One-Man Space Station (1960)

Final Mercury: the black Mercury-Atlas 9 spacecraft and its gleaming Atlas booster rocket in October 1963. Image credit: NASA.

Probably the prize for "smallest space station design ever proposed" should go to McDonnell Aircraft's One-Man Space Station. On 24 August 1960, engineers with St. Louis-based McDonnell, the Mercury spacecraft prime contractor, described the mini-station to members of the Space Task Group (STG) at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

A 10-foot-long, six-foot-wide pressurized cylinder with dome-shaped ends, the One-Man Space Station was meant to be launched stacked between a single-seat Mercury on top and an Agena-B upper stage below. The assemblage would be launched atop an Atlas-D rocket similar to that tapped to launch standard Mercury-only orbital missions.

The Atlas-Agena rocket was an early workhorse of lunar and planetary exploration. This image shows the launch of the Mariner 1 Venus probe on 22 July 1962. Less than five minutes later, the Atlas first stage veered off course. The range safety officer transmitted a self-destruct command and the Atlas, Agena upper stage, and Mariner 1 were destroyed. Image credit: NASA.

One might be excused for calling the One-Man Space Station a mission module that enhanced Mercury spacecraft capabilities rather than a bona fide space station. It was meant to be occupied for just 14 days by the single astronaut launched with it in the Mercury spacecraft, then permanently abandoned when the astronaut separated from it in the Mercury to return to Earth.

The group of NASA engineers that heard McDonnell's presentation shared some traits with the proposed One-Man Space Station: it was small and meant to be only temporary. The STG was founded on 5 November 1958, a little more than a month after NASA opened for business. Based at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the STG's aim was to carry out Project Mercury, the U.S. effort to launch a man into space ahead of the Soviet Union.

Though President Dwight Eisenhower took a dim view of what he saw as "space stunts" — for example, launching men into space — he became, along with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, one of NASA's chief architects. Eisenhower made no commitment to piloted spaceflight after Mercury. He insisted that Mercury be conducted as a civilian program to keep it separate from the serious military business of developing battlefield and intercontinental missiles and launching reconnaissance and early-warning satellites.

Atlas-D - a modified intercontinental ballistic missile - was not by itself powerful enough to place the Mercury/One-Man Station/Agena-B combination into Earth orbit. McDonnell proposed that the General Dynamics-built Agena-B ignite after the Atlas-D exhausted its propellants and separated. The Agena-B would then insert itself, the Mercury, and the One-Man Space Station into a 150-nautical-mile-high orbit inclined 30° relative to Earth's equator. The Agena-B would remain attached after orbit insertion: it was restartable and would retain enough propellants to maneuver in Earth orbit.

It is probable that the One-Man Space Station was the civilian version of a proposed piloted spy satellite. With its integral Agena-B stage for Earth-orbit injection and orbital maneuvers and its separable Mercury spacecraft for Earth return, McDonnell's station outwardly resembled the Discoverer automated satellites, the first of which was launched in January 1959. "Discoverer" was a cover name for the Corona spy satellite series. Atlas-launched Discoverer/Corona satellites employed an integral Agena for Earth-orbit injection and orbital maneuvers and a reentry capsule for exposed film return. An aircraft would capture the capsule as it descended on a parachute.

A piloted spy satellite must have seemed attractive by the summer of 1960, for the Discoverer/Corona program had suffered failure after failure. Not until Discoverer 14 — launched on 18 August 1960, just six days before McDonnell's presentation to the STG — did the program succeed in returning to Earth a capsule containing exposed film showing Earth-surface targets.

The One-Man Space Station's hull would encompass a total of 282 cubic feet of pressurized volume, of which 182 cubic feet would constitute living and working space. The astronaut would work inside the station in shirt-sleeves, not a pressure suit. A "laboratory test payload" — a suite of experiments which could be changed from flight to flight — would take up 40 cubic feet of the interior volume, while support equipment — for example, fuel cells capable of producing up to 1500 watts of electricity — would take up 60 cubic feet at the domed bottom end of the station.

Schematic of the "Tunnel Access" One-Man Station design with a human figure for scale. A = Mercury spacecraft; B = adapters for linking (from top to bottom) the Mercury spacecraft and the One-Man Space Station, the One-Man Space Station and the Agena stage, and the Agena stage and the top of the Atlas booster; C = inflatable tunnel linking the Mercury hatch with a similar hatch on the One-Man Space Station; D = pressurized work area; E = life support and electricity-generating equipment; F = One-Man Space Station laboratory test payload; G = Agena-B stage; H = Tunnel Access cover in launch position; I = Tunnel Access cover in deployed position; J = top of the Atlas-D rocket. Image credit: McDonnell Aircraft/DSFPortree.

McDonnell proposed two possible designs for its One-Man Space Station. The method the astronaut would use to move between the attached Mercury spacecraft and the One-Man Space Station pressurized volume would distinguish the two designs. McDonnell dubbed them "Tunnel Access" and "Hinged Lab."

Tunnel Access would need fewer Mercury spacecraft modifications than Hinged Lab. An inflatable fabric tunnel would reach Earth orbit folded against the Mercury and One-Man Space Station under a streamlined metal cover. Upon reaching orbit, the astronaut would inflate the tunnel to create a passage between the standard-design 24-inch Mercury side hatch and a 24-inch hatch on the Station's side. The metal cover would remain attached to the tunnel to stiffen it and partly shield it from meteoroid punctures.

When time came to return to Earth, the astronaut on board the Tunnel Access Station would don his protective pressure suit, return to his cramped seat in the Mercury spacecraft, seal the Mercury hatch, and fire pyrotechnic bolts or cord to sever the inflatable tunnel. He would then separate his Mercury spacecraft from an adapter linking it to the Station, turn it so that its broad aft end faced in its direction of motion, and ignite a single solid-propellant retrograde motor to begin atmosphere reentry.

The Hinged Lab design would see the Mercury spacecraft swing on a hinge so that a modified Mercury side hatch could link up with a hatch on the side of the One-Man Space Station. When time came to return to Earth, the astronaut would seal the Mercury hatch, then swing his spacecraft back to its Earth launch position on top of the Station. He would fire explosive bolts to separate the Mercury from the hinged adapter, then would begin reentry.

"Hinged Lab" One-Man Space Station. A = hinge; B = ring-shaped adapter; C = transfer tunnel linking modified Mercury spacecraft hatch with One-Man Space Station hatch. Image credit: McDonnell Aircraft/DSFPortree.

The presence of the Agena-B stage permitted McDonnell to delete the standard Mercury 24-pound solid-propellant posigrade motor set, which in Mercury-only flights would ignite to propel the spacecraft away from its spent Redstone or Atlas booster. Other modifications would include the aforementioned revised hatch designs, which would add 16 pounds to both the Tunnel Access and Hinged Lab One-Man Space Station designs; deletion of the astronaut-monitoring camera from the standard Mercury telemetry & recording system (a savings of 28 pounds); storage space in the Mercury spacecraft cabin for returning to Earth 28 pounds of experiment results generated on board the Station; and addition of seven pounds of water to the Mercury environmental control system.

A new-design adapter would link the broad base of the Mercury spacecraft with the top of the One-Man Space Station. This would weigh 97 pounds for the Tunnel Access design, which could get by with a relatively simple adapter, and 129 pounds for the more complex Hinged Lab adapter.

The Tunnel Access One-Man Space Station without Mercury and Agena-B would weigh 3344 pounds; for the Hinged Lab Station, the weight total was 3309 pounds. The Hinged Lab Station would include an additional 22 pounds of attitude-control propellant — necessary because of the difficulty of stabilizing the out-of-balance side-mounted Mercury configuration. The Tunnel Access Station, for its part, would add 50 pounds for the inflatable tunnel cover and 135 pounds for the tunnel itself.

McDonnell told the STG that the Atlas-D/Agena-B combination could inject 6076 pounds into the One-Man Space Station's planned orbit. Subtracting the combined weight of the modified Mercury, Agena-B, and Station left 1234 pounds for experiment equipment on the Tunnel Access Station and 1342 pounds on the Hinged Lab Station. The company listed as possible One-Man Space Station research projects the study of human adaptation to 14-day weightless missions; monitoring of "long-time equipment performance" on board spacecraft; "lunar probe navigation equipment" testing; radiation, geophysical, and astrophysical measurements; and, by using the Agena-B rocket motor, development of orbital rendezvous techniques.

McDonnell suggested that One-Man Space Stations might also be devoted to single-purpose missions: for example, one might be equipped to carry out communications research, the next might serve as an astronomical observatory, and yet another might enable detailed observations of Earth's weather. The company also suggested that a One-Man Space Station might revert to its likely original purpose: that is, high-resolution imaging of objects on Earth's surface.

Sources

One Man Space Station, McDonnell Aircraft, 24 August 1960.

NASA's Origins and the Dawn of the Space Age, Monographs in Aerospace History #10, David S. F. Portree, NASA History Office, September 1998.

More Information

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George Landwehr von Pragenau's Quest for a Stronger, Safer Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle Challenger and its booster system moments before they were destroyed. The plume of flame emerging from the side of its malfunctioning SRB is clearly visible. Image credit: NASA.

The Space Shuttle Orbiter Challenger was minding its own business on 28 January 1986, working hard to get its seven-member crew and its large satellite payload to low-Earth orbit, when its booster stack betrayed it and everything began to go badly wrong. First, hot gas within its right Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) began to burn through a seal meant to contain it. Soon, a fiery plume gushed from the side of the SRB, robbing it of thrust, and reached out menacingly toward the side of the brown External Tank (ET) and the strut linking the lower end of the SRB to the ET (image at top of post). The plume broke though the ET's foam insulation and aluminum skin, then the strut pulled free of the weakened ET.

Challenger fought back as the ET began to leak liquid hydrogen fuel. It swiveled (the aerospace term is "gimballed") the three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) in its tail as it struggled to stay on course. The plume from the SRB, meanwhile, glowed brighter as it began to burn hydrogen leaking from the ET. At the same time, the SRB began to rotate around the single strut left holding it to the ET. That strut was located not far from the Orbiter's gray nose, near the conical top of the errant SRB.

Throughout these events, Challenger's last crew remained oblivious to the technological drama taking place around them. This was just as well, since they had no way to escape what was about to happen to them.

When Challenger at last lost its struggle against its own booster stack, significant events were separated by tenths or hundredths of seconds. Immediately after the right SRB's lower strut came free, the entire Shuttle stack lurched right. Mike Smith, in Challenger's pilot seat, had time for a startled "Uh-oh" less than a second after the lurch. The ET's dome-shaped bottom then fell away, freeing all the hydrogen fuel it contained. The right SRB's pointed nose slammed into and crushed the top of the ET, freeing liquid oxygen oxidizer. The escaped hydrogen blossomed into a fireball that encompassed Orbiter, rapidly disintegrating ET, and SRBs.

Yet the Orbiter Challenger did not explode. Instead, it broke free of what was left of the ET and began a tumble. The aerodynamic pressures the Orbiter experienced as its nose pointed away from its direction of flight were more than sufficient to snap it into several large pieces: the crew cabin, the satellite payload, the wings, and the SSME cluster emerged from the fireball more or less intact. The SRBs, still firing, flew out of the fireball, tracing random trails across the blue Florida sky until a range safety officer commanded them to self-destruct. The Orbiter's wreckage, meanwhile, plummeted into the Atlantic within sight of the Florida coast.

NASA recovered the bodies of the crew and portions of the wreckage, including the section of the right SRB that had leaked hot gas. The wreckage was turned over to accident investigators.

This 1975 NASA illustration depicts the basic components of the Space Shuttle system. The Orbiter includes three Space Shuttle Main Engines (left). Two Solid Rocket Boosters, one of which is mostly hidden behind the External Tank, provide thrust during liftoff and the early part of ascent. The tank includes (from right to left) a small tank for dense liquid oxygen, a drum-shaped structural support ring/tank separator below the Orbiter's nose, and a large tank for low-density liquid hydrogen.

During a Shuttle launch, the three SSMEs ignited first. This caused the twin SRBs, the bases of which were mounted to the launch pad by explosive bolts, to flex along their entire length away from the SSMEs, then straighten out again just as they ignited. O-ring seals between the cylindrical segments making up the SRBs often became unseated during flexure, then had to reseat to contain hot gases after SRB ignition. Accident investigators concluded that failure of one of those seals doomed Challenger. Even more damning, they found that partial seal failures followed by hot exhaust leaks had occurred on pre-Challenger flights — and had been disregarded by NASA managers.

After Challenger, NASA and its contractors redesigned the SRB joints and seals, added crew pressure suits and a limited crew escape capability, and banned potentially unsafe practices and payloads from Shuttle missions. Yet the U.S. civilian space agency might have gone much farther when it sought to enhance Space Shuttle safety after Challenger.

Even before the accident, NASA had at its disposal redesign proposals that could have made the Shuttle stack stronger and safer. In 1982, for example, George Landwehr von Pragenau, a veteran engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, filed a patent application — granted in 1984 — for a Shuttle stack design that would have made the Challenger accident impossible.

Born and educated in Austria, von Pragenau joined the von Braun rocket team in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1957. He became a U.S. citizen in 1963. He specialized in rocket stability and flight effects on rocket behavior. He had, for example, been part of the team that found the cause of the "pogo" oscillations that crippled Apollo 6, the second unmanned Saturn V-launched Apollo test mission (4 April 1968).

In the conventional Shuttle stack, von Pragenau explained, SRB thrust was transmitted through the forward SRB attachment points to a reinforced intertank ring between the ET's top-mounted liquid oxygen tank and its liquid hydrogen tank.  He considered this "indirect routing" of thrust loads to be perilously complex. SSME thrust loads, for their part, passed through the Orbiter to its twin aft ET attachment points on the large, fragile liquid hydrogen tank.

By the time he filed his 1982 patent application, von Pragenau had spent almost a decade thinking about how the Shuttle stack might be rearranged to reduce weight and aerodynamic drag, increase stability, simplify thrust paths, and provide greater structural strength. His 1984 patent was, in fact, not his first aimed at Shuttle improvement.

Von Pragenau's 1974 alternative Shuttle stack. Image credit: U.S. Patent Office.

In 1974, von Pragenau had filed a patent — granted the following year — in which he proposed a more slender, more vertically oriented Shuttle stack; that is, one that would mimic conventional rocket designs in which stages are stacked one atop the other. He linked the twin SRBs side by side. Moving the tank for dense liquid oxygen from the ET's nose to its tail placed its concentrated mass nearer the base of the stack, improving in-flight stability. He then mounted the SRBs to the Orbiter's belly and perched the ET atop the SRB/Orbiter combination. SRB and SSME thrust loads were conveyed through struts to meet at the ET's flat, reinforced base.

Von Pragenau's 1982 Shuttle stack design was in some ways a less radical departure from the existing Shuttle design than was his 1974 design. He left the SRBs, ET, and Orbiter in their normal positions relative to each other, but made other significant changes. As in his 1975 patent, he moved the liquid oxygen tank from the ET's nose to its tail and brought the SRBs closer together to improve stability. The liquid oxygen tank became skinny, cylindrical, and almost as long as the Orbiter and SRBs attached to it. The liquid hydrogen tank, fat with low-density fuel, von Pragenau mounted atop the oxygen tank, partially overhanging the Orbiter and SRBs.

Von Pragenau's 1982 Shuttle stack redesign. The numeral "15" points to the rigid thrust structure framework. "34," "35," "36" are Solid Rocket Booster attachment fixtures. These would link to slide rails ("31" and "32") that would run the length of the liquid oxygen tank ("20"). "19" is the liquid hydrogen tank. Image credit: U.S. Patent Office. 

Von Pragenau could not tolerate flexing SRBs. He proposed to mount a slide rail on either side of the liquid oxygen tank. Three attachment fixtures on each SRB would link to the slide rails, helping to ensure rigidity. When the SRBs depleted their propellant, pyrotechnic bolts would fire, freeing them to slide backwards down the rails and fall neatly away from the Orbiter/ET stack.

The most important feature of von Pragenau's redesign was a rigid framework – a thrust structure – that would link the bottom of the SRBs just above their rocket nozzles. In addition to holding the SRBs rigidly in place, the thrust structure would transmit SRB thrust loads to the bottom of the ET oxygen tank, which would rest atop the center of the thrust structure. When the spent SRBs slid away from the Orbiter/ET stack, they would take the thrust structure with them.

Side view of Von Pragenau's 1982 Shuttle stack concept. Image credit: U.S. Patent Office.

Von Pragenau's concepts apparently exerted little influence on NASA's post-Challenger recovery effort. A likely explanation is that neither of his proposals — if they were known to decision-makers at all — was deemed affordable. In addition to extensive changes in manufacturing tooling, both proposals would have required modifications to the Vehicle Assembly Building, the twin Complex 39 Shuttle pads at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), and even the barge that delivers ETs to KSC. Instead of beefing up the existing Shuttle, NASA studied designs for new shuttles which, for lack of funding, remained firmly in the low-cost realm of CAD drawings, conference papers, and conceptual artwork.

On 1 February 2003, the Space Shuttle claimed another crew. The oldest Orbiter, Columbia, was heavier than her sisters Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour, which limited the amount of cargo she could deliver to the International Space Station (ISS). For this reason, NASA largely relegated to Columbia the few remaining non-ISS missions — for example, Hubble Space Telescope servicing.

As they began Earth-atmosphere reentry at 8:44 a.m. Eastern Standard Time after a nearly 16-day life sciences mission, the seven STS-107 astronauts on board Columbia were unaware that, during ascent, a piece of ice-impregnated insulating foam nearly a meter wide had broken free from the ET and impacted their spacecraft's left wing. Ice and foam had broken free from ETs before, but the damage they caused was, after cursory examination, deemed acceptable by Shuttle Program managers. This time, however, the impact opened a hole up to 10 inches wide in the Orbiter's left wing leading edge.

Hot plasma generated during reentry entered the hole and began to destroy Columbia's left wing from the inside out. Observers along the Orbiter's flight path, which cut across the southern tier of U.S. states, reported unusual flashes. Meanwhile, members of the STS-107 crew on Columbia's Flight Deck observed and recorded on video flashes visible outside their windows. In the recovered video, the astronauts appear to realize that the flashes were unusual but show no signs of panic.

Much as Challenger had before it, Columbia fought bravely against the forces destroying it. Onboard computers took account of increased drag on the left side of the Orbiter and sought to compensate to keep it on the flight path. At 8:59 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, however, Columbia tumbled and disintegrated over northeast Texas.

Both of von Pragenau's design concepts placed all or part of the ET above the Orbiter, so one might argue that they would not have prevented a failure resembling that which killed the STS-107 crew. On the other hand, one can be forgiven for speculating that a U.S. civilian space agency provided with the means after Challenger to rebuild the Shuttle system to make it safer might also have evolved an organizational culture more prone to investigating and less prone to tolerating recurring flight anomalies.

Von Pragenau retired from NASA in 1991 after more than 30 years of service. He remained involved in engineering efforts at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center during his retirement. He died two years after the Space Shuttle's final flight (STS-135, 8-24 July 2011), on 11 July 2013, at the age of 86.

Sources

Patent No. 4,452,412, Space Shuttle with Rail System and Aft Thrust Structure Securing Solid Rocket Boosters to External Tank, George L. von Pragenau, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, 15 September 1982 (filed), 5 June 1984 (granted).

Patent No. 3,866,863, Space Vehicle, George L. von Pragenau, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, 21 March 1974 (filed), 18 February 1975 (granted).

Hampton Cove Funeral Home Obituaries: George Landwehr von Pragenau (http://www.hamptoncovefuneralhome.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=2150841&fh_id=13813 — accessed 27 October 2016).

NASA History: Columbia Accident Investigation Board (http://history.nasa.gov/columbia/CAIB.html — accessed 29 October 2016).

NASA History: Challenger STS 51-L Accident (https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sts51l.html — accessed 29 October 2016).

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Talking to the Farside: A 1963 Proposal to Use the Apollo Saturn V S-IVB Stage as a Radio Relay

The Moon's Farside hemisphere. Image credit: NASA.

A Saturn S-IVB stage awaits shipment from the Douglas Aircraft plant in California. Various red protective covers would be removed before flight. Image credit: NASA.

The S-IVB rocket stage played several important roles in NASA's 1960s and 1970s piloted space programs. The 58.4-foot-long, 21.7-foot-wide stage, which comprised a single restartable J-2 rocket engine, a forward liquid hydrogen tank, and an aft liquid oxygen tank, served as the second stage of the two-stage Apollo Saturn IB rocket and the third stage of the three-stage Apollo Saturn V.

The Saturn IB S-IVB's J-2 engine would ignite at an altitude of about 42 miles and burn until it placed a roughly 23-ton payload into low-Earth orbit. After that, it would shut down and the spent stage would separate. The Saturn V S-IVB's J-2, on the other hand, would ignite twice to accelerate the stage and its payload: once for 2.5 minutes at an altitude of about 109 miles and again for six minutes about two and a half hours later.

The first burn would place the S-IVB and payload into a low parking orbit between 93 and 120 miles above the Earth; the second would place the S-IVB and payload onto a path that would intersect the Moon, about 238,000 miles away, about three days after Earth launch. Departure for the Moon was called Translunar Injection (TLI).

During Apollo lunar landing missions, the payload was a three-man Command and Service Module (CSM) and a Lunar Module (LM) Moon lander. The astronauts would separate the CSM from the four-segment shroud linking it to the S-IVB about 40 minutes after TLI. They would then maneuver clear of the S-IVB and turn their spacecraft end-for-end so that its nose pointed back at the top of the stage.

The shroud segments, meanwhile, would hinge back and separate to reveal the LM spacecraft mounted atop the S-IVB. The crew would guide the CSM to a docking with the LM; then, about 50 minutes after docking, the joined CSM and LM would move away from the S-IVB. The stage would then vent residual propellants and ignite auxiliary rocket motors to place itself on a course away from the CSM-LM combination.

Schematic representation of Apollo 8 mission events (not to scale). Apollo 8 was the first mission to inject the Saturn V S-IVB stage into orbit around the Sun. Image credit: NASA.

Roughly 60 hours after launch from Earth, the docked CSM and LM would enter the Moon's gravitational sphere of influence. About 12 hours later, they would pass behind the Moon over the Farside, the lunar hemisphere turned always away from Earth. There, out of visual, radar, and radio contact with Earth, the astronauts would ignite the CSM's Service Propulsion System (SPS) main engine to slow the CSM and LM so that the Moon's gravity could capture them into lunar orbit. This critical maneuver was called Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI). Orbital mechanics dictated that LOI should occur more or less over the center of the Farside.

A few hours later, two astronauts would separate from the CSM in the LM. They would fire the Moon lander's throttleable descent stage engine — again over farside, as dictated by orbital mechanics — to begin their descent toward their pre-selected landing site on the Nearside, the lunar hemisphere that is turned always toward Earth. Following a safe landing and a surface stay (about one Earth day for the earliest Apollo landing missions), the LM ascent stage would lift off.

About two hours later — again over the Moon's hidden hemisphere — the CSM would rendezvous and dock with the LM. The lunar landing crew would rejoin the CSM pilot, the astronauts would cast off the LM ascent stage, and preparations would begin to ignite the SPS to depart lunar orbit for Earth. The critical lunar-orbit departure maneuver, also carried out over farside, was called Trans-Earth Injection (TEI).

The S-IVB stage would, meanwhile, swing past the Moon and enter orbit around the Sun. Although it would travel to the Moon and beyond, as of early 1963 no one had identified any further role for the S-IVB after the CSM and LM separated from it.

The silhouette at left shows the position of the S-IVB third stage in the Saturn V stack. The cutaway illustration (right) shows the interstage fairing that linked the S-IVB to the Saturn V S-II second stage and the relative sizes of the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant tanks. Helium stored in spherical tanks push propellants into the J-2 engine. Image credit: NASA.

For six months in 1963, engineers at The Bissett-Berman Corporation in Santa Monica, California, working on contract to NASA Headquarters, studied another use for the Apollo-Saturn V S-IVB stage. In a series of "Apollo Notes" prepared beginning in March of that year, they identified a need for a relay satellite to enable Earth-based radar tracking of the Apollo CSM and LM while they carried out crucial maneuvers over the Farside. They then proposed that the spent S-IVB be outfitted to serve as a relay.

The first note, authored by H. Epstein and based on a concept suggested by L. Lustick, proposed a radar relay satellite for tracking the Apollo CSM during LOI and CSM rendezvous and docking with the LM ascent stage. Epstein and Lustick's satellite would include an omnidirectional antenna for near-lunar operations and, for "deeper phase operation," a steerable four-foot parabolic dish antenna.

The relay satellite, Epstein wrote, would separate from the S-IVB stage along with the Apollo LM and CSM after TEI, then separate from the CSM-LM combination before LOI. It would fly past the Moon on a path that would keep both Earth and most of the Farside in view during LOI and CSM-LM rendezvous and docking. The omni antenna would relay radar from Earth until the satellite was 40,000 kilometers beyond the Moon, then the dish would take over.

The second Bissett-Berman Apollo Note, dated 16 April 1963, suggested that a "special purpose relay package" be placed on the S-IVB stage. The package would either remain attached to the stage or would eject from it when activated. The Apollo Note's author, L. Lustick, attributed the S-IVB relay concept to one Dr. Yarymovych, whose organizational affiliation was not stated.

For his analysis, Lustick assumed that the S-IVB would retain enough propellants for its J-2 engine to restart a third time shortly after CSM-LM separation, raising its speed by 160 feet per second. He calculated that, at the time of CSM-LM LOI, the S-IVB or ejected relay package would have in view simultaneously both Earth and more than three-quarters of the Farside hemisphere.

At the time of CSM docking with the LM ascent stage, about 100 hours after Earth launch, the relay would have in view Earth and a little more than two-thirds of the Farside. Throughout the approximately 28-hour period between LOI and CSM rendezvous with the LM ascent stage, the S-IVB or ejected relay package would remain within 143,000 miles of the Moon.

The S-IVB would rely for attitude control guidance on the ring-shaped Instrument Unit (IU), the Saturn V's "electronic brain." The IU, located on top of the S-IVB during launch, encircled the LM descent stage and provided attachment points for the four separable shroud segments. It was not intended to operate for more than a few hours, so would need modifications to ensure that it could reliably stabilize the S-IVB throughout the relay period.

The ring-shaped Instrument Unit (IU) rode atop the S-IVB stage on both Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets. Image credit: NASA.

The Instrument Unit assembly line at the IBM plant in Huntsville, Alabama. Image credit: NASA.

In an 18 April addendum to Lustick's 16 April Apollo Note, engineer H. Epstein looked at simplifying the S-IVB Farside Relay concept by assuming that the stage would lack attitude control while it acted as a data relay. Replacing steerable dish antennas — one for Earth-S-IVB communication and one for S-IVB-Apollo CSM communication — with two passive omnidirectional antennas would permit data relay no matter how the S-IVB stage became oriented, he wrote.

The use of relatively low-power omni antennas would produce few problems as far as Earth-S-IVB communication was concerned, for NASA could call into play large antennas on Earth to ensure reception of the weak signal. Epstein proposed increasing from four feet to five feet the planned diameter of the dish antenna on the CSM to enable it to receive data from Earth relayed through the S-IVB-CSM omni antenna. He noted, however, that, even with a larger CSM dish antenna, radio interference from the Sun might stymie the omni antenna relay concept.

An undated Apollo Note by Lustick and C. Siska explored the S-IVB Farside Relay concept in yet greater detail, and included evidence of NASA interest in the scheme: for the first time, the authors cited NASA Headquarters-imposed study requirements. The space agency told Bissett-Berman to assume that the S-IVB could increase its speed by up to 1000 feet per second for up to seven hours after TLI, and that the maximum range between the S-IVB Farside Relay and the CSM should not exceed 40,000 nautical miles throughout the relay period.

NASA, Lustick and Ciska explained, sought to learn whether relay of voice (not only data or radar) would be possible using an S-IVB Farside Relay during the roughly 30-hour period between LOI (a "particularly important" time to have voice relay capability, NASA asserted) and CSM-LM ascent stage rendezvous and docking.

The authors found that boosting the S-IVB's speed by 1000 feet per second 7.6 hours after TLI would place it on a path to relay voice between Earth and farside from 72 hours after Earth launch until 102 hours after Earth launch, at which time the S-IVB would reach NASA's 40,000-nautical-mile operational limit. In fact, they found that the S-IVB would have Farside in view as early as 60 hours after Earth launch (this was of purely academic interest, however, because the Apollo spacecraft would not yet orbit over Farside at that time).

Lustick and Ciska noted also that the S-IVB would pass out of sight behind the Moon as viewed from Earth 102 hours after Earth launch. They added, however, that slight adjustments in S-IVB boost direction would postpone loss of Earth contact with the S-IVB Farside Relay for long enough to ensure that voice communication could continue during CSM rendezvous with the LM ascent stage.

In Bissett-Berman's penultimate examination of the S-IVB Farside Relay concept, author Ciska noted that a 1000-foot-per-second boost could be planned for as early as TLI. This would, however, leave no propellant margin for later correction of S-IVB boost aim errors.

On the other hand, S-IVB attitude control was expected to "drift" over time, making accurate boost pointing later than TLI increasingly unlikely. Furthermore, boil-off of liquid hydrogen from the S-IVB stage would rapidly reduce the amount available to fuel a later boost. Both of these factors favored an "all-or-nothing" early boost.

Ciska noted also that, regardless of the S-IVB boost aim point selected, the stage would pass out of sight behind the Moon as viewed from Earth for roughly half an hour at some point along its curved path during the voice relay period. For a 1000-foot-per-second boost applied 7.6 hours after TLI with an aimpoint slanted 100° relative to a line linking the Earth and Moon, for example, the half-hour occultation would occur about 99 hours after Earth launch.

The last Bissett-Berman Apollo Note devoted to the S-IVB Farside Relay concept, also by Ciska and dated 20 August 1963, was an extension of his earlier note. In it, he examined an S-IVB boost 4.15 hours after TLI and considered further the effects of boost direction.

Ciska did not attempt to plot S-IVB attitude drift or liquid hydrogen boil-off rates; nevertheless, he called realistic a 700-foot-per-second boost 4.15 hours after TLI with an aim point slanted 100° relative to the Earth-Moon line. Following the maneuver, the S-IVB Farside Relay would pass out of view of Earth for about 30 minutes a little more than 83 hours after Earth launch and would pass beyond NASA's 40,000-nautical-mile limit about 103 hours after launch.

The S-IVB stage converted into the Skylab Orbital Workshop retained its IU and liquid oxygen tank — the latter launched dry and used as a dumpster — but lost its J-2 engine and saw its liquid hydrogen tank converted into a large habitable volume (note astronaut on lower deck for scale). Image credit: NASA.

Though the Bissett-Berman S-IVB relay proposal was not taken up, S-IVB stages did play key non-propulsive roles in NASA's piloted space program. NASA converted Saturn IB S-IVB 212 into the Skylab 1 Orbital Workshop. Skylab was launched into low-Earth orbit on the last Saturn V to fly and staffed by three three-man crews in 1973-1974. Saturn V S-IVB 515, originally intended to boost the Apollo 20 mission to the Moon, was converted into the Skylab B workshop, but was not launched and became a walk-through display in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

Of the 10 Apollo Saturn V S-IVBs that departed low-Earth orbit between 1968 and 1972, half reached orbit about the Sun and half were intentionally crashed into the Moon. The Apollo 8, Apollo 9, Apollo 10, Apollo 11, and Apollo 12 S-IVBs departed the Earth-Moon system, while those that boosted Apollo 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 out of low-Earth orbit were intentionally impacted on the Moon's Nearside. The impacts were part of a science experiment: the seismic waves their impacts generated registered for hours on seismometers left behind on the lunar surface by earlier Apollo crews, helping to reveal to scientists the structure of the Moon's deep interior.

The irregular ray crater blasted out by the impact of the Apollo 13 S-IVB stage in April 1970. Image credit: NASA.

The Apollo 12 S-IVB, launched on 14 November 1969, flew past the Moon too fast to receive a gravity-assist boost into orbit about the Sun, so circled the Earth in a loosely bound distant orbit until 1971, when, through gravitational perturbations from Earth, Sun, and Moon, it escaped into solar orbit. It orbited the Earth again for about a year in 2002-2003, during which time it was observed and mistakenly identified as a near-Earth asteroid. Spectral analysis revealed the presence of titanium-based paint, however, confirming the object's identity as Apollo 12's errant S-IVB.

Sources

Apollo Note No. 35, Lunar Far Side Relay Technique – Some Basic Radar Considerations, H. Epstein, The Bissett-Berman Corporation, 21 March 1963.

Apollo Note No. 44, Back of Moon Relay Trajectories, L. Lustick, The Bissett-Berman Corporation, 16 April 1963.

Addendum to Apollo Note No. 44, Communications Capability of Unstabilized S-4-B Satellite Relay System, H. Epstein, The Bissett-Berman Corporation, 18 April 1963.

Apollo Note No. 87, Section 7, Far-Side Relay, L. Lustick and C. Ciska, The Bissett-Berman Corporation, no date.

Apollo Note No. 90, Further Examination of Far-Side Relay Trajectories, C. Ciska, The Bissett-Berman Corporation, 6 August 1963.

Apollo Note No. 97, Minimum Boost Velocity Requirement for Far-Side Relay, C. Ciska, The Bissett-Berman Corporation, 20 August 1963.

More Information

Reviving & Reusing Skylab in the Shuttle Era: NASA Marshall's November 1977 Pitch to NASA Headquarters

What If Apollo Astronauts Could Not Ride the Saturn V Rocket? (1965)

Solar Flares and Moondust: The 1962 Proposal for an Interdisciplinary Science Satellite at Earth-moon L4

"A Continuing Aspect of Human Endeavor": Bellcomm's January 1968 Lunar Exploration Program

Lunar Exploration Program candidate landing sites. Of these, the Apollo Program would reach only Fra Mauro; Apollo astronauts would, however, visit five other sites not labeled here. Please click on image to enlarge. Image credit: NASA/DSFPortree.

Bellcomm, Inc., based near NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, was carved out of Bell Labs and Western Electric in 1962 to provide technical advice to NASA's Apollo Program Director. NASA rapidly expanded Bellcomm's purview to take in nearly all NASA Office of Manned Space Flight planning.

In a January 1968 report, Bellcomm planners N. Hinners, D. James, and F. Schmidt proposed a lunar mission series designed to bridge a gap in NASA plans they believed existed between the first piloted "Early Apollo" Moon flights and sophisticated Apollo Applications Program (AAP) lunar expeditions. They declared that their Lunar Exploration Program was "based upon a reasonable set of assumptions regarding hardware capability and evolution, an increase in scientific endeavor, launch rates, budgetary constraints, operational learning, lead times, and interaction with other space programs" and "the assumption that lunar exploration will be a continuing aspect of human endeavor."

Hinners, James, and Schmidt envisioned a series of 14 lunar missions in four phases. Phase 1 would span the period from 1969 through 1971. The five Phase 1 missions were approximately equivalent to the Early Apollos. They would launch at least six months apart to give engineers and scientists adequate time to learn from each mission's successes and failures and enable them to apply their new knowledge to subsequent missions. Phase 1 would begin with Lunar Landing Mission (LLM)-1, the historic first Apollo Moon landing.

The LLM-1 Lunar Module (LM) would alight on one of the Moon's flat, relatively smooth basaltic plains. Called since the 17th century "maria" (Latin for "seas" - the singular is "mare"), they appear as mottled gray areas on the Moon's white face. They cover about 20% of the Moon's Earth-facing Nearside hemisphere, but are scarce on the hemisphere the Moon turns always away from Earth (its Farside). LLM-1 and the other Phase 1 missions would each have several back-up near-equatorial Nearside mare landing sites, enabling them to land in safe places regardless of how their planned launch dates might slip.

Almost any mare would do for LLM-1, Hinners, James, and Schmidt argued, because the first piloted landing mission would emphasize engineering, not science. LLM-1 would test the LM, lunar space suits, and other Apollo systems ahead of more ambitious Phase 1 missions. If all went as planned, the LLM-1 crew would stay on the moon for 22 hours and carry out two short moonwalks.

LLM-1 would follow a "free-return" flight path that would guarantee that the Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) could loop around the moon and return to Earth without propulsion in the event that its Service Propulsion System (SPS) main engine failed en route to the Moon. The SPS was meant to adjust the CSM/LM combination's course during flight to and from the Moon, slow the CSM and LM so that the Moon's gravity could capture them into lunar orbit, and boost the CSM out of lunar orbit to return to Earth. The Bellcomm planners noted that use of the free-return trajectory would greatly limit the percentage of the Moon's surface a lunar mission could reach.

The LMs constructed for Phase 1 missions would each be capable of delivering two astronauts. their space suits, and up to 300 pounds of payload to the lunar surface. They payload would include geologic tools for collecting up to 50 pounds of lunar rock and dust samples for return to Earth. Missions LLM-2 through LLM-5 would, in addition, each include an Apollo Lunar Scientific Experiment Package (ALSEP) – a cluster of geophysical experiments – for deployment on the Moon. The ALSEPs would monitor the Moon and return data after the astronauts returned to Earth.

LLM-2 through LLM-5 would see astronauts perform geological traverses on foot to spots up to several kilometers from the LM. Meanwhile, the CSM Pilot, alone in lunar orbit, would photograph the Moon's surface through the CSM's small windows.

LLM-2, like LLM-1, would follow a free-return trajectory and remain for 22 hours at a mare landing site. It would, however, add a third moonwalk.

LLM-3 would abandon the free-return trajectory so that it could reach a fresh crater on a mare. The crater, the Bellcomm planners explained, would serve as a natural "drill hole." Studies of both natural and human-made craters on Earth had shown that the LLM-3 astronauts would find the oldest rocks – those excavated from deepest beneath the surface – on the crater's rim. The astronauts would explore the lunar surface for longer than 22 hours but less than 36 hours.

LLM-4 would be similar to LLM-3, but would be targeted to land at one of the many widely scattered mare "wrinkle ridges." In 1968, some scientists (notably, Nobel Laureate Harold Urey) still attributed these sinuous raised features to salty water escaping from reservoirs beneath the Moon's surface, but today we know that they formed when lava that filled the mare nearly 4 billion years ago buckled as it cooled. Some may link or follow traces of the ancient landscape drowned when the lava welled up from within the Moon.

LLM-5, the final Phase 1 flight, would see an LM land at a mare site bordering a Highlands region. The Highlands, the light-colored areas on the Moon's disk, are ancient cratered terrain. The LLM-5 astronauts would squeeze four moonwalks into their 36-hour mission.

The Bellcomm planners' four Lunar Exploration Program Phase 2 missions would commence about two years after LLM-5 and span 1972-1973. Upgrades to Apollo hardware and operations in Phase 2 would permit in-depth exploration of specific unique landing sites selected primarily for scientific interest. Among the upgrades that Hinners, James, and Schmidt proposed was variable Earth-to-Moon flight time or variable time spent in lunar orbit prior to landing. This operational flexibility was intended to permit an Extended LM (ELM) spacecraft to reach its pre-planned target site even if launch from Earth were delayed for several days.

The Phase 2 lunar-surface astronauts would perform six moonwalks at each landing site. The ELM would land 1300 pounds of payload. Phase 2 CSMs would carry prototype remote sensors to test their feasibility ahead of their operational use in Phases 3 and 4.

The first Phase 2 mission, LLM-6, would see an ELM spend three days at Tobias Mayer in the extensive Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms") mare region. Its crew would deploy an ALSEP and explore on foot a sinuous rille (canyon), a dome (possible volcano), and a fresh crater with a surrounding dark halo (possible volcanic vent). LLM-7 would be similar to LLM-6, but would land at a linear rille site designated I-P1.

LLM-8 would see introduction of the Lunar Flying Unit (LFU), a one-person rocket flyer. Bellcomm targeted LLM-8 to the Flamsteed Ring, an ancient crater mostly submerged by lava during the formation of Oceanus Procellarum. At the time Hinners, James, and Schmidt selected it, the Flamsteed Ring was suspected of being an extrusive volcanic feature called a "ring dike."

LLM-9, similar to LLM-8, would visit Fra Mauro, a site known for its domes and rilles, which geologists interpreted as signs of recent volcanism. Fra Mauro would later come to be seen (correctly) as a large geologic unit made up of ejecta from the enormous impact that blasted out Mare Imbrium, the right "eye" of the "Man in the Moon." Cone crater, a natural drill hole in the Fra Mauro Formation, would become the target of Apollo 13 (and, after that mission failed to land on the Moon, Apollo 14).

Phase 3 of Bellcomm's Lunar Exploration Program would comprise a single lunar-orbital survey mission in 1974. Because it would include no lunar landing, it received no LLM number. The mission would, for all practical purposes, mark the start of advanced AAP lunar flights. A solar-powered sensor module based on a planned AAP Earth-resources observation module design would replace the LM. By spending 28 days (one lunar day-night period) in lunar polar orbit, the mission's augmented CSM could pass over the entire lunar surface in daylight, enabling the crew to conduct global high-resolution film photography. When time came to return to Earth, the astronauts would load exposed film into their CSM, then undock from the sensor module and leave it behind in lunar orbit to function as an independent satellite.

Hinners, James, and Schmidt explained that Lunar Exploration Program Phases 1 and 2 missions would gather "ground truth" data on the composition and structure of the Moon's surface. These data would enable scientists to interpret Phase 3 mission results in preparation for Lunar Exploration Program Phase 4, which would span 1975-1976.

Phase 4 would see two "Dual Launch" Lunar Surface Rendezvous and Exploration Missions. Each Dual Launch mission would require two Saturn V rockets, two augmented CSMs, an LM-derived unmanned Lunar Payload Module (LPM), and an augmented ELM bearing one LFU.

LLM-10 and LLM-11 together would make up the first Dual Launch mission. LLM-10 would deliver an unmanned LPM to either Hyginus Rille or the Davy crater chain. The LLM-10 crew, orbiting the Moon in their augmented CSM, would remotely pilot the LPM's final approach to the landing site to help to ensure that it would set down within 100 meters of a predetermined target point. Before returning to Earth, the LLM-10 astronauts would "photo locate" the landed LPM from lunar orbit to aid the follow-on LLM-11 crew in finding it. They would also release a science subsatellite into lunar orbit.

LLM-11 would see two astronauts wearing advanced "hard" (mostly non-fabric) space suits land their augmented ELM near the pre-landed LPM for a two-week stay. The suits, though made of inflexible materials (aluminum is typically mentioned), would, by virtue of complex joints and constant air volume within all parts of the suit, improve astronaut mobility on the lunar surface.

The LLM-11 crew would draw on the LPM's 8000-pound payload to conduct in-depth exploration of their complex landing site. The LPM payload would include lunar surface transportation systems: specifically, one LFU and a one-man, 2000-pound Local Scientific Survey Module (LSSM) moon rover. Other LPM cargo would include a spare hard suit, a core drill attached to the LPM for obtaining a 100-foot-deep drill core, an LSSM-transportable core drill for obtaining 10-foot cores at scattered sites, life support consumables for replenishing those in the LLM-11 ELM, and an advanced lunar-surface geophysical station with a 10-year design life.

Hinners, James, and Schmidt selected the Marius Hills as the landing site for LLM-12 and LLM-13, their second Dual Launch mission pair and the final missions of their Lunar Exploration Program. The Marius Hills were popular with planners for their many domes and other features of possible volcanic origin.

The Bellcomm planners anticipated that, after the LLM-13 crew returned to Earth, even more ambitious AAP moon missions would commence. These might lead to establishment of a lunar surface outpost by about 1980. They were, of course, incorrect; it became clear soon after they completed their report that lunar exploration would not (yet) become "a continuing aspect of human endeavor."

This NASA map, published at the time of the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972, shows the six Apollo landing sites. All landings occurred within an area the size of the western United States between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains (on a world with about as much surface area as Europe and North America combined). If Apollo 17 had landed in St. Louis, Missouri, Apollo 16 would have landed in northeastern Texas; Apollo 15 on the Kansas-Nebraska border; Apollo 14 and Apollo 12 in New Mexico; and Apollo 11 in Oklahoma.

The earliest Apollo landing missions (Apollo 11, Apollo 12, and Apollo 14) were roughly equivalent to Bellcomm's LLM-1, LLM-2, and LLM-3, though their crews performed fewer moonwalks. Apollos 15, 16, and 17, by contrast, were mainly shaped by the certain knowledge that Apollo lunar exploration would soon conclude. They became unlike any of Bellcomm's proposed missions as NASA sought to accomplish as much lunar exploration as possible at minimal cost before political support for the Apollo Program ran out.

The final Apollo lunar mission, Apollo 17 (December 1972), saw astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt explore the Highlands-bordering Taurus-Littrow mare site for about three days. Schmitt was the only professional geologist to explore the Moon. They drove an electric-powered Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). Meanwhile, Ron Evans, on board the Apollo 17 CSM in lunar orbit, used a suite of sensors to map a broad swath of the Moon's surface and released a science subsatellite.

Sources

"A Lunar Exploration Program – Case 710," N. Hinners, D. James, and F. Schmidt, TM-68-1012-1, Bellcomm, 5 January 1968.

To a Rocky Moon: A Geologist's History of Lunar Exploration, D. Wilhelms, University of Arizona Press, 1993.

The Geologic History of the Moon, U.S. Geological Survey Paper 1348, D. Wilhelms, J. McCauley, and N. Trask, USGS, 1987.

More Information

Apollo's End: NASA Cancels Apollo 15 & Apollo 19 to Save Station/Shuttle (1970)

Rocket Belts and Rocket Chairs: Lunar Flying Units

"Assuming That Everything Goes Perfectly Well in the Apollo Program. . ." (1967)

Apollo Science and Sites: the Sonett Report (1963)

Harold Urey and the Moon (1961)

Naming the Space Station (1988)

The 1982 "Space Platform" was the Station design President Ronald Reagan displayed to leaders of prospective Space Station International Partner nations in 1984. Image credit: NASA.

On 12 April 1988, James Odom, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Station, sent out a memorandum with two attachments to a long distribution list. Recipients included NASA Administrator James Fletcher, Deputy, Associate, and Assistant Administrators at NASA Headquarters, the NASA Inspector General, the NASA Chief Scientist, the nine NASA field center Directors, Public Affairs Officers across the agency, the six field center Space Station Project Offices, and representatives of the Space Station International Partners (Canada, the European Space Agency, and Japan). The memo's subject line summed up its purpose succinctly: it was called "Naming the Space Station."

Odom explained that the Space Station President Ronald Reagan had called upon NASA to build in his State of the Union Address of 25 January 1984 was about to enter its "development phase," so the time was ripe to decide on a name for it. He attached a NASA Management Instruction laying out guidelines for naming NASA projects and, more interestingly, a list of 16 names suggested by a Space Station Name Committee he had appointed. Each name included a brief rationale.

The naming rules were straightforward. Candidate names were to be simple and easily pronounced, not refer to living persons, neither duplicate nor closely resemble other NASA or non-NASA space program names, be translatable into the languages of the International Partners, and have neither ambiguous nor offensive meanings in the International Partner languages. In addition, acronyms were to be avoided. The naming process was not to be revealed to the public; if, however, members of the public happened to submit names that followed the rules, the Name Committee would consider them.

NASA's 1985 "Power Tower" Space Station configuration included hangars for space tugs and satellite servicing, a laboratory, a free-flyer providing an enhanced microgravity environment, and zenith- and nadir-pointing truss-type platforms for instruments. Image credit: NASA.

Several of the Name Committee's 16 names sought a return to the Greco-Roman mythology naming tradition of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. Hercules was, its rationale explained, an appropriate name for the Space Station because the mythical hero was "a symbol of extraordinary strength. . . who won immortality by performing 12 labors." Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom and learning; Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn. Jupiter, the greatest Roman god, was a candidate name; the Name Committee explained, however, that it was meant to refer to the Solar System's largest planet, and that it was "symbolic of mankind's greatest adventure, the exploration of space."

Pegasus was suggested because the Space Station would "dwell among the stars" like "the winged horse who ascended into Heaven." Olympia referred to the sacred grove where ancient Greece held its Olympic Games; the name was meant to invoke the spirit of international cooperation.

Another proposed 1985 NASA Space Station design provided ample room for hangars and attached payloads, as well as a simplified track arrangement for the Station's mobile platform-mounted robot arm. The Station's electricity-generating solar arrays, steerable only by moving the entire Station, cover its zenith-facing side. Image credit: NASA.

Two names, Earth-Star and Starlight, referred to the Station's likely bright star-like appearance in the skies of Earth, while another, Skybase, was said to build on "the tradition of Skylab," the first U.S. space station, which had reached orbit in May 1973. Landmark was suggested because the Space Station Program would constitute a "landmark" in the history of the NASA spaceflight. Pilgrim referred to outer space settlement, and the rationale for Prospector declared that the Space Station would "serve as a base for exploration of space for natural deposits."

This last Station function must have come as a surprise to many on Odom's distribution list, for the Space Station was meant to serve as a laboratory; before 1988 it had lost essentially all of its transportation node capabilities, so had little hope of ever playing a significant role in the development of space resources. NASA planners, meanwhile, had moved toward the concept of a separate transportation node space station. They believed (with good reason) that separating transportation and laboratory functions would result in two stations with optimized designs.

Other names — Freedom, Independence, Liberty, and Unity — advertised U.S. political and social values, and thus followed Soviet convention. ("Soyuz," for example, means "Union," which refers to the multi-modular nature of the Soyuz spacecraft, but also to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.) Liberty also referred to breaking "the bond of Earth's gravitational pull," Unity to international cooperation, and Independence to “man’s first permanent step to be 'independent' of Earth."

Freedom, the Name Committee explained, was appropriate because the Space Station would "provide scientific and technological 'freedom' to explore avenues of research," as well as freedom "from the confines of gravity." In addition, freedom was "a political value central to all of the Space Station's international partners."

In his memorandum, Odom explained that names submitted to the Space Station Name Committee would be given to the NASA Administrator, who would make the final selection. In the end, though, the list of candidate names landed on President Reagan's desk. On 18 July 1988, NASA announced that he had selected the name Space Station Freedom.

Space Station Freedom — sometimes referred to as Space Station "Fred" due to its much-reduced size and capabilities — in 1991. Image credit: NASA.

Despite Odom's assertion that it would soon enter development, Space Station Freedom underwent repeated redesigns to reduce cost and complexity and narrowly dodged cancellation. In mid-1993, new President William Clinton ordered a comprehensive review of the U.S. space station program, a management overhaul, and a redesign based on one of three options, designated A, B, and C. In November 1993, Clinton selected Option A, a pruned-back version of Freedom that became known as Alpha. (One might speculate, none too seriously, that had Option B been selected, the station would have been called Beta.)

During his single term in office, President George H. W. Bush, Clinton's predecessor, had concluded agreements first with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and then with Russian President Boris Yeltsin that called for, among other things, use of the Soyuz spacecraft as a Space Station Freedom lifeboat. Bush had stopped short of giving the Russians a central role in the NASA station; nevertheless, he laid groundwork for things to come.

President Clinton's decision to accept the Russian invitation to combine Alpha and Mir-2 had its critics. Nevertheless, the move created a geopolitical rationale that ensured broad Congressional support for the station for the first time. The combined space station would keep Russian rocketeers occupied so that they would not peddle their missile-manufacturing services internationally. In terms of space operations, the merger amounted to what was probably the first instance of Earth-orbital barter: the Russian segment would provide orbit-maintenance propulsion and early staffing in exchange for abundant electricity from the U.S. segment's enormous truss-mounted steerable solar arrays.

The International Space Station in August 2005. Image credit: NASA.

For a time, the combined U.S.-Russian station was jokingly referred to as "Ralpha," for "Russian Alpha," which at least had the advantage of being distinctive. Ultimately, however, NASA and its partners settled on the prosaic name International Space Station (ISS).

Following (mainly) Russian tradition, individual ISS modules have received names. The Mir-2 core module, a small independent space station NASA referred to as the "Service Module," was named Zvezda ("Star"), while the first U.S. component, Node 1 — a module designed as an attachment point for other modules — was dubbed Unity for reasons similar to those given by the 1988 Name Committee. Other names include Zarya ("Dawn") for the FGB propulsion and storage module, the first ISS component launched; Destiny for the U.S. Lab Module; Kibo ("Hope") for the Japanese lab; and Columbus for the European lab.

The International Space Station in 2011. Image credit: NASA.

Source

Memorandum with attachments, S/Associate Administrator for Space Station to Distribution, "Naming the Space Station," 12 April 1988.

More Information

NASA's 1992 Plan to Land Soyuz Space Station Lifeboats in Australia

Skylab-Salyut Space Laboratory (1972)

He Who Controls the Moon Controls the Earth (1958)

Dreaming A Different Apollo, Part Two: Naming Names

A lunar outpost near an abandoned Apollo Lunar Module descent stage (left). Image credit: European Space Agency.

The names we give to places on and off Earth and to vessels of sea and space have long fascinated me. The Moon is one of my favorite places because it is covered with names of scientists and engineers, each of whom has an intriguing biography. At the insistence of Carl Sagan, Mercury bears the names of artists, musicians, poets, and the like, so it is also interesting.

Other worlds have other themes assigned to them. The Uranian moon Miranda, for example, draws names from Shakespeare's The Tempest and locations in Shakespeare's plays.

The Royal Navy in the Age of Fighting Sail is a great source for picturesque ship names, and science fiction seldom disappoints. The late, great Iain M. Banks had a particular talent for irreverent names, which he applied to the intelligent starships of his The Culture setting: I Blame the Parents is one of my favorites.

In Part One of this series (see link below), I described a world in which the Apollo Program did not die; one in which U.S. taxpayers opted to squeeze their $24-billion Apollo investment for all it was worth instead of (as President Lyndon Baines Johnson put it) pissing it all away. I did not give the Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) and Lunar Module (LM) spacecraft in that post names for fear of making more confusing an already complicated series of missions. In this post, I mean to rectify that omission.

During Apollo as flown, we saw the following spacecraft names (or, perhaps more properly, call-signs): Apollo 7, none; Apollo 8, none; Apollo 9, CSM Gumdrop and LM Spider; Apollo 10, CSM Charlie Brown and LM Snoopy; Apollo 11, CSM Columbia and LM Eagle; Apollo 12, CSM Yankee Clipper and LM Intrepid; Apollo 13, CSM Odyssey and LM Aquarius; Apollo 14, CSM Kitty Hawk and LM Antares; Apollo 15, CSM Endeavour and LM Falcon; Apollo 16, CSM Casper and LM Orion; and Apollo 17, CSM America and LM Challenger. Apollo 7 and Apollo 8 were CSM-only missions, so their spacecraft did not need names to distinguish them from their LMs in radio communications. Their CSMs were thus known by their mission designations alone.

Part One of this post series continued the Apollo series with the Saturn V launch of the Olympus 1 space station in late 1971. My alternate-history NASA designated the unstaffed station launch Apollo 18. Olympus is, of course, a relatively modest mountain in Greece that was the home of the Greek Gods. It was also a favorite name among 1960s space station planners — for example, Edward Olling — at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston. (In 1973, following the death of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, MSC was renamed in his honor.)

The first Apollo CSM to reach Olympus 1 was Apollo 19. It was another CSM-only mission, so bore no spacecraft name — much as the Skylab CSMs in our timeline had only numbers (Skylab 2, Skylab 3, and Skylab 4 — Skylab 1 was the launch of the Skylab station). Apollo 20, nearly identical to Apollo 19 apart from its duration (its crew lived on board Olympus 1 for 56 days in early 1972, twice as long as the Apollo 19 crew) also bore no name.
 
After that, though, NASA had a change of heart. It developed and retroactively applied an alphanumeric designation system for flights and encouraged crews to name their spacecraft, much as it had during Project Mercury (but not during Project Gemini). The alphanumeric system pleased NASA bureaucrats; naming piloted spacecraft in single-spacecraft missions was a public-relations ploy meant to point up the distinctive qualities of the individual CSM-only missions to the Olympus stations.

NASA called it Skylab; in my alternate-history world, I call it Olympus 1. Image credit: NASA.

The Apollo 19 mission, which flew the first K-class CSM with modifications for long-duration space station missions, became O-1/K-1/R-1 (Olympus 1/K-class CSM 1/Resident Crew 1). Apollo 20 became O-1/K-2/R-2.

Between Apollo 19 and Apollo 20, NASA began gradually to abandon the term "manned." The change of terminology had two justifications: first, NASA was keen to distinguish between missions that included astronauts who traveled to a destination, such as the Moon, and those that included astronauts who lived for extended periods on board a long-term facility in space, such as a space station. The former came to be referred to as "piloted" missions and the latter, "staffed" missions.

The new terminology also acknowledged an ongoing shift in U.S. society toward greater inclusion. As President Richard Nixon stated in his Second Inaugural Address in January 1972: "our country has always known its greatest success when all of its people participate in all parts of the great American adventure."

Apollo 21 (I-1), the one and only I-class piloted CSM-only lunar polar orbiter mission, was dubbed Endurance by its two-man crew, who orbited the Moon for 28 days to image potential landing sites for advanced L-class Apollo lunar landing missions planned to begin in late 1974. An automated imaging orbiter was considered for the mission, but was rejected because it would have required costly new development (for example, a complicated automated capsule system for returning to Earth its exposed film) as well as a unique Saturn IB upper stage configuration.
 
The crew of Apollo 22 (O-1/K-3/R-3) named their CSM Discovery. They docked with Olympus 1 in June 1972 for a 112-day stay. Ninety days into their flight, the two-person crew of Apollo 23 (O-1/K-4/V-1), the first space station short-stay visitor crew, docked at Olympus 1's radial port to check on the health of the Apollo 22 crew and certify continuation of their mission. In a poetic reference to their short stay of only 10 days, they named their CSM Hummingbird.

Apollo 24 (J-3), launched in October 1972, was a lunar landing mission resembling our Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 missions. In fact, it carried the original Apollo 17 crew of Eugene Cernan, Joseph Engle, and Ronald Evans. In our timeline, Apollo 17 was the last piloted mission to the Moon of the 20th century, so geologist Harrison Schmitt, the only professional scientist to reach the Moon, replaced Engle as LM Pilot. Cernan, Engle, and Evans named their CSM America and their LM Challenger, just as Cernan, Schmitt, and Evans did in our timeline.

Schmitt was one of six scientist-astronauts selected as part of Group 4 in June 1965. He would fly Apollo 17, and three other Group 4 astronauts — Joseph Kerwin, Owen Garriott, and Edward Gibson — would fly as Science Pilots on the three Skylab missions. Garriott also flew a Space Shuttle mission. In our timeline, Schmitt was originally assigned to fly Apollo 18; after it was cut, he was moved to Apollo 17.

It would obviously be different in the "Dreaming a Different Apollo" timeline. Schmitt would not be the first Group 4 scientist-astronaut to fly; several would reach Olympus stations before he set out for the Moon. He would become the first Group 4 astronaut to reach the Moon, but not (as was the case in our timeline) the only one. He would also fly to the Moon a second time and never seek to be elected U.S. Senator from New Mexico.

In our timeline, NASA selected the 11 scientist-astronauts of Group 6 in August 1967, just as Congress finished slashing President Johnson's request for funds to begin major work on the Apollo Applications Program (AAP) in Fiscal Year 1968. AAP shrank rapidly and morphed into Skylab in early 1970. Of the eleven Group 6 scientists, seven eventually flew Space Shuttle missions. In the "Dreaming a Different Apollo" timeline, most would fly Apollo missions before 1976.

This is a good place to consider how astronaut selection would unfold in the alternate timeline. Seven refugees from the cancelled U.S. Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory would join NASA in August 1969 as Group 7, just as they did in our timeline. In our timeline, they were the last astronauts selected until January 1978, when Group 8 — which included among its 35 members the first minority and women astronauts — was selected to fly on board Space Shuttles.

In the "Dreaming a Different Apollo" timeline, NASA would, beginning with Group 7, select new astronaut groups of about 10 members about every three or four years to bring in new skills and make up for attrition. Group 8 would, as in our timeline, include the first U.S. women and minority spacefarers, but they would join NASA in January 1971, not January 1978.

Older astronauts of our timeline's Group 8 might join Group 9 (1974) and younger ones might join Group 10 (1977) or Group 11 (1981). In general, though, NASA would need fewer astronauts. Because of this, many individuals who flew in space in our timeline might never join the space agency as astronauts.

Given the "morality" and prejudices of the 1970s, it seems likely that NASA would find excuses not to fly women as members of Olympus Resident or Apollo lunar crews, though several would reach Olympus 3 as members of Visitor crews. One would serve as Visitor crew Commander in 1979. The thought of mixed-gender crews on long-duration and minimal-privacy lunar missions would, however, make many American taxpayers uncomfortable.

In the early 1980s, however, this would rapidly change. Once the spaceflight "glass ceiling" was shattered, many women would fly in space in many roles, just as in our timeline.

Apollo 25 (J-4) would be an engineering/technology-development mission to the Apollo 24 site meant to prepare NASA for L-class missions and eventual lunar outposts. In addition to accomplishing a precision landing almost exactly one kilometer from the Apollo 24 LM descent stage, which they inspected in considerable detail, the Apollo 25 crew collected materials-exposure cassettes and meteoroid, dust, and solar-particle capture cells the Apollo 24 crew had left behind. They also collected geologic samples scientists studying Apollo 24 samples and photos had determined were of special interest. The Apollo 25 crew named their CSM Franklin and their LM Carver to honor the famous American inventors and scientists.

Journey to a lava tube cave. Image credit: NASA.

Apollo 26 (O-2) was the launch of the Olympus 2 station without a crew. Apollo 27 (O-2/K-5/R-1) saw three astronauts live on board the second U.S. space station for 224 days. They named their CSM Freedom, which led one stand-up comedian to quip that it should have been called "Incarceration."

The crew received the Apollo 28 (0-2/K-6/V-1) CSM Athena, Apollo 29 (O-2/K-7/V-2) CSM Amity, and the Apollo 30 (O-2/K-8/V-3) CSM Liberty. Apollo 28 included among its crew Shannon Lucid, the first American woman in space, Apollo 29 included Jean-Loup Chrétien of France, the first non-U.S./non-Soviet astronaut in space, and Apollo 30 included CSM Pilot Milton Bromley, the first person of African descent in space. The Apollo 30 Visitor crew returned to Earth in the Apollo 27 CSM Freedom, leaving CSM Liberty for the Apollo 27 Resident crew.

The Apollo 31 Saturn V, which bore no crew, launched a pair of Radio/TV Relay Satellites to Earth-Moon L2 and Apollo 32 (O-3) Saturn V, which also bore no crew, launched Olympus 3, the first of the "long-life" space stations. The Apollo 33 (O-3/K-9/R-1) crew, the first to stay on board a space station for what became the "routine" interval of 180 days, reached Olympus 3 in the CSM Eos, which was named for the Greek goddess of the dawn.
 
Apollo 34 (J-5) in February 1974, the last of the J-class missions, landed in dark-floored Tsiolkovskii crater on the Moon's Farside hemisphere. Harrison Schmitt was the mission's LM Pilot and the first geologist on the Moon. They named their CSM Beagle as a dual tribute to the famous exploring ship of Charles Darwin and the comics character Snoopy, the de facto mascot of NASA piloted spaceflight. They named their LM for the red-golden star Arcturus, long seen as a harbinger of springtime.

The Apollo 35 (O-3/K-10/V-1) CSM Hermes delivered the first drum-shaped Cargo Carrier (CC-1) to Olympus 3 and the Apollo 36 (O-3/K-11/V-2) CSM Independence caused it to re-enter after the Apollo 33 crew unloaded it. Hermes was, among other things, the Greek God of Commerce, The Messenger of the Gods, and the half-brother of Apollo. The Apollo 37 (O-3/K-12/R-2) CSM Celeste (a feminine name meaning "heavenly") delivered the large Argus telescope module to Olympus 3.
 
The Apollo 38 (L-1A) mission saw the LM-derived Lunar Cargo Carrier-1 (LCC-1) launched without a crew on a Saturn V on a direct path to the planned landing site of the Apollo 40 (L-1B) mission. Apollo 38 included no CSM. The Apollo 39 (O-3/K-13/V-3) CSM Shenandoah was the first of more than a dozen K-class CSM spacecraft named for U.S. national parks and monuments.

The Apollo 40 CSM was the first L-class Advanced CSM (ACSM) and its LM was the first L-class Advanced LM (ALM). The Apollo 40 crew named their ACSM Aquila, for the constellation The Eagle, and their ALM Altair, for its brightest star. Drawing on equipment and supplies from LCC-1, the lunar surface crew used Altair as their base camp to explore a complex landing site for one week. This more than doubled the three-day J-class lunar stay-time.
 
The Apollo 41 (O-3/K-14/R-3) CSM Constitution delivered the Olympus 3 station's third Resident crew while its second Resident crew was still on board, marking the beginning of continuous station occupation. The Apollo 42 (O-3/K-15/V-4) CSM was named Adventure.

The Apollo 43 (O-3/K-16/V-5) crew named its CSM Yosemite, and the Apollo 44 (O-3/K-17/R-4) crew named its CSM Acadia. Yosemite is, of course, a famous national park in California; Acadia was the the first national park established east of the Mississippi River.
 
My first Dreaming a Different Apollo post ended with the launch of Apollo 44 in December 1975. The timeline could, of course, continue (and, I suspect, probably will). One can imagine an ACSM called Draco paired with an ALM named Thuban, the constellation Draco's rather faint brightest star. I am sure that we will see an Enterprise at some point. 

Direct Ascent moon lander with Apollo-style Earth-reentry module (top) from NASA's 1991-1994 First Lunar Outpost (FLO) study. Image credit: NASA.

I expect that the Apollo series would continue into the late 1980s or early 1990s. By the beginning of the 1990s decade, the Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous Apollo mission scheme would give way to Direct-Ascent missions, in which a single spacecraft would launch from Earth and travel directly to a lunar base. Opportunities for naming spacecraft would become fewer, but almost certainly would continue.

More Information

Dreaming a Different Apollo, Part One: Shameless Wishful Thinking

Space Station Resupply: The 1963 Plan to Turn the Apollo Spacecraft Into a Space Freighter

Apollo's End: NASA Cancels Apollo 15 & Apollo 19 to Save Station/Shuttle (1970)