Apollo 11 – 50th Anniversary of the First Man on the Moon (preview)

CONTENTS AND INTRODUCTION

APOLLO 11: 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST MAN ON THE MOON The space programme began in 1957 when Russia launched Sputnik 1, followed less than 12 years later by the first human boot prints on the Moon. The story of that achievement, and the intermediate steps vital to ensuring its success, is a model of human ingenuity and success – in human resources, technical know-how and in the desire to reach beyond frontiers and technological barriers.

It was never going to be easy, for in the words of President Kennedy it was: “The most hazardous, dangerous and greatest adventure upon which mankind has ever embarked.”

Had Russia not beaten America by putting the first man in

PART 1: PREPARING THE WAY

orbit, it is highly unlikely that the decision would ever have been taken and the road to the Moon may have taken several decades to build – if ever.

But that is not how it was, for the urge to beat the Russians was deeply embedded in the ambitions of a new president who sought the high frontier of advanced technology to build rockets unimaginably bigger than anything conceived before and to send trained astronauts on the most perilous voyages of discovery since human being first sailed beyond sight of land to discover new worlds.

David Baker

046 CHAPTER 7 PAVING A PATH TO THE MOON

004 CHAPTER 1 FIRST STEPS

The dawn of the Space Age from the launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957 to the fl ight of Yuri Gagarin in April 1961 – the first manned space fl ights (Vostok and Mercury).

President Kennedy’s Moon-goal challenge.

Unmanned reconnaissance missions, crew selection, plans for manned Apollo landings, training and planning for the fi rst landing, selecting the experiments.

US manned space fl ights in the Gemini programme.

016 CHAPTER 3 SECURING THE LEAD

Firing out of lunar orbit, the long coast back to Earth and how the spacecraft survived a fiery re-entry to achieve a successful splashdown.

PART 3: BACK TO THE MOON, BACK TO THE FUTURE

PART 2: THE MISSION 050 CHAPTER 8 LIFT-OFF!

010 CHAPTER 2 A LEAP FORWARD

088 CHAPTER 12 COMING HOME

Preparations for the Apollo 11 mission, launch, fl ight to the Moon, getting into lunar orbit.

060 CHAPTER 9 ARRIVAL

The fi re of January 1967 and the loss of three astronauts, changes to the spacecraft, fi rst launches of the mighty Saturn V rocket and the fi rst unmanned test of the Lunar Module. Flight of Apollo 7.

The steps necessary for going down to the surface, what was required and how Mission Control played a vital role in making it a success.

024 CHAPTER 4 FIRST FLIGHT AROUND THE MOON

066 CHAPTER 10 TRANQUILITY BASE

The fi rst Apollo fl ight around the Moon in December 1968 – Apollo 8.

032 CHAPTER 5 GETTING READY

First complete fl ight of Apollo and Lunar Module in Earth orbit in March 1969 – Apollo 9.

040 CHAPTER 6 FULL DRESS REHEARSAL

First circumlunar reconnaissance in May 1969 – Apollo 10.

Armstrong and Aldrin’s fi rst impressions of the Moon and their fi rst hours preparing to set foot on another planet.

Armstrong’s historic fi rst step.

074 CHAPTER 11 MOONWALK

Events as they unfolded from Neil Armstrong’s fi rst steps, joined by Buzz Aldrin, to the deployment of the instruments and back inside for a rest.

096 CHAPTER 13 PINPOINT LANDINGS

The Apollo 12 pin-point landing next to an unmanned Surveyor spacecraft sent to the Moon in 1967, the Apollo 13 near-disaster and the successful landing of Apollo 14 commanded by America’s fi rst astronaut.

104 CHAPTER 14 DRIVING ON THE MOON

The last three greatly expanded missions beginning with Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 taking the fi rst Lunar Roving Vehicles to the Moon.

118 CHAPTER 15 LAST STEPS FROM APOLLO

Apollo 17, the last lunar rover and the last boot prints on the Moon provides a fitting end to the Apollo programme.

124 CHAPTER 16 GOING BACK

The plans for an international programme to put an orbiting space station around the Moon by the early 2020s to support expeditions to the surface and the provision of permanent bases for scientific and industrial use.

AUTHOR: David Baker

PUBLISHING DIRECTOR: Dan Savage

PRODUCTION EDITOR: Dan Sharp

COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR: Nigel Hole

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PUBLISHED BY: Mortons Media Group Ltd, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincolnshire, LN9 6JR. Tel: 01507 529529

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COPYRIGHT: Mortons Media Group Ltd, 2019 All rights reserved.

PUBLISHER: Steve O’Hara

ISBN: 978-1-911276-82-1

NOTE: Distances given herein are in statute miles, not nautical miles.

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CHAPTER 1 – PREPARING THE WAY

FIRST STEPS (1957-1961)

Russia’s R-7 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), capable of throwing a nuclear warhead to the United States, was used to launch Sputnik 1 and adapted later for a wide variety of roles. This recent view of a Soyuz launcher at the European Space Agency’s Kourou facility shows the same core stage and four boosters as that employed for all early Soviet space successes. (ESA)

The dawn of the Space Age as depicted by an artist imagining the world’s first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, launched in the early hours of October 5, 1957. (Gregory R Todd)

I

t was 28 minutes after midnight local time, on Saturday, October 5, 1957 when the world’s first artificial satellite was launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. It was sent into space on what NATO referred to as an SS-6 Sapwood rocket but which the Russians called the R-7, known within the Soviet Ministry of Defence as the 8K71. It was an intercontinental ballistic missile adapted for the purpose of achieving a propaganda coup by placing the first man-made object in orbit. For ever after it would be officially recorded as having been launched on October 4, at 34 seconds past 7.28pm Universal Time.

The project had been the brainwave of Sergei Korolev, Russia’s chief rocket designer during the 1950s. Born in the Ukraine on January 12, 1907, he trained as an aircraft engineer and went into the design bureau where he displayed talents for organisation and planning. Accused of talking about space travel, thereby advocating the wasteful use of Soviet resources, he was imprisoned from 1938 during Stalin’s purge on intellectuals which also included the cream of experienced military officers. Serving six years in the Kolyma labour camp, Korolev was released after the Great Patriotic War ended in 1945.

With an evident talent for aircraft design and rocket propulsion, Korolev was quickly put to work and was awarded the Badge of Honour for designing rocket motors boosting aircraft into the air and

for their application as primary propulsion, believing that rockets could bypass jets as the most effective propulsion for point interception. But his interests went further and when Stalin ordered a crash programme to build ballistic missiles, Korolev had his opportunity to shine.

A new institution known as NII-88 was set up to at Gorodomlya on Lake Seliger where captured German rocket research data was pored over. The Russians had obtained some 2000 German V-2 programme rocket engineers, snatched at gunpoint in East Germany, from whom they proceeded to extract information.

This was necessary because vast quantities of paperwork and blueprints relating to rocket research had been grabbed by the Americans right under the nose of the Red Army at the end of the war.

But the research that followed initial tests made using V-2 copies, known as the R-1 and the R-2, provided a base upon which indigenous Soviet research quickly exceeded anything the Germans had produced. This was largely because the German scientists and engineers had been focused by their SS masters into exclusive development of the V-2 as a bombardment weapon, stifling a broader programme which the Russians now embarked upon.

But the Russians had their own advanced rocket research programme during the 1930s, emaciated when many of the talented engineers and scientists working on weapons which could have propelled the

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Soviets ahead of the Nazis were sent to the gulags.

Quickly, the Russians developed a number of improvements, including warheads which separated so as to avoid the effects of the main body of the rocket tumbling, as most of the V-2s launched did, and turned their attention to improving the accuracy of missiles. The R-2 doubled the range of the V-2 to more than 400 miles (644km) while the Korolev team worked on a new model, the R-3, with a theoretical range of 3000 miles (4827km) but the propulsion expert Valentin Glushko could not manage to develop the rocket motors for this and it was cancelled.

But Stalin wanted a missile with an intercontinental range and while intermediate types proved successful the geopolitical situation pushed the Soviet Ministry of Defence increasingly toward a deterrent built around land-based rockets capable of reaching the United States. Believing the USSR to be encircled by hostile states, he sought a means of attacking the USA without fl ying through enemy airspace. Not that this inhibited the Soviet push toward a jet bomber force, the real objective with manned aircraft being targets across Western Europe rather than North America. So it was that concerted efforts were applied from 1953 toward the world’s fi rst ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile), the R-7.

RUSSIA’S BIG STICK

The ability to produce a rocket with the power to reach the United States with a thermonuclear warhead called for a level of thrust which could not immediately be achieved with the motors available in the early 1950s. To solve this, the R-7 was based around the concept of adopting rocket motors of medium thrust in clusters on four boosters equally spaced around an elongated core stage. The basic rocket motor design consisted of four combustion chambers fed equally by a single turbopump delivering liquid oxygen and kerosene, each single chamber producing a thrust of more than 40,000lb (177.9kg), slightly less than the thrust of the singlechamber V-2 rocket motor.

All elements would carry a set of four rocket motors, each RD-107 booster quartet producing a thrust of 178,300lb (793kN) and a single core RD-108 quartet producing a thrust of 160,400lb (713.4kN).

With all four boosters and the core stage fi ring from the ground up, lift-off thrust was an unprecedented 873,600lb (3886kN).

The R-7 was capable of throwing a 3MT thermonuclear warhead with a mass of 11,850lb (5375kg) a distance of 3728 miles (6000km).

Begun in 1953, the R-7 design was given the formal go-ahead the following year and made its fi rst fl ight attempt on May 15, 1957, which was only a partial success as was the second attempt on July 12. The fi rst fully successful launch occurred on August 21 followed by a second on September 7.

From its conception, Korolev saw in the R-7 the potential to place an artificial satellite in orbit and proposed this to the Soviet Academy of Sciences but the idea was rejected. Until, that is, March 1955 when the Americans announced that they would launch a satellite as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) planned for 1957-58 and the Russians followed within days by an announcement of their own.

Concurrent with the development of what was intended to be the fi rst Russian satellite, which weighed 1120lb (840kg), a second satellite was being prepared capable of carrying a dog into orbit in a payload capsule weighing 2926lb (1327kg).

But when the Americans began to prepare for their own satellite launch, and looked likely to achieve that before the end of 1957, the Russians hurriedly put together a satellite weighing a mere 184lb (83.5kg) which could be launched quickly and get the jump on the competition. This was Sputnik 1 and it made it into space ahead of the US Vanguard satellite which was being prepared for launch on a very much smaller rocket.

Premier Khrushchev, who approved the attempt, was not at all convinced and was moved to sanction Sputnik 1 only by his son who worked within the aerospace industry; moreover, in reality the Americans were ahead of the Russians but nobody knew – or could be told – because of national security considerations. The publicly announced Earth satellite project was Vanguard – a pseudo-civilian effort built around a three-stage rocket based on the Viking sounding rocket, which had been used to shoot science packages to the edge of the atmosphere from where they were recovered after descending on parachutes.

Behind the scenes, another US satellite project had been under way for three years, a spy satellite built up on an Agena rocket stage which would be launched on a developed version of the Thor ballistic missile, the type of Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) deployed to the UK between September 1958 and August 1963, when it was withdrawn.

Nevertheless, with a range of 1750 miles (2816km), it could strike all targets in western Russia as far east as Moscow.

But the variant developed into a satellite launcher had a much longer and more useful life.

This project was instigated during the administration of President Eisenhower who, concerned at the potential threat to surveillance and intelligence gathering aircraft such as the Lockheed U-2 (which would begin overfl ights of the USSR in June 1956), approved a crash programme to develop spy satellites. This carried the highest level of security classification and once launches began they would be covered under the public name of Discoverer, proclaimed by the military to be a research and development programme for scientific understanding of the space

The R-7 ICBM proved flexible and robust, achieving a wide variety of ‘firsts’ which maintained pressure on the United States to respond. (Novosti)

Newspapers across America and around the world heralded the launch of Sputnik, a transformative event which alerted many people to the advanced technological achievements of the Soviet Union. (via David Baker) Apollo 11 – 50th anniversary 5

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Displayed here as a replica, the original intended as Russia’s first satellite, Sputnik 3 was launched on May 15, 1958. Weighing 2926lb (1327kg), it was almost 100 times heavier than the largest American satellite launched to that date. (Novosti)

environment. It was recognised that Vanguard would fly first, providing the US contribution to the IGY, but the spy satellites would follow just as soon as they were ready.

Public disclosure satisfied the requirement for acknowledgment of rocket launches, which could hardly be kept secret, from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) near Lompoc, California.

This launch site had been used for the development of a wide range of missiles and rockets and would be used to launch all the Discoverer spy satellites, known secretly under the code name Corona, so that they could be launched into polar orbit, 90º to the Earth’s equator. Thus began the US space programme, largely in total secrecy, with only the diminutive Vanguard known to the public as the US contribution to the global study of the Earth and its environment.

REACTION AND RESPONSE

The secrecy that surrounded the extent of America’s preparedness for the Space Age had masked a much more concerted effort than anything then approved in the Soviet Union, where it had taken all of Korolev’s persuasive powers, and the involvement of Krushchev’s son, to get approval for the modest Sputnik programme. But the reaction in the USA was palpable as fear spread that the Russians could orchestrate another ‘Pearl Harbor’ moment, striking directly and without warning. Only this time there was nothing that could stop nuclear-tipped missiles raining down. In reality it was no more threatening than US plans for a wide and expanding force of ICBMs capable of delivering thermonuclear ruin on the Soviet Union.

In 1954, around the time the US military got interested in long range planning for spy satellites, work started on America’s first ICBMs – Atlas and its back-up Titan.

Both were much smaller than Russia’s R-7,

because they didn’t need to be as powerful to carry America’s nuclear warheads, which were very much smaller than Russia’s but just as effective.

There was reluctance on the part of the US Air Force to throw its weight behind the missiles programme because it was more interested in preserving an expanding and increasingly capable Strategic Air Command equipped with Boeing B-47s and B-52s, with bold and unrealistic plans for supersonic bombers. But the ICBM was here to stay and the Atlas and Titan programmes made sense, capable as they were of striking with impunity and unchallenged except for the deterrent doctrine that by launching first they would suffer the consequences of reciprocity.

Development of the Atlas ICBM began in 1954 when advances in propulsion coupled to the breakthrough in miniaturising nuclear warheads made intercontinental missiles possible. Studies into what became Atlas had begun as early as 1951 but Karol Bossart, a Belgian who had moved to the United States

A Corona recovery capsule is admired as senior Air Force officials pose to express their delight at its successful return to Earth. A key architect of the classified Air Force missile and space programme, Lt Col Bernard Schriever, commander Air Research and Development Command, is in the centre. (USAF)

Before America could launch its first satellite, Russia sent a dog into orbit, destined to die within a few hours of overheating. There was no means of getting it back alive. (Novosti)

in the 1920s, came up with the answer to engineering challenges which had inhibited the programme from the start. He proposed a unique design, one which could dramatically reduce the empty weight of the missile and provide a significant improvement in thrust/weight ratio.

Achieving that could bring the propulsion requirement within the extant capabilities of the rocket motor design teams.

Bossart designed a rocket of monocoque design comprising ultra-thin walls formed by the propellant tanks themselves instead of a rigid design built up from frames and stringers supporting internal propellant tanks enclosed within a separate skin. The monocoque design was very much lighter and when empty of propellant it would be held rigid by an internal pressurising gas to stiffen it. Bossart also addressed the deep concern that a two-stage rocket would be unreliable: two-stage rockets were logical in that they dispensed with excess weight as they ascended but separation and ignition of a second stage posed difficulties with the current technology.

Atlas would adopt what became known as a 1½ stage concept. Instead of shutting down the first stage, separating it and igniting a second stage at altitude, Bossart placed a single XLR-43-NA-3 booster engine either side of a central rocket motor called the ‘sustainer’. All three motors would ignite on the launch pad and the rocket would only be released from holddown arms when they had been verified as operating properly. The paired booster motors would provide a thrust of 300,000lb (1334.4kN) and be jettisoned at around two minutes and 10 seconds, while the XLR-43NA-5 sustainer would continue to burn for a further two minutes and 38 seconds on a thrust of 54,000lb (240.2kN).

A division of North American Aviation, Rocketdyne, built the rocket motors and the Convair division of General Dynamics produced the Atlas missile. The first flight

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The Thor Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) would be deployed to the UK from 1958 but it formed the basis for the satellite launcher used to place the Corona spy satellites in orbit. (USAF) LEFT: Two months after Sputnik 1 and a month after Russia had put a dog in orbit, US ambitions to follow in hot pursuit were shattered when Vanguard TV-3 blew up on the launch pad on December 6, 1957.

A parody of the name of the Russian satellite, the press dubbed it ‘flopnick’! (NASA)

attempt occurred on June 11, 1957, with the Atlas A, a development series which did not have the central sustainer. The rocket was held by restraint clamps for 10 seconds to check the performance of the booster motors then released. Less than a minute after lift-off, however, the range safety officer had to destroy it when it ran amok. The second attempt, on September 25, was also a failure. The next attempt on December 17 was a success, by which time the Russians had used their R-7 to place Sputnik 2 in orbit carrying a dog called Laika – who would die in space as there was no plan to bring her back.

The first Atlas B, with boosters and sustainer installed, was launched on July 19, 1958 – the definitive Atlas. But cautious about putting faith in such a radical design, Atlas was only one of two ICBMs under development. The Titan missile was much more conventional in design but both would underpin America’s manned space flight programme. Titan was approved as a backup ICBM in May 1955 and would make its first flight on February 6, 1959.

Of conventional two-stage configuration, Titan was manufactured by the Martin Company initially utilising a twin-chamber Aerojet LR-87-AJ-1 rocket motor in the first stage delivering a thrust of 330,000lb (1467kN) which was quickly improved with the AJ-5 variant to produce 430,000lb (1900kN) for two minutes, 30

seconds of flight time. The LR-91 second stage engine delivered a thrust of 80,000lb (355.8kN) for a further two minutes and 35 seconds. Improvements here too increased performance to a stage thrust of 100,000lb (444.8kN).

Long before the first satellites were launched, the Air Force also had in

On becoming President, John F Kennedy appointed James E Webb as administrator of NASA – the top job at the nation’s new space agency and the man who would oversee the Apollo programme. (NASA)

development the Dyna-Soar boost-glide strike and reconnaissance system, a delta-winged re-entry vehicle launched by rocket to the edge of space and near orbital speed to circumnavigate the globe.

Later versions would have entered orbit and Titan was selected to provide the lift. To better understand the physiological effects of space flight, the Air Force also began its Man In Space Soonest (MISS) programme, which initially involved shooting a man on a ballistic trajectory to experience several minutes of weightlessness during free-fall to a recovery by parachute. But MISS also incorporated a plan to follow through with manned space flight eventually leading to a Moon landing with more developed vehicles.

While the Air Force put resources into the development of Thor, Atlas, Titan, Dyna-Soar and MISS, the Army had a German rocket team led by Wernher von Braun working at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency’s (ABMA’s) Development Operations Division at Huntsville, Alabama, on a massive satellite launcher called Juno. With a thrust of around 1.5 million pounds (6672kN) it would be capable of lifting 10-ton satellites for the military. While the Air Force had the highly classified Corona spy satellite programme under way, from 1957 the Army was looking to develop a bespoke launcher for heavy weather and Apollo 11 – 50th anniversary 7

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A big step forward, the Atlas ICBM during a test firing on August 2, 1958.

(USAF)

communication satellites and this was just the launch vehicle to do it. Before long the Army would commission the Project Horizon study envisaging manned military bases on the Moon.

The American public was largely unaware of these expansive Air Force and Army plans and when Sputnik trumped efforts to get a US satellite into orbit on the Vanguard rocket, it took them completely by surprise and triggered a cascading series of Congressional hearings from a wide range of specialist opinion. Examining every facet of space activity, spread between the Navy, with its Vanguard project, the Army and the Air Force, it appeared to the political elite in the nation’s capital that it lacked a unified purpose and was suffering from fragmentation.

NASA continued the vibrant aeronautical research programme which had formed the backbone of the NACA. Here, the Bell X-2 is posed in front of a Boeing B-50 carrier-plane and support personnel. (NACA)

a beginning rather than an end in itself.

This branch of the government was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), set up in 1915 and modelled on the UK’s Advisory Committee for Aeronautics established in 1909, which was but one of the several such organisations in air-minded countries across Europe before the First World War. The NACA had the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia and the Ames Aeronautical

A MAN IN SPACE

Prior to Sputnik, the American effort to launch a satellite in support of the IGY was in no rush and the very notion of a ‘space race’ was alien to those working to send packages of research instruments into orbit. Until, that is, Russian satellites suddenly seemed to be intensely threatening. Adhering to his desire for a public space programme run by civilians, President Eisenhower and his government chose to steer toward a separate agency, open and operating for genuine purposes of scientific endeavour rather than toward military objectives. Congress and the government looked to a small but highly significant branch of the executive to embrace all these disparate endeavours, and to make the Vanguard programme just

Developed from the R-7 which had been adapted for the Sputnik flights, Korolev utilised a separate upper stage to send Yuri Gagarin into orbit on April 12, 1961, aboard the 10,360lb (4700kg) Vostok 1 spacecraft. (Novosti)

Laboratory at Moffett Field, California.

Eventually, it would add the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio and would also manage the Muroc Flight Test Unit at Edwards Air Force Base, California. Langley and Ames had worldclass wind tunnels, some of the largest in the world, while Lewis carried out research in aircraft engines and propulsion.

Until the mid-1940s, the NACA conducted high quality research into flight, the technology of aircraft and flying and the science of aeronautics, achieving fame for its aerofoil cross sections, wing shapes which could be virtually taken off the shelf and applied by manufacturers to specific aircraft types for particular roles with unique specifications.

From the mid-1940s, the NACA had conducted research with specially designed aircraft sponsored by the military services and these included the Bell X-1, which achieved the first supersonic flight on October 14, 1947, and with later derivatives as well as an expanding inventory of experimental X-types. Most famous of all is the hypersonic X-15 which achieved speeds in excess of Mach 6 and altitudes above 350,000ft (106,680m).

But the NACA was also increasingly involved in the development of sounding rockets which would propel scientific packages high above the atmosphere, which had been the basis of planning for one step further which was the orbiting satellite, or as early proposals referred to it, a “Long Playing Rocket”!

It was therefore to the NACA that Congress turned when considering how to organise the civilian side of the national

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space programme and in a series of lengthy hearings it was agreed to expand and broaden the scope of this body and to give it impetus through a new name: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration – NASA. This was a big step up for the scientists and engineers who were not used to working in the visibility of a goldfish bowl where politicians and the public would be gazing in upon its detailed workings; mandated through the National Aeronautics and Space Act signed by President Eisenhower on July 29, 1958.

NASA would open its doors for business on October 1, almost exactly 12 months after the event that triggered its formation – the launch of Sputnik 1.

Already committed to supporting the development of Earth-orbiting satellites, NASA had also been assisting the Air Force with MISS studies and in the outline design of a recoverable capsule carrying a single occupant on the ballistic flight and later for orbital missions. That work moved wholly into the new civilian space agency (where it was renamed Project Mercury), as did the Development Operations Division of the ABMA together with its work on the advanced Juno launch vehicles, which by now had been named Saturn, powerful rockets beginning with an initial type known as Saturn I, capable of lifting 10 tonnes and more into low Earth orbit.

By 1961 a wide range of space programmes under way in the Army and the Air Force had been moved to NASA; only the highly classified spy satellite projects under the Corona programme remaining completely within the Air Force and the CIA. By this time also a new president had arrived in the White House and this would ignite a major expansion along lines never anticipated by NASA when it formed. But the surge and growth in activities and goals forced upon the president was not his preferred solution to what became a dramatic response to unanticipated events.

It began when John F Kennedy campaigned for the presidency on a promise to never again allow Americans to suffer the shock and national embarrassment of the Soviet public relations coup when they launched the world’s first artificial satellite.

Accusing the Eisenhower administration of apathy and lacklustre approach to national needs, and allowing the Russians to gain an upper hand in the war of political ideologies, Kennedy failed to see the next major coup coming from Russia. That occurred just 82 days after his inaugural address as the 35th President of the United States, when Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth and again shocked a complacent America.

Gagarin’s launch in a Vostok spacecraft on April 12, 1961, shook the Kennedy administration to the core – presenting them with the same unexpected propaganda slingshot Eisenhower had

suffered just 30 months earlier, triggering the formation of NASA. It was made worse by events of arguably more immediately seismic consequences on the world stage when a surprise US attack on the island of Cuba less than one week later failed to topple the regime of Fidel Castro. The name of the place where it stalled – the Bay of Pigs – will forever signify a bungled and inappropriate attempt to overturn a coup against US interests, when Castro deposed the Batista regime and declared a dictatorship in 1959 to become a persistent thorn in America’s side.

The Bay of Pigs fiasco pushed Castro, seeking protection against his superpower neighbour, into the lap of Soviet Premier Khrushchev and set the scene for the Cuba Missile Crisis of October 1962. But of more immediate consequence, it set Kennedy alight in an attempt to find any way at all of beating the Russians at their own game – one in which they seemed destined to outperform the United States in the accelerating contest to accomplish ‘firsts’ in space activity. Suddenly, and totally unexpectedly, this became the new battleground for gaining the support of ideologically uncommitted countries around the world.

Initial Soviet successes brought Kremlin approval to develop a manned spacecraft, although the Vostok series was only sanctioned when an unmanned variant was also produced to carry cameras, in which configuration it was called Zenit, Russia’s first spy satellite. None of this was known in detail to western intelligence, which is why the not exactly unexpected flight of Yuri Gagarin heralded a new era in space exploration. But the reaction was every bit as seminal as the formation of NASA had been after Sputnik 1.

NASA had the Mercury capsule with which it expected to make the first manned flight some time in early 1961 and the attention of the press provided the Russians with a window on the programme which only served to alert them to its schedule.

Aware that the first suborbital ballistic shot with Mercury was imminent, the full orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin completely eclipsed the cautious and sequential steps taken by the Americans.

Two days after Sputnik, an assertive and demanding President Kennedy convened a meeting in the White House to ask key government officials, including NASA boss Jim Webb, what to do about the Soviet propaganda coup. He wanted to know if there was any way the US could catch up.

Could it leapfrog anticipated ‘firsts’ by beating them to the Moon?

It was decided that this was a question to ask of the National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Lyndon Johnson.

Kennedy ended the meeting by saying: “If somebody can just tell me how to catch up. There’s nothing more important.” A memo to Johnson calling for that followed on April 20. Less than two weeks later he had the solution.

The Martin Company was contracted to develop the Titan I ICBM as a hedge against the untried concept of the Atlas missile and was eventually developed into a more powerful version with storable propellants. Titan II remained on frontline service through 1987.

(USAF)

Gagarin had been chosen from a short list which included many cosmonauts soon to become household names around the world as five more followed over the next two years.

(Novosti)

A model of the Vostok spacecraft on display at Frankfurt in 2002. The barrel-shaped object at left is the second stage of the launch vehicle, supporting the equipment module and retrorocket with the spherical re-entry module on top. (de:Benutzer:HPH)

Back after one orbit of the Earth, Vostok 1 ushered in the era of human space flight.

(Novosti) Apollo 11 – 50th anniversary 9

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CHAPTER 2 – PREPARING THE WAY

A LEAP FORWARD (1961-1966)

N

A Mercury-Redstone rocket of the type used to place Shepard and Grissom on separate suborbital, ballistic shots in 1961. (NASA)

NASA selected seven pilots for the Mercury programme in 1959, astronauts who would serve in Gemini and Apollo. Left to right: Malcolm Scott Carpenter (USN); Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr (USAF), John H Glenn (USMC); Virgil I Grissom (USAF); Walter M Schirra Jr (USN); Alan B Shepard Jr (USN); Donald K Slayton (USAF). Only Schirra would fly all three spacecraft. (NASA)

ine days after being given the task of finding a way to beat the Russians, Lyndon Johnson reported back to President Kennedy in a reply based on discussions with several government leaders. He advised Kennedy that a commitment to a Moon landing had a very real chance of outpacing the Russians. But Kennedy was not enamoured with space exploration for its own sake. When the matter of a lunar landing came up at an earlier meeting, Kennedy turned on his science adviser, Jerome Wiesner, and with frustrated irritation declared: “It’s your fault! If you had a scientific spectacular on this Earth that would be more useful – say, desalting the ocean, or something just as dramatic – then we would do it!” When Johnson delivered his recommendation on April 29 he emphasised that nothing short of a manned Moon landing would overwhelm the advantage held by the Soviets. Kennedy had not wanted to hear that but listened and decided in its favour.

With his enduring influence of several years as Senate majority leader, Johnson could still pull strings and had already received tacit approval after confidentially briefing senior senators on the plan. They would make their approval known to the president on May 3.

Moon mission advocates in NASA, still unaware of the way the mood was swinging in favour of such an announcement, quietly began to get ready. On May 2, NASA Associate Administrator Robert C Seamans had set up an ad hoc task group for a Manned Lunar Landing Study through a committee chaired by William A Fleming.

This was the first formal in-house NASA study to decide upon a common set of criteria by which to plan a manned lunar landing programme, establish guidelines, provide cost estimates and determine the kind of launch vehicles that would be capable of placing a payload of up to 400,000lb (181.4 tonnes) into low Earth orbit, the mass believed necessary to put astronauts on the Moon.

But there was one key event that would have to show capability before the final decision could be made – the launch of Alan Shepard on the first manned Mercury flight, albeit a brief ballistic hop out of the atmosphere and down on parachutes to a splashdown off the coast of Florida. That

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Built in an old wind tunnel at NASA’s Lewis Research Center (now Glenn Research Center), the Multiple Axis Spin Test Inertial Facility (MASTIF) evaluated a pilot’s ability to restore stable control of attitude, after tumbling in three-axes simultaneously, using instruments and nitrogen thrusters. (NASA)

event took place on May 5, watched from the White House by Kennedy already nervously aware that a lot of his political leverage would ride with Shepard on that short, 15-minute flight.

It was near perfect and cleared the way for a confident announcement to the American public and the world, albeit a relatively insignificant step long before the great leap forward. But it was enough to show that NASA could put men in space, if only for a few minutes, and that it would soon put another astronaut up, and this time in orbit. Without that successful suborbital first step, it is doubtful Kennedy could have promised his nation a challenge so outstanding that it would, if fulfilled, stand as one of the greatest human achievements of all time.

So it was that before a joint session of Congress on May 25 Kennedy made a speech on national priorities during which he declared: “I believe that this nation should commit itself, before this decade out, to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project will be more exciting, or more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” He was correct on all counts.

When Kennedy proclaimed a Moon goal for NASA he launched an enterprise the magnitude of which very few could calculate. It was going to cost a lot of money and require the space agency to grow enormously to embrace all the skills, the people, the technology and the knowhow to make it happen. And although a number of studies about how to get there had been conducted at a low level, nobody knew precisely how it could be achieved.

All the initial astronauts were subject to varying g-loads at the Johnsville centrifuge at the Naval Air Research & Development Center, Warminster, Pennsylvania. (NARDC)

advance of the calendar year.

Neither had the Kennedy Administration supported NASA’s Apollo concept when it entered office in January 1961, appearing to concur with its predecessor that it would be best to see what results came back from the Mercury orbital flights, in which several missions were planned. Now an entirely new application for Apollo would direct it to the single national goal of landing a man on the Moon. It had been thought that the Russians might attempt such a feat in 1967 – the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution that brought Lenin to power, and some had wanted to set the deadline no later than that year. Wisely, prudence prevailed; the additional two years would prove crucial to meeting the goal.

Alan Shepard gets fitted with biomedical sensors prior to his flight to become America’s first man in space on May 5, 1961. (NASA)

In May 1961 NASA had its hands full building toward the operational phase of its Mercury programme but for more than a year studies had been conducted on a successor to the one-man capsule, a three-man spacecraft which at an industry conference opening on July 28, 1960 had been named Apollo. It was conceived as part of NASA’s Long Range Plan, a circumlunar space vehicle which could also be used for carrying out extended scientific experiments in orbit around the Earth.

NASA had been unable to persuade the Eisenhower administration to incorporate it in the fiscal year 1961 budget and it had been left out of the proposed budget for 1962. At that time US government offices began their financial years six months in

DECISION TIME

It would take a year for NASA engineers and managers to agree the way Apollo would achieve the Moon landing goal and much depended on the Saturn series of rockets being developed by Wernher von Braun. Their story is key to understanding how NASA resolved the matter.

Saturn had been developed on the basis of clustered rocket motors utilising propellant tanks from the Redstone and Jupiter programmes. Much as the Russians had clustered medium-thrust rocket motors to achieve a single rocket with great lifting potential, so too did von Braun develop Saturn using eight H-1 rocket motors each with a thrust of 166,000lb (738.4kN) or a total launch thrust of 1.328 million pounds (5907kN), 60% more powerful than Russia’s R-7 and three times the energy of the Titan II rocket. The H-1 had evolved from the S-3D, which had a thrust Apollo 11 – 50th anniversary 11

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Mercury came equipped with an escape tower which, in the event of a malfunction in the launcher, would have fired to lift the spacecraft to safety. The retropack was used for de-orbiting the spacecraft, the heat shield protected the spacecraft from the heat of re-entry while the shingles protected the occupant from lower levels of heat. (NASA)

of 150,000lb (667.2kN) and was used to power the Thor and Jupiter missiles. It was developed further during the lifetime of the Saturn rocket into a thrust of 188,000lb (836.2kN) producing a stage output of 1.5 million pounds (6672kN) and still further development as noted in Chapter 3.

But the proposed rocket had no upper stage and on its own could not achieve orbit so a variety of proposals were submitted for those. The entire Saturn programme grew quickly into a family of rockets collectively known as the Space Launcher System (SLS), greatly enthused over as the first true workhorse for space, much as the Douglas DC-3 had become the workhorse of 1930s airline expansion for commercial passengers and freight.

These optional configurations were divided into increasingly more capable launchers possessing more advanced upper stages, all based on the initial Saturn rocket stage known as the S-I, the upper stages having sequential suffix numbers.

Von Braun was highly enthusiastic for Saturn and wanted to use the S-I to test fly the F-1 rocket motor. Rocketdyne was

Mercury had redundant automated attitude control systems which could be sequentially configured for increasing levels of manual authority.

Horizon scanners provided information on orientation, maintained by roll, pitch and yaw thrusters. The recovery system including parachutes was located in the forward section. (NASA)

working on the F-1 for the Air Force, which wanted its own satellite launcher, and NASA eyed this as a potential motor for an even more advanced rocket which it named Nova, although this was ill defined and somewhat speculative. Nevertheless, with a thrust of 1.5 million pounds (6672kN) a single F-1 would do the work of eight H-1 motors.

Through a series of convoluted paths too circuitous to relate here, the Saturn I rocket, as it was named, was to be developed in two versions: Block I with only the first stage for ballistic flights, to verify that it was possible to launch a clustered rocket; and Block II with an S-IV upper stage powered by six RL-10 engines each with a thrust of 15,000lb (66.72kN) consuming liquid hydrogen, kept at -423ºF (-252.87ºC) and liquid oxygen, stored below -298ºF (-183ºC).

These cryogenic propellants are the most efficient that can be used in a rocket stage but required technology which had to be invented to handle those super-cold fluids and to maintain them in a liquid state within the tanks, until consumed in the

Watching the flight of Astronaut Shepard on television. Left to right: Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, Admiral Arleigh Burke, President Kennedy, Mrs Kennedy. (White House)

rocket motors. This was one area where the Americans had the advantage, having learned how to store and handle cryogenic hydrogen during the development of the thermonuclear hydrogen bomb in the 1950s. Not until May 15, 1987, would the Russians launch their first rocket using liquid hydrogen as a fuel.

Von Braun had been working on advanced rocket designs after Juno I, a satellite launcher developed from Redstone, and Juno II, the equivalent development of the Jupiter rocket. Juno III and IV were more powerful configurations based on Atlas and Titan core stages and were bypassed for the Juno V (Saturn I) configuration concept. They are irrelevant to the progressive evolution leading to the ultimate Saturn configuration.

Under the spectrum of original Juno V proposals, various groups of upper stages had been categorised as defining Saturn A, B and C types. All but the C-types, with the basic Saturn S-I stage and one or two cryogenic upper stages, were rejected and the C-1 became the Saturn I described above. The C-2 had an S-I first stage with an S-II second stage and an S-IV third stage, while the C-3, -4 and -5 adopted the very powerful F-1 in increasingly more capable three-stage configurations. The C-2 was dropped but the proposed C-3 had two F-1 engines while the C-4 had four, which would have produced a lift-off thrust of six million pounds (26,688kN), while the C-5 delivered a launch thrust of 7.5 million pounds (33,360kN).

All these proposals evolved between 1960 and 1962, with considerable time after Kennedy’s May 25, 1961, Moon decision spent trying to work out how to get there.

Projections regarding the plausibility of increasingly powerful launchers influenced that decision. As noted above, there was a projected concept called Nova which emerged as an idea in 1958 and which was taken over by NASA in 1961 as a superheavy launcher with a projected first stage

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thrust of 12 million pounds (53,376kN).

Almost 10 times more powerful than the Saturn C-1, selection of Nova would be a bold decision indeed.

But that was the baseline requirement in terms of lifting potential underpinning NASA’s initial mission mode for getting astronauts on the Moon. Called Direct Ascent (DA), the preferred method envisaged a giant rocket delivering a spacecraft direct to the Moon in a single launch. The spacecraft would lift off from the Moon and return direct to Earth. As the period required to develop and test such a colossal rocket appeared longer than the lunar deadline given by Kennedy, preference began to swing toward a compromise concept called Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR). This would require the use of many much smaller rockets, not appreciably bigger than the C-1 but each capable of lifting separate elements of the total configuration required to leave Earth orbit and fly to the Moon.

EOR had the advantage of not needing a super-size rocket that at this time nobody knew precisely how to build; at 50ft (15.24m), the diameter of the first stage of the Nova concept was a daunting engineering challenge. But it did require a lot of separate Saturn flights. Trade-offs included the development cost of a single Nova-class rocket, the cost of a single launch, the production and launch costs of an EOR programme and the probability of achieving either within the decade.

And then another concept came along. Several earlier studies from eminent theorists such as the Russian Yuri Kondratyuk (1916) and the German Hermann Oberth (1923) had looked at a cheaper but seemingly more complex concept. In this, a rocket the size of what was, in the early 1960s, represented by von Braun’s Saturn C-5 – essentially a C-4 with a fifth F-1 engine in the first stage – could carry two spacecraft to the Moon.

One would remain in lunar orbit while a smaller spacecraft carried two men down to the surface, from where they would rejoin the ‘mother-ship’ and return to Earth,

Candidate rocket concepts under Wernher von Braun’s Saturn programme with the Nova launcher for comparison. The C-1 was used for early Apollo test flights while the C-5 was selected for the Earth Orbit Rendezvous mode. (NASA)

leaving the lunar lander behind. Most engineers discounted this arrangement as being too risky, involving too many steps in which something could go badly wrong.

Until, that is, John Houbolt, an engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center, took up the idea and made its adoption his crusade.

Fighting insults, obfuscation and vested interests, he battled his way to the top managers and got a fair hearing.

The concept was known as Lunar Orbit Rendezvous – LOR – and provided a middle way, one in which overall, the risks would be minimised, costs kept to a manageable level and technical challenges limited.

But powerful voices objected. Largely responsible for the design of the Mercury and Apollo spacecraft, Max Faget fumed against Houbolt, asserting that: “His figures lie, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”

Initially designated the Saturn C-1, the Saturn I was an assembly of clustered tanks from the machine tooling used to fabricate Redstone and Jupiter stages, with eight H-1 engines at the base. (NASA-MSFC)

LOR advocates accepted that this method would require a second spacecraft to be developed but pointed out that a single Saturn C-5 could carry out the entire mission, avoiding the need for a very expensive super-rocket or the costly launch of large numbers of smaller rockets for EOR. This single-shot capability with a rocket already on the drawing boards was a redeeming feature of the mode. The large production run of EOR rockets would cut the chances of multiple flights to the lunar surface but LOR would allow a full lunar landing mission with a single rocket.

Because selection of LOR would dramatically cut the number of Saturn rockets needed, and bring a halt to the design of a truly massive rocket, von Braun was the last person in the decision loop to come round in support of it. But there were fierce opponents which kept the debate boiling for several months.

The Saturn I represented a quantum leap in capability, Redstone (centre foreground) being the descriptive templates for the eight circumferential tanks and Jupiter (left) for the central tank. Clustered together, the eight H-1 rocket motors provided a lift capacity greater than anything the Russians had at the time. (NASA-MSFC) Apollo 11 – 50th anniversary 13

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The first of a new generation, NASA launches the ballistic SA-1, the first Saturn I, on October 27, 1961, signalling a shift in capability, although it will be January 29, 1964 before it carries the S-IV upper stage to deliver payloads to orbit. (NASA)

Finally, on June 7, 1962, von Braun gave his official approval and it appeared that the decision for LOR was inevitable. But this was not so. Forces were still at work – higher than NASA, which threatened the whole concept. Not least was Jerome B Wiesner, the chairman of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, who disapproved of the whole idea.

Wiesner told Kennedy so, openly and during a public tour of facilities hosted by von Braun, all within earshot of a press pack in full flow accompanying the retinue.

Diplomatically, Kennedy smoothed it over and reiterated faith in his advisers and NASA engineers that the right decisions would be made in the best interests of the nation. It was calculated that LOR would save $1.4 billion over EOR and advance the projected landing date from early 1969 to July 1968.

Reluctant to concede, Wiesner sought an audience with Kennedy in the White House and made an appointment in order to see the president, press home his argument and overturn the LOR decision, claiming it was unsafe and would kill astronauts to the embarrassment of the Government. Unfortunately for Wiesner, it was the very day that US spyplanes discovered Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles going into Cuba and a very much more dangerous crisis began to rapidly unfold.

The meeting was cancelled and Wiesner thought better of it, wisely choosing to let the matter rest – he had already expressed his opinion very openly and publicly.

In 1960 Wiesner had convened a separate and independent panel which recommended cancellation of any further manned space flight programme in its conclusions submitted to the presidentelect on January 10, 1961. Basing his opposition on the risks and potential repercussions to the government of a major catastrophe, he opposed any attempt at orbital flight with an astronaut, citing opposition from the general consensus of the scientific community at large to this sort of programme. Battle lines had been drawn long before the inappropriate outburst in front of his president.

COMMITMENT

The decision to use Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, to develop a second spacecraft to get to the surface of the Moon and to employ the biggest rocket ever built was publicly announced on July 11, 1962. It was, in fact, the third major hardware commitment made since the decision to go to the Moon has been set by Kennedy in May 1961. Following an intensive bidding process, on November 28, 1961, NASA announced that North American Aviation would build the Apollo spacecraft, at which time it was expected to be the vehicle that would actually go right down to the surface.

Recognising that many procedures essential for the Moon mission, be it EOR or LOR, could not be developed using the one-man Mercury capsule, on December 22, 1961, NASA announced that it had approved development of a larger, two-man evolution of Mercury which would be called Gemini after the twin stars Castor and Pollux. This would test and develop procedures for long-duration flights of up to two weeks, rendezvous and docking of separate vehicles in orbit, and spacewalking equipment including suit and backpack for conducting Moonwalks – in NASA jargon, Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA).

NASA had been planning for an interim bridging spacecraft between Mercury

Senior politicians and NASA managers receive a briefing on the Saturn rocket from Dr George Mueller (off picture). From left: James Webb, NASA administrator; Vice President Lyndon Johnson; Dr Kurt Debus, director of the Launch Operations Directorate at Cape Canaveral; President John F Kennedy; unknown; Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara; unknown. (NASA)

and Apollo since the beginning of the year, much of the work being conducted

by James A Chamberlain, one of many Canadians who moved to the US to work on NASA’s manned flight programmes. Now that the Moon decision had been made a vehicle which could be developed out of the existing Mercury spacecraft, and fly well before the much more complex Apollo vehicle, made a lot of sense.

In fact, from the mid-1962 mission-mode decision, NASA was committed to four separate manned space vehicles: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Lunar Module (LM, originally called the Lunar Excursion Module) – the name for the lander that would separate from Apollo and go down to the surface. The contract for Gemini was a straightforward appendage to the contract for the Mercury spacecraft awarded to the same contractor, McDonnell Aircraft.

However, nine aerospace contractors bid for the LM. Grumman was known for building a generation of tough aircraft for the Navy and this played well with their proposal and on November 7, 1962, NASA announced that they had won.

Throughout this period NASA’s budget began to soar as Mercury flight operations picked up pace. After Alan Shepard made America’s first flight into space on his 15-minute MR-4 hop on May 5, 1961, Gus Grissom followed with a repeat flight on July 21 designated MR-5, clearing the way for manned orbital missions. But a not indifferent milestone was achieved on October 27 when the first Saturn C-1 made a ballistic flight 247 miles (398km) downrange, demonstrating the viability of the clustered tank and rocket motor concept.

The following year NASA put John Glenn into orbit on February 20, 1962, a three-orbit flight to partially restore US prestige with MA-6. By this time Russia had sent a second cosmonaut into space on August 6, 1961, when Gherman Titov spent just over one day in orbit aboard Vostok 2.

NASA began to catch up when Malcolm Scott Carpenter made a three orbit flight aboard MA-7 on May 24, 1962, essentially a repeat of the Glenn flight.

And then, on August 11, 1962, Andriyan Nikolaev was launched on Vostok 3 followed a day later by Pavel Popovich in Vostok 4, the first time two spacecraft had been in orbit simultaneously.

Vostok 3 remained aloft for nearly four days, with Vostok 4 returning to Earth after almost three days in space. The dual flight brought the two spacecraft within four miles (6.4km) of each other but without the means to change orbit there was no possibility of a rendezvous. NASA mounted its third manned orbital flight when Walter Schirra was launched aboard MA-7 on October 3, 1962, for six orbits, doubling the duration of the first two Mercury-Atlas flights.

It was time to extend the duration of US manned missions and that was demonstrated with the 34-hour flight of Gordon Cooper aboard MA-9, the last

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The S-IV stage was developed to give the Saturn I an orbital capability, providing a world lead in the use of high-energy, cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. Powered by six RL-10 rocket motors it delivered a total stage thrust of 90,000lb (400.32kN). (NASA-MSFC)

Mercury flight, launched on May 15, 1963.

Engineers had stretched the capability of the Mercury capsule to its design limit, initially planning four extended-duration flights of which MA-9 was to be the first, followed by MA-10 on a three-day flight carrying Alan Shepard. Managers had decided to cancel further Mercury flights and focus on the two-man Gemini programme, despite pressure from some to sustain the one-man missions.

Russia’s only manned flights in 1963, and the last of its one-person capsules, was with Vostok 5, launched on June 14 carrying Valery Bykovsky, and Vostok 6 put up two days later carrying the first woman to go into space – Valentina Tereshkova.

It was nearly a failure before Tereshkova noticed that engineers had incorrectly programmed the automatic control system so that when the de-orbit motor fired it would push Vostok 6 to a higher orbit rather than causing it to descend!

Reporting this to Korolev, instructions were voiced up for her to re-programme the control system. Both returned on June 19, Bykovsky having set a new record of four days 23 hours in space, Tereshkova almost two days 23 hours.

With the very public proclamation of the US Moon goal, and extensive press coverage of the upcoming Gemini and Apollo missions, political pressure on Russian rocket engineers by their Soviet masters to maintain a lead increased expectations and led to an evolution of Vostok that would make only two flights – each aiming to snatch two more ‘firsts’.

This development was the Voskhod spacecraft, a significantly modified Vostok into which three cosmonauts could be placed without space suits, or two spacesuited occupants could squeeze inside from where one could conduct a spacewalk.

Challenged by NASA’s impending Gemini missions to be the first to send more than one person into space, Korolev adapted four remaining Vostok spacecraft for a series of spectacular ‘firsts’, receiving permission from the Soviet MilitaryIndustrial Commission to do so in March

1964. The timing was critical; NASA had flown the first of two unmanned Gemini qualification flights on April 8 with an expectation that the second would fly in August followed by manned flights beginning that November. But a lightning strike on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral and technical problems with the spacecraft delayed that second unmanned test until January 19, 1965.

By this time, Korolev had launched his three-man Voskhod I mission on October 12, sending cosmonauts Komarov, Feoktistov and Yegorov on a flight lasting 24 hours and 17 minutes, the first crew to fly ‘shirt-sleeve’ into space. And racing to conduct a spacewalk before NASA astronauts, already proclaiming plans for an EVA on the second manned Gemini mission, Voskhod II was launched on March 18, 1965, carrying Belyayev and Leonov. Using an inflatable airlock attached to the exterior surface of a side hatch, Leonov entered the inflated and pressurised airlock, Belyayev closed the hatch behind him and depressurised the airlock before Leonov opened the outer hatch and became the first person to conduct a spacewalk.

It had been a near thing. The flexible, inflated airlock with the external appearance of a sausage, became limp and too flexible for Leonov to manoeuvre his body inside. So he began to leak oxygen out of his suit allowing it to partially collapse, making it less bulky. Finally squeezing himself inside, the airlock was pressurised allowing Leonov to rejoin Belyayev before jettisoning it and returning to Earth for a total mission time of 24 hours and two minutes.

It is ironic that what began as an American attempt to catch the Russians had so quickly switched players, where the Soviet government was now racing to outperform an increasingly aggressive American space effort, stimulating a Russian response to snatch glory from a programme falling behind. Tragically, this haste would result in the loss of life – both in America and Russia.

The Mercury-Atlas configuration that sent four US astronauts into orbit between February 20, 1961 and May 15, 1963. (NASA)

Jerome B Wiesner, who did his utmost to deter Kennedy from approving the Moon decision and then worked hard to cancel the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous mission mode in a public showdown that left the president embarrassed but undeterred. (White House)

Launched on March 18, 1965, Alexei Leonov conducts a 12-minute spacewalk from the Voskhod II spacecraft, an evolution of the Vostok one-person vehicle and the last of its kind prior to the introduction of Soyuz in 1967.

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CHAPTER 3 – PREPARING THE WAY

SECURING THE LEAD (1965-1966)

Launched in pursuit, Gemini VI-A rendezvoused with Gemini VII to demonstrate the ability of one spacecraft to find another in space and manoeuvre in close proximity.

Note the drifting strands of tape previously wrapped around the attachment point between the spacecraft and the second stage of the Titan II launcher. (NASA)

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