4 ms·

Could you elaborate a bit? What was "the crazy scheme of Apollo?"

by msl 10y ago

hga 10y ago
Read pretty much any SF story about getting to the Moon with chemical rockets prior to NASA, and it involves two transfer stations, one generally manned in LEO, and one in lunar orbit, manning seriously optional. You use rockets optimized to get from earth to the LEO station, to transfer between the two stations, then one to get to and from the Moon. Cheaper, and you keep long lived and potentially permanent assets up there, anything you loft to LEO is done at tremendous expense, course. Two flies in the ointment for assets beyond LEO and not under a lot of lunar soil/rock: Apollo was primarily a political stunt to convince the rest of the world our technology as good or better than the USSR's, who'd we'd let get out into space first to get them to establish the open skies principle that orbiting over someone else's territory wasn't spying (something they were insisting up to a week or month before Sputnik). Such assets were superfluous for the stunt, plus there was a very strong RFK/LBJ prejudice against any hint of military utility in NASA's space program. That plus internal politics which allocated the initial catch-up job to a group which was only good at making truly impressive launch pad explosions put us on the back foot in terms of getting out into space, and the Soviets made a fairly serious effort to beat us to the moon, e.g. look up the N1 rocket. Second, and seldom remembered is that the whole program was predicated a quiet Sun cycle, that's the determining reason I've read why the last two missions were canceled, the program had sufficient delays that it was getting into the danger zone, and Nixon wasn't about to kill an Apollo crew. For some SF coverage of this, read Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars where during an interplanetary voyage all the passengers and crew had to huddle for a while into the small shielded space the craft had for such an event.
- msl 10y ago
  I am not sure I would call not building two space stations for the purposes of the program crazy. Remember, that the Apollo program was initiated before anyone had performed an orbital rendezvous of any kind. For quite some time the preferred (by most) approach to the moon landing was direct ascent [0], as rendezvousing seemed just too scary. The approach of sending a large, but modular spacecraft all the way to the moon also proved to have the ability survive some rather interesting failure modes [1] so maybe it was not so crazy after all? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_ascent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_ascent [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13#Accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13#Accident
  - hga 10y ago
    Remember, that the Apollo program was initiated before anyone had performed an orbital rendezvous of any kind. And, yet, that became part of the plan rather quickly, it and EVA (extra-vehicular activity) were the big flashy parts of Project Gemini, during which I started following it all in real time.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Apollo used orbital rendezvous for every moon landing. Remember 3 go to moon, 2 land, then 3 come home. Among other advantages this means the lander does not need to drag a heat shield with it.

Could you elaborate a bit? What was "the crazy scheme of Apollo?"

by msl 10y ago

Could you elaborate a bit? What was "the crazy scheme of Apollo?"

hga 10y ago

Read pretty much any SF story about getting to the Moon with chemical rockets prior to NASA, and it involves two transfer stations, one generally manned in LEO, and one in lunar orbit, manning seriously optional. You use rockets optimized to get from earth to the LEO station, to transfer between the two stations, then one to get to and from the Moon. Cheaper, and you keep long lived and potentially permanent assets up there, anything you loft to LEO is done at tremendous expense, course. Two flies in the ointment for assets beyond LEO and not under a lot of lunar soil/rock: Apollo was primarily a political stunt to convince the rest of the world our technology as good or better than the USSR's, who'd we'd let get out into space first to get them to establish the open skies principle that orbiting over someone else's territory wasn't spying (something they were insisting up to a week or month before Sputnik). Such assets were superfluous for the stunt, plus there was a very strong RFK/LBJ prejudice against any hint of military utility in NASA's space program. That plus internal politics which allocated the initial catch-up job to a group which was only good at making truly impressive launch pad explosions put us on the back foot in terms of getting out into space, and the Soviets made a fairly serious effort to beat us to the moon, e.g. look up the N1 rocket. Second, and seldom remembered is that the whole program was predicated a quiet Sun cycle, that's the determining reason I've read why the last two missions were canceled, the program had sufficient delays that it was getting into the danger zone, and Nixon wasn't about to kill an Apollo crew. For some SF coverage of this, read Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars where during an interplanetary voyage all the passengers and crew had to huddle for a while into the small shielded space the craft had for such an event.

msl 10y ago
I am not sure I would call not building two space stations for the purposes of the program crazy. Remember, that the Apollo program was initiated before anyone had performed an orbital rendezvous of any kind. For quite some time the preferred (by most) approach to the moon landing was direct ascent [0], as rendezvousing seemed just too scary. The approach of sending a large, but modular spacecraft all the way to the moon also proved to have the ability survive some rather interesting failure modes [1] so maybe it was not so crazy after all? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_ascent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_ascent [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13#Accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13#Accident
- hga 10y ago
  Remember, that the Apollo program was initiated before anyone had performed an orbital rendezvous of any kind. And, yet, that became part of the plan rather quickly, it and EVA (extra-vehicular activity) were the big flashy parts of Project Gemini, during which I started following it all in real time.
- Retric 10y ago
  Apollo used orbital rendezvous for every moon landing. Remember 3 go to moon, 2 land, then 3 come home. Among other advantages this means the lander does not need to drag a heat shield with it.