NASA’s plans are threatened

Lovell:

In the summer of 1968, two months before Apollo 7 was scheduled for launch, circumstances in Kazakhstan, southeast of Moscow, and in Bethpage, Long Island, northeast of Levittown, conspired to scramble this cautious scenario. In August, the first lunar module arrived at Cape Kennedy from its Grumman Aerospace plant in Bethpage, and in the assessment of even the most charitable technicians, it was found to be a mess. In the early checkout runs of the fragile, foil‑covered ship, it appeared that every critical component had major, seemingly insoluble problems. Elements of the spacecraft that were shipped to the Cape unassembled and were supposed to be bolted together on site did not seem to want to go together; electrical systems and plumbing did not operate as specified; seams, gaskets, and washers that were designed to remain tightly sealed were springing all manner of leaks.

Some glitches, of course, were to be expected. In ten years of building sleek, bullet‑shaped spacecraft designed to fly through the atmosphere and into orbit, no one had ever attempted to build a manned ship that would operate exclusively in the vacuum of space or in the lunar world of one‑sixth gravity. But the number of glitches in this gimpy ship was more than – even the worst NASA pessimists could have imagined.

At the same time the LEM was causing such headaches, CIA agents working overseas picked up even more disturbing news. According to whispers coming from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Soviet Union was making tentative plans for a flight around the moon by a Zond spacecraft sometime before the end of the year. Nobody knew if the flight would be manned, but the Zond line was certainly capable of carrying a crew, and if a decade of getting sucker‑punched by Soviet space triumphs had indicated anything, it was that when Moscow had even the possibility of pulling off a space coup, you could bet they’d give it a try.

NASA was stumped. Flying the LEM before it was ready was clearly impossible in the cautious atmosphere that now pervaded the Agency, but flying Apollo 7 and then launching nothing at all for months and months while the Russians promenaded around the moon was not an attractive option either. One afternoon in early August, 1968, Chris Kraft, deputy director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, and Deke Slayton were summoned to Bob Gilruth’s office to discuss the problem. Gilruth was the overall director of the Center and, according to the scuttlebut, had been meeting all morning with George Low, the director of Flight Missions, to determine if there was some plan that would allow NASA to save face without running the risk of losing more crews. Slayton and Kraft arrived in Gilruth’s oflice, and he and Low got straight to business.

“Chris, we’ve got serious problems with the upcoming flights,” Low said bluntly. “We’ve got the Russians and we’ve got the LEM and neither one is cooperating.”

“Especially the LEM,” Kraft responded. “We’re having every kind of trouble it’s possible to have.”

“So it couldn’t be ready by December?” Low asked.

“No chance,” said Kraft.

“If we wanted to fly Apollo 8 on schedule, what could we do with just the command‑service module that will further the program?”

“Not much in Earth orbit,” Kraft said. “Most of what we can do with that we’re already planning to do on 7.”

“True enough,” Low said tentatively. “But suppose Apollo 8 didn’t just repeat 7’s mission. If we don’t have an operative LEM by December, could we do something else with the command‑service module alone?” Low paused for a moment. “like orbit the moon?”

Kraft looked away and fell silent for a long minute, calculating the incalculable question Low had just asked him. He looked back at his boss and slowly shook his head.

“George”, he said, “That’s a pretty difficult order. We’re having a hell of a struggle getting the computer programs ready just for an Earth‑orbit flight. You’re asking what I think about a moon flight in four months? I don’t think we can do it.”

Low seemed strangely unperturbed. He turned to Slayton. “What about the crews, Deke? If we could get the systems ready for a lunar mission, would you have a crew that could make the flight?”

“The crew isn’t a problem,” Slayton answered. “They could get ready.”

Low pressed him. “Who would you want to send? McDivitt, Scott, and Schweickart are next in line.”

“I wouldn’t give it to them,” Slayton said. “They’ve been training with the LEM for a long time, and McDivitt’s made it clear he wants to fly that ship. Borman’s crew hasn’t been at it as long, plus they’re already thinking about deep‑space reentry, something they’d need for a mission like this. I’d give it to Borman, Lovell, and Anders.”

Low was encouraged by Slayton’s response, and Kraft, infected by the enthusiasm of the other men in the room, began to soften. He asked Low for a little time to talk to his technicians and see if the computer problems could be resolved. Low agreed, and Kraft left with Slayton, promising an answer in a few days. Returning to his office, Kraft hurriedly assembled his team around him.

“I’m going to ask you a question, and I want an answer in seventy‑two hours,” he said. “Could we get our computer problems unravelled in time to get to the moon by December?”

Kraft’s team vanished, and returned not in the requested seventy‑two hours, but in twenty‑four. Their answer was a unanimous one: yes, they told him, the job could be done.

Kraft got back on the phone to Low: “We think it’s a good idea,” he told the director of Flight Missions. “As long as nothing goes wrong on Apollo 7, we think we ought to send Apollo 8 to the moon over Christmas.”

On October 11, 1968, Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham tested the Apollo 7 Command Service Module (CSM) in a low Earth orbit; eleven days later they plopped down in the Atlantic Ocean. The media applauded the mission wildly, the president phoned his congratulations to the crew, and NASA declared that the flight had more than achieved its objectives. Inside the Agency, flight planners set about the task of sending Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders to the moon just sixty days later.

Unlike the Gemini spacecraft, the Apollo program went back to using an escape tower. Aldrin:

Apollo 7, the first manned Block II CSM, lifted off perfectly with the ignition of the Saturn IB at 11:00 am on October 11, 1968. This was Wally Schirra’s third flight and the first for Walt Cunningham and Donn Eisele. Their ride on the Saturn IB booster was bumpy for the first few minutes, and on ignition the S‑IVB second stage gave them a good kick in the pants. The new mixed‑gas cabin atmosphere in this Block II command module, composed of 40 percent nitrogen and 60 percent oxygen, also worked well. After a short time in orbit the nitrogen had been vented and the crew were breathing pure oxygen at a safe, low cabin pressure.

The flight’s principal objective was to check out the CSM, especially its big service propulsion system (SPS) engine. The crew worked their way into the flight plan slowly, trying to avoid the spacesickness that could ambush an overeager astronaut. As he had on his Mercury and Gemini flights, Wally Schirra managed to combine the precision of an experienced flight test engineer with the zaniness of a fraternity boy. After firing the SPS engine for the first time, Wally shouted, “Yabadabadoo!” just like Fred Flintstone.

After several more firings to modify their orbit, they made a mock rendezvous and docking with the S‑IVB stage before settling down for a rigorous orbital test flight of the CSM. Under zero‑G conditions, the command module seemed very roomy. They could float into odd corners to “sit” or sleep. Unfortunately, several of their many windows were fogged up with condensation or streaked with soot from the escape tower’s solid rockets. Nobody got spacesick, but they all caught bad colds, the result of an ill‑conceived hunting trip in the Florida marshes with racing driver and car dealer Jim Rathman. But they had practiced the mission in simulators so many times over the past months that their performance was flawless.

Over the next 10 days, Wally and his crew adapted to the spacecraft’s quirks, like sweating coolant pipes, banging thrusters, and a rudimentary sanitation system. Walt Cunningham and Schirra even accomplished feats of weightless gymnastics in the spacious lower equipment bay below the crew couches.

Television coverage was a key part of the public relations dividends of this flight. Wally had brusquely vetoed the first planned live TV broadcast because that day’s flight plan was overcrowded. (And he later revealed he was mad at Mission Control for launching them into high‑altitude winds.) But soon he returned to his jovial self. He and Walt even held up professionally printed placards that quipped to the camera: “Hello From the Lovely Apollo Room High Atop Everything.”

For the first time in 23 months, America could see its astronauts in space again. Their competence, their humor, and the Apollo spacecraft’s sophistication went a long way to raise the national mood in an extremely troubled year. In the first eight months of 1968 there had been the Tet offensive in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the May student revolt in Paris, the riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August. These three grinning astronauts tumbling and pirouetting in their roomy spacecraft were just what the country needed to see.

After splashdown in the Atlantic less than a mile from the aircraft carrier Essex , NASA called the mission “101 percent successful.”

The Soviet program had expanded so much that it needed a new centre for cosmonauts. This was called Zvedezni Gorodok (Star Town). They tested a modified Soyuz/Proton disguised as a Zond craft. Zond were unmanned deep space probes.