An early/mid 1960’s NASA film about the design of the Apollo hardware. Includes simple schematics of both Direct mission hardware as well as Lunar Orbit Rendezvous hardware; also visible are more detailed diagrams of Apollo and Apollo-derived designs.
If you look back to NASA in the mid-1960’s, it certainly seems like it was an organization filled with people who thought that the future was wide open. Apollo was merely going to be the first step; after some landings would come longer-term “camps” on the moon, with stays of a few weeks in temporary habitats; then would come bases that could be visited by multiple crews. Nuclear powered space stations with artificial gravity. There would be manned flyby missions to Venus and eventually manned landings on Mars; as propulsion systems inevitably grew vastly more capable, manned missions to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn would follow in due course.
By the time Apollo 11 actually landed on the moon, though, it was becoming clear that the future was not going to be what it should have been. As noted previously, the production line of the Saturn V was shut down a year before Apollo 11, not only limiting the possible missions of the Apollo program but ending hope for missions that would expand upon Apollo. Shortly after Apollo 11, it seems that morale at NASA was already in decline as the engineers, scientists, technicians and so on could see the writing on the wall. Not only was Saturn dead, but funding was in decline and it was becoming clear that there was minimal political interest in carrying Apollo forward… the job of beating the Soviets to the Moon was done, and the important scientific work, not to mention the prospect of carrying western civilization to the stars, was not that important to the political class who were far more interested in the “Great Society” spending programs. So in September of 1969 a “Seminar on Manned Flight Awareness” was held at the Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, to deal with the issue:
The successful lunar landing and completion of the flight of Apollo 11 achieved a national objective in this decade and is a significant milestone in man’s continuing progress in space exploration. Historically, achievements of such magnitude, requiring concentrated efforts over an appreciable time period, are followed by a letdown and general relaxation of the personnel involved. In addition, this letdown may be amplified by a serious morale problem when funding cutbacks are experienced. The result is n decline in the required attention to detailed workmanship which can cause a rise in accident rates and potential loss of life.
To counter these potential morale and complacency problems in the spaceflight program, this Government/Industry Manned Flight Awareness Seminar is being conducted. The objective of this seminar is the maintenance of high quality workmanship through effective awareness and motivational programs. We intend to do this by outlining NASA’s plans for future programs and the resources being made available to successfully conclude these programs. In addition, executives of various industrial firms deeply involved in space work will present their views of the future. In this way we can get the message from NASA Management to the individuals responsible for doing the work that is vital to assuring a high quality of workmanship in the aerospace force.
Not having been born yet, I don’t have any firsthand information on just what was going on at the time in NASA. However, one thing I *do* have firsthand information on was the end of the United Technologies Center/Chemical System Division facility south of San Jose, California, circa 2003-2004. That company was a manufacturer of solid rockets such as the booster separation motors for the Space Shuttle, booster rockets for the Tomahawk cruise missile, Minuteman ICBM stages and so on. It was a vital part of the rocket industry of the United States. And in 2003-2004, it was *obvious* to everyone there that the company was doomed. Things were going wrong left and right to the point that a lot of us were wondering if it was active sabotage; in reality it was merely management and unions working together to make things as ridiculous as possible. Coupled with the fact that the company could, at best, turn in a profit measured at a handful of millions of dollars a year while sitting on *billions* of dollars of prime Silicon Valley real estate, everyone there knew that the companies time was strictly limited. So, what did the USAF and NASA do about it?
The USAF/NASA told the rest of the United States aerospace industry to *not* hire any of us. We were embargoed from seeking employment elsewhere, at least at companies that received federal contracts. So we stayed on the job. Until, of course, the embargoes were lifted, then we fled like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
It seems that NASA in September 1969 was facing a similar predicament. Everyone there – scientists, engineers, technicians and subcontractors of all kinds – could see the writing on the wall. And when you know that the project you’re working on has a near-term end date, you look for somewhere else to be, preferably before all your co-workers get the same idea. This is sensible, but it’s also a problem. Yes, Apollo/Saturn had a distinctly limited lifespan. But the program still had a number of years left, and it would need the bulk of the staff to stay on the job to make sure that the spacecraft and launch vehicles were finished, maintained and prepared for their missions. If everyone at NASA fled for brighter opportunities elsewhere, the missions still funded would be unable to be completed. So NASA held a seminar that seemed to have the singular goal of convincing people just how bright NASA’s future really was. A space shuttle would be available by 1976 and a space station by 1979… as well as a polar orbit station and one in geosynchronous. A lunar orbiting station around 1976. Nuclear powered inter-orbital shuttles. Manned missions back to the Moon and on to Mars.
It was all wrong. Yes, the Shuttle finally arrived in the early 1980’s, greatly delayed and vastly and permanently over budget, each flight costing one to two orders of magnitude more than originally projected. yes, a space station did eventually arrive… in the 1990’s, handicapped by international politics, small, undermanned, under-capable. None of the rest of it even *tried* to happen. The seminar reads like desperation, or a rah-rah session at some multi-level marketing scheme; I had flashes to scenes in the recent Hulu series “Dopesick” where Oxycontin sales reps are getting the latest BS about how great the next dosage of the pill will be, so go out there and sell more.
*A* future does not mean *A* *GOOD* *FUTURE.*
No. It was the end, and apparently everyone involved could see it.
You can download a PDF of the 80-page seminar publication HERE.
The rewards for October, 2021, have been sent out. Patrons should have received a notification message through Patreon linking to the rewards; subscribers should have received a notification from Dropbox linking to the rewards. If you did not, let me know.
Document: “C-131C Tactical Unit Support Airplane,” 1953 Consolidated Vultee briefing on cargo aircraft military capabilities
Document: “Aerodynamic Model test Report Titan IIIM Final Posttest Report 0.0535 scale Force and Pressure Model Phase II,” 1967 Martin Report Of Unusual Size (ROUS, 353 pages) describing with charts, data, model photos and diagrams, of the proposed Titan IIIM topped with a Manned Orbiting Laboratory.
Diagram: General Arrangement of the Douglas D-558 research aircraft (provenance unknown)
CAD Diagram (for $5-level and up): Medusa Spinnaker, second illustration of giant but lightweight nuclear pulse propelled spacecraft
If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. *ALL* back issues, one a month since 2014, are available for subscribers at low cost.
A 1964 Boeing design for an orbital HL-10 derivative, to be used for space station logistics. This would be launched atop a Saturn Ib. Cargo would be carried up int he adapter, which would be expended; passengers would go up and down within the body of the spaceplane. A heat shield would cover the canopy until after re-entry.
Sigh. It’s sad to think that in many ways the 1970’s were more forward thinking than today. Solar Power Satellites the size of Manhattan, space colonies the size of small states. Today… apart from SpaceX, about the most you can hope for is ever more social media. Until, of course, you get deplatformed.
Below is a piece of NASA-Ames art depicting the interior of an Island 3 colony. The full size version is downloadable HERE. This was intended to be a cylinder 5 miles or so in diameter by 20 long, rotating along the long axis to generate “gravity.” In this design, fully one third of the “land area” was given over to windows that would bring in sunlight via mirrors. Other notions included mounting strips of very powerful artificial light on the “ground” facing up to light the other side (this was the Babylon 5 approach), mounting strips of artificial light along the central axis pointing outwards, having external parabolic mirror beam sunlight through the central axis and reflected or diffused outwards. In order for an island 3 habitat like this to be dynamically stable, you’d need two of them, side by side, rigidly linked at the hubs. This would counter the torque and prevent the cylinders from converting rotation around the long axis into end-over-end tumbling, which is the natural response of something like this (experiment: try to spin a pencils around the long axis. You will inevitably end up with it tumbling)
The NASA art below shows an exterior view of a complete colony.The habitats would need to be pretty close to the same mass, but otherwise their interiors could be very different… one could replicate, say, farmland and meadows and such with small towns scattered about; the other could have forests and large cities. One could be in winter, the other in summer. The full-rez is downloadable HERE.
There is a ring of “cans” around the end of each habitat. These are the agricultural units for the habitat; each independently spin around their own axis, generating the level of artificial G appropriate to grow wheat or corn or weed or hay or whatever is needed. Being smaller in radius, Coriolis effects would be substantially more noticeable; but as plants don’t care, and the job of agriculture will probably be done by robots, it doesn’t matter much. Each farm would be pretty well closed off from the others, so if some sort of blight were to pop up, chances are good it could be contained.
A few years ago I had a notion for a book – half technical descriptions, half manifesto/screed – about megaprojects. A description of not only what mankind could do given time and energy, but what mankind *should* do in time. As with a lot of things, this books got squashed by the realization that its already been done (gosh, thanks Isaac Arthur), but I still kinda want to 3D CAD model one of these things. I’ve not thought about that book in some years… got a hundred pages into it, I think. Shrug.
In 1985, Rockwell International considered the possibility that there might be profit in clustering the External Tank from the Space Shuttle in Earth orbit. There the tanks could be filled with propellant to serve as orbital “gas stations,” or rebuilt into space habitats or other structures, or simple reprocessed for the raw structural materials. In order to do this the Shuttle would have to shed a noticeable fraction of total payload. Something not given a whole lot of thought was what to do about the insulating foam applied to the tanks; ultraviolet sunlight, thermal cycling and a harsh vacuum would cause the foam to break down ans turn each orbiting tank into a little comet, the nucleus of a cloud of foam bits.
Still, it would have been nice if the tanks had been used rather than simply dumped into the Indian Ocean.
This set of models was recently sold on eBay. It depicts a proposed concept for extending the utility of Apollo hardware… in this case, the Command Module and the Ascent Stage of the Lunar Module, by using them in Earth or Lunar orbit in conjunction with a small space laboratory. The Lunar Module would be used as a little space lab of it’s own, with a bolted-on telescope… this idea transformed into the Apollo Telescope Mount on Skylab, which began life as a modified LM. This probably dates from 1965-66. The purpose of the lab was to provide living space for the crew of three, because missions were contemplated lasting several months, providing detailed examination of the Earth or moon. Scientifically useful to be sure, but were the crew packed solely into the CM and LM for that period they’d likely kick the walls out.
In 1965 North American Aviation produced a study for NASA about reusable space launch vehicles to support forthcoming expected space stations. Included within that study was an alternate use of rocket vehicles… point-to-point hypersonic commercial passenger transportation. This concept goes back to the late 1940’s and has continued to the present day, with the Elon Musk suggesting that the SpaceX Starship could be used for that purpose. The idea is interesting and it certainly *could* work. But could it be commercially cost effective? History with craft such as the Concorde and the Shuttle argue strongly against an early vehicle like this doing anything but losing truckloads of cash every time it launches.
Artwork circa 1964 depicting the Lockheed BALlistic LOgistics Spacecraft (BALLOS), a sort of super-sized Apollo capsule meant for the transportation of a dozen astronauts (10 passengers, 2 crew) at once to and from any one of the doubtless dozens of space stations that the United States would surely have in orbit by the mid 1970’s. Launch vehicle would be a Saturn Ib.
