posted 12-21-2004 06:52 PM               

With Apollo gone, NASA scrambled to propose a national reusable launch veichle system: the space shuttle.

Strangely no one sought to simply reduce the Apollo program to a manegeable size. If a single F1 engine, a simple tankage were used to replace the Saturn IB booster, NASA would have had a two stage, two engine, highly reliable Earth orbit launch system, with lots of excess capacity.

The Apollo service module could have been reduced in size, a refurb program started for the Apollo capsules. All of this would have reduced the cost of getting astronauts in orbit. More important it would have kept the F1, J2 and Saturn V booster in production.

posted 12-22-2004 09:57 AM               

I believe that after the last Skylab/Apollo flight, there was still a few Apollo spacecraft left that were flight ready.

A proposal to fly limited Earth orbit science flights and maybe even dock with Skylab and boost it into a higher orbit to avoid the fiery end that eventually took place, was made and quickly dismissed. After all the shuttle was just around the corner with new technology. We didn't need to go backwards or so they thought.

posted 12-22-2004 05:49 PM               

Nixon certainly was glad to reduce the expenditures of an active space program, particularly one spawned by the man he lost to in 1960, and one natured by one of the most unpopular Democratic presidents in the 20th Century. Nixon had a huge dollar devaluation program going on, axed the "S.S. United States" subsidy, and was trying to end the Viet Nam war on his terms, rather than to admit we had the crap kicked out of us ("Peace with honor").

The actual order to killed Saturn rocket production was made during LBJ's administration. We had a science ignorant public and Congress who saw the moon as a pile of grey rocks and an exclusive playground for a few white astronauts. It was easy to perceive the moon program as an unnecessary expense.

Now, I am not a Nixon fan, but place the blame where it is deserved. Remember that the shuttle was developed on Nixon's watch, which, while it is not the vehicle the Saturn V was, kept us in space. It would have been far smarter to milk the Saturn/Apollo design and go for Apollo Applications, but we didn't. I wish Nixon had the insight to do so, but he didn't.

posted 12-22-2004 08:07 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by spaceman48263:
I agree! Could you just see the Apollo CM with today's technology?

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posted 12-23-2004 10:59 AM               

Please figure into this equation one more thing. Astronauts would have died in space, possibly on the lunar surface. They will die again someday. Society better be willing to face reality and move forward despite the pain we will all suffer.

Anyway, to summarize, Nixon was ot wholey responsible for killing Apollo. Killing Apollo was a stupid and gross miscalcualtion of our needs for spaceflight and development of space resources, Congress and the public is too dumb to recognize the larger picture surrounding how their money is invested or spent. Killing Apollo in no way advanced social and health reform on Earth.

posted 12-23-2004 11:38 AM               

In hindsight, it's easy to wonder what the heck they were thinking, but, since there are many today arguing that the Shuttle should be retired even earlier in order to free up funding for CEV, one can almost empathize with the desire 35 years ago to put as much funding into Shuttle as possible to move ahead with the next program that much sooner.

posted 01-09-2005 12:32 PM               

The Apollo program was doomed shortly after the Apollo 1 fire, when North American Aviation, later to become Rockwell International was selected as the prime contractor for the new shuttle program. In order for NASA to get out of their mess, they told NAA that if they would accept all the blame for the fire, they would award the new program, worth billions of dollars, to them. Here was a company that was put down as the most irresponsible aircraft builder, poor leadership, poor engineering and slipshod work habits in the days after the fire awarded the plum. It was under Johnson's administration.

We thought at the time that it would be a new spacecraft using the tried and true Saturn V booster arrangement. It would be lifted aloft and return as an airplane. Maybe use the same technique used to land on the moon, a descent rocket motor and thrusters.

To our surprise, it became apparent that this was to be an entirely new system. Huge segmented solid rocket boosters, a huge tank bolted onto the orbiter containing many tons of violatile fuel and oxygen. A very dangerous arrangement for manned flight. Incidently all unproven systems.

During the early 60's, the USAF came up with the Dyna-Soar program, using a booster similar to the Saturn V with the reusable spacecraft as the payload. We thought the NASA program would be similar.

It was all downhill after that. After two landings on the moon, Apollo 13 barely made the evening news, covered only by the independent new organizations. It was only after the service module blew up that it made the evening news.

American interests were on Vietnam, civil rights and unemployment. Nixon was president by then and being a politician, he saw the handwriting on the wall, particullar at the urging of Congress. He saw a new program that would pour billions of dollars into the work forces. He told NASA to cut the amount of launches to conserve funds and concentrate on the new shuttle system.

In the meantime, after consulting with space scientists, and people that would use the new space system, NASA came up with the final orbiter system that would fill all needs. A monster that had no space time, used unproven systems and was a death trap.

One thing they shoved to the back of the pile, crew safety. There was no way for the crew to escape this monster.

Instead of using the system we had developed over the years at a cost of many trillons of dollars, starting long before the first rockets were launched at the Cape. They were going to try something new that would cost trillons more. Discarding the Apollo spacecraft as being obselete was the first task at hand. Of course, all the contractors were now happy. Most of all NAA(Rockwell.

The Saturn V could lift any configuration shuttle into earth orbit safely, used as a freighter, and a properly built orbiter could be ejected at any point along the launch route if something went wrong. Yet all this went by the wayside. We scrapped Apollo and you know the rest of the story. We have lost two orbiters and 14 brave astronauts.