Lunar Base or Space Station? (1984)

In December 1983, the National Science Foundation's Division of Policy Research and Analysis enlisted Science Applications Incorporated (SAI) of McLean, Virginia, to compare the science and technology research potential of an Earth-orbiting space station and a base on the moon. In its January 1984 report, SAI cautioned that, because its study was performed "in a very short two-week period," it offered only "a preliminary indication" of the merits of a space station in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and a lunar base. The study had a short turnaround time so that its results could be made available to the Reagan White House ahead of its planned announcement of a NASA space station program during the January 1984 State of the Union Address.

SAI explained that its study used a four-step approach. First, the study team judged which science and technology disciplines could best be served by an LEO space station and which by a lunar base. Next, the team developed a lunar base conceptual design capable of serving the disciplines it identified. It then developed a transportation system concept for deploying and maintaining its base. Finally, the team estimated the cost of developing, building, and operating its base.

The team identified five science and technology disciplines that would best be served by a lunar base. The first was radio astronomy. Bowl-shaped radio telescopes might be built in bowl-shaped lunar craters. Radio astronomers might take advantage of the moon's Farside (the hemisphere turned permanently away from Earth), where up to 2000 miles of rock would shield their instruments from terrestrial radio interference. This might enable detection of very faint signals from distant extraterrestrial civilizations. The 238,000-mile separation between lunar and terrestrial radio telescopes would enable Very Long Baseline Interferometry capable of detecting minute details in galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

High-energy astrophysics and physics was SAI's second lunar base discipline. The team noted that, because the moon offers "a large, flat area, a free vacuum, and a local source of refined material for magnets," it might serve as the site for a large particle accelerator.

Lunar geology (which SAI called "selenology") was obviously better served by a lunar base than by a space station. SAI noted that the moon "has barely been sampled and explored." Lunar base selenology would focus on "understanding better the early history and internal structure of the Moon" and "exploring for possible ore and volatile deposits." Selenologists would rove far afield from the base to measure heat flow and magnetic properties, drill deep into the surface, deploy seismographs, and collect and analyze rock and regolith samples.

SAI's fourth lunar discipline was resource utilization. The study team noted that samples returned to Earth by the Apollo astronauts contained 40% oxygen by weight, along with silicon, titanium, and other useful elements. Lunar oxygen could be used as propellant for spacecraft traveling between the Earth and the moon and from low-Earth orbit (LEO) to geosynchronous orbit (GEO). Silicon could be used to make solar cells. (SAI pointed out, however, that the two-week lunar night would make reliance on solar arrays for electricity "somewhat difficult.") Raw lunar dirt - known as regolith - could serve as radiation shielding. If water ice were found at the lunar poles - perhaps by the automated lunar polar orbiter that SAI advised should precede the lunar base program - then the moon could supply hydrogen rocket fuel as well as oxygen.

SAI's fifth and final discipline was systems development. The team wrote that base technology development would be "devoted to improving the efficiency and capabilities of systems that support the base," such as life support, with the goal of "reduced reliance on supplies sent from Earth." Transport system development might include research toward an electromagnetic launcher (also known as a "mass driver") of the kind first proposed by Arthur C. Clarke in 1950. Such a device might eventually be used to launch bulk cargoes (for example, lunar regolith, liquid oxygen propellant, and refined ores) to sites around the Earth-moon system.

The team noted that some disciplines might be served equally well by a lunar base and an Earth-orbiting space station. Large (100-meter) telescopes for optical astronomy, for example, might be equally effective on the moon or in Earth orbit. The moon, however, would offer a stable, solid surface that might enable the "pointing stability and optical system coherence" necessary in such a telescope.

SAI acknowledged that its report proposed "research and development activities. . . too numerous and often too difficult for a first-generation lunar base." It thus divided the activities within the lunar base disciplines into two categories: those suitable for its first-generation base and those that would need a more elaborate second-generation facility. First-generation radio astronomy, for example, would use two small antennas on Nearside (the lunar hemisphere facing Earth). In the second generation, a 100-meter-diameter antenna would operate on Farside.

Having defined its lunar base science program, the SAI team moved on to the second and third steps in its study. The team assumed that NASA's Space Shuttle and LEO station would form part of its lunar base transportation infrastructure. The Shuttle would deliver lunar base crews, spacecraft, and cargo to the space station, where they would be brought together for flight to the moon. The team also proposed reapplying hardware developed for the LEO station to the lunar base program.

SAI's lunar transportation system would include three types of spacecraft. The first, the Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV), was a reusable two-stage spacecraft permanently based at the LEO station. SAI assumed that NASA would develop OTVs for moving cargoes between the LEO station and higher orbits (for example, GEO), thus providing a basic OTV design that could be modified for lunar base use. The OTV, which would operate as a piloted spacecraft through addition of a "personnel pod," would be capable of delivering up to 16,950 kilograms of crew and cargo to lunar orbit.

Cargos and crews would reach the lunar surface on board two types of landers. Expendable automated Logistics Landers would each deliver up to 14,600 kilograms of cargo to the base. Crews would lower in a Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), a reusable four-person spacecraft. The LEM would use engines identical to those on the Logistics Lander, enabling lunar base technicians to salvage Logistics Landers abandoned near the lunar base as a source of spare engine parts for LEM repairs.

The three vehicles would support two flight modes. Cargo missions would Direct Descent. An automated OTV would transport a one-way automated Logistics Lander to the moon. The OTV first stage would ignite and burn nearly all of its propellants, then would separate, turn around, and fire its engines to slow down and return to the LEO station for refurbishment. The OTV second stage would then ignite, burn most of its propellants, and separate from the Logistics Lander. The second stage would swing around the moon on a free-return trajectory, aerobrake in Earth's atmosphere, and rendezvous with the LEO station. The Logistics Lander, meanwhile, would descend directly to the lunar base site with no stop in lunar orbit.

For Crew Sorties, a personnel pod bearing up to four lunar base crewmembers and an OTV pilot would replace the Logistics Lander. The OTV first stage would operate as it did in the Direct Descent mode. After a three-day flight, the OTV second stage/personnel pod combination would enter lunar orbit, where it would dock with a LEM carrying lunar base astronauts bound for Earth. They would trade places with the new base crew. In addition to the new crew, 12,750 kilograms of propellants (sufficient for a round trip from lunar orbit to the base and back again) and up to 2000 kilograms of critical cargo would be transferred to the LEM.

The second stage/personnel pod and LEM would then separate. The former would fires its engines to depart lunar orbit, and the latter would descend to a landing at the lunar base. The second stage/personnel pod would then aerobrake in Earth's atmosphere and return to the LEO station for refurbishment.

SAI's flight manifest/base buildup sequence would begin with a pair of flights that together constituted a Site Survey Mission. The first flight would see an unpiloted LEM with empty propellant tanks placed in lunar orbit through a variant of the Crew Sortie mode. An automated OTV second stage bearing the LEM in place of a personnel pod would enter lunar orbit, undock from the LEM, and return to Earth.

The second flight of the Site Survey Mission would employ another variant of the Crew Sortie mode. Five astronauts would arrive in lunar orbit in a personnel pod on an OTV second stage and dock with the waiting LEM. The four astronauts in the base site survey team would transfer to the LEM along with propellants and critical supplies. They would then undock and land at the proposed base site, leaving the OTV pilot alone in lunar orbit. After completing their survey, they would return to the second stage/personnel pod, then undock from the LEM and return to Earth orbit.

Assuming that the base site checked out, Flight 3 would see the start of base deployment (and the beginning of lunar missions in Direct Descent mode). A Logistics Lander would deliver to the lunar base site an Interface Module and a Power Plant. The Interface Module, based on LEO space station hardware, would include a cylindrical airlock, a top-mounted observation bubble, and cylindrical tunnels with ports for attaching large base modules. The Power Plant was a nuclear source capable of producing 100 kilowatts of electricity

Flight 4 would then deliver two "mass mover" rovers, two 2000-kilogram mobile laboratory trailers, and a 1000-kilogram lunar resource utilization pilot plant. The rovers would be designed to tow the mobile labs up to 200 kilometers from the base on geologic excursions lasting up to five days. The mobile labs would carry instruments for microscopic imaging, elemental and mineral analysis, and subsurface ice detection, a radio sounder for exploring beneath the surface, stereo cameras, and a soil auger or core tube for drilling two meters beneath the surface. The first-generation Pilot Plant would process 10,000 kilograms of regolith per year to yield oxygen, silicon, iron, aluminum, titanium, magnesium, and calcium.

Flight 5 would deliver the Laboratory Module, the first 14-foot-diameter, 40-foot-long cylindrical base module. These would be based on the pressurized module design used on the LEO station. Flight 6 would deliver the Habitat Module, which would provide living quarters for the seven-person base crew. Flight 7 would deliver the Resources Module, which would include a pressurized control center and an unpressurized section containing water and oxygen tanks and for life support, power conditioning, and thermal control equipment. The final base build-up flight, a duplicate of Flight 1, would deliver a backup LEM to lunar orbit.

Long-term occupation of the moon would begin with Flight 9, a Crew Sortie mission that would deliver a four-person construction team . A three-person construction team would join them on Flight 10, bringing the total base population to seven. The OTV pilots for these missions would return to Earth alone after the construction teams departed for the base in their respective LEMs.

Using the rovers, the construction teams would unload the Logistics Landers and join together the base components. They would attach the Lab, Hab, and Resource Modules to the Interface Module, then link the resource utilization pilot plant to the Lab Module. The Power Plant would be placed a safe distance away and linked by a cable to the base power conditioning system. The teams would link the Power Plant and base thermal control system by hoses to a heat exchanger/heat sink, then would activate the Power Plant. Finally, the astronauts would use scoops on the rovers to cover the pressurized modules with regolith for radiation shielding. The completed base would provide seven astronauts with 2000 cubic feet of living space per person.

Flight 11 would see the four-person construction team that arrived on Flight 9 lift off in a LEM and return to lunar orbit. They would dock with the OTV second stage/personnel pod from Flight 11. The first four-person lunar base team would trade places with them and, following LEM refueling and critical cargo loading, would descend to the base. The first construction team and the OTV pilot would then return to the LEO station. On Flight 12, a three-person base team would replace the Flight 10 construction team.

Subsequently, lunar base teams of three or four astronauts would rotate back to Earth every two months. The typical base complement would include a commander/LEM pilot, a LEM pilot/mechanic, a technican/mechanic, a doctor/scientist, a geologist, a chemist, and a biologist/doctor.

SAI then estimated the cost of its lunar base and three years of operations based on NASA's station cost estimates. At the time SAI conducted its study, NASA estimated LEO station cost at between $8 billion and $12 billion. This was an underestimate calculated to make the station program more politically palatable. NASA placed the cost of the LEO station's Logistics, Habitat, Laboratory, and Resource Modules and other structure at $7.1 billion, so SAI estimated the cost of the lunar base Resource, Habitat, Laboratory, and Interface Modules at $5.8 billion.

Although the OTV would find uses in the LEO station program, SAI charged its development and procurement costs ($7.2 billion) to the lunar base. The expendable Logistics Lander and reusable LEM would cost $6.6 billion and $4.8 billion, respectively. The LEM, though structurally beefier and more complex, would costs less because the Logistics Lander would bear the development cost of systems common to both landers.

NASA also low-balled the cost of its Space Shuttle launches, a practice that continues today. Based on NASA estimates, the study team assumed that a Shuttle flight would cost $110 million in 1990. The 89 Shuttle flights in the lunar base program would thus cost a total of $9.8 billion. The LEO station, by contrast, would need only 17 Shuttle flights at a cost of $1.9 billion. SAI placed total LEO station cost plus three years of operations at $14.2 billion. Lunar base cost plus three years of operations would come to $54.8 billion.

In its conclusion, SAI noted that both the LEO station and lunar base programs could be completed in about 10 years. The LEO station would, however, serve a broader scientist user community and provide an OTV base in LEO for eventual lunar base use. It argued that the LEO station was a reasonable near-term (for the next 10 years) objective, while the lunar base would show obvious benefits in a long-term (50 years) space program. It argued that the

Space Program will function best if it has both near-term objectives and long-range goals. The near-term objectives assure that we progress with each year that passes. The long-range goals provide direction for our annual progress. The Space Station and Lunar Base appear to serve these respective roles at the present time.

A Manned Lunar Science Base: An Alternative to Space Station Science? A Brief Comparative Assessment, Report No. SAI-84/1502, Science Applications, Inc., January 10, 1984.

Mother's Day

Yesterday marked my daughter Samantha's first Mother's Day since her mom Martha was killed. We talked about it during the week leading up to the holiday. I told her that I try to be both her mom and her dad, which seemed to comfort her a little. More important, I think, was the wonderful way her teacher adapted to meet Sam's needs. While the other kids each made a handprint tile for their mom, she helped Sam to make two; one that she could give to me, her dad-mom, and one for Martha's grave in New Jersey. (We now plan to visit her grave for the first time during the Fourth of July weekend.)

As has happened so many times before, friends stepped in to help. Valerie took Samantha for a horseback ride on Saturday. They were attacked by a tree limb and both fell off their trusty steed. Fortunately, neither suffered more than scratches. Valerie probably wouldn't have fallen, but she threw her arms around Samantha to protect her. I pointed that out to Sam and told her that she has a bunch of adult female pals who love her. It's not exactly like having a mom, but it's a good thing. Sam seemed to take comfort in that.

Sam had a playdate with her best friend on Mother's Day proper. I figured that it would keep her spirits up. I knew this ploy had succeeded when I arrived to pick her up. She was grinning from ear to ear and laughing as her friend drove her around the backyard on an toy electric jeep.

After we got home, we built with LEGO. I cobbled together a pseudo-medieval steampunkish helicopter for battling flying dragons, and Sam built a train car to go with the little Creator kit steam engine we built a a few weeks ago. I didn't have to coach her much; she's becoming an expert builder. Then, I let her bounce on the bed. On some days, the rules must be suspended.

Retro Mars

An edited version of the article that follows appeared in the February/March 2000 issue of Air & Space Smithsonian under the title "The Road to Mars." The article grew out of my research for my NASA-published monograph Humans to Mars (February 2001). Late 1999-early 2000 really did seem like the best of times for Mars planning, but it didn't last. For one thing, I was premature when I proclaimed that NASA planners had learned the lessons of SEI.

When Slide Rules Ruled

There's another space age hidden away in the dusty archives. One that built on the Apollo moon program with the aim of putting men on distant Mars. To us this hidden space age, conceived but unborn, seems so audacious as to appear to be science fiction. Yet the men who conceived it were conservative engineers, not sci-fi scriveners. Some were infected by a fever dream of an ever-expanding space frontier. And, of course, most had down-to-earth ulterior motives, too.

This hidden space age is locked away in Mars expedition plans drawn up by slide rule-wielding engineers in the 1960s. Most proposed launching men to Mars during the 1970s, soon after Apollo reached the moon. It’s fair to ask - could they have really meant it? After all, little was known then about Mars or long-term human spaceflight. Many still believed that Mars had canals.

In fact, most 1960s studies were meant to give engineers a grasp of the basic problems of Mars flight rather than to detail an actual expedition. Detailed planning would have to wait until a national Mars program got a green light from a President, the way Apollo got a green light from Kennedy. Most would-be Mars explorers thought the green light would come in the 1970s, after Apollo, and that men would walk on Mars in the 1980s.

Their optimism drove their dreams, but it made them lousy prognosticators. In the 1970s NASA Mars studies went dormant as the agency marshalled its diminished resources to build the Space Shuttle. Near decade’s end Mars interest revived - but outside NASA. The first major post-Apollo Mars study was sponsored by The Planetary Society, a not-for-profit space advocacy group, not NASA. It resembled, by the way, the 1963-1964 NASA MSC study described in this article.

In the 1980s, big ineffectual reports dominated NASA Mars planning, culminating in the 90-Day Study, which proposed a gargantuan program spread over 30 years. The study kicked off the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI), a program designed more to provide work for government laboratories in the post-Cold War world than to explore Mars. Proposed at a time of record federal budget deficits, SEI was dead on arrival.

Today marks a high point in Mars planning - in many ways this is the best of times. Though the light is still obviously red, engineers know more about Mars and the effects of spaceflight on humans. SEI taught them that big programs don’t sell, so their plans are more realistic, less dependent on a national commitment to an Apollo-sized program. And space technology has come a long way from 1960s-era vacuum tubes.

Yet still it pays to sift through the 1960s studies. The fact is, the 1960s generated most of the ideas studied today - that is, those ideas that don't date to the 1950s or even earlier. We've selected six studies that typify NASA Mars planning in the 1960s. They represent the dozens of Mars mission designs hatched in the days when slide rules ruled.

NASA’s First Mars Expedition Plan: 1961

In April 1959, staffers at NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, astonished the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences by appealing for modest funds to study sending men to Mars. The NASA was but six months old. Project Mercury, the first U.S. piloted space project, was still years from placing a man in orbit.

In fact, Lewis had begun research into propulsion for interplanetary journeys as early as 1957, before Sputnik 1 became Earth's first artificial moon. Lewis studied advanced nuclear and ion propulsion systems, so saw Mars expedition planning as a natural extension of its work.

Congress gave Lewis its money. By the time Alan Shepard became the first American in space in May 1961, it had laid out NASA's first Mars expedition plan. Until the early 1990s, most NASA Mars plans would follow this Mars mission blueprint.

The mission begins with the vehicle system in an orbit about the Earth. . .the vehicle. . .is accelerated by a high-thrust nuclear rocket engine onto the transfer trajectory to Mars. Upon arrival at Mars, the vehicle is decelerated to establish an orbit about the planet. . .a Mars Landing Vehicle. . .descends to the Martian surface. . .After a period of exploration [it blasts off Mars and docks with the spacecraft in orbit, which] then accelerates onto the return trajectory. . .upon reaching Earth, an Earth Landing Vehicle separates and. . .decelerates to return the entire crew to the surface.

On May 25, 1961, President John Kennedy set NASA's sights on the moon. Would-be Mars explorers saw it as a mixed blessing - on the one hand, concentrating on the moon might postpone serious Mars work; on the other, many technologies required for a piloted Mars flight, such as large rockets, could be developed along the road to the moon.

Twirling ion ships to Mars: 1961

The large rockets for Apollo would be designed and tested at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where Werner von Braun was director. When Lewis received its money for Mars work, Marshall was still a part of the U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal. Though its rockets launched the first U.S. satellites, Redstone didn't officially join NASA and become Marshall until 1960.

Ernst Stuhlinger led advanced propulsion work at Redstone. Stuhlinger, like Von Braun, is one of the few people to have worked for both Adolf Hitler and Walt Disney. Like Von Braun, he spent World War II designing and testing V-2 rockets at the Nazi rocket base of Peenemunde on the Baltic Sea. In 1945, the U.S. Army brought him to America as war booty. In the late 1950s, Stuhlinger's ion-powered Mars armada starred in "Mars and Beyond," a colorful Wonderful World of Disney episode.

Ion drive uses little propellant, slashing the number of expensive launches required to launch Mars ship parts and propellant. Because ion thrusters produce little acceleration, escaping Earth can take months. Once away from Earth, however, ion Mars ships can be faster than chemical or nuclear.

Stuhlinger's ships twirled to generate artifical gravity for their crews. The ship's flat body was a radiator. Working fluid coursed through a nuclear reactor, was heated, then drove a turbine to make electricity for ionizing cesium propellant. The fluid passed through the radiator to cool down, then repeated the cycle. Building a power system that could work in space for years was probably ion drive's greatest challenge.

Though NASA largely ignored ion drive, the Soviets based their humans-to-Mars plans on it. The current NASA Mars plan has a solar-powered ion "tug" boosting a chemical-fueled Mars ship to elliptical high-Earth departure orbit. This technique could, NASA estimates, cut Mars expedition cost by up to half.

EMPIRE: 1962-1964

According to author T. A. Heppenheimer, Von Braun realized that Marshall's role in Apollo would end as soon as its large Saturn rockets were ready for moon flight. Unless some goal beyond Apollo were established, Von Braun's center would face collapsing budgets and layoffs. Mars, some felt, might be the key to Marshall’s future.

In mid-1962, Marshall launched the Early Manned Planetary Interplanetary Roundtrip Expeditions (EMPIRE) study. EMPIRE focused on Mars missions that could occur in the 1970s using modest extrapolation of Apollo technology. Mars landing missions were considered too ambitious, so the EMPIRE contractors - Lockheed, Ford Aeronutronic, and General Dynamics - were ordered to study easier manned Mars flyby and orbiter missions. However, Krafft Ehricke, director and principal author of the General Dynamics study, cheated - his EMPIRE Mars ships were good for both orbital and landing missions.

Ehricke was another German brought to the U.S. after World War II. He commanded tanks in Hitler's drive on Moscow before joining Von Braun and Stuhlinger at Peenemunde. In 1953, he joined General Dynamics, where he was instrumental in the development of the Atlas missile. But Mars remained his favorite destination, and in the late 1950s he took charge of General Dynamics Mars work.

Ehricke's nuclear-powered EMPIRE ships came in two varieties - cargo and crew - and traveled in convoys for safety. If a crew ship's engines became disabled, its crew module could move to a cargo ship to finish the expedition. The crew ships tumbled end over end to create artificial gravity.

The General Dynamics scheme bore Ehricke's unmistakable stamp. His study was immensely detailed - for example, it concerned itself with such minutiae as in-flight exercise for the Mars crew - but a tad quirky. The in-flight exercise it recommended was table tennis.

Not to Be Left Out: 1963-1964

No NASA center wanted to be left out if Mars was to be NASA's next target after the moon, so in 1963 several NASA centers launched their own Mars studies. The earliest at Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) - known today as Johnson Space Center - was conducted under MSC Assistant Director for Engineering Maxime Faget, designer of the Mercury capsule.

Faget believed Marshall's Mars enthusiasm to be premature and scorned the rival center's focus on manned flybys. "The flyby mission," he declared in 1962, "will demand the least energy but will also have the least scientific value." He wanted a gradual approach to human spaceflight, with a space station and moon base ahead of Mars flights. Robots could do flybys, he thought.

Despite this, MSC's 1963-64 in-house Mars study used flyby techniques. Near Mars the crew would enter a small lander and abandon their flyby ship. They would land on Mars and explore the surface. An unmanned second flyby ship would then fly past Mars, and the crew would blast off to meet it for the ride home to Earth. MSC's approach saved propellant - except for the small lander, no vehicle had to fire rockets at Mars. But the risks - what if the lander missed its appointment with the second ship?

MSC also contracted with Ford Aeronutronic for the first detailed Mars lander study. For their design - a tubby lifting-body with twin winglets - Aeronutronic assumed a largely nitrogen martian atmosphere at 10% Earth sea-level pressure. The astronauts would seek out martian life - among other things, they would study it for possible food value.

Mars Planning Moves to Washington: 1965-1967

That Aeronutronic's lifting-body design would have crashed on Mars was revealed in July 1965, when a radio experiment using the Mariner 4 robot flyby probe found that Mars's atmosphere is carbon dioxide at less than 1% Earth pressure. Mariner 4's effects on NASA's 1960s Mars plans cannot be underestimated. In addition to finding a painfully thin atmosphere, it snapped 21 pictures of moon-like craters containing no signs of life, edible or otherwise. What's more, it showed that Faget was right. Robots could do flybys - no people were required.

But the flyby concept held out a little longer. In 1966, Charles Townes - Nobel Laureate and head of the NASA Advisory Council - asked George Mueller, head of the Office of Manned Space Flight at NASA Headquarters, to study a manned flyby mission. The task fell to Mueller's Planetary Joint Action Group (JAG), a NASA-wide team already in place to plan nuclear-powered Mars landing missions. The JAG's manned flyby attempted to integrate humans and robots to the benefit of both.

The JAG flyby spacecraft would release a robot lander as it neared Mars. The lander would touch down, scoop a sample, then immediately blast back to the flyby ship. The astronauts would study the sample and any life forms it contained mere minutes after it left Mars. A robot could, of course, launch a sample directly back to Earth - but would any martian life forms survive the long voyage to a terrestrial lab?

In 1967, the Vietnam War's cost dominated the Federal budget. Congress warned NASA that it would tolerate no new program starts. Despite this, MSC incautiously called for industry bids to design the Mars sample retriever robot. Congress angrily quashed the effort and went one further - it killed a new robotic program called Voyager that would have sought life on Mars.

The End of the Beginning: 1968-1969

More than any other individual, NASA Administrator James Webb was responsible for Apollo's success. An ingredient in that success was his refusal to discuss NASA's post-Apollo plans. He knew that NASA detractors might seize on them to the agency's detriment.

Washington-savvy Webb stepped down in 1969. His replacement was Tom Paine, an entirely different kind of NASA chief. Paine, a Washington neophyte with little grasp of politics, let vision be his guide as he set out to define NASA's post-Apollo goals.

Mueller's office had a plan for NASA's future. Paine found it appealing for its swashbuckling audacity. Evolved from JAG work, Mueller's Integrated Program Plan included a space base in Earth orbit, a moon base, and humans on Mars - all by 1982. Central to the plan was a Mars spaceship in the spirit of Star Trek's Enterprise or the Discovery from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Boeing's nuclear-powered Mars cruiser measured almost 500 feet long and 100 feet wide at Earth orbit launch. Today's Space Shuttle Orbiter would fit longways on its back. Two of these behemoths would travel to Mars together, each toting a North American Rockwell-designed Mars lander. With a cost of $29 billion - about $200 billion today - the scheme marked the giddy high-water mark of Mars expedition grandiosity.

In September 1969, President Richard Nixon's Space Task Group (STG) endorsed the NASA plan with reservations. NASA formed an agency-wide team to begin its implementation. But Nixon ignored the STG’s recommendations, opting instead to build the Space Shuttle. In 1971, NASA ceased all manned Mars flight planning. According to some old hands, mere mention of the name "Mars" in the halls of NASA became grounds for censure. High-level piloted Mars planning would not begin again until 1984.

Von Braun was shifted to a less responsible NASA Headquarters job. He left the agency in 1972 to sell helicopters, and died in 1977. Stuhlinger retired in 1975. Ehricke spent his remaining years writing of humankind's eventual "polyglobal civilization" among the planets. He died in 1984, just as high-level Mars planning became acceptable again.

Mueller left NASA in December 1969, after it became clear that his Integrated Program Plan stood little chance of acceptance. Today he's CEO of Kistler Aerospace, a start-up launch company.

After it fell afoul of Mueller's JAG efforts, the Voyager program re-emerged as Viking, which landed on Mars in 1976. Viking's life hunt yielded equivocal results, but its experiments hinted at a Mars with a complex Earth-like past and useful resources. The Viking results helped to trigger the revival of Mars planning in the 1980s, and provided data for the main cost-saving technique in the current Mars plan - use of native martian resources to make rocket fuel. The name Voyager was re-applied to a program of outer planet exploration.

Faget supervised design of the Space Shuttle, then retired near Houston. Paine left NASA in 1970. In 1985, the Reagan White House called upon him to chart NASA's future course a second time, then quietly shelved his audacious vision of American settlements on the moon and Mars following the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle accident. Paine passed away in 1992.

The TALL system (1967)

In October 1967, Lockheed Missiles & Space Company (LMSC) pitched to NASA a new spacecraft for advanced Apollo missions to the moon. In its presentation, the company first reviewed four options for lunar transportation and logistics using Apollo-based systems. By the time of LMSC's presentation, these four options had received considerable study.

The first option was the baseline Apollo Lunar Module (LM). This would require one Saturn V rocket launch. Two astronauts would land in the baseline LM and remain on the moon for 36 hours with 200 pounds of cargo for a cost of $330 million.

Next in order of increasing capability was the Extended LM (ELM) option. This would also require a single Saturn V. Two astronauts would land in an ELM and stay on the moon for three days with up to 1500 pounds of cargo. The cost would come to $340 million.

The ELM + Lunar Payload Module (LPM) option would need two Saturn V rockets. The LPM would be an automated one-way lander. Two astronauts would land the ELM near the pre-landed LPM and stay on the moon for up to 12 days with up to 8150 pounds of cargo. Each ELM + LPM expedition would cost $660 million.

The fourth option, the ELM + LM Truck, would also require two Saturn Vs. The LM Truck was an automated one-way lander based on the Apollo LM. Two astronauts would land the ELM near the LM Truck and stay on the moon for up to 14 days with up to 9500 pounds of cargo for a cost of $640 million.

LMSC then proposed a fifth option: its Titan-Agena Lunar Logistics (TALL) System, which, it said, would fill the "performance gap" between options two and three. The company's $367-million ELM + TALL option would place two astronauts on the moon for seven days with up to 3000 pounds of cargo.

The automated TALL lander would lift off on an LMSC-built Titan III-D (top image above), a relative of the Titan II rocket used to launch piloted Gemini capsules into Earth orbit. Twin solid-propellant strap-on motors and liquid-propellant first and second stages would in turn exhaust their propellants and detach. Midway through ascent, the aerodynamic payload shroud would jettison, exposing the TALL lander and its payload attached to an LMSC-built Improved Agena stage. Titan III-D second stage burnout would occur about seven minutes after launch.

The Improved Agena would separate from the Titan III-D second stage and fire its engine for nearly 11 minutes to place the TALL lander on course for the moon. Translunar coast would last about four days. The Improved Agena would perform a course correction burn halfway to the moon if required. A final 33-second burn would place the TALL lander into a 100,000-foot-high circular lunar orbit.

The TALL lander would then separate from the spent Improved Agenda and descend to the target landing site on five engines. The ELM would later land nearby, and the astronauts would unload the TALL lander's cargo of lunar exploration equipment, which might include Lunar Flyer Vehicles (LFVs), rovers (bottom image above), experiment packages, and oxygen, water, food, and other supplies for extending the astronauts' lunar surface stay.

LMSC proposed an "Integrated TALL Flyer/Lander," which would see two LFVs serve double-duty as the TALL lander's descent propulsion system. This would eliminate the need for a separate TALL propulsion system and would remove the LFVs from the TALL lander's cargo deck, freeing up mass and room for other cargoes. The astronauts would detach the twin LFVs from the TALL lander structure and pilot them to scientifically interesting locations around their landing site. LMSC noted that the TALL System could also perform automated lunar exploration missions independent of NASA's piloted lunar program.

The TALL System - A Lunar Logistics Supplement for Apollo, Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, October 20, 1967.

Busy week

I work for the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Research Program. I manage our Regional Planetary Image Facility (RPIF), one of a network of 17 NASA-funded RPIFs that span the globe. Nine are in the U.S.; the other RPIFs are in the U.K., France, Italy, Israel, Japan, Canada, Germany, and Finland.

Much of my time at work this past week was devoted to writing our funding proposal to NASA for Fiscal Years 2009 through 2012. I haven't written one of these before, so I found it nervous-making. Today, after five drafts (one per day), Astro's Chief Scientist - who coached me through the process, and did a fair bit of rewriting besides - declared it satisfactory. So, off it goes to the reviewers.

In other news, it's official: the public "face" of the Flagstaff RPIF will be located in the Henry Moore Room. Currently configured as a conference room, Moore is a roughly 600-square-foot space adjacent to the Shoemaker Building lobby, where the RPIF already maintains some nifty displays.

I'm really excited about this, because the Moore Room is large enough to hold many of our most significant archival and reference materials. There's even enough room for us to put our one-fifth-scale model of Surveyor VII (image above) in there. Best of all, it's an attractive and comfortable space for researchers. Windows on the north side of the room provide indirect natural light and a fine view of Flagstaff's Buffalo Park and the San Francisco Peaks. Visiting researchers will work at a big round table near the windows.

You're all invited to come by for a visit. With a bit of luck, we'll be installed in the Moore Room by September.

Geology of Nine Rump GLEP sites (1968)

The NASA-sponsored Santa Cruz conference (July 31-August 13, 1967) led to creation of the Group for Lunar Exploration Planning (GLEP), a "continuing advisory body" chaired by Wilmot Hess, Science and Applications Director at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. Hess in turn created a lunar landing site selection subgroup (the "Rump GLEP"), which first met on December 8-9, 1967. To help guide the subgroup's planning, NASA told the Rump GLEP that as many as 10 Apollo missions might land on the moon.

Farouk El-Baz of Washington, DC-based Bellcomm, NASA's Apollo planning contractor, was the subgroup's secretary. In a May 1968 report, he summarized 12 Rump GLEP Apollo landing missions. These would, he wrote, occur in four phases of three missions each.

Phase I would comprise Apollo missions to relatively flat "lunar sea" (mare) regions; specifically, "an eastern mare, a western mare, and an 'old' surface unit, preferably the Fra Mauro Formation." Surface stay time for each mission would be less than 36 hours. Because the astronauts would explore on foot, the total surface traverse distance at each site would be limited to 1.5 kilometers. The Phase I missions would be designed primarily to prove the Apollo Lunar Module (LM) spacecraft (top image above); scientific exploration would, quite properly, take a back seat to engineering on these early flights. El-Baz did not count the three Phase I missions toward NASA's 10 Apollo landings.

Phase II targets would include 3.5-kilometer-diameter Censorinus crater between Mare Tranquillitatis and Mare Nectaris, the rim of 80-kilometer Tycho crater in the southern Lunar Highlands, and Littrow on the eastern "shore" of Mare Serenitatis. Littrow, El-Baz wrote, is covered with dark material believed to be the product of recent volcanism. The three Phase II crews would each remain on the moon for 36 hours. They would explore on foot and would establish seismographic stations to create a "seismic net" spanning the moon's Nearside hemisphere. The astronauts on the Tycho mission would visit the derelict Surveyor VII automated lander, which landed north of the prominent young crater on January 10, 1968.

Phase III Apollo missions would visit Hyginus Rille (a "great cleft") and 10-kilometer Hyginus crater in southern Mare Vaporum, the "remarkable" Abulfeda crater chain in the southern Highlands, site of possible volcanic cinder cones, and 1300-meter-deep Schröter's Valley on the Aristarchus Plateau in Oceanus Procellarum, reputedly a site of "transient phenomena" (possible present-day lunar volcanism). Lunar Flying Units (LFUs) (bottom image above) would whisk the astronauts up to five kilometers from their Extended Lunar Module (ELM). The Phase III expeditions would each remain on the moon for 72 hours. El-Baz noted that Abulfeda could be explored on foot if the cinder cones were omitted from the traverse plan.

Phase IV would see visits to "three sites. . . which [would] entail a much more elaborate means of exploration." Ninety-five-kilometer Copernicus crater, El-Baz wrote, featured "extensively terraced" inner walls with "deep ravines" and traces of "many vast landslides." Marius Hills, a collection of domes and rilles in central Oceanus Procellarum, was a "probable volcanic province." Apennines-Rima Hadley, in south-east Mare Imbrium, included the Apennines Mountains ("by far the most imposing of the lunar mountain ranges"), Rima Hadley ("a V-shaped sinuous rille"), and 5.5-kilometer-diameter Hadley C crater, which might have been blasted out by an explosive volcanic eruption.

The Phase IV missions would all remain on the moon for longer than 72 hours. As in Phase III, LFUs and Lunar Roving Vehicles (LRVs) would transport explorers up to five kilometers from their ELM. El-Baz assumed that a separately launched automated cargo lander would land stay-time extension supplies and advanced exploration gear at each Phase IV site before the astronauts arrived. In addition, an Unmanned LRV (ULRV) would land and conduct a long traverse, gathering samples and data as it made its way toward a rendezvous with astronauts at a Phase IV landing site. A ULRV might, for example, land in central Mare Imbrium and traverse 500 kilometers to meet the Apennines-Rima Hadley astronauts, who would collect its samples for return to Earth.

NASA carried out Apollo missions that corresponded to Rump GLEP Phase I missions. Apollo 11 (July 1969) landed on Mare Tranquillitatis, an eastern mare, Apollo 12 (November 1969) landed on Oceanus Procellarum, a western mare, and Apollo 14 (January-February 1971) set down at Fra Mauro. Of the Phase II, III, and IV sites, however, Apollo crews visited only Apennines-Rima Hadley and Littrow. Apollo 15 explored the former in July-August 1971, and Apollo 17, the last of six successful Apollo landing missions, explored the latter in December 1972.

Geologic Characteristics of the Nine Lunar Landing Mission Sites Recommended by the Group for Lunar Exploration Planning, TR-68-340-1, Farouk El-Baz, Bellcomm, Inc., May 31, 1968.

Record-breaking LEGO tower

Stella, one of my neighbors and a frequent visitor to this blog, pointed out this cool Daily Telegraph story on LEGOLand Windsor's just-completed 100-foot-tall LEGO tower (image above). Thanks, Stella!

Space Shuttle to the moon (1971)

A NASA Headquarters "exploratory study" in the last half of 1971 looked at the feasibility of using the proposed Space Shuttle for piloted lunar missions. On December 14, 1971, when NASA Headquarters submitted the study's brief report to Robert Thompson, the Space Shuttle Program Manager at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, the Nixon Administration was still a month away from unveiling its Fiscal Year 1973 NASA budget request, the first which would include funds specifically for Space Shuttle development.

The study considered two candidate Shuttle orbiter designs: the Grumman/Boeing H-33 orbiter (bottom image above), which was delta-winged with internal liquid oxygen tankage and one throwaway liquid hydrogen tank over each wing, and the McDonnell Douglas orbiter, also delta-winged, with internal liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen tanks. Both featured a payload bay measuring 15 feet in diameter by 60 feet long and could launch 65,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit, a requirement imposed on the Shuttle design by the U.S. Air Force in return for its support for the Space Shuttle.

The report noted several "potential problem areas" for cislunar application of the Space Shuttle orbiter. The first was environmental control. The baseline orbiter carried consumables for a seven-day Earth-orbital stay by four astronauts. The cislunar orbiter would need consumables for a 30-day trip, including two days in Earth orbit, six days for flight to and from the moon, and 22 days in lunar polar orbit. The cislunar crew would number seven in Earth orbit and during transit, and four in lunar orbit while three astronauts explored the lunar surface. The second major problem area was heat balance. Because it would have a larger crew, the cislunar orbiter would need larger radiators to shed the excess heat the astronauts would generate.

The report then presented a "typical" cislunar orbiter mission. The cislunar orbiter would first launch to a 100-mile-high polar Earth orbit, then 10 to 12 additional Shuttle flights would refuel it with 444,000 pounds of propellants. The last flight would deliver a 45,000-pound lunar lander measuring 10 feet in diameter by 47 feet long and its three-person crew.

The cislunar orbiter would have a mass at departure from Earth orbit of up to 1.6 million pounds. It would perform the translunar insertion burn and begin a 72-hour coast to the moon that would end with a lunar polar orbit insertion burn.

The lunar lander would then leave the orbiter's payload bay and descend to a landing on the moon. The lander astronauts would explore for up to a month while the orbiter crew studied the moon from orbit. They would then blast off in the lander's ascent stage with up to 500 pounds of lunar samples. The ascent stage would be stowed in the payload bay and returned to Earth for reuse. The cislunar orbiter would then perform a trans-Earth insertion burn to leave lunar orbit for Earth.

Reentry into Earth's atmosphere would be an especially problematic mission phase for the cislunar orbiter because its heat shield would be designed for reentry from Earth orbit at about 25,000 feet per second, not at lunar return speed of 36,000 feet per second. The report proposed that, halfway to Earth, the orbiter perform a braking burn to reduce its atmosphere entry velocity to about 31,000 feet per second.

Upon reaching Earth, the cislunar orbiter would perform an aerobraking maneuver high in the atmosphere to further trim its speed and capture into orbit. The report described the novel maneuver as having four stages: first, the orbiter would descend at a constant velocity to an altitude no lower than 250,000 feet, taking care not to exceed its maximum allowable heating rate. Next, it would maintain a constant altitude as it slowed. After that, it would pull up and enter a 100-mile-high circular orbit about the Earth. Finally, it would fire braking rockets to begin a normal Shuttle reentry. In effect, the orbiter's heat shield would experience two nominal reentries per lunar mission.

The report concluded that the cislunar Shuttle orbiter could replace the proposed Cislunar Shuttle spacecraft, which stood little chance of receiving immediate funding support, thereby permitting an early resumption of piloted lunar flights after Apollo. As a bonus, since the energy required to reach geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) is similar to that required to depart Earth orbit for the moon, the cislunar orbiter could service communications satellites in GEO.

Cislunar Application of the Space Shuttle Orbiter, Project V1086, J. E. Blahnik; undated (post-July 1971) attachment to memorandum from Director, Science and Applications, to Manager, Space Shuttle Program, NASA Johnson Space Center, December 14, 1971.