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Shooting The Moon

v1.1.1 / chapter 8 of 26 / 01 apr 13 / greg goebel / public domain

* While NASA was getting organized, the US and the USSR engaged in their first Moon race, competing to see which would be the first to hit the lunar surface with a payload. The effort helped lead to the establishment of communications networks to support space efforts. In the meantime, the US was moving as fast as possible towards putting long-range missiles into operational service, as well as on the secret space agenda of putting spy satellites into orbit.

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[8.1] THE FIRST MOON RACE
[8.2] BUILDING A SPACE COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK
[8.3] US ICBMS ENTER SERVICE / CORONA LAUNCH ATTEMPTS

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[8.1] THE FIRST MOON RACE

* NASA planned for the future while the Soviets kept up the competitive pressure in the present. In January 1958, Sergei Korolyev wrote a memo to the Central Committee of the USSR, proposing the development of an R-7 derivative with an upper stage. The official rationale was to use the improved booster to first send a probe to crash into the Moon, and then to launch a probe to go into orbit around it and take pictures of the unseen lunar farside. However, Korolyev also emphasized that the new booster would have military applications, such as the launch of heavy reconnaissance satellites.

His proposal was quickly approved, and he put his people on a driving schedule to get the new booster flying. Valentin Glushko's design bureau was assigned to design an upper stage, as was the design bureau of Semyon Kosberg, a jet-engine designer and a newcomer to space activities. Korolyev believed that the duplication of effort would help ensure success.

Kosberg's design was the one that was used. His upper stage had a fueled weight of 8.1 tonnes (8.9 tons) and was powered by a single "RD-105" LOX-kerosene engine, providing 4.49 kN (5,000 kgp / 11,025 lbf) thrust. The upper stage was to be mounted on the first stage assembly using an open lattice structure that would become characteristic of Soviet boosters. The lattice would allow the second-stage engine to be started before first-stage engine cutoff, meaning the second-stage engine would not have to be fired under "free-fall" zero-gravity conditions that would complicate fuel flow.

Korolyev bulled forward on the project. He had the clout to push through Soviet bureaucracy now. When a problem with fabricating fuel tanks arose, he told his lieutenants what to do, and then concluded: "If you don't succeed, blame yourself for the consequences. If you need any help, give me your plan of action. I'll sign it. That's it." Those who displeased Korolyev were quick to suffer his wrath -- except for his placid friend Tikhonravov, who Korolyev never browbeat.

* While the Soviets were planning their own Luna mission in early 1958, a grassroots movement was springing up for an American Moon shot:

• Pickering of JPL was promoting a fast-track project to this end named "Red Socks" that had been dreamed up a few weeks after the launch of Sputnik 1.
  
  
• One of Fletcher's people at Ramo-Wooldridge calculated that if the Thor-Able were fitted with the Vanguard upper "kick stage", it would be able to send a small payload to the Moon.
  
  
• RAND, ever present in the background of the Cold War through the 1950s, weighed in with a report that stated the Air Force had the capability of sending a probe to the Moon.

James Killian went to California in January 1958 to listen to a pitch for a moonshot, codenamed "Project Baker", by officials from Ramo-Wooldridge's "Space Technology Laboratory (STL)". Killian's response was direct: "Send in a proposal and we'll go ahead." Ramo-Wooldridge quickly churned out a neat 30-page report, proposing that a Thor-Able using a kick stage based on the solid-rocket motor from a Hughes Falcon air-to-air missile could put a small probe in orbit around the Moon.

ARPA was assigned to direct the program. The Moon effort was publicly announced on 27 March 1958, and ARPA director Roy Johnson sent requests to both von Braun and Schriever to prepare Moon shots. Having both the Army and the Air Force work on the project in parallel would improve the chances for success. The Air Force went ahead with Thor-Able for the mission, while the Army prepared their Juno II.

The director of the Air Force project was George Mueller. Ramo-Wooldridge was unsurprisingly the prime contractor, with executive authority assigned to Louis Dunn and project management to Dolph Thiel. The design team worked long hours with no overtime pay. They were supposed to have a probe in orbit around the Moon in less than six months, while it had been made absolutely clear that the effort was second priority to military needs. They had to plan the mission when Thor-Able hadn't even been flown at the time, and incidentally design and build the Moon probe, as well as set up a tracking and communications network to keep an eye on it.

* The speed of the missile and space projects of the second half of the 1950s remains a source of amazement decades later, and must have been exhausting at the time. Explorer 1 had only just gone into orbit, and now the US was planning to put a spacecraft around the Moon. The first Thor-Able shot, a military RV test, took place in April 1958. The Thor almost made it to engine cut-off and then blew up. However, two successful Thor-Able launches were performed in July, with each booster tossing its RV over 9,700 kilometers (6,000 miles). This was several months before a successful full-range Atlas flight test.

The Air Force attempted the first American Moon shot on 17 August 1958, with a Thor-Able carrying a 38 kilogram (84 pound) lunar flyby probe. The launch was performed from Cape Canaveral, with General Schriever in attendance. The booster blew up 77 seconds after liftoff. The project team was disappointed, but such accidents were not particularly unexpected at the time, and there were more rockets where they came from.

They tried again on 11 October. By that time, overall supervision of the program was the responsibility of the new-born NASA; it was to be NASA's first space mission. In practical fact, it was a NASA mission only in name. NASA Administrator Glennan, preoccupied with getting his agency running, passed all practical responsibility for the Moon shots back to the Air Force and ABMA teams. This time the probe, which was named "Pioneer 1" -- the first shot would be retroactively named "Pioneer 0" -- made it successfully into space, but a problem occurred with third stage separation. The mission crew quickly realized that Pioneer 1 did not have enough velocity to reach the Moon. It reached an altitude of over 110,000 kilometers (70,000 miles), and then dropped back to Earth, falling into the atmosphere over the South Pacific 43 hours after launch. The shot was praised internationally in news headlines, but it was still missing the goal.

The Air Force team tried once more, launching "Pioneer 2" on 8 November 1958. The third stage failed to ignite and the probe fell back to Earth about seven hours after launch.

* The pace was just as exhausting in the USSR. The Soviets made their first attempt to launch the two-stage "Luna" booster to the Moon on 23 September 1958. It was carrying a "Luna E-1" probe, which was a sphere with a weight of about 360 kilograms (800 pounds), bristling with five antennas, and carrying:

• A radio system.
  
  
• Batteries.
  
  
• A simple science payload, including a radiation detector, a magnetometer, a micrometeorite detector, and a kilogram of sodium powder to be released on the way to the Moon to generate a glowing trail.

The launch vehicle disintegrated 92 seconds into flight. The Soviets tried again on 11 October, almost precisely in parallel with the American Pioneer 1 launch. Korolyev was confident that he would beat the Americans to the Moon by a few hours, but the Luna booster blew up 104 seconds into flight, scattering debris over the Kazakhstan steppes. A recovery team went out into the barrens to recover the wreckage for analysis, and the investigation revealed that vibration had set up oscillations in the strap-on boosters. A fix was designed, but it took until the end of 1958 to implement it. The Soviets performed another shot on 4 December 1958, but the mission was lost four minutes into flight when one of the main engine turbopumps failed.

* Back in the USA, von Braun's US Army team was making their first shot at the Moon with their Juno II. The payload, "Pioneer 3", was a tiny conical probe that only carried Geiger counters, batteries, and a radio system. It was so small that it was brought out to Cape Canaveral on a commercial airliner as carry-on baggage.

Pioneer 3 was launched on 6 December 1958. Everything seemed to go well but the Jupiter main stage climbed too steeply and cut off too quickly. Pioneer 3 climbed to an altitude of over 100,000 kilometers (63,000 miles) and then fell back to Earth. It discovered a second Van Allen radiation belt at high orbital altitude, but the Army team was still very disappointed.

* Korolyev performed the next launch in the race on 2 January 1959. This time the booster operated almost flawlessly, launching a Luna E-1 probe on a path that took it to within 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) of the Moon and into orbit around the Sun. It released its sodium powder payload halfway to the Moon, providing visible evidence of the Soviet mastery of the skies. The spacecraft was named "Luna 1", or "Lunik", in imitation of "Sputnik", The mission wasn't quite perfect, since the probe was supposed to hit the Moon, not sail past it. The Soviets made the best of the matter and announced that they had launched the first "manmade planet", renaming the probe "Mechta (Dream)".

The Americans knew that the Soviets had intended to hit the Moon, but were also aware that the USSR had trumped the USA again; publicly nitpicking at the Soviets would have been foolish. The ABMA team pushed on and launched "Pioneer 4" on 3 March 1959. They were aiming at the Moon, but missed just as the Soviets had, and by ten times as far.

On 18 June 1959, the USSR launched a "Luna E-1A" probe, a slightly improved version of the Luna E-1 with a weight of 385 kilograms (850 pounds), but it didn't make orbit. The next attempt, on 14 September 1959, was a bulls-eye, the probe actually hitting the Moon. It was of course publicly named "Luna 2". It released its sodium payload, and Korolyev had also arranged for the University of Manchester's 76 meters (250 feet) diameter steerable radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in the UK to track the flight. Sir Bernard Lovell, the prestigious radio astronomer in charge of the site, concluded that the feat was "simply astounding, the mind just boggles." There was no doubt that the Soviet Union had just become the first nation on Earth to send an artifact to another world.

On 4 October 1959, two years to the day after the launch of Sputnik 1, the USSR launched a "Luna E-3" probe, a drum-shaped spacecraft with a skirt, a number of antennas, and a film camera system. It was designed to swing around the Moon in a loop, take pictures, then coast back to Earth, develop the pictures on board, and relay them by radiofax to a ground station. It had a weight of about 280 kilograms (615 pounds).

The mission was a success, with "Luna 3", as it was named, curving around the Moon on 7 October and taking pictures of its "farside", which no human being had ever seen. It was a major accomplishment and a justified source of Soviet pride. 29 images were obtained. The initial images were worthless; a mission scientist commented when he saw the first one: "At least we know now the farside is round also." However, 17 of the images proved useful. They were fuzzy and grainy, but adequate to show major features of the lunar farside.

The Jodrell Bank radio telescope also picked up the images, though this time Lovell was working with the CIA, not the Russians, with the CIA figuring out how to interpret the signals. The imagery gave sufficient evidence to ensure that nobody contested the right of the Soviets to name the coarse features mapped in the images. They gave some of the most prominent landmarks nationalistic names such as "Tsiolkovsky", "Lobachevsky", "Lomonosov", and "Mendeleyev", but they were fair enough to add an international flavor to the map of the farside, with major landmarks given names such as "Giordano Bruno", "Maxwell", "Pasteur", and of course "Jules Verne". No doubt they realized that their namings would have run into great resistance if they had only included Russians. They even named a feature after the great capitalist inventor "Edison", who was something of a hero in Russia for his technical and industrial achievements. The International Astronomical Union approved the designations.

* Luna 1 through 3 and Pioneer 4 also made another, unintentional discovery, a next step beyond Explorer 1's original discovery of the Van Allen belts. The four probes showed that the Sun emitted streams of particles that became known as the "solar wind". A Norwegian scientist named Olaf Birkeland had suggested in 1896 that particle emissions from the Sun could cause the "aurora borealis" or "northern lights", but the density and energy of the Sun's particle emissions were a complete surprise.

The solar wind was not obvious at lower orbital altitudes because it was deflected by the Earth's magnetic field, or "magnetosphere", though it had been known for decades that when localized explosions or "flares" took place on the Sun, they tended to disrupt radio communications. The solar wind and its interactions with the magnetosphere became a subject of great interest to space science researchers.

The US would continue to launch Pioneer probes, but the mission would shift to simply studying deep-space physics and not trying to hit the Moon. The Soviets would try to launch two more Luna E-3 probes, one on 15 April 1960 and the other four days later, on 19 April 1960. Neither made orbit, and the failure of the Luna booster on the 19 April attempt was spectacular, with the core and the strap-on boosters going their separate ways over the launch area. Apparently nobody was hurt, despite the fireworks.

BACK_TO_TOP

[8.2] BUILDING A SPACE COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK

* One of the less obvious aspects of the first American Moon probes was that they needed a communications network to send their findings back to Earth. On first mention, this might seem to imply buying a few radio receivers and putting them in shacks around the world. In fact, something along that line had been done by the NRL to support Vanguard, resulting in what was known as the "Minitracker" network. Such an approach was totally inadequate for a Moon probe. Vanguard flew in a "low Earth orbit (LEO)", a few hundred kilometers high, and receiving a signal from a satellite from over such a relatively short distance was not difficult. However, the Moon is 400,000 kilometers (250,000 miles) away, and since a Moon probe couldn't carry a large and powerful transmitter, receiving stations had to be very sensitive.

The issue was dropped into the lap of Ramo-Wooldridge's STL organization when the Pioneer program was authorized in March 1957. Since the first launch attempts were to be in August of that year, STL was forced to throw together a network as fast as possible.

One option was to use existing radio telescope dishes. A USAF officer paid Bernard Lovell a quiet visit, and the Jodrell Bank observatory was quickly fitted with gear to permit reception of signals from the Pioneer probes. Lovell was no stranger to secret military projects, having worked on radar during World War II, and he clearly enjoyed the prestige and publicity of cooperating with international space efforts. STL also arranged for the construction of a second receiving station at South Point on the island of Hawaii. They were able to obtain a moveable dish antenna 18.3 meters (60 feet) in diameter on short notice. The antenna was a modified version of the TLM-18 antenna that Radiation Incorporated was already producing to support the US spy satellite effort.

Two antennas could not provide 24-hour coverage for the Pioneer probes, and the missions had to be planned so that a probe's approach to the Moon took place when the spacecraft was in the field of view of one of the antennas. The two antennas were used on all three Air Force Pioneer Moon shots.

* After that, STL staffers wondered where to go next with their communications network, only to quickly find out they were being driven out of the business. Even before ARPA formally initiated the Pioneer Moon program, JPL had been thinking about building such a communications network themselves.

Eberhardt Rechtin, in charge of JPL's guidance research division, had released memos on Moon and Mars probes that led to considerations of the communications network needed to support such missions. He addressed the matter in detail, saying in a message to an ABMA official in early April 1958, only days after ARPA announced the Pioneer program: "The design of the [communications] stations should be on the basis of a long-term program. This means that the antennas should be precision built rather than simply crudely constructed telemetering antennas."

Rechtin realized that to obtain continuous contact with a space probe the communications network had to have global coverage, with at least three ground stations about 120 degrees apart in longitude to ensure that one station was in line-of-sight to the spacecraft at all times. The ground stations also had to be capable of operating in almost any weather, and so the antenna had to be able to tolerate winds of 100 KPH (60 MPH) in operational configuration, and twice that in stowed configuration. Pointing accuracy had to be about two degrees so the antenna would remain locked on the spacecraft.

On 7 February 1958, William Merrick, a JPL engineering manager, was assigned to investigate the appropriate antenna design. After a thorough study, he settled on a dish antenna then being built by the Blaw Knox company. Blaw Knox had two such antennas under construction as radio telescopes, one for the University of Michigan to be installed in Ann Arbor, Michigan; the other for the Associated Universities Incorporated (AUI) consortium, to be installed at Green Bank, West Virginia.

This dish antenna design had begun life as studies performed at the NRL in 1953, with later work performed by the Carnegie Institute and AUI. The antenna was 26 meters (85 feet) wide and fully steerable, with a gun-type "alt-azimuth" mounting. JPL ordered three of the antennas in April 1958, with the Army applying pressure to take over one of the two antennas then under construction to ensure that at least one antenna was in place to support the upcoming Army Pioneer Moon shots.

Along with finding the proper antennas, there was the problem of finding sites for them. The antennas would have to pick up signals from far-away space probes fitted with low-power radio transmitters. Such signals were necessarily weak and easily drowned out by interference, and that implied isolated sites walled off from sources of radio noise by surrounding high ground.

JPL already had an excellent site for the first antenna, Goldstone Dry Lake at the Army's Camp Irwin in the Mojave Desert, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Pasadena. JPL had evaluated the site two years earlier for possible use as a rocket-engine test facility. Goldstone had the necessary isolation, was relatively near to JPL, and the Army already had a solid title to the land. Although some Army officials resisted JPL's attempt to take control of the property, General Medaris overruled them.

The construction crew began work in May 1958, setting up an access road and laying the antenna's foundations. They worked through the summer, dealing with the intense desert heat while avoiding rattlesnakes and unexploded ordnance. The antenna was ready for operation by November 1958.

* A third issue that had to be addressed was the frequency to be used by the Army Pioneer probes and the Goldstone antenna. The Air Force Pioneer probes had transmitted at 108 megahertz (MHz), as had the Vanguard and Explorer satellites, and so the STL antennas had been set up to receive at that frequency as well. JPL was considering the long term, when probes would be launched to other planets, and Walter K. Victor, the lab's head of electronics research, felt that terrestrial and cosmic radio noise sources at frequencies below 500 MHz would cause too much interference with faint signals from a distant space probe.

Victor originally wanted to use two frequencies, at 1,365 and 1,535 MHz. These two frequencies "bracketed" 1,428 MHz, corresponding to the "21 centimeter" microwave radiation emitted by cosmic hydrogen. Radio astronomers were very interested in the 21 centimeter wavelength since it allowed them to map cosmic gas clouds, and so JPL could leverage off technology developed to that end. The two frequencies selected were far enough off the 21 centimeter wavelength to ensure that there would be no interference from the cosmic hydrogen "background". However, Victor learned that there was no way that a workable transmitter operating at such wavelengths could be built in time to meet the aggressive Army Pioneer schedule, and he had to settle for a frequency of 960 MHz.

The Goldstone antenna was used on the Army Pioneer 3 and 4 Moon shots, in conjunction with existing smaller antennas used on earlier shots and adapted to 960 MHz. The two Army shots were disappointments, the Soviets having won the first Moon race beyond any argument, but JPL had laid the foundation for a deep-space communications network,

* JPL was busy trying to build on that foundation, having spent the summer of 1958 lobbying ARPA -- at the moment still in charge of America's emerging space program -- and incidentally trumping further STL efforts to implement their own global space communications network.

The formation of NASA in October complicated matters, not only because ARPA was now handing over projects to the new agency, but because NASA included NRL staffers who were pushing for extension of the existing NRL Minitracker network. Minitracker would not be capable of supporting deep-space probes, but the network's advocates argued that Earth satellites were much more important anyway. NASA management was in visionary mode at the time, investigating where the agency would be in the next decade, and the thinking of the Minitracker advocates seemed too myopic. JPL's views won out, and on 10 January 1959 NASA signed an agreement with the military that included provisions for setting up tracking and communications stations for deep-space probes in Australia and South Africa.

Spain had been originally considered as an antenna site, but South Africa won out because space probes launched from Cape Canaveral would generally be placed into an orbit that took them over South Africa before they were kicked off onto their deep-space trajectories. In those days, Americans worried about Communism all but first, last, and always, and the South African policy of racial "apartheid" wasn't an objection at the time. It would be later.

JPL intelligently decided that instead of operating the ground stations as American "colonies" in foreign countries, they would fund and coordinate activities with local organizations to set up the stations. Locals would generally be better adjusted to their environment than Americans on foreign duty, and it would also allow the host nations to participate in the Space Race. They were generally eager to do so.

The appropriate organization in Australia turned out to be the "Weapons Research Establishment (WRE)" of the Australian Department of Supply. The WRE was managing the Woomera rocket test range, where flight tests were performed for Australian and British missiles. WRE management was excited about supporting the US space effort, and also felt they could use the radio gear to support their own missile launches.

The appropriate organization in South Africa was the "National Institute for Telecommunications Research (NITR)" of the Council for Scientific & Industrial Research. NITR management proved just as enthusiastic as their WRE counterparts.

NASA sent site-survey teams to Australia in early 1959, then to South Africa in the fall of 1959. In Australia, NASA and the WRE found an appropriate site at a dry lake bed known as "Island Lagoon", 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Woomera, and surrounded by hills except to the south. In South Africa, NASA and the NITR selected a valley near the town of Hartebeesthoek, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Pretoria. Cooperative construction efforts were quickly begun, with the stations scheduled for completion no later than mid-1961.

BACK_TO_TOP

[8.3] US ICBMS ENTER SERVICE / CORONA LAUNCH ATTEMPTS

* By early 1959, the US was well on the way to deployment of a strategic missile force. Jupiter was declared operational in August 1958 and Thor was declared operational in November 1958, and the wheels began to turn to deploy them to their overseas bases.

Atlas was declared operational on 9 September 1959, though the only way to launch it at the time was from a conventional gantry at Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg Air Force Base; it was still far from a "real" weapon. Work went forward on improving it. The first Titan launch attempt was on 6 February 1959, with only the lower stage operational, and was successful. The fourth launch featured successful stage separation, though the second stage was inert. The next two launch attempts were failures.

Even as Martin and the BMD was trying to get Titan flying, however, it was becoming "old news". In early 1959, the BMD began to consider a follow-on variant, with the new version of the missile to become the "Titan II". Titan I, as the initial effort became known, was powered by RP-1 kerosene-type fuel and liquid oxygen. Liquid oxygen had to be stored in cryogenic tanks and loaded just before launch, since it would otherwise boil away. Titan II would feature a bigger second stage and storable propellants, in the form of nitrogen tetroxide and UDMH, essentially the same propellants being used on the comparable Soviet R-16 missile. Storable propellants would allow Titan II to be kept at launch readiness for extended periods of time, making it a much more practical weapon than Titan I. The fuel mixture was also hypergolic, burning spontaneously on contact, simplifying engine ignition at the expense of complicating fuel handling.

BMD had determined that modifying the Titan I to use storable propellants was straightforward, at least by the standards of rocket science, and would yield a much more workable weapon at a small addition to total program cost. The Titan II would also feature a new "all inertial" guidance system, while the Titan I was being designed with an inertial guidance system with radio command update. The Titan II program was approved in November 1959. The Air Force decided to field a small number of Titan Is as an interim capability until Titan II came on line.

* Meanwhile, the Navy was busily trying to get their Polaris IRBM to fly, and were going through the same discouraging learning curve familiar to other missile development teams. Three Polaris launch attempts in 1958 were all failures. The first two launch attempts in 1959 were also failures, but the sixth launch attempt, on 20 April 1959, was a complete success, falling into its planned target area 480 kilometers (300 miles) downrange. Polaris had finally been tamed. The development program began to converge towards an operational system.

Now Minuteman entered its flight test phase, with an initial launch of a missile consisting of a "short grain" first stage on 15 September 1959. This launch also validated the missile's launch technique, with the Minuteman fired out of a simple buried silo without blast exhausts. It worked perfectly, with the lift-off of the missile preceded by a big "smoke ring" floating up from the lip of the silo into the sky. This smoke ring would become a trademark of Minuteman launches.

* While the ICBMs began to roll off the production lines, the CIA was moving full speed ahead on their Corona film-recovery spy satellite program. Lockheed had moved very quickly in developing the satellite, and the CIA also had the use of the new launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where the satellites could be launched in relative secrecy.

Unfortunately, the road ahead was very bumpy. An attempt to launch "Discoverer 0" on a Thor-Agena booster in early 1959 failed. Thrusters on the Agena stage of Discoverer 0 fired while the booster was on the pad, tumbling the Agena off the Thor first stage. Its successor, "Discoverer I", supposedly went into orbit, but the tracking stations never found it, and it appears that it splashed into the Pacific.

"Discoverer II" went into orbit, but ground control was lost. The bucket may have come down on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen. There remains a suspicion that it was recovered by the Soviets, but if so, all they got out of it was a pair of artificial mice, consistent with the Discoverer cover story. Later, suspense writer Alistair MacLean would greatly embellish the story as the basis for his novel ICE STATION ZEBRA. The Corona project team swallowed the failures and pushed forward, with the pressure increasing with every launch attempt.