One False Step Read online

   Obviously, the effect on NASA during the 1960s would have been extremely wide-ranging. While Apollo would not necessarily have been cancelled – its more advanced capabilities being obvious – it would certainly have experienced considerable delay, intended instead as a longer-term replacement for the Gemini. Running two lunar programs in parallel would have proven extremely difficult; even with the required funding, the trained and experienced manpower for both programs would have been difficult to obtain. One more likely casualty would have been the Saturn V; nothing larger than the Saturn IB would have been required for the Lunar Gemini program, and the only perceived mission for the Saturn V was the lunar flight.

   The Gemini flights could have been divided into two stages. The first stage would have appeared similar to the flights as planned; it is highly unlikely that the abbreviated Gemini program could have accomplished all the needed goals, so the longer program would have been required. These first flights would have needed to satisfy the same requirements for rendezvous and docking, as well as proving the durational flights. It can be assumed that these flights would have flown between 1965-66.

   The second series of flights would have used an upgraded Gemini model, referenced in the planning documents as 'Gemini L'. This would have had a strengthened heat shield, and probably an improved computer to allow for navigation across the translunar void. The original study called for two launches, the second sending the Centaur stage into orbit as a booster, but the other option – using a Saturn IB to send the complex around the moon in a single launch – was also realistic. Given the conflicting Air Force requirements for the Titan, and the advanced development work on the Saturn IB, it seems likely that the latter option would have been employed; 1967 could have seen American astronauts flying around the moon, probably at least twice. A lunar orbital mission could have followed early in the following year, a requirement before a landing mission could have taken place.

   As for the landing on the moon, the 1961 plan called for the creation of a 'stripped-down' landing craft. The Apollo LM was redesigned constantly in order to save weight; a Gemini LM would have had to be even lighter, little more than a skeleton with a propulsion system attached to it. It is probable that it would have been an 'open' lander, something along the lines of the Surveyor, with no pressurised cabin. This would have provided a magnificent view for the astronaut as he descended to the moon, but there would have been very little margin of error as he descended, and his stay time would have been considerably reduced.

   Chamberlin's original proposal called for the lunar landing to take place on Gemini 16; this seems extremely unlikely; in Apollo, there were two lunar module test flights, one in Earth orbit and one in Lunar orbit. Unless some sort of a rush requirement was evident, it seems likely that this would have been repeated on Gemini – so Gemini 16 and Gemini 17 would have been the test flights, with Gemini 18 the actual landing on the Moon – or possibly even a later flight, had problems occurred on the two dry runs.

   It seems doubtful that much time would have been saved in reaching the moon. The first lunar flyby was likely in 1967, and an orbit in 1968 would definitely been a practical proposition, but in the Apollo program, a key delay was the development of the LM, which stretched late into 1968; the first testing flights did not take place until 1969. The 'Gemini LM' would in many ways have been an even more difficult engineering proposition; reduced weight would not have meant reduced complexity, quite the reverse. Perhaps six months might have been shaved off the development program – which would have seen the first man walk on the moon in January 1969, perhaps December 1968 – in the launch window that was occupied by Apollo 8.

   An inevitable question is who, in this rotation, would have been the first man to land on the moon. One candidate would have been Gus Grissom; in Apollo, Deke Slayton pushed him as the first man on the moon, and had Apollo 1 flown, it was almost certain that he would have rotated to command that lunar landing – and he flew the first Gemini flight, and had a significant role in its design; some of the astronauts referred to it as the 'Gusmobile'. It is almost impossible to predict crew assignments with any accuracy – the Gemini assignments were partly designed to provide training for Apollo, and with no Apollo program, this schedule would have been changed.

   As for the astronaut corps in general; there would probably have been changes. Group III would certainly have been selected, and the pressure to admit scientists to the astronaut corps would have continued, so the Group IV scientist-astronauts would also likely been selected. Group V, however, would have been less likely to be selected – there would have been no need for nineteen new astronauts with far fewer flight assignments, only two astronauts per mission. It would have been hard to conceive Group VI, the second batch of scientist-astronauts, being selected, though the seventh Group – astronauts that had been selected for the USAF manned orbiting laboratory – would probably still have been transferred over, though some of them may have thought more carefully about accepting. Given that they were all trained for Gemini operations, they would have been strong candidates.

   If Gemini 18 was successful, it seems less likely that there would have been as many repeats. The capability of the proposed LM was marginal at best; without a cabin, stay time would have been limited to the life support potential of the astronaut's spacesuit, and this would almost certainly have meant only a couple of hours on the surface. Further, the ability to return samples from the surface would have been far reduced. The capacity to perform useful scientific work would have been far inferior to Apollo. A landing would likely have seen the astronaut plant a flag on the surface, and deploy a series of surface experiments, then taking a few samples of the lunar surface from the immediate vicinity of his craft; he would then have returned to the Gemini waiting in orbit.

   This author suspects that while there would have been a couple of repeats – Gemini 19 and Gemini 20, perhaps – that would have represented the conclusion of the Gemini moon program. Simply put, there was nowhere else to go with it. No capacity to increase the payload returned from the moon, no capacity to extend stay time, no capacity to include more equipment. The balance of probabilities is that the last American on the moon would have left the surface in 1969.

   Where from there? Well, Apollo had the Apollo Applications project, follow-on missions utilizing the same hardware, and there was a similar suite of 'Gemini Applications' designed as follow-on missions. Gemini shined in Earth orbit; it was never really intended or designed for translunar operations, but it had great potential for development for operations nearer home, and at a reduced cost to the Apollo – no expensive Saturn IB booster, a Titan III would have done just as well, and those were being produced on an assembly-line basis.

   One objective that was seriously considered for the Gemini program was satellite retrieval, specifically of a Pegasus satellite. This was of key interest, not only because it allowed for the retrieval of long-term experiments in space, or the possibility of repair of key satellites, but also for potential military applications. The USAF had always expressed a keen interest in Gemini; at one point Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara actually offered them control of the entire program, and they were planning to use the capsule in association with the military Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) – the potential to examine Soviet satellites, or retrieve instrumentation from American spy satellites, would have been tempting.

   Flying the Gemini in a one-man configuration was also examined, with the goal of carrying a larger scientific payload. This could either consist of a telescope for astronomical observation, or equipment for Earth observations, and could have been extended-duration missions focused on one tight objective; it is possible to consider 'Gemini Observatories' launched to monitor expected astronomic events, such as comets.

   Perhaps one of the most interesting possibilities was the space station concept. A good deal of work went into the use of a Gemini capsule as a support vehicle for a space station,
much of it in the aforementioned MOL project. There were some proposals to use an Agena booster as a 'minimal space station' attaching a 'pressurised can' which could at the very least have been used for longer-duration missions for the purpose of space medical research.

   More potential lay with the Titan III; the MOL was designed to launch as the top stage, with the Gemini vehicle on top – this could have supported a two-man crew for twenty-eight days, a duration comparable to the shortest Skylab flight. Much of the required design work was done by the USAF; by the time the MOL was cancelled, a 'dummy' version had already been placed in orbit. While it would have certainly been inferior to the flown Skylab in terms of potential, the cost per unit would have been significantly reduced, providing the possibility of an extended program. (Further, the USAF might have been willing to share some of the cost, in exchange for MOL projects being flown on some stations.)

   There might have been a range of proposed missions, but whether they would have been flown is a different story. Apollo Applications had some grand plans as well, but the reality was that all the missions utilised hardware that had already been constructed for the landings on the moon, retasked to new operations. No new Saturn launchers or Apollo CSMs were built. On the other hand, Gemini operations might have had less potential, but they would have been considerably cheaper to fly, and multi-module space stations similar to Mir could have been flown using the same basic station design.

   So, was the decision to remain with Apollo for the lunar landing the correct one? On balance, it was probably a good thing that NASA stuck to their guns and held for Apollo. While there is no doubt that a Gemini landing on the moon was technically feasible, the reality of the situation was that any potential Gemini LM could only have accomplished a 'footsteps-and-flags' mission, and there would have been very little scientific payback from such a landing, in comparison with the wealth of data and samples returned by Apollo. It must have been tempting as Apollo costs and delays mounted to switch instead to the Gemini, but the correct decision was taken.

   Nor was it likely that both programs could have been run in parallel. Certainly, even as late as 1965, Pete Conrad could have got his Gemini flyby of the Moon, possibly as early as 1966 and certainly in 1967 – the consensus was that such a flight could be accomplished with the Centaur stage – but it is unclear what this would have provided for Apollo. The Lunar Orbiter series of probes was, by then, providing better photographic imagery than an astronaut flyby could have produced, and even the experience of translunar navigation would have only been of limited use; Gemini would have used very different equipment to accomplish this than Apollo, and again, unmanned probes had provided significant experience in this area.

   Had the Soviet Union continued their earlier momentum in space, then matters might have been different. If it appeared that the Soviets were close to a lunar flyby, say six months to a launch, then the pressure on NASA to improvise a Gemini flyby would have been enormous, despite Administrator Webb's acceptance of this as a possibility. Even then, it is unlikely that there would have been significant time savings over the more capable Apollo. Landing on the moon was not a straightforward task, and the pace of technological development that landed a man on the moon already progressed at a furious rate.

   And yet...imagine the view that Gus Grissom, Pete Conrad, or Neil Armstrong would have had as they descended to the lunar surface, essentially strapped to an engine as the moon rushed up to meet them. Imagine what that ride would have been like.

  Bibliography

  Advanced Gemini: Circumlunar Mission, Letter from John L. Hammersmith to Eldon W. Hall, 1962

  An Interview with George M. Low, Quest, Volume 15, Number 4, pp14-33

  Deke!, Donald K. Slayton with Michael Cassutt, Forge, 1994

  Direct Flight Apollo Study, Volume 2: Gemini Applications, McDonnell, 1962

  Gemini Spacecraft: Advanced Missions, McDonnell, 1965

  Gemini: Steps to the Moon, David J. Shayler, Springer-Praxis, 2001

  List of Missions, Letter from John L. Hammersmith, 1964

  On The Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini, Barton C. Hacker and James M. Grimwood, NASA, 1977

  Orbits of High Inclination, Letter from Eldon W. Hall, 1966

  Preliminary Project Development Plan for An Advanced Manned Space Program using the Mark II Two Man Spacecraft, Space Task Group, 1961

  Chapter 3: The Moon is Red!

   The origins of Russian interest in space date back from before the founding of the USSR; long before any such experiments were being carried out in other countries by more famous names, experimenters in the fledgling Soviet Union were trialling liquid-fuelled rockets. Their goals were grandiose, and they had nothing whatsoever to do with the moon – the slogan of the early Soviet pioneers in rocketry was 'Onward to Mars!'. Mars – the Red Planet. The idea that the new communist state would be the one to conquer Mars seemed logical, and some of the earliest works of Soviet science-fiction depicted Soviet spacemen bringing revolution to the Martians. (Aelita springs to mind here, notably.)

   The heirs of these men – in some cases, the youngest of these men themselves – were the early pioneers of the Soviet space program. The parallels between the U.S. Army space program and the Soviet space program are fascinating, as in both cases, they were reliant on military spin-offs for their work. In America, it was the Redstone, Jupiter, Atlas and Titan nuclear missiles that were harnessed for the space program; in the Soviet Union, it would be the R-7 nuclear missile. The circumstances behind the launch were again not dissimilar, with the key difference being that the Soviets did not fill the top stage with sand, but instead placed the satellite that would begin the Space Race at its top – Sputnik 1.

   No-one was more surprised at the phenomenal public response than the nation that was responsible for the breakthrough. On the day of its launch, Sputnik was only granted a short piece on the front of Pravda; the next day, it was allotted the entire front page, and Premier Khrushchev began to uses the launch to herald a new era of Soviet technological supremacy. From this day on – he would demand a series of spectaculars designed to continually prove that supremacy, regardless of the merits of the missions involved.

   Putting a man in space – before the Americans, who were known to be working on a range of similar projects – was therefore given the highest priority. It was recognised, however, that it would be a few years before this would be a possibility – but while this was being prepared, other spectacular achievements would be required. Sending up progressively heavier Sputnik satellites, some of them carrying doomed animals, was certainly a start, but sending a satellite to the moon would be a far grander one.

   The Soviet Union was not the only nation with this idea; though Explorer 1 was only a fairly recent visitor to the celestial sphere, the United States in 1958 was on the threshold of launching its Pioneer series of probes, intended for the moon. An early race for the moon was in the offing, and again it was one that the Soviet Union was determined to win. In this they had key advantages, notably in the capability of their boosters; fundamentally, they had a lot more weight to play with in terms of payload than the United States, which was forced to shave every possible microgram of weight from their vehicles.

   The early attempts by both sides to launch probes to the moon were unsuccessful – for the Americans, in the blinding light of publicity, for the Soviets, hidden state secrets that only became clear after the onset of glasnost, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even now, there are many unanswered questions about the Soviet space program. 1959 dawned, however, with the first success – with the launch of an acknowledged space probe, Luna 1. This passed less than six thousand miles from the moon, by far the closest flyby thus far, and gathered a range of valuable scientific information. (In comparison, the next American Pioneer probe passed 60,000 miles from the moon.)

   Luna 2 soon followed, and this accomplished a mission that it has often been thought Luna 1
was intended to accomplish – a hard-landing on the moon. The second probe, identical to the first, was launched on September 12th, 1959, and tracked by observatories across the world, crashed into the moon somewhere close to the crater Archimedes.

   Both of these accomplishments would be dwarfed by the third – the launch of Luna 3, in October 1959. The first probe had flown close to the moon, the second had crashed into it; the third would truly pioneer new ground, by taking the first pictures of the dark side of the moon. The results stunned the world, and the astronomical community; here was half of our closest neighbour, revealed for the first time. (In point of fact, the probe only showed 70% of the dark side – still a major triumph.) The right of the discoverer of new terrain to name it has resulted in the far side of the moon having a somewhat...Russian theme to it, with such terrain features as the Moscow Sea.

   At a time where the Soviet space program seemed to be going from strength to strength, the many failures hidden from the public gaze, the American space program appeared to be languishing. There were great hopes that the newly formed NASA would be able to swing back to a lead by placing the first man into space – and plans for the first suborbital flight were close to accomplishment when the Soviet Union trumped them again, placing the first man in orbit – bypassing the suborbital 'hop' that was the American first step.

   It was in this atmosphere that President Kennedy called for landing a man on the moon. Khrushchev is often criticised for turning the Soviet space program into nothing more than a series of spectaculars, but it was Kennedy that would set the stage for the greatest spectacular of all. In this be deliberately selected something that was not attainable with the current equipment in inventory. The USSR might have an edge in launcher capability, but it would not be sufficient to put a man on the moon. He believed that this would provide level ground from which the two countries could start, and that in such a race, the USA would win.