Felxibility of Apollo design (was Space station future adrift (Soyuz purchase crisis) )

Jeff Findley ) wrote:

"John Doe" wrote in message ...
NASA built Apollo for a single very precise mission: get a few
humans to moon
and back.

This is not right. NASA was working on Apollo as a general purpose
spacecraft before they got the "to the moon" mandate from Kennedy.

Apollo was a very good general purpose capsule, as evidenced by its use for
lunar missions, Skylab missions, and ASTP. Other uses were planned as part
of the Apollo Applications Project, but those were all cancelled when it was
decided that the shuttle would replace Apollo/Saturn. Skylab and ASTP were
the two remaining bits from the AAP program.

Correct, sort of. I knew Owen Maynard, one of the engineers who was
first hired into the Space Task Group in 1959, and who (after working
on Mercury for some months---including doing some scuba diving to
retrieve bits of MA-1 from the ocean floor!) was moved in 1960 into
the group working on early systems engineering for post-Mercury
missions. According to Murray&Cox's Apollo book, that group had been
formed to "start thinking about a lunar mission in a more organized
fashion" (several people in NASA at the time, including Max Faget, had
been thinking/talking about Lunar missions for awhile before then).
From Owen's reminisces, the approach taken by that group appears to
have been to back off a bit from just Lunar missions, to try to map
out a variety of possible post-Mercury missions; the Apollo spacecraft
concept was then developed to envelope those missions. That's where
the modular concept for Apollo came from, since some missions would
need things that others wouldn't, and with a modular concept you could
keep what you needed from the basic concept for a given mission,
without having to carry along massive things you didn't need. (Owen
may well have made the first sketches of the overall Apollo
configuration.)

In parallel with this, I'm sure that various senior NASA managers were
lobbying up through the chain of command for some sort of
life-after-Mercury mission for NASA. Various concepts for this mission
were undoubtedly floated, including the Lunar mission concept; it
appears that the working-level engineers and engineering managers were
pushing for this one, but they didn't know if the administration would
bite, so they also offered up other concepts, just in case.

One of Owen's stories was about the designs for the Mars mission and
the Earth-orbiting space station that they did around the same time as
they did the Lunar mission design. They all used the Apollo spacecraft
design as their basis for moving astronauts to and fro. I have in
front of me right now, a drawing that Owen left me, of the "Radial
Module All-Rigid Space Station" that one of the draftsment did for him
in 1962; designed to be launched on a Saturn V, using a ciyple of
"6-man ferry-logistics vehicles" docked to it, basically an Apollo
CSM. Owen also prepared (and patented) a design for a trans-Mars space
station based on this design (I think that one was planning on using a
NERVA upper stage to push it out to Mars and back again)---this was
actually released by one of the commercial model companies as a
plastic kid's model in the 1960s, as "NASA's Space Station."

The impression that Owen gave me was basically that these three files
(space station, Lunar mission and Mars mission) were developed to
similar levels by the engineering team, and used as lures by Gilruth
et al. to tempt Kennedy's administration into agreeing to some sort of
post-Mercury program. There's a famous memo assocaited with Kennedy's
Lunar mission decisio that alludes to these. If Kennedy and his
advisors had been jsut a little more nervous about how far ahead
they'd have to aim in order to be sure the Russians wouldn't be able
to catch up with them, he mght have ended up picking the Mars mission
instead, in which case Owen and company would have focused their
efforts on moving that one beyond the concept phase. What a "What
If...? scenario! (Interestingly, it appears that whatever mission was
chosen at that point was going to be named Apollo.)

- Kieran A. Carroll

(Kieran A. Carroll) wrote:
That's where the modular concept for Apollo came from, since some
missions would need things that others wouldn't, and with a modular
concept you could keep what you needed from the basic concept
for a given mission, without having to carry along massive things you
didn't need.

The problem with this statement is... There is nothing modular about
the Apollo spacecraft. The CSM is a matched pair always and forever.

(The Apollo *program* was semi-modular, the Apollo *spacecraft* is
not. The two are often assumed to be the same because historically
the terms were used interchangeably. It's important to recognize that
the two terms are different and cover different, if overlapping,
ideas.)

The impression that Owen gave me was basically that these three files
(space station, Lunar mission and Mars mission) were developed to
similar levels by the engineering team, and used as lures by Gilruth
et al. to tempt Kennedy's administration into agreeing to some sort of
post-Mercury program.

So how does all this square with the known fact that the STG and NASA
senior management were caught utterly blindsided by Kennedy's
announcement of the lunar mission?

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

In article ,
Derek Lyons wrote:
That's where the modular concept for Apollo came from...

The problem with this statement is... There is nothing modular about
the Apollo spacecraft. The CSM is a matched pair always and forever.

Uh, no, not really. The CM needs *some sort* of SM, but it doesn't have
to be the lunar-mission SM. Many of the proto-Skylab concept drawings,
for example, show Apollos with what are clearly *not* lunar SMs. The SM
provided a few well-defined services via well-defined interfaces, and
doing alternate versions wouldn't have been a big trick. A station ferry,
for example, could have a much smaller main engine with much smaller
tanks, no high-gain antenna, batteries instead of fuel cells, and
compressed GOX rather than LOX for breathing.

In fact, it would have made sense to build a revised SM even for later
lunar missions, with a smaller but more sophisticated main engine, giving
lower thrust but higher Isp. The SPS was sized for a lunar takeoff, to
get development going before the EOR/LOR war was over.

Somewhat odder are the "mission modules" that some early concepts showed.
Some just had instruments operated from the CM, but others seemed to be
manned, with pressurized internal volume... but it wasn't clear how you
would *get there* from the CM.

In hindsight, Apollo would have been more versatile if built like the TKS,
with a heatshield hatch and a pressurized SM.

The impression that Owen gave me was basically that these three files
(space station, Lunar mission and Mars mission) were developed to
similar levels by the engineering team, and used as lures by Gilruth
et al. to tempt Kennedy's administration into agreeing to some sort of
post-Mercury program.

So how does all this square with the known fact that the STG and NASA
senior management were caught utterly blindsided by Kennedy's
announcement of the lunar mission?

They weren't envisioning anything like that *schedule*. Their idea of a
lunar-mission focus was LEO flights in the mid-60s, and high-orbit and
then circumlunar flights in the late 60s, followed by development of
second-generation hardware to attempt a lunar landing in the mid-late 70s.
The original specs for what became the CSM called for missions in Earth
orbit and lunar orbit... but not a landing.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
(Kieran A. Carroll) wrote:
That's where the modular concept for Apollo came from, since some
missions would need things that others wouldn't, and with a modular
concept you could keep what you needed from the basic concept
for a given mission, without having to carry along massive things you
didn't need.

The problem with this statement is... There is nothing modular about
the Apollo spacecraft. The CSM is a matched pair always and forever.

The CM computer definitely started out as modular, with even the requirement
that modules could be swapped (in case of failure) during mission (visionary
idea in 1960s and we take for granted today as a feasible design construct)

The impression that Owen gave me was basically that these three files
(space station, Lunar mission and Mars mission) were developed to
similar levels by the engineering team, and used as lures by Gilruth
et al. to tempt Kennedy's administration into agreeing to some sort of
post-Mercury program.

... and the odd thing was the MIT team actually had a Mars feasibility study
underway in the late 1950s.

gb

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...

The problem with this statement is... There is nothing modular about
the Apollo spacecraft. The CSM is a matched pair always and forever.


Perhaps KAC meant that the LM and Saturn V launch vehicle could be left
behind or changed out (respectively) for each Apollo mission. For example
for most orbital missions the smaller Saturn IB could be used. Also IIRC
more seats could be added to the CM at the expense of cargo space and
mission length. More or less fuel, or different
equipment, could be carried in the SM too.

However, I think NASA would rather have used something else for Skylab and
ASTP.

"rk" wrote in message
...
w9gb wrote:

.. and the odd thing was the MIT team actually had a Mars feasibility
study underway in the late 1950s.

This the one that you're thinking of? I haven't read it in a while but
recalled where it was on the www (good read in any case):

-- rk

"Design Principles for a General Control Computer"

Ramon L. Alonso and J. Hal Laning
Report R-276, April 1960
[snip]
http://klabs.org/history/history_docs/mit_docs/agc.htm


YES, in fact I was thinking of Eldon Hall's book which is a condensed
version of many of these discussions and papers, In the history before
Apollo (Hall's book) he goes into a bit more detail about the Mars
feasibility studies, especially guidance -- as being important in thinking
through the problem -- before having to actual build hardware to achieve it.

Thanks for the web links.

gb

w9gb wrote:
.. and the odd thing was the MIT team actually had a Mars feasibility study
underway in the late 1950s.

There are people with independent deep space habitat,
Mercury, Venus, Asteroid, Jovian and Saturnian moon
and outer planet manned mission feasibility studies
underway. And a few thinking as far out as interstellar.

Many of those are hard, but it bears thinking about.


-george william herbert

In article ,
says...
There is nothing modular about
the Apollo spacecraft. The CSM is a matched pair always and forever.

Wasn't there some non-trivial thoughts about a light-weight mini-SM for
use with Earth-orbit missions like Skylab?
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

The loss of the American system of checks and balances
is more of a security danger than any terrorist risk.
-- Bruce Schneier

"Kevin Willoughby" wrote in message
...

Wasn't there some non-trivial thoughts about a light-weight mini-SM for
use with Earth-orbit missions like Skylab?

I think it's true that the Skylab SMs weighed a good deal less than the
lunar mission ones, but to justify designing a new mini-SM would probably
have needed a different space station, one that could be restocked.

Kevin Willoughby wrote:

In article ,
says...
There is nothing modular about
the Apollo spacecraft. The CSM is a matched pair always and forever.

Wasn't there some non-trivial thoughts about a light-weight mini-SM for
use with Earth-orbit missions like Skylab?

There was. But substituting a SM late in the game isn't the same as
designing a modular system.

The OP suggested that Apollo was a system where you only hauled along
what you needed for a specific mission, leaving the remainder at home.
That is in fact,a modular system, but it's not how Apollo was
designed.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL