were von Braun's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, working on the Saturn V; Bob Gilruth's Manned Spaceflight Center in Houston, working on the Apollo capsule and in overall charge of the mission itself; and the Cape Canaveral launch center, which would provide the launch facilities for the shots. USAF General Sam Phillips was the Apollo program director, with Joe Shea handling the Apollo office at the Houston MSC.

The Office of Space Science (OSS) at NASA headquarters was also supporting the effort by defining science experiments that would be performed by the Apollo astronauts. However, the OMSF had veto power over proposals made by the OSS and didn't hesitate to use it. It was apparent to anyone with some sense that Apollo hadn't been conceived as a scientific program, but what came as a shock to scientists interested in using the program to actually learn something about the Moon was that NASA seemed almost indifferent to science. JFK had told NASA to get men on the Moon before the decade was out, that was what Mueller and his people were determined to do, and nothing was going to get in the way.

The foremost advocate for using Apollo to perform lunar research was a US Geological Survey (USGS) geologist named Eugene Shoemaker. Shoemaker was a brilliant scientist who would establish the importance of meteor impacts as a major factor in the geological history of the Earth, and would also do much to expand the view of geology from a sole focus on the Earth to the rest of the planets in the solar system.

In fact, Shoemaker was more than a bit "space-happy". In 1961, cashing in on the space frenzy, he managed to get the USGS to establish an "Office of Astrogeology", much to the annoyance of old crusties in the organization who felt that the USGS had enough to do just studying the Earth. Shoemaker also felt that the first man on the Moon should be a geologist, and planned to make the trip himself until a bout with Addison's disease in 1963 ended that dream. He still continued to push for using the Moon program to do valuable research and was outraged to find that there were many NASA officials who thought science was irrelevant. How could anyone spend all this effort to go to the Moon and throw away the opportunity to learn something about it? From a scientist's point of view, such an attitude was shockingly complacent; it was at least illogical from almost anybody else's.

There was also the more widespread attitude among the scientific community that any science that could be done by Apollo wasn't proportional to the cost. NASA, stung by criticisms from Shoemaker and others, made some efforts to raise the profile of science in the program; in June 1965, under pressure from Shoemaker and the National Academy of Sciences, cast out the net to select scientist astronauts. The NAS screened the requests and came up with 16 candidates, which were screened down further by NASA to six:

• Owen K. Garriot, a physicist.
• Edward G. Gibson, a physicist.
• Duane Graveline, a physician.
• US Navy Lieutenant Commander Joseph P. "Joe" Kerwin, a flight surgeon.
• Frank Michel, a physicist.
• Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, a geologist.

The list was much smaller than had been expected, and it got smaller right away. The NAS hadn't been thorough in performing background checks, and Graveline was going through a messy divorce at the time. Deke Slayton threw him out so fast that he didn't even make the group photo. Slayton insisted that Graveline's dismissal was solely motivated by the belief that divorce proceedings would disrupt his work -- but whatever the motive, it gave any astronaut who had concerns about the stability of his marriage a big hint that he patch things up immediately.

The original test-pilot astronaut cadre was not happy to see the scientist astronauts. They weren't part of the clique and there was some feeling that scientists were impractical academics, the prime example being Thomas Gold with his fussing about his pits of moondust. Of the six, only Michel and Kerwin knew how to fly, and not unreasonably Deke Slayton didn't feel the rest were qualified to be astronauts at all until they earned their aviator wings: there were no passengers on a spaceflight yet, and no astronaut wanted to have a crewmember alongside who would couldn't carry his weight in normal flight operations, much less in a flight emergency. The newcomers wouldn't even start astronaut training until they had been through aircraft flight training, conducted by the Air Force.

Gene Cernan would admit much later that the test-pilot astronauts had an arrogant attitude toward the scientists. To be sure, there was a general belief that the scientists would fly eventually, since at the time the perception was that Apollo was a long-term effort. There would be specialized science missions down the road, after the mission hardware and procedures had been nailed down, and then flying the scientists would be no major problem. Over the short run, however, they were on the bottom of the flight roster, and not without some good reason.

To compound the squeeze for the scientist astronauts, a fifth batch of astronauts selected largely from the test-pilot community was announced in April 1966. It didn't take a lot of brains to suspect that the fifth group had higher status than the fourth, a suspicion that would be confirmed by flight assignments. The new astronauts included:

• USAF Captain Charles M. Duke JR
• USAF Captain Joe H. Engle, an X-15 pilot
• USAF Major Edward G. Givens JR
• USAF Major James B. Irwin
• USAF Major William R. Pogue
• USAF Captain Stuart A. Roosa
• USAF Captain Alfred M. Worden
  
  
• US Navy Lieutenant John S. Bull
• US Navy Lieutenant Commander Ronald E. Evans JR
• US Navy Lieutenant Thomas K Mattingly II
• US Navy Lieutenant Bruce McCandless II
• US Navy Lieutenant Commander Edgar D. Mitchell
• US Navy Lieutenant Commander Paul J. Weitz
  
  
• USMC Major Gerald P. Carr
• USMC Captain Jack R. Lousma
  
  
• Vance D. Brand
• Fred W. Haise JR
• Dr. Don L. Lind, a flight-qualified NASA researcher
• John L. "Jack" Swigert JR

For all the lack of opportunity, most of the scientist astronauts hung on, since they had a shot at the Moon, and no matter how poor the odds were giving up would have thrown away that chance. One of the toughest cases among them was Jack Schmitt. He was a protege of Shoemaker's, and in fact when Schmitt was rejected by NASA during the initial selection process, Shoemaker called in favors and got him back in. That was not just out of loyalty to Schmitt; Schmitt had been the only geologist among the scientist astronauts, and Shoemaker was outraged that the team wouldn't include a geologist. Schmitt was smart, hard-working, single-minded about geology, opinionated, full of bad jokes and sarcasm. He was a nerd to the hotshot flyboys, but as it would turn out, Shoemaker had put exactly the right person in the right place.

Eleven more scientists would be recruited as the sixth batch of astronauts in the summer of 1967; they included Joe Allen, Phil Chapman, Tony England, Karl Henize, Don Holmquest, Bill Lenoir, John Llewellyn, Story Musgrave, Brian O'Leary, Bob Parker, and Bill Thornton. At that time, the prospects for future missions were beginning to dim and the new batch would get an even less enthusiastic welcome than the first. Not one knew how to fly and the Air Force was overloaded trying to train new pilots for the combat meatgrinder in Southeast Asia, meaning the new scientist astronauts would have to wait a year to even begin serious astronaut training.

Deke Slayton sat them down right away and said there wasn't likely to be any missions for them. Slayton was a decent sort and felt like hell telling them that, but he would have felt worse saying nothing and letting them hang. Given a welcome like that, the newcomers codenamed themselves "XS-11" as a reflection of their status in the organization. None of them would ever fly an Apollo mission, but some would tough it out and end up flying in space. Story Musgrave would later fly many space missions, and he would also become a very enthusiastic and accomplished pilot.

* In the meantime, Saturn and Apollo were moving ahead. Mueller was very decisive. Faced with strong schedule pressure, in November 1963 he had made a dramatic decision: the first flight of the Saturn V would be an "all-up" test, with all three stages operational, with the flight putting a "boilerplate" Apollo capsule into space. Von Braun and his team at the Marshall Space Flight Center were shocked; it was completely foreign to their engineering culture and their reaction was literally: "You must be out of your minds!"

However, Mueller had reason to be confident. He had been a driving force in both the Minuteman and Titan II ICBM programs, both of which had used all-up testing. The approach had proven successful and greatly cut program schedules. Von Braun swallowed hard, but after thinking it over for a week dropped all of his objections.

There were of course ground tests of engines and systems. Flight tests of "boilerplate" prototypes of Apollo hardware using Little Joe II and Saturn I boosters had been conducted in 1964 and 1965, and on 26 February 1966 the first "real" prototype of an Apollo CSM was put on a suborbital flight by a Saturn IB. It was followed by an orbital flight on 5 July and a second suborbital flight on 25 August. The flights were generally successful, providing more confidence for the Saturn V all-up tests.

The downside of Mueller's strong management style was that he was maybe too decisive, refusing to delegate authority. He was what would be now called "process oriented", building up new layers of management that the old-timers saw as creeping bureaucracy. Given the fact that NASA had become such a big, sprawling organization an increase in bureaucracy was probably inevitable, but recognizing that fact didn't make it more pleasant to deal with.

* The Apollo program was one of the biggest non-military technology development programs ever funded by the US government. With such a large amount of money changing hands between the government and the defense contractors, there had to be some ... irregularities. Not corruption as such, since Jim Webb had implemented strict procedures to ensure accountability and established equally strict rules of conduct. The Moon program was highly visible and it had to be kept as squeaky clean as possible; a political scandal would have been a disaster. When Webb found out that von Braun was accepting a large number of paid public speaking engagements, Webb told him to cease and desist immediately. The Army might have not worried about von Braun's promotionalism, but NASA did.

On the other hand, Webb also was eager to spread NASA patronage around to ensure support for the agency's agenda. There were cozy deals in which political influence counted, and which would have likely led to scandals in a later time when high-profile government programs lived under a microscope of investigative journalism. At the time, though, there was general public enthusiasm for the Moon program, the news media was not as intrusive, and people were less inclined to become upset over a little deal-making. The program moved ahead, and one way or another or another that was all that really mattered.

There were dissenting voices, critics who felt that the United States was demonstrating a sense of misplaced priorities in spending so much money to get men to the Moon. The complacency of the 1950s that had helped prod JFK to initiating the Apollo program was having other effects in American society, particularly a growing dissatisfaction with the status quo and a willingness to question the conventional wisdom. For the moment, the voices were isolated, but the volume was slowly growing.

BACK_TO_TOP

[19.3] THE LEM WARRIOR / THE OUTER SPACE TREATY

* Apollo was almost completely a civilian program. The military had no use for either the Apollo spacecraft or the Saturn V and no real control over the program. However, given the fact that the American civil space effort was basically an outgrowth of the nation's military space effort, connections between the two could never be completely cut.

Grumman was building the LEM for NASA. There had been a perception, even at Grumman, that the Apollo CSM, being built by North American, had been first prize, while the LEM was second prize. The CSM was a general-purpose spacecraft, intended for use with a range of missions, while the LEM was essentially useful only for Moon landing missions. However, Grumman felt the LEM might also have applications closer to home. One application considered by a company team was a military space mission, blandly referred to as "Covert Space Denial (CSD)", which in less evasive language meant inspecting Soviet spacecraft close up and destroying them if necessary. That sounds like a job for a streamlined science-fiction-movie space fighter armed with missiles and laser beams, but it turned out that with a few changes the ugly little LEM could do the job perfectly. Grumman engineers detailed their ideas in a secret report.

The LEM was a self-contained manned spacecraft that had life support; navigation, guidance, sensor, communications, and computing systems; a powerful main engine; and a reaction control system. The "LEM Warrior", to give it a name, would be built more ruggedly and fitted with larger fuel and stores tanks -- which would have been easy to do since the tanks were mounted externally -- plus a robot arm. Of course, the heavy landing legs would be deleted. The LEM Warrior could operate from a space station in polar orbit.

The original LEM Warrior was intended to perform orbital inspections, but in a follow-up report in 1965 Grumman engineers suggested that the spacecraft could be used to attack enemy satellites as well. Various means of attack were considered, such as using the robot arm to chop up the target or plastering the target with high-velocity pellets, but one of the simplest options was to just paint the target black. The paint would ruin optics, disable solar cells, and cause the target spacecraft to overheat and fail. The Grumman report cheerfully concluded that it was "a snap to negate the usefulness of just about any satellite. As a matter of fact it appears to be a hell of a lot easier to upset a space vehicle than it is to protect it from interference with the enemy."

* The LEM Warrior was an interesting idea, but it also never happened. Both sides had incentives to escalate military activities in space, but they had stronger incentives not to. The intelligence provided by spy satellites helped reassure each side that the other was not preparing to annihilate them, and once they started painting each other's spacecraft black that reassurance would no longer be available. Besides, although it may not have been apparent at the time, it is obvious in hindsight that if the two sides smashed up each other's spacecraft, the result would be clouds of orbital debris that would make all near-space operations impossible.

In fact, both sides were so aware of the pitfalls of militarizing space that they came to a formal agreement to slow down the process, in the form of the United Nations 1967 "Outer Space Treaty (OST)", which formalized an earlier 1963 UN resolution on the legal principles of space exploration. The OST declared that:

• Space was open to all, firmly establishing the principle of freedom of space overflight of all nations.
  
  
• No nation could declare a claim on any celestial body.
  
  
• The signatory nations would avoid "harmful contamination" of space and celestial bodies, and were liable for damage to the spacecraft of other nations.
  
  
• Celestial bodies were not to be used for military purposes. Military bases could not be set up on celestial bodies, nor could they be used for military exercises or tests of any kind of weapon.
  
  
• Nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction were not to be based in orbit or on another celestial body.
  
  
• All signatory states were obligated to render assistance to astronauts of any states and ensure that they were returned home without interference.

There was nothing in the OST that specifically outlawed something like the LEM Warrior, since the treaty didn't ban the testing of conventional weapons in orbit, restricting them only from heavenly bodies. However, the OST basically established that space was to be reserved for peaceful uses, and the LEM Warrior was clearly contrary to that spirit.

Of course, in practice both the US and the USSR had high-priority military space programs, but they were focused on surveillance and communications satellites, and that is how things remained for the rest of the century. There would always be pressures to put weapons of various sorts into space, but for the time being they were resisted.

BACK_TO_TOP

[19.4] SOYUZ IN DEVELOPMENT / SOVIET MANNED MOON FLIGHT PLANS

* The USSR had effectively started the Space Race, and established an early lead in "space spectaculars" due to the heavy ICBMs the USSR had developed. By placing the Apollo program on the fast track, Kennedy had raised the stakes.

The Soviets had actually included manned Moon missions in their long-range plans as far back as 1956, envisioning the use of atomic-powered rockets to do the job. That was little more than an item on a wish-list, and it wasn't until the early 1960s that more definite plans began to take form. Korolyev's OKB-1 was considering what to do after the first series of Vostok flights, and one option was to use an improved Vostok capsule as a core element of an assembly or "complex" of separate pieces launched by an R-7 derivative booster. The "Vostok complex", known as "Sever (West)" in the later phases of its development, would be able to perform a range of missions, including satellite inspection and interception, placing payloads in geostationary orbit, or performing a manned circumlunar expedition.

Further work on the concept led to an entirely new "modular" capsule, named the "Soyuz (Union)" -- incidentally, the word is pronounced "sah-yoos", not "soh-yooz". The Soyuz capsule was designed as a Vostok replacement with an eye to lunar missions, but Korolyev was shrewd enough to promote it as a general-purpose spacecraft that could be modified to perform different types of missions, with proposals including a "Soyuz 7K-R" ("Razvedchik / Reconnaissance") military small space station derivative and a "Soyuz 7K-P" satellite interceptor variant.

Construction of the baseline model, the orbital "Soyuz 7K-OK", was authorized in late 1963. Ironically, although Korolyev had based his pitch for Soyuz on military applications, the strictly military variants would never be built. The Soyuz 7K-R reconnaissance space station would lose out to a competing space station program, to be discussed later, and the satellite interception role would be taken up by the "Istrebitel Sputnik A (IS-A)" maneuvering interceptor satellite, then under development. The IS-A won out because a consensus would emerge that there was no sense in developing a piloted satellite interceptor: while a cosmonaut could perform a hands-on inspection of an enemy satellite before disabling it, obviously satellites could be easily fitted with self-destruct systems to counter such inspections.

The Soyuz 7K-OK was focused on Earth orbit operations, but OKB-1 quietly continued work as a "bootleg" project on a stripped-down version, the "Soyuz 7K-L1", to perform a loop around the Moon. A Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft would be shot into orbit, where it would mate up with a boost stage that had been launched separately with empty tanks, and then filled up with three tanker launches. Given the capability and reliability of Soviet space hardware at the time, the prospects of pulling off a space mission requiring five separate launches were not good.

* One of Korolyev's competitors seemed to have a better idea. A new heavyweight missile, the "UR-500", was being developed by OKB-52, run by Vladimir Chelomei. In the 1950s, Chelomei had worked on cruise missiles, but he saw ICBM development as more interesting. To help further his ambitions, he hired Sergei Krushchev, an engineer who was incidentally Nikita Krushchev's son, and also cultivated contacts with Valentin Glushko. In 1960, Chelomei was given control of a state factory sited near Moscow that had been previously run by the Myasishschev design bureau, which built big bombers. Nikita Krushchev felt that ICBMs were a much better option than bombers, and Chelomei now had the resources to develop such a weapon.

The Soviet Union had developed fusion bombs with yields in the tens of megatonnes of explosive yield. They were the most destructive nuclear weapons ever built, and among the heaviest. Launching one on a missile would mean a big missile. OKB-52's UR-500 would be a "super ICBM", capable of throwing a 30 megatonne warhead. Development was approved by the authorities. Glushko's design bureau was involved in the project, assigned to develop its big rocket engine, the "RD-253", which would have a thrust of 1,471 kN (150,000 kgp / 330,000 lbf), using storable propellants. The UR-500's first stage would use six RD-253s.

The UR-500 would clearly prove very useful for space spectaculars, and OKB-52 envisioned using a variant of it, the "UR-500K", for a circumlunar mission that would only require one launch, not five. OKB-52 was designing their own manned circumlunar spacecraft, the "LK-1", for such a mission. Ironically, the UR-500 ICBM would never be built, since improvements in military technology would render it irrelevant. In contrast, the UR-500K would be a great success, emerging as the "Proton" booster, the Soviet heavy-lift workhorse.

* Korolyev understood the weakness of his proposal for using multiple launches to perform a circumlunar flight, and OKB-1 was working on their own "super booster", designated the "N-1", that would be able to perform a manned circumlunar mission with one launch, and would support manned lunar landings further down the road. However, the N-1 program was hobbled by bureaucratic difficulties.

Korolyev did not like storable propellants, partly because they were nasty in almost every respect, and partly because he felt that LOX-LH2 was the way of the future for space launch vehicles. He did not want to use engines like the RD-253, but Glushko had his hands full developing the RD-253 and other engines; he did not have the resources to provide yet another engine just to make Korolyev happy.

Korolyev had another option. When his design bureau had begun work on the R-9 ICBM a few years earlier, he had decided to work with yet another design bureau, run by Nikolai Kuznetsov, to obtain a LOX-kerosene engine, the "NK-9". This was rocking the boat, since the Kuznetsov design bureau was at the time focused on the design of aircraft jet engines, not rockets; Glushko was not happy at Korolyev encouraging other organizations to encroach on his bureaucratic territory and compete for resources. Glushko had complained to his superiors about the matter, and a commission had ruled that the R-9 would have to use engines provided by Glushko's bureau.

Since Glushko couldn't provide the engines Korolyev felt he needed for his Moon rocket, he decided he had no choice but to turn back to Kuznetsov. Korolyev encouraged Kuznetsov to develop two new derivatives of the NK-9, designated the "NK-15" and "NK-15V", that would be used to power the first and second stages of the Moon booster. The NK-9 would be used on the third stage. Glushko was no happier at Korolyev's new dealings with the Kuznetsov bureau than he had been before; this time, Glushko couldn't interfere with the relationship, but he could and did refuse to cooperate. This was troublesome, since Glushko's bureau had most of the expertise in rocket engine design. Now things became personal between Glushko and Korolyev, with the two sniping at each other. Krushchev himself tried to intervene and patch things up, but it didn't work.

* In August 1964, the Soviet Central Committee finally approved a manned Moon landing program. Korolyev would build the N-1, with the full-specification booster launching a two-man lunar orbiting spacecraft, the "Soyuz 7K-LOK", and a one-man lunar lander, the "LK". Korolyev had originally envisioned using two N-1 launches and Earth-orbit rendezvous to conduct a lunar landing mission, but the economy of lunar-orbit rendezvous was just too compelling, and he became a believer.

The directive was that the USSR would put a man on the Moon in 1968, before the Americans did. This was an aggressive goal, since the US had a three-year start, much more funding, and much better organization. In fact, the Moon effort remained split between Korolyev and Chelomei, since the decision also approved Chelomei's circumlunar program, based on the Proton booster and the LK-1 capsule. The mission was to performed in October 1967, the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Korolyev did not give up, however, and continued his efforts to take control. OKB-52's work on the LK-1 capsule lagged and Korolyev was able to use that as a lever against Chelomei. In October 1965, the decision was made to transfer the circumlunar effort to OKB-1. Korolyev more or less "hijacked" OKB-52's program, using Chelomei's Proton booster mated with the "Block D" lunar-transit upper stage being developed for the N-1, carrying the Soyuz 7K-L1 Moon orbiter.

Publicly speaking, however, the Soviet Union had no Moon program. Nikita Krushchev had stated in an interview in October 1963: "At the present we do not plan flights of cosmonauts to the Moon. I have read a report that the Americans wish to land a man on the Moon by 1970. Well, let's wish them success." At the time, that had been technically true, since the USSR hadn't actually committed to a Moon program, but it also gave the impression that it wasn't an issue with the Soviet leadership. The reality was that the decision makers were waffling, hovering indecisively between doing the job and doing nothing, which was likely the worst position they could have taken.

BACK_TO_TOP

[19.5] DEATH OF KOROLYEV

* There was a reason for the ambivalence. The USSR's Moon program demonstrated the limitations of the Soviet system. The first and most obvious problem was that the USSR simply couldn't match American resources. The Soviet Union could score propaganda successes with hardware developed for military purposes that was more powerful than its American counterparts, but there was no way the Kremlin could come up with the funds that the US was now pouring into NASA.

The other problem was bureaucracy. To be sure, NASA's effort was bureaucratic as well, but though all bureaucracies are nightmarish at close range, some work much better than others. NASA had basically a clear goal with substantial political and financial backing, and the agency was able to deal with the squabbles and rivalries and get everyone moving more or less in the same direction. The Soviet system seemed single-minded and efficient from the outside, but in reality their space effort was characterized by squabbling and factionalism.

The Soviet space program ultimately got its marching orders from the "Ministry of General Machine Building", MOM in its Russian acronym, created in 1965, which in turn was controlled by the Defense Division of the Central Committee and the Military Industrial Commission of the Council of Ministers. They handed down directives to the various design bureaus. There was little attempt to reduce duplication of effort, and in fact the system was designed to create rivalries. That was a legacy of Stalin, who had wanted to promote competition, with the less admirable agenda of hobbling potential rivals by playing them all off against each other. The leadership of the design bureaus and other factions was, as one participant put it much later, sometimes like a "dog guarding a haystack": the dog couldn't eat the hay, but he would drive off anyone else who tried to use it. The culture of secrecy, which was ingrained to the bottom of Soviet society, only aggravated the lack of cooperation.

Korolyev bitterly feuded with Glushko, and Korolyev didn't get along well with Chelomei either. Korolyev was a bearlike man in appearance and manner -- coarse, energetic, blunt, and forceful. Chelomei was a scientist, an intellectual who wore neat fashionable suits and cultivated the company of artists. Instead of pulling together, the leaders in the space establishment worked against each other.

The American Moon program was under firm civilian control, and operating according to a clear and strong mandate passed down from the martyred John F. Kennedy. In the USSR, military concerns predominated. The generals had little interest in space itself, and tolerated non-military space activities only so long as they provided good publicity.

Korolyev understood all this perfectly, and was a master at playing the system. None of his rivals were able to direct the whole clumsy show as well as he, and under his ploys and prods there was still a chance that the Soviet Union could keep the edge in space spectaculars they had exploited so successfully in the previous years. Indeed, Krushchev had not so much pushed Korolyev to achieve space spectaculars than Korolyev led him on with them. In short, Korolyev was the one player in the Soviet system who stood a chance of getting the USSR to the Moon before the USA. And then a roll of the dice threw that advantage away.

* Korolyev, always looking for a new space spectacular, was promoting new Voskhod missions to keep cosmonauts flying until Soyuz was available. However, he developed a bleeding polyp in his intestine, and on 14 January 1966, he went in to the hospital to have it removed. The operation was a routine one, and no difficulty was expected. The operation was to be performed by Boris Petrovsky, a prominent health minister. Petrovsky had been working in administrative roles, but felt he would have no problem handling such a minor surgery.

Exactly what happened that day is still somewhat unclear, not surprising given the typical Soviet secrecy under which the matter was hidden. Some sources claim that Petrovsky badly bungled the operation, but all are in agreement that he discovered that Korolyev had an undetected, large, and malignant tumor in his abdomen that seriously complicated the surgery. Even the best surgeons have nightmares about cutting open a patient and then finding a different problem from that which had been diagnosed, and Petrovsky was not able to deal with the situation. A healthier person might possibly have survived, but Korolyev was overweight, overworked, and had put up with extreme abuse in the Gulag. He died in the operating room, age 58.

The tragic death of Sergei Korolyev was arguably a greater blow to the Soviet space program than the dismissal of Krushchev. Control of Korolyev's design bureau, and the USSR's Moon program, descended on his deputy, Vasily Mishin, who simply could not fill Korolyev's shoes. In the only compensation for this sad matter, once Korolyev was dead there was no sensible reason to keep the identity of the Chief Rocket Designer a secret any longer. His contributions were publicly acknowledged, and he was given a state funeral, with his ashes interred in the wall of the Kremlin as fitted a hero of the Soviet state.

* One of the immediate results of Korolyev's death was that interest in further manned Voskhod flights went almost completely to zero. The perception was that about as much as could be done with Voskhod had been done, and that it made more sense to get Soyuz flying instead of playing with further space stunts. The only further launch of a Voskhod was on 22 February 1966, with the dogs "Veterok (Breeze)" and "Ugolek (Blackie)" on board to conduct a 22-day endurance test flight. The mission was kept quiet and designated "Cosmos 110" in the West. The dogs were recovered in generally good health, though they had serious problems getting around after landing; it took them ten days to get back into shape.

The basic Vostok / Voskhod design would remain in service for decades, however, not merely in the form of a sequence of Zenit photo-reconnaissance satellites, but also the similar "Resurs" Earth resource observation satellites, the "Bion" biological studies satellites, the "Foton" materials processing satellites, and a number of specialized spacecraft. It was a perfect example of Soviet design philosophy: come up with a good, straightforward, robust design and make the maximum possible use of it.