Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of NASA's Apollo Lunar Expeditions

The Hammer and the Feather by Alan Bean.

Reprinted by permission of Alan Bean.

Copyright

Copyright © 2010 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2010, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in Washington, D.C., in 1989 in the NASA History Series as NASA SP-4214 under the title Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions. A new Introduction by Paul Dickson has been added to this Dover edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Compton, William David, 1927–

Where no man has gone before: a history of NASA’s Apollo lunar expeditions / William David Compton; introduction to the Dover edition by Paul Dickson.

p. cm.

Originally published: Washington, D.C. : National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Management, Scientific and Technical Information Division, 1989.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780486135564

1. Project Apollo (U.S.)—History. 2. Space flight to the moon—History. I. United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Scientific and Technical Information Division. II. Title.

TL789.8.U6A528 2010

629.45’4—dc22

2010033543

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

47888201

www.doverpublications.com

INTRODUCTION TO THE DOVER EDITION

The national goal of landing Americans on the moon—as set forth by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961—had little or nothing to do with science. America’s national honor had suffered from the Soviet Union’s early accomplishments in space, as well as from terrestrial matters such as the humiliation resulting from the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba the month before the President’s space directive. So, the hope for primary benefit of the excursion was a new sense of national honor. A second dividend of a lunar landing would be the creation of a national capability to operate in deep space in preparation for further exploration, beginning with the planet Mars.

The lunar landing and return to earth was a matter of engineering, not pure science. The science was pretty much figured out by Sir Isaac Newton and a few modern pioneers like Robert Goddard. In fact, one of the great misnomers of the Space Age was to talk about rocket scientists and rocket science when the appropriate terms were almost always rocket engineers and rocket engineering.

The gulf between science and engineering during the early days of Apollo often seemed too wide to close as a significant group of scientists opposed the whole program. They argued that it was of negligible scientific value and that better and cheaper science could be achieved with the use of robotic missions. These were reasonable debating positions, but not ones that worked politically. As William David Compton points out in his preface to Where No Man Has Gone Before: If the Soviets sent men and women to the moon, no American robot, however sophisticated or important, would produce an equal impact on the world’s consciousness. Hence, America’s leadership in space would be asserted by landing humans on the moon.

Compton’s lucid account of the Apollo missions that followed the Apollo 11 moon landing focuses on the ways in which scientists interested in the moon as a base for observations and lunar samples, and engineers concerned with landing and the return to earth resolved their differences and carried out a mission that made contributions to science and also developed remarkable engineering achievements.

The first half of the book is devoted to preparations for subsequent lunar landings, with the remainder detailing the lunar explorations that followed Apollo 11, in which ten astronauts visited the moon and brought back lunar samples for scientists to investigate. Data, photographs, and lunar samples in the form of over 380 kilograms (841.54 pounds) of moon rocks brought to earth by these astronauts and data from experiments they left on the moon, still transmitting somewhat in 1977, began to give a picture of the moon’s origin and nature, contributing to an understanding of how the earth had evolved.

The Apollo program concluded with Apollo 17 in December 1972 after 27 men had gone into lunar orbit. At the conclusion of the last mission a plaque was left on the lunar surface by Gene Cernan which read: This is our commemoration that will be here until someone like us, until some of you who are out there, who are the promise of the future, come back to read it again and to further the exploration and the meaning of Apollo.

The meaning of Apollo as explored in Compton’s narrative gives twenty-first century readers an extremely valuable tool for understanding what we’ve learned and are still learning from the data and the samples collected by the Apollo astronauts. The Moon rocks, often derided as little more than costly souvenirs when they were first returned to earth, are proving to have significant long-term scientific value. It is a story which, over time, becomes more compelling as our ability to analyze those decades-old lunar samples improves. Case in point: the July 22, 2010 issue of Nature reported a new study from the California Institute of Technology on a mineral (apatite) discovered in a volcanic rock from the moon which was collected by Apollo 14 astronauts in 1971. According to the researchers the mineral contained robust evidence for the presence of water in the interior of the moon from where some lunar rocks were derived. Water on the moon could mean that an occupied station on the moon becomes a more likely possibility, because water would not have to be transported there from earth.

The story of lunar spacecraft and the flight program leading up to the return of Apollo 11 is detailed in Chariots for Apollo: The NASA History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft to 1969, by Courtney G. Brooks, James M. Grimwood, and Loyd S. Swenson, Jr., which has been recently released as a Dover reprint among other editions from the NASA Historical Series. As Compton points out in the original introduction to Where No Man Has Gone Before, it is both a parallel and a sequel to Chariots for Apollo. To have read both books is to have experienced one of the greatest and most compelling stories of recent centuries.

PAUL DICKSON

September 2010

PREFACE

The purpose of this book is only partly to record the engineering and scientific accomplishments of the men and women who made it possible for a human to step away from his home planet for the first time. It is primarily an attempt to show how scientists interested in the moon and engineers interested in landing people on the moon worked out their differences and conducted a program that was a major contribution to science as well as a stunning engineering accomplishment.

When scientific requirements began to be imposed on manned space flight operations, hardly any aspect was unaffected. The choice of landing sites, the amount of scientific equipment that could be carried, and the weight of lunar material that could be brought back all depended on the capabilities of the spacecraft and mission operations. These considerations limited the earliest missions and constituted the challenge of the later ones.

President John F. Kennedy’s decision to build the United States’ space program around a manned lunar landing owed nothing to any scientific interest in the moon. The primary dividend was to be national prestige, which had suffered from the Soviet Union’s early accomplishments in space. A second, equally important result of a manned lunar landing would be the creation of a national capability to operate in space for purposes that might not be foreseeable. Finally, Kennedy felt the need for the country to set aside business as usual and commit itself with dedication and discipline to a goal that was both difficult and worthwhile.

Kennedy had the assurance of those in the best position to know that it was technologically possible to put a human on the moon within the decade. His political advisers, while stressing the many benefits (including science) that would accrue from a strong space program, recognized at once that humans were the key. If the Soviets sent men and women to the moon, no American robot, however sophisticated or important, would produce an equal impact on the world’s consciousness. Hence America’s leadership in space would be asserted by landing humans on the moon.

This line of reasoning was convincing enough for most congressional leaders, who would have to provide the money, and was accepted by a majority of Americans. But Apollo was conceived and developed in an era when the scientific community was emerging as a political force in the country. Scientific research was becoming a big business in the late 1950s and early 1960s, sustained by unprecedented financial support from the federal government. Science had constituted the major portion of NASA’s early space program and was the rationale for the space program in the first place; hence scientists considered space to be their province. The investigations of the pioneer space scientists did not require a human’s presence; hence man had, in their view, no important role in space. Since Apollo was not a scientific project, it was unnecessary; because it would be expensive, it probably would be detrimental to the legitimate space program already under way.

In one respect the critics were right: Apollo was not primarily a scientific project. The engineers charged with accomplishing the lunar landing within the decade had far too many problems to solve to give much thought to secondary matters—a category to which they relegated scientific experiments. Some may have felt that the landing itself was enough; the President had called for nothing more. Most probably reasoned that someone else would specify what the astronauts would do on the moon. For the engineers responsible for carrying it out, Apollo required a strict ordering of priorities: be sure we can get the crew there and back; then provide for other objectives. Risks abounded, and the glare of publicity surrounding Apollo made it certain that the loss of a single astronaut’s life could imperil the project’s very existence.

Objections by the scientists had no effect on the nation’s determination to carry out the manned lunar landing. Science would, however, considerably affect the conduct of the lunar missions that followed the first landing. By the time the project ended in December 1972, engineers and scientists had developed a mutual respect and a commonality of aims. No one lamented more strongly than the scientists—not, for the most part, the same ones who had objected so vigorously to the program in the early days—the cancellation in 1970 of three planned lunar exploration missions.

Apollo might have been considered complete when the crew of the spacecraft Columbia came aboard the U.S.S. Hornet in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969. Indeed, for some years after President Kennedy proposed it, the first lunar landing was regarded as the objective of Apollo. Planning for manned space flights to follow the lunar landing began in 1963 with studies on how the Apollo spacecraft could be modified to extend the duration of the missions and increase the payload that could be carried to the moon. In 1965 a program called Apollo Applications emerged, which included long-duration earth-orbital flights as well as lunar exploration. It would build and launch a few Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rockets each year, sustaining the nation’s manned space capability and producing useful information while the nation decided what the next major step in manned space exploration would be.

By late 1967, however, it was clear that that decision would not come early, and that post-Apollo programs other than lunar exploration required more thought. An Office of Lunar Exploration Programs was opened in NASA Headquarters to direct the continued exploration of the moon under the Apollo banner, and the earth-orbital portion of Apollo Applications, which would evolve into Skylab, was split off.a

The development of the spacecraft, rockets, and launch facilities necessary to accomplish the primary goal of Apollo has been described in three prior volumes in the NASA history series.b The story of the lunar spacecraft and the flight program up to the return of Apollo 11 is detailed in Chariots for Apollo. The present volume is both a parallel and a sequel to Chariots; it traces the development of the Apollo science program from the earliest days and continues the history of the Apollo program, laying major emphasis on the scientific exploration of the moon conducted on the later flights, Apollo 12 through Apollo 17.

One issue of great concern to scientists and engineers alike was whether a trained scientist should be included in the crew of the lunar module. If the point of man in space was to make best use of the unique capabilities of humans, would not manned space science require a professional scientist? Or were the intricacies and potential hazards of flying the spacecraft so great that only test pilots could be trusted to lead the missions? Could one professional be sufficiently trained in the other’s skills to be an adequate surrogate? The qualifications of candidates for selection and training as astronauts, and the choice of crews for each mission were points that were never really settled during Apollo and remained a point of contention throughout the project.

Another issue concerned the scientific study of the samples returned from the missions, which was complicated by the U.S. Public Health Service’s insistence on quarantining everything returned from the moon until it could be shown that no exotic microorganisms had been accidentally imported. The Lunar Receiving Laboratory and its role in the storage, dissemination, and preservation of the lunar samples are important to the scientific story of Apollo.

Finally, this history must make a first cut at answering the following questions: what have scientists made of the data produced by Apollo? Do we understand more about the origin and history of the moon and the solar system as a result of Apollo’s six voyages? Any answers to these questions can only be provisional since, like all scientific questions, they are subject to revision as new investigators apply new techniques to the samples. By the time this history was written, scientists had reached consensus on very few answers to the questions that lunar exploration hoped to clarify, but I have tried to summarize their tentative conclusions.

A program as complex as Apollo is not easily handled by a simple chronological account. In the early stages, from 1961 to roughly the end of 1966, the several phases of the program had to be hammered out more or less independently and many complex relationships had to be built. For those reasons I have organized the early chapters of the book topically, the better to deal in some detail with these early developments.

By early 1967 most of the separate elements were in place; then on January 27, 1967, the program was shaken to its foundations by the command module fire that killed three astronauts in training for the first manned Apollo mission. The fire was a watershed for Apollo, setting back operations by a year or more while NASA and its contractors examined every detail of spacecraft design, manufacture, and management. It had almost no negative effect on the science program; in fact, lunar exploration probably benefited by the delay, which gave some much-needed time to the development of the lunar surface instruments and the lunar receiving laboratory. From the fire to the first lunar landing in July 1969, a basically chronological account of development is somewhat more manageable.

The other accident in the Apollo program, the aborted Apollo 13 mission, was deliberately mentioned only briefly in the main text. To have covered that flight in detail, dramatic as it was, would have lengthened the story unacceptably; and since other authors have dealt with it in detail (see n. 78, chapter 11), I decided to treat the essentials of the accident, the management of the flight, and the results of the investigation in appendix 8. The safe return of the crippled spacecraft and its three crewmen is a monument to the skill and determination of hundreds of dedicated individuals; the subsequent investigation was a masterly piece of engineering detective work, lacking a body—the failed spacecraft itself—to provide clues; but space did not permit full treatment of the flight in all its aspects. As for its impact on lunar science, Apollo 13 created a delay of a few months, giving scientists a little breathing space, which they welcomed, to refine plans for later missions. The loss of one load of lunar samples and the data from one more set of surface experiments was of small importance in the end. More than that was lost a few months later when two of the remaining six missions were canceled.

In writing this history I was granted unrestricted access to the extensive Historian’s Source Files at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, to the files in the History Office at NASA Headquarters, and to documents stored at the various Federal Archives and Records Centers. To the extent possible within the time constraints of my contract, participants reviewed my drafts and offered comments. They also corrected factual errors where they found them. Their comments were given thoughtful consideration and incorporated into the history whenever the documentation seemed to support them or when an insider’s viewpoint yielded insights the historian cannot glean from the documents alone. The interpretations of events here recorded, as well as any errors that remain, are my responsibility.

I have tried to define fairly and accurately the arguments on both sides of the scientific and technological issues that bore on the conduct of the Apollo exploration missions. I found it somewhat difficult to treat the opposition to the Apollo program voiced by many prominent scientists. Of course the scientists who spoke against Apollo and later criticized NASA’s management of it were merely exercising their right to political expression. One reviewer who took exception to my treatment noted that this was the only avenue open to the scientists, who were put off by the engineers and had no choice but to go public with their objections, in the hope that political pressure would gain what their efforts within the system had not. Nevertheless, their objections, usually based on the unspoken assumption that purely scientific projects were entitled to privileged treatment, often smacked of intellectual arrogance. More irritating still—even to an outsider—few of those who criticized the project wanted to assume any responsibility for managing it. On the whole the objectors preferred to remain outside, where they could pursue their rewarding scientific careers while freely criticizing NASA—often in ignorance of the political, operational, and cost restrictions within which the space agency had to operate. Those scientists who made a commitment to the program and stayed with it to the end, establishing close relationships with mission planners and scaling their objectives to the capability of the system, deserve more credit than they usually get for the ultimate scientific productivity of Apollo.

The reader who suspects that I have a lingering bias in favor of Apollo’s engineers is probably correct. I would not dispute the scientists’ assertion that the engineers in charge of Apollo often seemed to be throwing roadblocks in the way of science. I suggest, however, that the engineers’ reluctance to stretch the missions as far and as soon as the scientists wanted grew out of a healthy respect for the limitations of their equipment and procedures. However easy it may have come to seem, landing on the moon and returning to earth was not a bit less hazardous on the last mission than on the first. When lives are at risk, the line between boldness and recklessness can seem narrow to those who carry the responsibility. NASA and the nation paid the price of haste on January 28, 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger and its crew of seven were lost 73 seconds after launch.

One word about terminology. Throughout the text I have used generic terms like scientific community as convenient shorthand, which may be misunderstood. Obviously no single, homogeneous scientific community exists now, or ever did, and I use the term only to indicate the source of comments or criticisms. Terms like manned space flight enthusiasts, Headquarters officials, or MSC engineers only categorize the source of a comment and do not imply that all persons in that category agreed with the statement or point of view thus attributed.

W.D.C.

Houston, 1987

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The onerous task of acquiring, sorting, and culling the Apollo documentation at Johnson Space Center had been all but completed when I undertook this history. Chief among those responsible for acquiring these records and putting them in order are James M. Grimwood, historian at JSC from 1962 to 1979, and the late Sally D. Gates, editor and archivist in the JSC History Office until her death in 1980.

By helping me learn to find my way through this morass while I worked on an earlier project, Jim Grimwood and Sally Gates earned my lasting gratitude. Similarly the staff of the Headquarters History Office—Monte D. Wright, director, Frank W. Anderson, Jr., assistant director, Carrie Karegeannes, editor, and Lee D. Saegesser, archivist—provided moral support, critical evaluation, and substantial assistance in my early days. Sylvia D. Fries, who took over as director in 1983, was no less helpful and encouraging on the present project than her predecessor. In the later stages of research and writing I was fortunate to have a sympathetic and helpful technical monitor in William E. Waldrip of the Management Analysis Office at JSC. Not only did he help in working with the NASA bureaucracy; he also took a deep and genuine interest in the organization and content of the book and offered perceptive comments while I was writing it.

Mrs. Sarah C. Arbuckle deserves mention for the hundreds of hours of tedious labor she applied to preparing the computerized index to the Apollo files, which was one of the tasks required by my contract. Although the results of her efforts do not appear in this book, the index was of great help in research in the later stages of its preparation. Researchers who use these files in the future will surely be grateful for her work.

Captain Alan L. Bean, USN (Ret.), artist and former astronaut, generously provided the frontispiece: a reproduction of his picture, The Hammer and the Feather, which depicts the demonstration performed by David R. Scott on Apollo 15. No photograph of this demonstration was taken on the moon; the only ones available were taken from the television screen on which earth viewers saw it performed.

Finally, my thanks go to the participants in Apollo who provided interviews and criticized the manuscript.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

INTRODUCTION TO THE DOVER EDITION

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1 - AMERICA STARTS FOR THE MOON: 1957–1963

2 - LINKING SCIENCE TO MANNED SPACE FLIGHT

3 - APOLLO’S LUNAR EXPLORATION PLANS

4 - HANDLING SAMPLES FROM THE MOON

5 - SELECTING AND TRAINING THE CREWS

6 - MISSION AND SCIENCE PLANNING: 1963—1966

7 - SETBACK AND RECOVERY: 1967

8 - FINAL PREPARATIONS: 1968

9 - PRIMARY MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: 1969

10 - LUNAR EXPLORATION BEGINS

11 - FIRST PHASE OF LUNAR EXPLORATION COMPLETED: 1969-1970

12 - APOLLO ASSUMES ITS FINAL FORM: 1970–1971

13 - LUNAR EXPLORATION CONCLUDED

14 - PROJECT APOLLO: THE CONCLUSION

SOURCE NOTES

APPENDIX 1 - ORGANIZATION CHARTS: NASA, OMSF, OSSA, MSC

APPENDIX 2 - APOLLO FUNDING HISTORY

APPENDIX 3 - LUNAR EXPLORATION PLANNING, 1961—1967

APPENDIX 4 - CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR EVENTS IN MANNED SPACE FLIGHT AND IN PROJECT APOLLO, 1957—1975

APPENDIX 5 - SUMMARY DATA ON APOLLO MISSIONS

APPENDIX 6 - PRIME AND BACKUP CREWS, SUPPORT CREWS, AND CAPSULE COMMUNICATORS FOR APOLLO LUNAR MISSIONS

APPENDIX 7 - CREW TRAINING AND SIMULATIONS

APPENDIX 8 - THE FLIGHT OF APOLLO 13

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY

INDEX

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

1

AMERICA STARTS FOR THE MOON: 1957–1963

When the crew of Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969, Americans hailed the successful completion of the most audacious and complex technological undertaking of the 20th century: landing humans on the moon and returning them safely to earth. Just over eight years before, when President John F. Kennedy proposed the manned lunar landing as the focus of the United States’ space program, only one American—Lt. Comdr. Alan B. Shepard, Jr.—had been into space, on a suborbital lob shot lasting 15 minutes. At the end of the first lunar landing mission, American astronauts had logged more than 5,000 man-hours in space. To the extent that any single event could, the first successful lunar landing mission marked the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s development of the capability to explore space by whatever means were appropriate for whatever purposes seemed to serve the national interest.

To many, Apollo 11 demonstrated that the United States had clearly won the space race with the Soviet Union, which had been one of the space program’s major purposes. By the time that was done, other issues dominated the scene. National interests were not the same in mid-1969 as they had been in 1961. Of the public reaction after Apollo 11, a congressional historian has written,

The high drama of the first landing on the Moon was over. The players and stagehands stood around waiting for more curtain calls, but the audience drifted away. . . . The bloody carnage in Vietnam, the plight of the cities, the revolt on the campuses, the monetary woes of budget deficits and inflation, plus a widespread determination to reorder priorities pushed the manned space effort lower in national support.¹

Project Apollo encompassed more than simply sending men to the moon and back. It reflected a determination to show that humans had an important role to play in exploring space, as they had in exploring the unknown corners of the earth in earlier centuries. That proposition was not universally accepted. From the time the space agency determined to put humans into space, many Americans argued vigorously against manned space flight on the grounds that it was unnecessary and inordinately expensive. Space scientists had already shown how much could be done with instruments, and planners were designing spacecraft that would revolutionize communications, weather forecasting, and observation of the earth, all without requiring the presence of people in space.