The first
manned spaceflights occurred in the shadow of the tensest moments of the Cold
War between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the world's European
powers in disarray after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union
used propaganda, alliances and proxy wars to outflank the other and broaden
their respective spheres of influence. Space became another way to exert
dominance over the other.
The space
race was "war by another means," said Roger Launius, senior curator at the
National Air and Space Museum here. The Cold War rivals were engaging in a
technological rivalry and wanted to prove to non-aligned nations and the rest
of the world that they were "second to none," Launius said in an Aug. 25 interview.
The Soviet
Union struck first in the space race, launching the first satellite, Sputnik,
Oct. 4, 1957, leading to the formation of NASA a year later. The agency
celebrated its 50th
anniversary this month on Oct. 1.
The
superpowers were roughly on parallel paths, according to Launius and John
Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington
University here. The United States launched the first
American to space, Alan Shepard, on a Mercury capsule, just about a month
after the Soviets sent the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit on a Vostok
spacecraft April 12, 1961.
"The [U.S.]
military had been talking about humans in space since the mid-50s on," Logsdon
said in an Aug. 20 phone interview. The U.S. Air Force's Man-In-Space-Soonest
project was a conceptual program, which then was transferred to NASA control
and eventually became
Project Mercury.
American
Space Age
Responsibility
for Mercury fell to NASA's Space Task Group working at Langley Research Center
in Hampton, Va., under Bob Gilruth. The "premier organization for human
spaceflight," the Space Task Group later became the core of the Houston-based
Johnson Space Center (renamed from the Manned Space Flight Center in 1973),
Logsdon said.
NASA's
predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), also had
looked at human spacecraft just two weeks after Sputnik launched, said Ted
Spitzmiller, a space historian and author of "Astronautics: Book 1: Dawn of the
Space Age." NACA estimated a two-year development cycle to send a human into
orbit but the orbital launcher, the Atlas, took longer than expected to
complete, he said. John Glenn became the first American in orbit Feb. 20, 1962.
Mercury was
an experiment to see whether a human could survive the extremely rapid travel
necessary for orbit, could perform tasks while weightless and survive the
forces of re-entry, Logsdon said. U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower's incentive
for the manned program was to see if there were practical uses for humans in
space; he was prepared to end the manned space program after Project Mercury,
he said.
But the
manned Mercury flights commenced under newly elected John Kennedy who, unlike
his predecessor, was more interested improving the United States' prestige
through the use of "soft power" like the space program, Logsdon said. Kennedy
noted the positive reaction from around the world to Gagarin's spaceflight and
determined the United States could not come in second to the Soviet Union in
space endeavors.
Saddled
with another Soviet space first and the failed U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion
of Cuba, Kennedy wrote an April 20, 1961, memo to Vice President Lyndon Johnson
asking if there was a "space program that promises dramatic results in which we
could win?" according to the NASA History Web site. The answer came back that a
manned
Moon landing would be just such a program.
It was
risky but the success of Shepard's flight gave the struggling president the
confidence to address Congress May 25, 1961, and announce the United States
would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade and return him safely
to Earth.
The war
analogy also applies to the budget that was required for the moon landing. It
involved a "warlike mobilization" effort and was "almost 180 degrees" from what
Eisenhower had wanted, Logsdon said.
Charged
with landing an astronaut on the moon, Project Apollo was announced July 29,
1960. The proposal departed from NASA's original 10-year plan, which had been
presented to Congress in February 1960 and called for circumlunar flight, not a
lunar landing, Logsdon said.
That plan
was partly based on what is considered the traditional space program paradigm,
which was popularly championed by visionary Marshall Space Flight Center head
Wernher von Braun, who wanted to establish a space station in Earth orbit and
then travel to the moon, Logsdon said.
The middle
child
The Gemini
program, which was announced Dec. 7, 1961, was more a predecessor to Apollo
than it was a successor to Mercury, Logsdon said. Launius compares Gemini to a
middle child that is successful in its own right but oft-forgotten between the
firsts of oldest-child Mercury and the splendor of youngest child Apollo.
Gemini was
necessary because NASA planners needed to know how to rendezvous and dock.
Gemini also maintained manned activity to prevent a problematic five-year gap
during the space race with the Soviet Union, Launius said. Gemini was completed
in just a year and a half, Spitzmiller said in an Aug. 20 phone interview.
Gemini
missions, which often involved rendezvousing and docking with target Agena
launch vehicles and one rendezvous between two Gemini orbiters, also helped
develop procedures for spacewalks and long-duration missions, he said. Until
Gemini the longest U.S. manned mission was the last Mercury flight in which
Gordon Cooper spent 34 hours in orbit.
Gemini
astronauts were unable to perform efficient spacewalks until Buzz Aldrin
perfected a new spacewalking technique during the Gemini 12 mission that would
help prevent spacewalkers from exerting themselves unnecessarily. With a
doctorate in astronautics Aldrin had a better understanding of microgravity
than his fellow astronauts and he worked diligently on space rendezvous
techniques, Launius said. Aldrin developed an "economy of movement" that is
still standard, he added.
Moon or
bust
Aldrin,
Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins delivered on Kennedy's promise July 20,
1969, when Aldrin and Armstrong landed on the Moon. The United States could
have stopped the Apollo missions after Apollo 11, but the nation wanted to
prove it could do it consistently, and scientists were pushing for further lunar
studies, Launius said.
In the
1990s Launius had the opportunity to talk to a Russian who had worked in the
design bureau of Soviet Chief Designer Sergei Korolev, who is credited with
driving the Soviet space program until his death in 1966. He recalls the
Russian telling him: "We weren't ready to give up after Apollo 11. We thought
that was a fluke..." But after Apollo 12 landed on target and retrieved parts of
Surveyor 3 they knew they were beaten, Launius said.
Spitzmiller
marks Apollo missions 11 to 17 as the "pinnacle" of NASA's manned space
program. In addition to achieving the only human landings on an extraterrestrial
object in history, the Apollo effort also led to technological advances in
propulsion, materials, tracking and computers. From "that point on, things seem
to plateau," he said, recalling how the manned program lost much of its funding
and push without charismatic leaders like Kennedy, who was assassinated in
1963, and von Braun, who retired June 17, 1972.
Ultimately,
however, it was the lack of a response by the Soviets after the Moon landing
that prompted the U.S. government to pull back on its manned space program, Spitzmiller
said.
Three
Apollo missions were cut due to reduced funding and the near-fatal accident on
Apollo 13, Launius said. The ramp down after Apollo was to be expected, Logsdon
said, noting that "Apollo was an exception" in the manned space program. The
politics of 1961 warranted going to the moon but the politics of 1969 did not
warrant going to Mars, he said.
With the moon
landings completed by December 1972, NASA shifted its focus to maintaining a
presence in Earth orbit. With Apollo done, NASA was looking to get back to the
von Braun paradigm, Launius said.
Leftovers
from canceled Apollo missions became
equipment for Skylab, formerly known as the Apollo Applications Program,
which began in the mid-1960s. After atmospheric drag damaged the space station
during its May 14, 1973, launch, Skylab housed three successful crewed missions
that ended in 1974. Skylab plummeted back to Earth in July 1979.
Skylab
never was intended as anything other than an intermediate program; it was not
designed for resupply like the International Space Station, Logsdon said.
However, Spitzmiller calls Skylab a "lost opportunity" for the United States to
establish a permanent presence in space. Apollo or Gemini probably should have
continued to support Skylab, he said.
Even before
the end of the Apollo Mmoon missions, the United States and the Soviet Union
were planning a joint mission. In May 1972 U.S. President Richard Nixon and
Soviet Premier Alexey Kosygin signed an agreement that led to the Apollo-Soyuz
Test project. While the July 17, 1975, Apollo-Soyuz mission was technologically
insignificant — all the hardware previously had been used except for the
docking column — it served as a significant instrument of detente for Nixon, a
way to help improve relations between the Cold War superpowers, Launius said.
Without the
Soviet Union, the manned space program would not be as far along and the nation
likely would have followed the von Braun model and not gone to the moon,
Launius said. Without the space race, Spitzmiller believes that the United
States would not have sent a man into orbit until the mid-1960s and not gone to
the moon until the mid-1980s, if at all.
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