ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´

IF THE US unveiled the Apollo project today, the price tag would be
a staggering $250 billion. No one nation is ever likely to undertake a mission
of this magnitude again. At the time, though, the Moon landing captured
the hearts of many people. The International Telecommunications Satellite
Organisation, which controls telecommunications traffic worldwide, set up
the first global satellite link to relay live pictures of the landing to
500 million people across the world.

The emotion of the event even converted some of the programme’s detractors.
From the southern US, Ralph Abernathy, spiritual successor to Martin Luther
King, walked with 25 families to the gates of Cape Canaveral, protesting
at the waste and expense of Apollo. When Tom Paine, the head of NASA, heard
that security guards were holding the protestors at the gate, he went down
and spoke to them. ‘It will be a lot harder to solve the problem of hunger
and poverty than it is to send a man to the Moon, but if it were possible
for us not to push that button and solve the problems you are talking about,
we would not push the button.’ Paine allowed the families into the VIP stand
to watch Saturn V, the booster rocket of Apollo 11, thunder into space.

More than a million people crowded the approach roads and the highways
to Cape Canaveral, the centre that had been launching craft into space since
February 1958. Airports were brought to a standstill and 200 members of
Congress and 19 ambassadors arrived to watch the first launch of astronauts
to the Moon. On the beaches, people camped in tents; on the roadsides for
miles around the Cape, many more camped in vans. Across the US, retailers
reported the largest ever buying spree of TV sets, a record that still stands.
In cities throughout the US, crime fell to an all time low; in churches
in every state, people held special prayer services. In Africa, spiritual
leaders began lengthy rituals to appease the supernatural.

Finally, at 9.32 am Eastern Standard Time on 16 July, more than 3000
reporters from 56 countries recorded the launch of the first expedition
to the Moon. Saturn V boosted Apollo 11 to a velocity of 28 100 kilometres
per hour into an orbit of the Earth. After two circuits, about two and three-quarter
hours after the launch, the third stage of Saturn V increased Apollo 11’s
velocity to 39 000 kilometres per hour and hurled the capsule towards the
Moon. About 62 hours into the mission, Earth’s gravity had slowed Apollo
11 to 3280 kilometres per hour, but then the pull of the Moon speeded up
the capsule again. At 72 hours into the mission, Apollo 11 entered an orbit
of the Moon at a velocity of 8400 kilometres per hour. A little more than
a day later, the lunar lander separated from Apollo, and fired its main
engines for nearly 12 minutes. During that time, the lander dropped 15.7
kilometres and flew 480 kilometres around the Moon to the Sea of Tranquillity.

But this episode of the mission was far from tranquil. About five minutes
after the lander left Apollo, a warning flashed on the capsule’s console
saying that the computer was overloaded. Then a second warning threatened
to end the descent and return the crew to the orbiting capsule. Steve Bales,
the officer responsible for guiding the lunar lander at Mission Control
in Houston, knew that the overload was not important and disregarded the
warning. The crew pressed on, knowing that Houston would monitor all the
necessary information.

As the lander approached the surface, its downblast sent dust billowing
over small rocks and craters, totally obscuring the view. As it hovered,
trying to find the smoothest place to land, the rocket propellant was running
low. Mission Control called out the time remaining before the lander would
crash to the surface: ’60 seconds . . . 30 seconds . . .’. Finally, with
just a few seconds to go, Neil Armstrong lowered the lander onto the surface.

Slowly the dust settled. But for several minutes Armstrong and Buzz
Aldrin were denied the drama of that magnificent view; they were too busy
preparing the lander for lift-off should anything go wrong. When Armstrong
descended the ladder of the lunar lander, NASA said that it was the beginning
of a new age of discovery. Armstrong seemed less sure of his words. He was
supposed to say: ‘That’s one small step for a man – one giant leap for mankind’;
what we heard was: ‘That’s one small step for man – one giant leap for mankind’.
Armstrong insisted subsequently that he stuck to the script even though
a careful examination of the tapes indicates he didn’t. He was so adamant,
however, that NASA keeps the script as the official record.

Yet in spite of the rhetoric it was not for any scientific reason that
NASA went to the Moon. It was a political decision made by President John
Kennedy in May 1961, less than four months after he reached the White House
and less than three years after NASA was established. Kennedy wanted to
know how the US could beat the Soviet Union in a space race that he believed
would show the world which political system to trust for technical as well
as social advances. Several times in the previous four years, the Soviet
Union had snatched glory by putting the first satellite in orbit, by sending
pictures of the far side of the Moon back to Earth and by launching the
first person into space.

The Apollo programme cost about $25 billion, roughly 60 per cent of
the total amount spent by NASA between 1961 and 1972. Yet the Apollo budget
was only about 1.5 per cent of the total spending by the American government
in the same period; it compared with 42 per cent spent on military projects.
Nevertheless, according to Eugene Emme, an historian, ‘the accelerated space
programme after 1961 emerged as the largest single technological enterprise
of a non-military nature ever undertaken’. The Apollo project employed more
than 250 000 people in more than 10 000 companies and paid for 11 Apollo
flights carrying astronauts, including six visits to the Moon between July
1969 and December 1972.

For its money, the US attracted the interest of millions of people around
the world, increased tourism, and improved export orders. The civil service
estimated the government received as much as seven invisible US dollars
for every dollar spent on the space programme. The image of the US in other
countries was enhanced briefly as the public relations roadshow rolled around
the globe. NASA had fleets of vans touring the world with display boards,
models and a team of lecturers describing everything from the way that Apollo
would fly to the Moon to how an astronaut goes to the toilet in space. For
several days after Kennedy’s speech about the landing, politicians spoke
of the ‘devastating humiliations’ of the Soviet Union’s achievements in
space. They urged that scientific resources in the US be ‘mobilised to a
wartime basis because we are at war’. One politician claimed he was ‘downright
hurt’ that the Soviet Union had put someone, Yuri Gagarin, into space first.

Others were less enthusiastic and, as time wore on, Kennedy too began
to doubt the wisdom of his hastily contrived decision. Several months before
his assassination in November 1963, Kennedy spoke at length about his desire
for cooperation in the peaceful exploration of space. ‘Both nations would
help themselves as well as other nations by removing these endeavours from
the bitter and wasteful competition of the Cold War.’ But it had gone too
far for that.

As the Apollo programme moved forward, it brought in its wake a range
of associated projects set up to seek answers to critical questions about
aspects of the Moon landing. Two questions called for direct observations:
where was the best place to land and what was the surface made of? In response,
NASA developed five craft to map the Moon’s surface remotely, built by Boeing
and known as the Lunar Orbiter series, and five successful landing spacecraft,
built by Hughes and known as the Surveyor series. Between 1966 and 1968,
the Lunar Orbiters mapped much of the Moon’s topography, and in 1966 and
1967 the Surveyor spacecraft landed on the Moon to inspect the surface and
to collect samples. But this work, delayed by technical problems, came too
late to provide information for the design of the Apollo lander. Surveyor
did at least confirm that astronauts would not disappear beneath a thick
layer of dust.

NASA trained astronauts to pilot Apollo in expanded versions of the
Gemini spacecraft. (The Gemini missions succeeded the Mercury ones, which
launched the first American astronaut.) NASA flew them 10 times in 1965
and 1966. Eventually, 13 of the Gemini astronauts flew on Apollo missions
and one, John Young, made two shuttle flights. In Gemini, astronauts practised
docking with another craft in orbit, tethered space walks and flights lasting
two weeks, the maximum duration of a trip to the Moon. The robotic craft,
which included the Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor series, and the expanded Gemini
programme cost NASA $2.5 billion on top of the Apollo bill.

Meanwhile, scientists struggled to get science incorporated into the
Apollo missions. Without space science, Apollo was in danger of being nothing
more than a giant flagpole for political messages. The task was difficult
because space science in the newly created agency developed separately to
the programme for putting astronauts on the Moon. Besides, scientists had
a very different plan for exploring the Moon from that espoused by Kennedy.

The head of the Office of Space Science and Applications at NASA was
Homer Newell. He worked with Robert Jastrow, transferred to NASA from the
Department of Defense, to develop the agency’s space science. Harold Urey,
a chemist and Nobel laureate, told Jastrow he was convinced the Moon held
the key to our understanding of the way that planets evolve. Urey convinced
Jastrow of the need for direct observation of the Moon. Jastrow introduced
Urey to Newell in December 1958, and the following month NASA set up an
ad hoc working group on lunar exploration. This was the birth of the Ranger
series of spacecraft, designed to crash into the Moon’s surface and to relay
pictures of the Moon to Earth up to the moment of impact. The ad hoc group
put together a plan for eventually sending scientists to explore the surface.

In August 1959, NASA acknowledged the importance of the ad hoc group
by reorganising it as the Lunar Science Group. Then, in early 1960, Newell
formed the Office of Lunar and Planetary Programmes, and studies of the
Moon became the priority. Before this, lunar missions had been seen as opportunistic
missions between regular flights by robotic probes to Mars and Venus. Little
more than a year later, Kennedy decided to put someone on the Moon, although
by then NASA had three projects in hand for exploring the planet. According
to NASA’s 10-year plan, published in 1959, Ranger, Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter
would provide scientific information about the Moon before it sent astronauts
to investigate the planet in the 1970s. Eventually, the agency would set
up a permanent lunar base for research.

So, by the early 1960s, the Office of Space Science and Applications
and the Office of Manned Space Flight within NASA had different plans for
exploring the Moon. The two offices also operated differently. Under Newell,
the Office of Space Science and Applications worked through several subcommittees,
each with a responsibility for a specific field, and it frequently sought
guidance from the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Office of Manned Space Flight sought advice from no one. Science was
not associated with the Mercury and Gemini missions.

As an interim step toward cooperation, Newell’s office suggested experiments
that the Office of Manned Space Flight developed into practical propositions.
The staff of the Apollo programme, however, were reluctant to allocate space
and weight for complex scientific instruments. As engineers, they reasoned
there was not enough room with so much standby equipment needed to ensure
the safety of the crew and its mission. As defined by Kennedy, Apollo was
to land people on the Moon, not to carry scientific instruments to the lunar
surface. The gap between the two offices widened when, in 1962, NASA moved
the projects associated with putting people in space from an old aeronautical
laboratory in Virginia to Houston in Texas; the Office of Space Science
and Applications stayed put. The Houston site was eventually known as the
Johnson Space Center.

ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s and engineers became polarised, each with their own ideas
of priorities. In 1963, NASA created a division to reconcile the diverging
viewpoints and, at conferences over the next two years, an array of scientific
experiments was developed for the Moon missions. The staff at Houston, which
thought they already had enough on their hands to land people on the Moon,
were responsible for making these experiments part of the Apollo mission.
The Houston team soon got the reputation of giving scientists a hard time.
To an extent, this is undeserved. Putting people in space is a complex and
risky business, demanding sophisticated hardware and loyalty to principles
of safety, rather than to space science.

Despite the difficulties, in 1965 NASA selected a group of scientists
to join its corps of astronauts. The agency intended to send several scientists
to the Moon after the first landings had demonstrated the techniques and
given its engineers confidence. As it happened, only one scientist, Harrison
Schmitt, walked on the Moon, and that was an accident. He was pulled from
the crew of Apollo 18, the Moon flight that was subsequently cancelled,
to go on the Apollo 17 mission, in December 1972, which turned out to be
the last lunar trip.

The battle to get science aboard Apollo was fought hard and won. Engineers
in industry and at NASA did a remarkable job in expanding the capabilities
of the basic Moon module used for the first landing in 1969. These advances
helped scientists to gather more information about the Moon than they would
have done, information that will keep them busy for decades. Without the
tenacious commitment of engineers, though, the technology of Apollo would
have been an inadequate compromise between bad engineering and over-ambitious
science objectives. Apollo forged a link between scientists and engineers
rarely seen in programmes that involve putting astronauts in space: it transformed
the programme from a political extravaganza into a useful tool for lunar
science.

Clearly, the first landing on the Moon was an unforgettable experience
for those who lived through the drama. Neither Armstrong, nor Aldrin nor
Mike Collins, who looked after Apollo 11 in lunar orbit, ever went into
space again. That was the price they paid for being the first astronauts
to go to the Moon: they spent their time as ambassadors of the US’s publicity
machine. Some thought the landings would quickly lead to tourism. With tongue
in cheek, Pan Am took reservations for the first lunar spaceliner. And who
were the first to put their names down? Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins.

An important lesson, though, is that the way science was kept waiting
in the wings is no model for future projects dependent on a marriage between
high technology and grand adventure. On this birthday of the first ‘giant
leap for mankind’, it is no time for complacent reflections. The best lessons
have yet to be put into practice.

* * *

The science that the Apollo spacecraft carried to the Moon

BY THE beginning of the 1960s, scientists had concluded from fragments
of meteorites and asteroids that hit the Earth, that the Solar System is
about 4.6 billion years old. Those advocating lunar exploration thought
that the Moon, too, was of the same age. They felt certain that the Earth’s
companion would reveal information about the early history of the Solar
System, because traces of primordial bombardment would remain. By the end
of the decade, geologists could claim that on the Earth, movement of continental
plates has destroyed much of the physical evidence of events early in the
Earth’s history.

Accordingly, an ever-growing band of scientists began to lobby for an
increase of the role of science in the Apollo missions. The contractors
building hardware for the Apollo mission went to work expanding the capabilities
of the lunar lander that would carry scientists from the Apollo capsule
in orbit around the Moon down to the surface. For the first three trips
to the Moon, astronauts walked to work. On the last three visits, they had
an electric car, called the lunar roving vehicle.

Apollo 11, in 1969, returned with 21 kilograms of lunar samples; Apollo
17 returned with 110 kilograms, and the weight of scientific equipment increased
from 102 to 514 kilograms. In total, the Apollo spacecraft carried 2.1 tonnes
of scientific equipment to the Moon and returned to Earth with 379 kilograms
of the Moon for detailed analysis. During the missions, the astronauts left
five packages of experiments, which continued to send data to Earth for
many years.

These Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Packages (ALSEPs) carried a set
of instruments selected for a specific landing site. The first mission,
Apollo 11, was a test of the landing concept and did not have spare capacity
to carry an ALSEP. It only had space for a small seismometer, a solar-particles
experiment and an instrument to reflect laser beams from Earth. The reflected
laser light gave an accurate measurement of the distance between the Moon
and the Earth. The particles experiment returned to Earth with the crew
and the seismometer stopped after a period of three weeks.

The ALSEP on Apollo 12 carried instruments to measure the magnetic field
of the Moon, the ionised and the neutral particles in the lunar atmosphere,
and the strength and velocity of electrons and protons in the solar wind.
It also contained a seismometer that could detect the amount of dust and
debris that impinged on the ALSEP as it rested on the surface.

Apollo 13 returned to Earth without reaching the Moon; an explosion
on board crippled the spacecraft and nearly killed the crew. Its scientific
instruments would have concentrated on geological measurements. Apollo 14
concentrated on seismic studies by recording reflected vibrations from various
subsurface layers. While they were on the Moon, the astronauts detonated
small explosions to make the vibrations. After they had left, radio signals
triggered canisters to fire mortars, creating vibrations that probed the
surface to a depth of 150 metres.

Apollo 15 carried a magnetometer, field and particle detectors, a solar
wind spectrometer and equipment to measure the heat flow from the Moon’s
interior. The astronauts drilled a hole and suspended thermocouples on a
lead that carried the data back to the surface. Sensors on a second borehole
failed.

Apollo 16 tried to repeat the heat flow experiments, but John Young
tripped over the cable and tore it loose. During this mission, though, astronauts
managed to use a seismometer, a magnetometer and a remotely-controlled mortar
device for producing seismic vibrations. Apollos 15 and 16 also released
into lunar orbit small satellites that continued to send information about
particles and fields after the crew returned to Earth. During the final
mission, Apollo 17 in 1972, astronauts deployed two heat probes as well
as seismic mortars and instruments to measure the lunar atmosphere. They
also left a special device to detect gravity waves pulsing through the galaxy.

So what did we get from Apollo? A lot of samples, thousands of photographs
and data that still provides work for scientists. So far, scientists have
examined fewer than 50 per cent of the samples brought back. Nevertheless,
we are learning how the Moon differs from and is similar to the Earth. The
technology developed for Apollo did little for the rest of the space programme
or projects that followed. No launch vehicle developed specifically for
Apollo was used for anything else, except to launch the Skylab space station
to which Apollo astronauts were sent in 1973. The greatest contribution
to technology stems from the experience of successfully developing several
rockets, launch vehicles and spacecraft simultaneously.

What was developed for Apollo, which NASA temporarily forgot when building
the shuttle, was a unique management system capable of mobilising an entire
nation for the biggest technology enterprise ever undertaken in peacetime.
The lessons learnt for the management of the Apollo space programme are
now being dusted off for the space station.

David Baker is an aerospace and defence consultant. He worked for NASA
for 12 years and was a consultant to the US’s space programme for a further
six years.