themagicofreality:

Saturn V Up Close by Dwayne

(Source: thedemon-hauntedworld)

themagicofreality:

One Small Step by Andrew Harriman

Saturn V rocket on display at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

(Source: thedemon-hauntedworld)

NASA Mega-Rocket Could Lead to Skylab 2 Deep Space Station

NASA’s first manned outpost in deep space may be a repurposed rocket part, just like the agency’s first-ever astronaut abode in Earth orbit.

With a little tinkering, the upper-stage hydrogen propellant tank of NASA’s huge Space Launch System rocket would make a nice and relatively cheap deep-space habitat, some researchers say. They call the proposed craft “Skylab II,” an homage to the 1970s Skylab space station that was a modified third stage of a Saturn V moon rocket.

“This idea is not challenging technology,” said Brand Griffin, an engineer with Gray Research, Inc., who works with the Advanced Concepts Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

“It’s just trying to say, ‘Is this the time to be able to look at existing assets, planned assets and incorporate those into what we have as a destination of getting humans beyond LEO [low-Earth orbit]?’” Griffin said Wednesday (March 27) during a presentation with NASA’s Future In-Space Operations working group.

A roomy home in deep space
NASA is developing the Space Launch System (SLS) to launch astronauts toward distant destinations such as near-Earth asteroids and Mars. The rocket’s first test flight is slated for 2017, and NASA wants it to start lofting crews by 2021.

The SLS will stand 384 feet tall (117 meters) in its biggest (“evolved”) incarnation, which will be capable of blasting 130 metric tons of payload to orbit. Its upper-stage hydrogen tank is big, too, measuring 36.1 feet tall by 27.6 feet wide (11.15 m by 8.5 m).

The tank’s dimensions yield an internal volume of 17,481 cubic feet (495 cubic m) — roughly equivalent to a two-story house. That’s much roomier than a potential deep-space habitat derived from modules of the International Space Station (ISS), which are just 14.8 feet (4.5 m) wide, Griffin said.

The tank-based Skylab II could accommodate a crew of four comfortably and carry enough gear and food to last for several years at a time without requiring a resupply, he added. Further, it would launch aboard the SLS in a single piece, whereas ISS-derived habitats would need to link up multiple components in space.

Because of this, Skylab II would require relatively few launches to establish and maintain, Griffin said. That and the use of existing SLS-manufacturing infrastructure would translate into big cost savings — a key selling point in today’s tough fiscal climate.

“We will have the facilities in place, the tooling, the personnel, all the supply chain and everything else,” Griffin said.

He compared the overall concept with the original Skylab space station, which was built in a time of declining NASA budgets after the boom years of the Apollo program.

Skylab “was a project embedded under the Apollo program,” Griffin said. “In many ways, this could follow that same pattern. It could be a project embedded under SLS and be able to, ideally, not incur some of the costs of program startup.”

Living beyond the moon
Griffin and his colleagues envision placing Skylab II at the Earth-moon Lagrange point 2, a gravitationally stable location beyond the moon’s far side.

Over the past year or so, NASA has been drawing up plans for a possible manned outpost at EM-L2. A station there would establish a human presence in deep space, serve as a staging ground for lunar operations and help build momentum for exploring more distant destinations, such as asteroids and Mars, advocates say.

The Skylab II concept could also help ferry astronauts to these far-flung locales, Griffin said.

“You can build multiple vehicles,” he said. “If we were to send this one, the first one, out to Earth-moon L2, you could build another that that could be a transit hab. So rather than having to go back and use space station parts, you would be able to pick these off the line.”

pennyfournasa:

“Unlike the first ice skates or the first airplane or the first desktop computer—artifacts that make us all chuckle when we see them today—the first rocket to the Moon, the 364-foot-tall Saturn V rocket, elicits awe, even reverence.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson 

Many of us would like to think that the technologies of today are undoubtedly more advanced than those of the past. This simply isn’t true. Case and point: the Saturn V rocket. First launched in 1964 , it remains the most powerful machine ever built. In September 2011, NASA announced plans for a new heavy-lift rocket known as the Space Launch System (SLS). The SLS would be the first to rival the Saturn V rocket. 

Let Congress know that you support doubling funding for NASA:

http://www.penny4nasa.org/take-action/

Learn more here: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/

Jeff Bezos Recovers Apollo Rocket Engines From Deep Ocean

After lying on the ocean floor for more than 40 years, two Apollo rocket engines that helped deliver astronauts to the moon are once again seeing the light of day.

A team organized by Jeff Bezos spent three weeks fishing at sea to recover the corroded F-1 engines, which sat more than 4 kilometers below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Bezos does not yet know precisely which Apollo mission the engines flew on as the original serial numbers on the objects are missing. He is hoping they are the Apollo 11 engines that brought the first men to the moon. On Mar. 20, his team’s ship was heading back to Cape Canaveral in Florida with the aged pieces to restore them and perhaps determine which mission they came from.

“We’ve seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program,” Bezos wrote in a blog post. “We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces. Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible.”

Billionaire Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, announced his intentions to pull the Space Age relics up from the depths almost exactly one year ago. Little has been heard about the endeavor since then but that’s often how Bezos works. His private rocket company, Blue Origin, is probably the most secretive new corporation getting into the commercial launch business.

Pulling the F-1 engines up was a tremendous engineering challenge. The team used remotely operated vehicles tethered with fiber optic cables to work in the black depths at the bottom of the Atlantic. After restoring the engines and stabilizing them to prevent further corrosion, Bezos hopes to display them at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, though the ultimate decision for where to put them will probably involve NASA.

“This is a historic find and I congratulate the team for its determination and perseverance in the recovery of these important artifacts of our first efforts to send humans beyond Earth orbit,” wrote NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement about the recovery. ”We look forward to the restoration of these engines by the Bezos team and applaud Jeff’s desire to make these historic artifacts available for public display.”

The F-1 engines flew on the gigantic Saturn V, still the largest and most powerful rocket ever built in the U.S. Each engine is nearly 6 meters tall and 4 meters wide and weighs more than 8,000 kg. They produced 7.7 million pounds of thrust and brought the Saturn V to nearly 58 km above the Earth at a top speed of and to a speed of almost 10,000 km/hr.

Watch: Jeff Bezos Recovers Apollo Engines

Sagan & Swan’s Voyager Mars Landing Sites (1965)

Until the 1980s, most U.S. automated space explorers bore names connoting ventures into unknown parts – Explorer, Pioneer, Ranger, Surveyor, Mariner, and Voyager. Most people today identify the last of these names with the spectacularly successful pair of outer Solar System flyby spacecraft launched in the late 1970s. There was, however, an earlier Voyager program. First proposed in 1960 as a follow-on to the planned Mariner planetary flyby program, the original Voyager aimed to explore Venus and (especially) Mars using orbiters and landing capsules.

Carl Sagan, an assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard, and Paul Swan, Senior Project Scientist at Avco Corporation, published results of a study of possible Voyager Mars landing sites in the January-February 1965 issue of Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. For their study, they invoked a Voyager design Avco had developed in 1963 on contract to NASA Headquarters. The “split-payload” design comprised an orbiter “bus” based on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mariner (or proposed advanced Mariner-B) design and a landing capsule shaped like the Apollo Command Module (that is, conical, with a bowl-shaped heat shield). Bus and capsule would leave Earth together on a Saturn IB rocket with an “S-VI” upper stage (a modified Centaur stage).

The Voyager lander would be sterilized to prevent biological contamination of Mars. Near Mars it would separate from the orbiter, enter the martian atmosphere, and float to a gentle touchdown suspended from a parachute. The Avco design included no landing rockets, which meant that more lander mass could be devoted to instruments for exploring the planet. The lander would operate on Mars for at least 180 days. The Voyager orbiter, meanwhile, would fire rockets to slow down so that Mars’s gravity could capture it into a polar orbit, from which it would image the entire martian surface and serve as a radio relay for the lander.

Swan and Sagan noted that operational constraints would limit possible Mars landing sites. For example, the orbiter and Earth would need to rise at least 10° above the horizon at the landing site to permit daily radio communication sessions, and the Sun would need to be rise at least 10° above the horizon so that the lander’s solar-powered science instruments could function properly. Such constraints would combine to create landing “footprints” that would vary widely depending on the Earth-Mars transfer opportunity used. The footprint for the 1969 minimum-energy opportunity, for example, would take the form of a north-pointing wedge centered on 270° longitude and spanning from 70° south to 60° north latitude.

Avco’s Voyager lander was designed so that it could be targeted to specific regions within such footprints, Sagan and Swan noted. They proposed that exobiologically interesting sites be accorded top priority in Voyager lander site selection. Sagan and Swan then looked at possible exobiologically interesting areas accessible to the Voyager landers launched during the 1969, 1971, 1973, and 1975 minimum-energy opportunities.

Their list of such sites was, of course, based entirely on Earth-based telescopic observations, for no spacecraft had yet visited Mars. They also used surface feature names that had been assigned by telescopic observers (image at top of post); those names would be superseded soon after the 1971-1972 Mariner 9 Mars orbiter mission.Sagan and Swan described the “wave of darkening” observed since the 19th century. The “wave” was regularly observed spreading from the pole to the equator in the martian springtime hemisphere. When they wrote their paper, it was widely interpreted as indicative of martian water, atmospheric circulation, and vegetation. Theory had it that, as the polar ice cap melted, atmospheric moisture increased and circulated toward the equator. Hardy plants then darkened as they absorbed the moisture from the thin air.

The first two Voyager landers would reach Mars on 31 October 1969, during springtime in the planet’s southern hemisphere. The wave of darkening would be near its peak, making it the best biological exploration opportunity until 1984. Top priority landing sites would include the northern hemisphere regions Solis Lacus and Syrtis Major, which Sagan and Swan described as the “[d]arkest of the Martian dark areas.” On the landing date, both regions would lie at the northern extreme of the southern hemisphere darkening wave and would be relatively warm.

Voyager spacecraft launched in the 1971 minimum-energy opportunity would arrive at the planet on 14 December 1971. Swan and Sagan noted that the 1971 opportunity would need the least amount of energy of any opportunity they considered, and suggested two possible ways of taking advantage of this. Four landers (two per orbiter) could reach Mars as the southern hemisphere wave of darkening faded. Top priority landing sites for this approach would be the southern polar cap, southern hemisphere dark areas Mare Cimmerium and Aurorae Sinus, and Lunae Palus in the north.

Alternately, the 1971 Voyager missions could use a higher-energy path to deliver two landers to Mars as the southern hemisphere darkening wave began. “Thus,” they wrote, “the exobiologically highly desirable characteristics of the 1969 arrival [could] be completely duplicated in the 1971 launch period.”

In the 1973 opportunity, which would see a landing on 24 February 1974, two landers would explore Mars’s deserts and “the so-called canal features.” The accessible landing sites would be relatively cold on the arrival date. Top-priority sites would include Propontis, a region containing a “typical Martian canal,” and Elysium, a “near circular anomalous bright region of ‘pinkish’ coloration” in the northern hemisphere.

Sagan and Swan proposed that two Voyager landers leave Earth during the 1975 minimum-energy opportunity. They would land on Mars on 28 August 1976. Top-priority sites would include the northern polar cap and Mare Cimmerium, where the wave of darkening would reach its peak as the 1975 landers arrived.

Swan and Sagan looked briefly at the possibility of launching Voyager spacecraft on the powerful Saturn V rockets that were under development for the Apollo manned lunar program at the time they wrote their paper. They found that “superior site selection could be performed” if the giant moon rocket were applied to Mars exploration. In fact, their “preliminary calculations” showed that “the landing footprints for all post-1971 opportunities may be made to superimpose on the [highly favorable] 1969 footprint” if the Saturn V were used.

The first successful automated Mars spacecraft, 261-kilogram Mariner IV, departed Cape Kennedy, Florida, on an Atlas-Agena rocket on 28 November 1964, and flew past Mars on 14-15 July 1965, six months after Sagan & Swan’s paper saw print. Mariner IV revealed a cratered, distressingly moon-like Mars with an atmosphere ten times less dense than expected. The 21 grainy images of the planet the little spacecraft beamed to Earth revealed no signs of water or life. The Avco Voyager design Sagan & Swan had invoked for their study would have depended entirely on parachutes to descend to a soft landing; Mariner IV showed that, while parachutes might still be used, heavy landing rockets would also be needed to enable a soft landing.

This new operational constraint contributed to NASA’s October 1965 decision to employ the Saturn V as Voyager’s launcher. At least as important as the new Mars atmosphere data in this decision was, however, the desire to find new tasks for the Saturn V after it had done its part to place a man on the moon. In 1964-1965, at the request of president Lyndon B. Johnson, NASA had begun to plan its post-Apollo future. In January 1965, the Future Programs Task Group, a body appointed by NASA Administrator James Webb, recommended that the post-Apollo NASA program be based on Apollo-Saturn hardware.Accordingly, in August 1965, NASA Headquarters formed the Saturn-Apollo Applications (SAA) Program Office. By mid-1966, SAA planners expected to fly as many as 40 manned missions using Saturn-Apollo hardware beginning in 1968.

At about the same time, NASA began high-level agency-wide studies of Saturn V-launched manned Mars/Venus flyby missions – what Charles Townes, chair of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, dubbed a “manned Voyager” program. The first of these missions was expected to leave Earth in 1975.

Despite Sagan & Swan’s endorsement of the Saturn V, the fledgling planetary science community harbored mixed feelings about the decision to launch Voyager spacecraft on the giant rocket. The decision in December 1965 to postpone the first Voyager mission to the 1973 Mars-Earth transfer opportunity reinforced these misgivings. Combined with the post-Mariner IV redesign, the switch to the Saturn V drove the estimated Voyager cost-per-mission past $2 billion. The high cost made the program increasingly vulnerable as NASA funding reached its Apollo-era peak in 1965-1966 and began a speedy decline.

In August 1967, in the wake of the Apollo 1 fire, Congress killed Voyager and manned flyby mission studies and slashed funding for the Apollo Applications Program (AAP), as SAA had become known. The manned flyby program all but disappeared from NASA’s collective memory and AAP shrank rapidly to become the Skylab Program. In October 1970, NASA permanently closed the Saturn V assembly line, which had been on standby since 1968. The last Saturn V to fly launched the Skylab Orbital Workshop in May 1973.

Voyager, for its part, rose again. In fact, one might argue that it rose again twice. In October 1967, NASA officials, citing Soviet planetary ambitions, met with Congressional leaders to propose a new NASA robotic program for the 1970s. In the new plan, which Congress first funded in 1968, Viking replaced Voyager. Like the Avco Voyager, Viking comprised a lander and a Mariner-derived orbiter; unlike Avco’s Voyager, the Viking orbiter was meant to retain its lander until after it had captured into Mars orbit. The Viking Program’s Titan IIIE-Centaur launch vehicle was approximately equivalent to Saturn IB-Centaur in capability.

Funding shortfalls pushed launch of the twin Vikings from 1973 to 1975. Viking 1 left Earth on 20 August 1975 (image at top of post), and Viking 2 followed on 9 September 1975. In July-August 1976, the Viking landers became the first and second spacecraft to land successfully on Mars.

Meanwhile, in 1972, Congress approved the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn (MJS) flyby mission. The twin MJS spacecraft were christened Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 and launched in 1977. Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter (1979) and Saturn (1980); Voyager 2 flew past Jupiter (1979), Saturn (1981), Uranus (1986), and Neptune (1989). To date, Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft from Earth to have visited Uranus and Neptune.

Carl Sagan’s career after 1965 is well documented. He was involved in nearly all subsequent planetary missions, including the twin Vikings and twin Voyagers, and became by the early 1980s arguably the most important science popularizer since Galileo Galilei. His death at age 62 in December 1996 left a void that has not been filled. Paul Swan, for his part, led Avco’s seminal 1966 study of manned Mars surface operations and joined the staff of NASA’s Ames Research Center by 1970. He remained active there until at least the late 1970s.

The Voyagers continue to operate more than 34 years after launch and more than 50 years after the Voyager name was first proposed. Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object; at this writing it is about 120 Astronomical Units (AUs) out (one AU = the Earth-Sun distance of about 93 million miles). Sunlight needs more than 17 hours to reach Voyager 1. Both Voyagers have entered a poorly understood borderland called the heliosheath; Voyager 1 is widely expected to cross the heliopause and enter interstellar space before 2015.

image 2: Avco’s 1963 Voyager design. Image: NASA
image 3: The U.S. Air Force Aeronautical Chart and Information Center based its MEC-1 prototype Mars map on data current as of 1962. This is the Mars Sagan & Swan knew when they planned their Voyager landing sites. Image: U.S. Air Force/Lunar and Planetary Institute
image 4: Mariner IV captured image frame 11E at a distance of 12,600 kilometers from Mars on 15 July 1965. The largest crater in the frame, which is 151 kilometers wide, was named Mariner in honor of the spacecraft. The frame is centered in the region labeled Mare Cimmerium in the MEC-1 map above. Image: NASA
image 5: Voyager as envisioned shortly before its cancellation in 1967. Two such spacecraft would have been launched on a single Saturn V rocket. Image: NASA
image 6: The twin Voyagers are outward bound for the stars. Image: NASA

Reference:
Martian Landing Sites for the Voyager Mission, P. Swan and C. Sagan, Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Volume 2, Number 1, January-February 1965, pp. 18-25.

spacewatching:

On September 8, 1969, a transporter carried the 363-foot-high Apollo 12 Saturn V space vehicle from the Vehicle Assembly Building’s High Bay 3 at the start of the 3.5 mile rollout to Launch Complex 39A. The transporter carried the 12.8 million pound load along the crawlerway at speeds of less than one mile per hour.

pennyfournasa:

The Space Network, a NASA program responsible for transmitting data between satellites, spacecraft, space stations, and Earth, is getting an upgrade tomorrow.

Tentatively set to launch Wednesday, January 30th, at 8:48PM EST atop an Atlas V rocket, a new Tracking and Data Relay Satellite K (TDRS-K) will join seven other satellites currently in orbit who make up the Space Network.

Badri Younes, a scientist in the Space Communications and Navigation office at NASA, had this to say about the TDRS network of satellites:

“All of the beautiful images — looking at galaxies, looking at weather trends, providing support to the International Space Station — are because of TDRS. Science couldn’t be performed the way you expect it today without it.”

Read more: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdrs/index.html

Image Credit: Pat Corkery, United Launch Alliance

At the Seventh International Astronautical Congress, held in Rome in September 1956, Italian aviation and rocketry pioneer Gaetano Crocco described a manned space mission in which a spacecraft would conduct a reconnaissance flyby of Mars, swing past Venus to bend its course toward Earth, and, one year to the day after departing Earth orbit, reenter Earth’s atmosphere. After Earth-orbit departure, the spacecraft would need no additional propulsion. Crocco told the assembled delegates that an opportunity to commence such a mission would next occur in June 1971.

A little less than six years later, in May 1962, the Future Projects Office (FPO) at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, awarded manned Mars mission study contracts worth $250,000 each to General Dynamics, Lockheed, and the Aeronutronic Division of Ford Motor Company. General Dynamics was instructed to study Mars orbital missions, Lockheed to look at Mars flyby and orbital missions, and Aeronutronic to study dual-planet (Mars-Venus) flybys. The combined study effort was known as EMPIRE, an evocative (if somewhat tortured) acronym that stood for Early Manned Planetary-Interplanetary Roundtrip Expeditions.

EMPIRE took place against the backdrop of the Apollo lunar program. One year before its start, in a speech before a special joint session of Congress, President John F. Kennedy had put NASA on course for the moon. He had given the U.S. civilian space agency, which had been founded less three years earlier, until the end of the 1960s to achieve his goal. It was hoped, however, that an American could land on the moon as early as 1967, during Kennedy’s second term in office.

As EMPIRE began, NASA had nearly completed the contentious 14-month process of choosing the fastest, most reliable, and cheapest way of placing men on the moon. The Lunar Orbit Rendezvous mode, which would rely on MSFC’s Saturn C-5 rocket, was selected in July 1962, before EMPIRE reached its conclusion. C-5 was soon renamed Saturn V.

MSFC was fertile ground for NASA’s first major manned planetary mission study. The Huntsville Center’s director was Wernher von Braun (image at top of post), a famous advocate of manned flight to the moon and Mars. Von Braun’s efforts in the 1950s to popularize spaceflight had helped to prime the American public for the 1960s Space Race with the Soviet Union.

(Read more via the link)

The Proper Course for Lunar Exploration (1965)

image: MOLAB with side-mounted drill (foreground) and Apollo LEM as conceived in 1964-1965. The MOLAB would have arrived on the moon ahead of the piloted LEM on an unmanned LEM Truck. Image: Bendix/NASA

For a time, Thomas Evans headed up the Advanced Lunar Missions Study Program in the NASA Headquarters Office of Manned Space Flight. By the time of the 11th Annual Meeting of the American Astronautical Society (AAS) in May 1965, however, he had retired from NASA and become a farmer in Iowa. This gave him the freedom to speak his mind about what he felt were the Apollo Program’s shortcomings.

Evans told assembled members of the AAS that “the idea of a manned [landing] on the moon was so spectacular…that [it] dominated most pronouncements and thoughts on the space program.” He argued, however, that this objective had “too much the flavor of a stunt to be the final goal of a $20 billion national effort.” Evans maintained that

[Our] situation today is comparable to one which might have occurred during the railroad building era in America a century ago. It is as if the federal government had invested vast sums in the construction of the first railroad spanning the North American continent, but had procurred only a single engine and caboose… The first crossing by that engine and caboose would have been a major milestone in man’s progress and would have been greeted with enthusiasm and applause. But then those responsible for the program would have faced a major decision…Should the project be stopped? Should the engine-caboose be run repeatedly back and forth across the Continent to constantly remind the world of our great achievement? Or should a further modest investment be made in…some freight and passenger cars, to convert the system into something of practical value? Only the last solution would have been tenable then, and only a similar constructive approach would seem acceptable now.

Evans argued that the Saturn rockets and Apollo spacecraft NASA had under development would provide “an excellent base upon which to build a broad program of manned…lunar exploration beyond the first landing.” Evans pointed to statements by President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey which he said made clear that “the United States fully intends to explore the moon, not merely to visit it.” He also noted that NASA expected to be able to launch six Saturn V rockets per year beginning in 1969.

After explaining that “most Saturn Vs will be used for lunar operations since there are only a limited number of credible missions for this vehicle in earth orbital and planetary programs during the early 1970s,” Evans outlined four candidate Saturn-Apollo-based lunar exploration programs. In the first, the baseline Apollo program, a single Saturn V rocket would launch a Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) carrying three astronauts and the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) (as the Apollo Lunar Module – LM – was known at this time). Two astronauts would land on the moon in the LEM for a one-day stay. They would explore an area 0.2 miles in radius centered on their LEM. The crew would have at its disposal only 250 pounds of payload such as scientific instruments.

Evans’s second candidate program would be based on the Apollo Extension System (AES) that NASA had begun to study as early as 1963. This option would, he explained, permit “sophisticated orbital survey…to gather data on the entire surface of the moon,” as well as lunar surface stays lasting up to 14 days.

Two Saturn V rockets would be required for each AES lunar surface mission. The first would launch a piloted CSM and an automated cargo LEM loaded with 2500 pounds of supplies and equipment. The CSM would transport the cargo LEM to lunar orbit, then the LEM would separate and land automatically on the moon. The CSM and its crew would then return to Earth. The second Saturn V would launch three astronauts and Apollo CSM and LEM spacecraft “improved” to enable long missions. Two astronauts would land in the improved LEM near the cargo LEM, which would serve as their shelter during their 14-day surface stay. They would use a small surface rover or a pair of flying vehicles to explore an area five miles in radius.

The third candidate program, based on Apollo Logistic Support System (ALSS) studies, would also use two Saturn Vs per 14-day surface expedition, but would differ from AES in that the LEM Truck, a beefed-up LEM descent stage capable of delivering four tons of payload to the lunar surface, would replace the cargo LEM. The LEM Truck’s principal payload, Evans wrote, would be the Mobile Laboratory (MOLAB), a pressurized rover that would permit two astronauts to explore an area 50 miles in radius.

Evans noted that, in spite of their impressive capabilities, the AES and ALSS cargo delivery systems would be “inherently inefficient” because astronauts would need to travel to the moon and back to deliver each automated cargo lander. This would mean that the mass of the CSM systems required for crew support and Earth-return (life support, lunar-orbit departure and course-correction propellants, reentry heat shield, and parachutes) would have to be subtracted from the mass of the payload that the AES and ALSS systems could deliver to the moon’s surface.

LESA lunar outpost habitat with advanced crew transport spacecraft in the background. Lunar dirt emplaced atop the habitat provides radiation protection. Image: Boeing/NASA

The fourth program of lunar exploration, Lunar Exploration Systems for Apollo (LESA), would avoid this inefficiency. LESA, Evans explained, was “a family of shelters, vehicles, and other equipment…tailored to support not only short-term reconnaissance operations by two or three astronauts but also semi-permanent scientific stations manned by up to 12 or even 18 men.” The Saturn V-launched LESA lander would need no CSM, enabling delivery of up to 14 tons of payload. Crew delivery at first would be by improved Apollo CSM and a LEM capable of landing three men on the moon. A 90-day, three-man LESA 1 expedition could explore an area 80 miles in radius; a 365-day, 12-to-18-man LESA 3 outpost with advanced manned landers for crew rotation and resupply could survey an area 200 miles in radius. The former would require a total of three Saturn V launches; the latter, 10 to 17 Saturn V launches.

Developing the AES would cost an additional $500 million over the $20 billion already committed to Apollo, Evans estimated, while ALSS would cost $1 billion. LESA 1 would cost $2 billion – just 10% of the amount already committed to Apollo, he noted – and LESA 3 would evolve from LESA 1 for an additional cost of just $800 million.

Evans then proposed a two-phase lunar program. In Phase I, which would be based on AES, ALSS, or LESA 1, astronauts would explore three areas of the moon judged to be of “major geoscientific interest” totaling up to 1800 square miles (“a meager sample,” Evans noted, “of the total 10 million square miles of lunar surface”). In Phase II, which would be based on LESA 3 modified for six astronauts, NASA would maintain an outpost on the moon for four years.

Evans compared operations costs for the four programs. He determined that a combination of LESA 1 in Phase I and modified LESA 3 in Phase II would be most economical, with a total cost of less than $8 billion. ALSS/modified LESA 3, with an operations cost of $8.3 billion, would also be economically acceptable, while AES/modified LESA 3 would be “a disastrous selection” – together, the two phases would cost a total of about $20 billion.

The retired NASA manager ended his paper by assessing the state of NASA lunar planning. He noted that, of the $26 million allotted to advanced manned systems studies in the Fiscal Year 1965 NASA budget, most was budgeted for examination of inefficient and limited systems such as AES. “Only a trickle,” he wrote, would be devoted to the study of “more sophisticated and efficient systems.”

NASA continued studies of advanced lunar systems throughout the 1960s and on into the 1970s. It focused mainly on AES/ALSS-type missions, which it hoped to fly during the 1970s as part of its Apollo Applications Program (AAP), AES’s successor. Apollo did not, however, imply a long-term commitment to lunar exploration, and, as it became increasingly obvious that the Soviet Union had not made a commitment to manned lunar missions of the same magnitude as the United States, interest in post-Apollo advanced manned lunar systems rapidly faded in the White House and in Congress.

Apollo 1 astronauts Roger Chaffee (left), Ed White, and Gus Grissom during training for their mission. Image: NASA

Even more important, the 27 January 1967 Apollo 1 fire undercut NASA advanced plans. The fire killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee during a launch rehearsal just a few weeks before the planned first manned Apollo mission. The investigation into the cause of the fire revealed engineering and management shortcomings that left Congress in no mood to “reward” the agency by funding new space projects. Apollo, which represented a $25-billion investment in national prestige, suffered almost no funding cuts in the fire’s immediate aftermath, but AAP lunar missions were among the first to feel the knife.

In the 1969-1971 period, when NASA Adminstrator Thomas Paine’s Integrated Program Plan held sway within NASA, the space agency and its contractors studied complex and costly lunar transportation systems (such the Nuclear Shuttle) and lunar bases. Such plans enjoyed no support within the Administration of President Richard Nixon, however, and all IPP planning ceased soon after Paine’s resignation in September 1970.

The image at the top of this post illustrates the course that U.S. lunar exploration took after Evans presented his paper. It shows Apollo 17 Commander Eugene Cernan saluting Old Glory in the Taurus-Littrow valley in December 1972. The last of six missions to land on the moon, Apollo 17 left Earth atop the penultimate Saturn V rocket. The mission’s jeep-like Lunar Roving Vehicle (visible behind Cernan) ranged up to 7.6 kilometers from its home base, the LM Challenger (behind flag), during three traverses spanning three days. The only professional scientist to reach the moon, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, snapped the picture.

Reference:
“Lunar Exploration: What is the Proper Course?” Thomas Evans, Post Apollo Space Exploration, Francis Narin, editor, 1965, pp. 647-661; paper presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of the American Astronautical Society in Chicago, Illinois, May 3-6, 1965.

Mission Milestones: 2013’s Space Exploration Anniversaries
“Spaceship” Earth has completed another revolution around the sun, and has set off on another 365-day, 583-million-mile (940 million kilometers) journey across time and space.

image: An orbital sunrise is seen in this crop from the International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 35 insignia. The mission is set to begin in 2013.
CREDIT: NASA/collectSPACE.com

Over the past year, humankind’s efforts to push farther out into the solar system have resulted in launching the first commercial spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station, landing a car-size rover on Mars, docking the first Chinese manned spacecraft and sending 18 people to live and work off the planet.

In 2012, two probes completed the most detailed map of the moon’s gravity and North Korea (controversially) joined the nations that have lofted a satellite into space.

Over the next 12 months, more commercial spacecraft will visit the station, new probes will be launched to the moon and Mars, and if all goes as planned, the first spacecraft created to fly paying tourists on suborbital spaceflights will leave the Earth’s atmosphere for the first time.

As these and other firsts enter history, they will join a half century of international space milestones. Looking ahead into the coming year, 2013 will mark several key anniversaries for the events of the previous five decades of human activity outside the Earth. [13 Space Missions to Watch In 2013]

First women
Celebrations over the previous few years have marked the 50th anniversary of the first man in space, the first man from the United States in space, and the first American man in orbit. The 40th anniversaries of the manned lunar landings was also commemorated.

Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to fly to space when she launched on the Vostok 6 mission June 16, 1963.
CREDIT: NASA

The new year brings with it the 50-year anniversary of the first woman in space. Launched by the Soviet Union on June 16, 1963, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first female space explorer as she circled the Earth 48 times. [Women in Space: A Space History Gallery]

Flying under the callsign “Chayka” (Seagull), Tereshkova, aboard the Vostok 6 spacecraft, flew in orbit at the same time as Vostok 5 with pilot Valery Bykovsky on board.

Twenty years later on June 24, 1983, NASA’s Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. A member of the seventh space shuttle mission’s crew, Ride circled the Earth aboard the orbiter Challenger for six days.

On July 23, 2012, Ride succumbed to pancreatic cancer at age 61, less than a year before the 30th anniversary of her historic first spaceflight.

Last single men
Bykovsky, who shared time in Earth orbit with Tereshkova in 1963, set the record on that mission for the most time spent flying in space alone 50 years ago this June. His Vostok 5 mission landed after almost five days.

The last NASA astronaut to circle the planet solo, Gordon Cooper, did so from May 15-16, 1963, for one day and 10 hours. His 22-orbit mission aboard “Faith 7” was the final flight of the United States’ Mercury one-seater spacecraft program.

In the 50 years since Cooper flew, the only Americans to soar through space alone were the six Apollo pilots who orbited the moon solo and the two private pilots who won the suborbital X Prize in 2004.

China’s first astronaut, or taikonaut, also flew alone, ten years ago this Oct. 15. Yang Liwei lifted off on Shenzhou 5 in 2003 for a one-day, 14-orbit mission that established China as only the third nation to send a human into space.

Fallen crew
The first major milestone anniversary of the new year is also perhaps its most solemn: 10 years since the loss of space shuttle Columbia and the STS-107 crew.

Space shuttle Columbia launches on mission STS-107, January 16, 2003.
CREDIT: NASA

Commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool, mission specialists David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark and Michael Anderson, and Israeli payload specialist Ilan Ramon were returning to Earth onboard Columbia when the vehicle broke apart during reentry into the atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003. The 16-day science mission was just 16 minutes from landing.

It was the second time a shuttle was lost in flight after the STS-51L crew was killed aboard space shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986.

An investigation found that Columbia sustained damage to its left wing after foam from its external fuel tank fell and impacted the orbiter’s leading edge during launch. Though NASA worked to prevent foam from separating from future tanks and additional safety measures were implemented, the decision was made to retire the shuttle fleet after the completion of the International Space Station.

In 2012, the remaining three retired shuttle orbiters were delivered to museums for their permanent public display.

First outpost
Skylab, the United States’ first space station, lifted off 40 years ago this May 14.

The U.S. space station Skylab in its prime during the mid-1970s.
CREDIT: NASA

Built into a modified upper stage of a Saturn 5 rocket, the orbital workshop was damaged at launch when its debris shield separated and tore away, depriving Skylab of most of its power, removing protection from solar heating, and threatening to make the station unusable. The first crew, which launched just days later, was able to save Skylab in the first ever in-space repair, by deploying a replacement heat shade and freeing the single remaining, jammed main solar array.

Skylab hosted 300 scientific and technical experiments, including medical studies on the adaptability of humans to zero gravity, solar observations and investigations into Earth resources. The program was deemed successful in all respects, despite its early mechanical difficulties.

Mission milestones

2013 also marks the:
30th anniversary of the first launch of space shuttle Challenger (STS-6) on April 4;
50th anniversary of the first winged craft in space, the U.S. Air Force’s X-15 rocketplane with pilot Joe Walker, on July 19;
30th anniversary of Guion “Guy” Bluford becoming the first African-American in space on Aug. 30;
30th anniversary of the first (and only to date) use of a launch escape system on the launch pad, the former Soviet Union’s Soyuz T-10-1, on Sept. 26;
40th anniversary of Soyuz 12, the return to flight for the Russian spacecraft (after the loss of the Soyuz 11 crew) on Sept. 27;
25th anniversary of STS-26, the first return to flight for the U.S. space shuttle program (after the loss of the STS-51L crew) on Sept. 28;
30th anniversary of the first European to fly on the space shuttle (Ulf Merbold) and the first launch of the European-built Spacelab on Nov. 28;
20th anniversary of the first mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, STS-61, on Dec. 2.
25th anniversary of the first spacewalk (EVA) by a European astronaut (Jean-Loup Chrétien) on Dec. 9.

The Common Space Fleet (1968)

In 1968, as Apollo neared its culmination – the first manned landing on the moon – various organizations within NASA and their contractors sought to chart the U.S. civilian space program’s post-Apollo future. Three underlying cost-cutting approaches guided much of their work.

The first was re-application of hardware developed for Apollo. This was the approach proposed for the Apollo Applications Program (AAP), which had been endorsed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964-1965. AAP was rapidly shrinking in 1968, following a half-billion dollar cut in its budget in August 1967.

The second approach to NASA’s post-Apollo future was reusability. AAP largely rejected this option, though it did explore reuse of the Apollo Command Module (CM) capsules that would be used to transport AAP crews from Earth’s surface to space and back again. Reusability became the basis for the Space Shuttle Program, Apollo’s eventual successor. This approach has, however, not been commonly used in space programs.

The third approach was commonality; that is, the development of a suite of common-design spacecraft modules that could be combined in different ways to achieve diverse post-Apollo space goals. The approach reached its grandest expression in the Integrated Program Plan (IPP) proposed in 1969-1970.

The IPP was not the first time that space planners had invoked the principle of commonality, nor would it be the last. In late 1967-early 1968, for example, C. Davis and J. Tschirgi, with Bellcomm, NASA’s Washington, DC-based Apollo planning contractor, proposed a “Common Space Fleet” based on modified and upgraded Saturn V rockets and new-design hardware evolved from Apollo spacecraft systems. The Common Space Fleet would, they wrote, enable all the piloted missions that NASA was likely to be called upon to perform until about 1990.

Most Common Space Fleet hardware would reach Earth orbit on two variants of the Apollo Saturn V rocket, Davis and Tschirgi wrote. The first, the “product improved Saturn V,” would be essentially identical to the Apollo Saturn V. It would comprise an S-IC first stage, an S-II second stage, and an S-IVB third stage, all with only modest uprating. The second Saturn variant, the INT-20, would employ an S-IC as its first stage and an S-IVB as its second. It would be more powerful than the two-stage Saturn IB rocket used in Apollo Earth-orbital tests but less powerful that the Saturn V. An illustration in their paper also showed a Saturn V variant comprising an S-IC and an S-II; this Saturn variant, known as INT-21, resembled the Saturn V used to launch the Skylab Orbital Workshop, the last vestige of AAP, in May 1973 (image at top of post). The Bellcomm engineers envisioned using it to launch a Common Space Fleet “space base” into Earth orbit.

Cutaway drawing of Propulsion Module-I. Image: Bellcomm/NASA

The Common Space Fleet would include two chemical propulsion modules (nuclear propulsion, Davis and Tschirgi noted, was unlikely to be needed before the 1990s). The first and largest, Propulsion Module-I (PM-I), would burn liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen propellants and have a gross mass of 140,000 pounds. It would include one main rocket motor, eight spherical liquid oxygen tanks, one liquid hydrogen tank, four liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen-fueled docking propulsion modules with four small motors each, and a ring-shaped Instrument Unit containing avionics. Equipped with lunar landing gear, it would be capable of placing more than 21.5 tons of cargo on the moon.

PM-I would in addition be used to perform major maneuvers during manned planetary missions. Major maneuvers would include Earth departure, capture into planetary orbit, and planetary orbit departure for return to Earth. Davis and Tschirgi proposed also that PM-I be used to launch robotic planetary probes from Earth orbit and for “general maneuvering propulsion in cislunar space for rescue missions,” though they did not describe these uses in any detail.

The smaller drum-shaped Propulsion Module-II (PM-II) would have a gross mass of 25,000 pounds with its tanks full of methane and exotic high-energy fluorine-oxygen propellants. The 12.5-foot-diameter, 12.2-foot-long module would be used to propel piloted lunar spacecraft directly from the lunar surface back to the Earth; to abort manned planetary missions early in the launch from Earth orbit; for course-correction and attitude-control propulsion during Earth-orbital, cislunar, and planetary missions; and to maneuver during rescue missions in Earth-moon space. It would include three rocket motors, each with a retractable engine bell (“skirt”) measuring three feet in diameter, “high-performance” thermal insulation to prevent its propellants from boiling and escaping, and removable attitude control system rocket motor clusters.

The Common Space Fleet would include two kinds of crew modules. The largest would be the Common Mission Module (CMM). This would comprise a pair of drum-shaped single-deck modules stacked one atop the other, with a 21.7-foot-diameter cylindrical shroud encasing and linking them together. One of the single-deck modules, the living quarters module, would serve as “home,” Davis and Tschirgi wrote, while the other, the command and operations module, would serve as “office.”

A tunnel with hatches at either end would link the decks. Each would include beneath its floor a “crawlspace” containing life support and other systems. Either deck could support the crew in the event that the other became uninhabitable. A pair of lozenge-shaped Brayton-Isotope nuclear power systems would protrude from the CMM’s side; if one failed, the other would be sufficient to power the mission.

Cross-section of two-deck Common Mission Module. Image: Bellcomm/NASA

The two-deck CMM could support four men for two years with no resupply, Davis and Tschirgi estimated. For shorter lunar missions and missions with smaller crews, a single-deck CMM could be used. A second living quarters module could be stacked onto a standard two-deck CMM (thus creating a three-deck CMM) if an eight-man mission were contemplated.

Davis and Tschirgi’s second crew module was the conical, four-man Earth Depart and Entry Module (EDEM) outwardly resembling the Apollo CM. It would be capable of remaining dormant for up to two years while docked with an interplanetary spacecraft or space station or parked on the moon, and of operating for two weeks as an independent spacecraft. This would give astronauts ample time to rendezvous with and return from an Earth-orbiting space station, to reach and return from the moon, or to separate from an interplanetary spacecraft and reenter Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of up to 55,000 feet per second (15,000 feet per second faster than the Apollo CM) at the end of an interplanetary voyage.

All astronauts would lift off from Earth inside an EDEM; in the event of a launch vehicle failure, an abort system would boost EDEM and astronauts to safety. When an interplanetary mission departed from Earth orbit, the astronauts would ride within an EDEM attached to a PM-II. If a malfunction early in Earth-orbit departure forced the astronauts to abandon the interplanetary spacecraft, then they would detach from it in the EDEM and fire the PM-II’s engines to decelerate and fall back to Earth.

Davis and Tschirgi described launch vehicle, PM, and crew module combinations for four Common Space Fleet missions. The simplest was the aforementioned INT-21-launched space base. On the launch pad, the Common Space Fleet modules for the mission would be arranged as follows (top to bottom): an EDEM, a PM-II, a two-deck CMM, a drum-shaped experiments compartment (not a standard Common Space Fleet module). Upon arrival in Earth orbit, the Saturn INT-21 S-II stage would separate, then the EDEM with its attached PM-II would detach from the CMM, turn, and dock nose-first with the CMM. The four-man crew would then enter the CMM to live and work on board the space base.

Next most complex was the lunar base mission, which would require a pair of uprated three-stage Saturn V launch vehicles. The payload for Launch Vehicle (LV)-1, which would lift off without a crew, would comprise a single-deck CMM atop a PM-I with lunar landing gear. A streamlined nosecone would cover the CMM’s top, which would carry lunar surface exploration equipment and a crane for lowering it to the lunar surface. LV-2′s payload would comprise an EDEM bearing the four-man crew, a PM-II, and a PM-I with lunar landing gear. The LV-1 lander would descend to an automated landing, then the crew would arrive in the LV-2 lander. When the time came for the astronauts to return home, they would ignite the LV-2 lander’s PM-II to launch their EDEM directly back to Earth.

Third was the multi-planetary flyby mission, which would need three uprated Saturn V rockets. LV-1 would launch a nosecone and a PM-I. LV-2 would launch the crew in an EDEM, a PM-II, and a two-deck CMM. LV-3 would launch a nosecone, a compartment outwardly similar to the space base experiment compartment holding automated planetary probes for release at the target planets, and a second PM-I. The separately launched Common Space Fleet modules would dock in Earth orbit to form a single manned planetary flyby spacecraft. This would comprise (fore to aft) the EDEM, the PM-II, the CMM, the planetary probe compartment, and the second and first PM-Is.

Earth-orbit departure would expend the two PM-Is in turn, then the EDEM/PM-II combination would detach, turn, and dock with the CMM/planetary probe compartment. The PM-II would be used to perform any necessary course corrections. Near the end of the mission, as the flyby spacecraft neared Earth, the EDEM/PM-II would undock from the CMM. The PM-II would ignite its engines to slow the EDEM to a safe Earth-atmosphere reentry speed (if necessary), then would be discarded. The EDEM would reenter Earth’s atmosphere and land.

The most complex Common Space Fleet mission Davis and Tschirgi proposed was the Mars or Venus landing or orbital mission. It would need four or five uprated Saturn V launchers depending on the launch opportunity used. LV-1 and LV-2 would both launch a nosecone and a PM-I. LV-3 would launch an EDEM, a PM-II, and a two-deck CMM. LV-4 would launch a nosecone, a compartment holding automated planetary probes or a manned Mars lander, and a PM-I. If four PM-Is were needed, then a fifth Saturn V would launch a payload identical to that of LV-1/LV-2.

The modules would dock in Earth orbit to form a spacecraft comprising (from fore to aft) the EDEM with attached PM-II, the two-deck CMM, the planetary probes/manned Mars lander compartment, and the three or four PM-Is. One or two PM-Is would be expended to push the spacecraft out of Earth orbit. The EDEM/PM-II would then separate, turn, and dock with the CMM. Upon arrival at its destination planet, one PM-I would be expended to place the remaining PM-I, the probes/manned lander compartment, and the EDEM/PM-II into orbit. The last PM-I would place the spacecraft on course for Earth. Near Earth, the EDEM/PM-II would undock from the CMM. The PM-II would slow the EDEM for reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, then would be discarded. The EDEM would then reenter Earth’s atmosphere and land.

Davis and Tschirgi wrote that the Common Space Fleet would at a minimum be capable of manned missions to any destination between half of Earth’s distance from the Sun (that is, between the orbits of Venus and Mercury) and two times Earth’s distance from the Sun (beyond the orbit of Mars). This would take in Venus, Mars, and the moon. Ideally, however, Common Space Fleet capabilities would be extended to permit missions to destinations from between one-quarter of the Earth-Sun distance to beyond Jupiter. The expanded range would, they wrote, make available before 1990 the option of U.S. manned flyby missions to Mercury, asteroids in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter, and Jupiter and its family of moons.

Reference:
The Common Space Fleet – a Brief Description, Case 730, C. Davis and J. Tschirgi, Bellcomm, March 1968.

past, present, future. (not to scale)

NASA’s Rubber Room
Image: Top: The door to the rubber room. Middle: The rubber room with fire blankets in the center. Credit: NASA

The Saturn V was huge, and huge rockets tend to have proportionately devastating explosions. Engineers calculated that a Saturn V exploding on the launch pad would turn into a fireball 1,408 feet (430 meters) wide and burn for nearly 40 seconds reaching a peak temperature of 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,380 degrees Celsius).

In the age of Saturn V — the 60s and 70s — to get astronauts and launch crews clear of a fatal explosion, NASA had three possible escape plans in place: the launch escape system that would pull the command module free from the rocket during an abort; a slide wire astronauts could ride to a safe point on the ground; and an underground blast chamber.

The blast chamber is somehow buried in all the Apollo-era history. It’s fitting, perhaps, since it’s actually directly beneath the launch pad where the theoretical Saturn V explosion would have occurred.

The blast room is basically a bomb shelter. A small, circular room, it’s mounted on massive springs like a missile silo. This means that anyone inside would feel little disturbance when the Saturn V exploded right overhead.

Lining the room are huge chairs, big enough for an astronaut in a full pressure suit to strap himself in for safety. There’s also one fire blanket per man in the center of the room (shown below).

Up to 20 men could seek refuge in the blast chamber for up to 24 hours, though with more men, things became problematic due to the rise in carbon dioxide levels. The room was equipped with carbon dioxide scrubbers that came with spare filters and a store of oxygen candles — a type of chemical oxygen generator containing a mix of sodium chlorate and iron powder that burns to produce 6.5 man-hours of oxygen per kilogram of the gas mixture.

At the time, on the wall was a detailed schedule outlining exactly when oxygen candles had to be lit and filters had to be changed. With less than six men in the blast room, they could all breathe normally for a full day while the air above them cleared. With up to 10 men in the room, things got a little more complicated. Additional methods of providing oxygen became imperative if everyone inside was going to survive.

As evidence that men could last for a while in the blast room, there was even a toilet. But barely tucked away behind one of the chairs, using it in such a small space wouldn’t have been an appealing prospect.

To get into this fortress of safety, the astronauts and pad crews had to take a ride. Elevators would carry them from any level on the gantry to the base of the mobile launch platform where, on the north side, was a square door with rounded edges. It opened to a slide, 200 feet (60 meters) long, that would send astronauts and pad crews on a winding ride to a point 40 feet (12 meters) under the launch pad. They landed in the rubber room, so called because it was padded entirely with bouncy rubber. A six inch steel door admitted them through a short tunnel and into the blast chamber.

Once the air around the launch pad had cleared and it was safe to leave, astronauts and pad crews could take one of two long, narrow, and winding tunnels to the western edge of the launch pad area. There, they could open a door and step outside.

After the Apollo program ended, the rubber rooms and blast chambers were abandoned in place. There were no circumstances under which shuttle astronauts would use this underground shelter; the preferred method beginning in the 1980s were the gondolas on cables that led from the top of the gantry to a safe site on the ground.

The rubber room and blast chamber, at least the one under Pad A, is still there. It’s off limits to the public and preserved as a historic site, but if you can finagle your way in (which involves knowing the right people) it’s definitely a piece of history worth seeing.

To see NASA’s rubber room in all its glory, watch a clip from a BBC documentary on the Apollo emergency escape procedure.

jtotheizzoe:

Up Goer Five

Neil Tyson once lamented that the Saturn V rocket, a vehicle once heralded as the first generation of a coming era of interplanetary rocket travel, was taken for granted by a world looking to the future. And instead of the first of its kind, it was the last.

We haven’t surpassed the Saturn V. The largest, most powerful rocket ever flown by anybody, ever, the thirty-six-story-tall Saturn V was the first and only rocket to launch people from Earth to someplace else in the universe. It enabled every Apollo mission to the Moon from 1969 through 1972, as well as the 1973 launch of Skylab 1, the first U.S. space station.

Inspired in part by the successes of the Saturn V and the momentum of the Apollo program, visionaries of the day foretold a future that never came to be: space habitats, Moon bases, and Mars colonies up and running by the 1990s. But funding for the Saturn V evaporated as the Moon missions wound down. Additional production runs were canceled, the manufacturers’ specialized machine tools were destroyed, and skilled personnel had to find work on other projects. Today U.S. engineers can’t even build a Saturn V clone.

With this epic, holy-crap-rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-but-also-crying comic, xkcd provides us with this simplified set of plans, in easy-to-understand terms, to buil the Saturn “Up Goer” V. Think of it as a swift kick in the pants to get our space-exploration efforts on the right track.

Sure, what was impossible yesterday can be made possible today, through the hard work and application of science. But we must also remember that if we don’t keep stoking the fires of curiosity, what was possible yesterday can be made impossible today.

And much like failing to point the end with lots of fire toward the ground, we will be “having a bad problem and you will not go to space today”.

(via astronautjimblows)