posted 12-21-2012 07:29 PM               

The original Apollo 8 flight was to be a test of the lunar module in low earth orbit and the next flight a test of the CSM-LM configuration in a very high earth orbit.
A decision was made to delay the lunar module flight and fly just the CSM.

Most accounts attribute the idea to fly the CSM flight to lunar orbit to George Low (1926-84), NASA's Apollo Spacecraft Program Manager. Low, born in Vienna, Austria, was a brilliant engineer and administrator.

It is known that on August 7, 1968 he met with Manned Spacecraft Center director of flight operations Chris Kraft and asked him to look into the feasibility of such a circumlunar mission. A series of somewhat frantic meetings followed, including NASA leaders such as Robert Gilruth and Wernher von Braun. Finally a pitch was made to George Mueller, NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Spaceflight and James Webb, NASA Administrator. After some hesitation, Webb finally agreed, although an announcement was delayed until after the success of Apollo 7 in October.

posted 12-22-2012 03:13 AM               

Apollo itself was risky and we were lucky to only loose only three astronauts. Think about some of the bullets we dodged:

• Apollo 8 - No lunar module as a lifeboat and an astronaut delibilated (for a while) by space sickness.

• Apollo 9 - Another astronaut debilitated by space sickness, which could have had fatal consequences had it occurred during the mission's spacewalk.

• Apollo 10 - Violent vibrations could have broken the SIVB/Apollo CM/LM apart during TLI. A switch in an incorrect position could have led the LM ascent stage, and crew, crashing into the lunar surface.

• Apollo 13 - We all know about that one.

• Apollo 14 - A short-circuit in a switch aboard the LM could have aborted the landing or had worse consequences.

• Apollo 16 - Problems with CM's main engine could have left it stranded in lunar orbit, crashed on the moon, or sent into deep space.

posted 12-22-2012 06:40 AM            

More to the point, the Apollo management had no such prior performance information since this was only the second flight of the hardware. Does ignorance justify making a poor decision?? STS flew 24 times successfully before one of these many "risk" decisions caught up with STS management. Apollo management is looked upon as "brilliant" and STS management as a "broken safety culture".

One question I have pondered is what our view of Apollo management would have been if we had continued to fly Apollo 25 times or 135 times. I would suggest that the Apollo 8 decision needs to be looked at as extremely risky. Was that risk necessary? Did we need to save the 5000 lbs of weight by sending a LTA vs. a non land able LM? Was it that important to the program to beat a perceived Russian stunt? By the end of Gemini, it was clear we were well ahead in the space race and any knowledgeable NASA insider new the Russian lunar program was not going to succeed before the end of the decade.

posted 12-22-2012 09:14 AM               

Apollo management did not have "go" fever as bad as those involved in the Challenger launch decision. Every decision they made was based on the data available at the time, even though some of it was incomplete. All the data predicting "O-Ring" failure for Challenger's lunch was present, but it was summarily ignored ("Take your engineering hat off and put your management hat on.").

On Apollo 13, the one concern that everyone had(at the time) was the failure of the SPS engine to fire. Management's logic was that if it failed on the way to the moon, Apollo VIII would just loop around Luna and return to Earth. Had it partially failed for the return trip burn, the RCS engine might have been able to make up the missing delta-V. A total failure of the SPS was deemed unlikely. So the risk at the time was NOT perceived to be that great. During the entire Apollo program there was only one anomaly involving the SPS (Apollo 16) and it still performed as required.

posted 12-22-2012 09:36 AM               

According to the book, Frank Borman had a meeting with George Low in the spring of 1968 to discuss the progress made on the block II CM at Downey. Borman felt that the spacecraft was "about ready to go to the moon." A top secret "007" letter was immediately dictated and sent off to Kraft to find out, from a flight ops standpoint, the possibility of sending Apollo 8 around the moon. Kraft and Low, according to the book, had had several discussions on changing the mission even prior to the meeting with Borman.

On May 24th of that year, George Low included in his Apollo notes to Dr. Gilruth that "Chris Kraft and I agreed that we would pursue an E-Prime mission that would be a lunar orbit mission."

Things seemed to happen rather quickly after Borman's meeting with Low, which took place "on a Saturday, probably shortly after Apollo 6" according to Low's secretary. Apollo 6 flew in early April.

The book was written 23 years ago. Are there other sources out there with conflicting information?

posted 12-22-2012 10:16 AM            

Alternatively, had the O ring breach occurred 180 degrees opposite of where it did and Challenger made it to orbit would the decision to launch based upon the available data be called an "acceptable risk of spaceflight, lets fix it and move on".

I want to examine the quality of the decision, based not upon how lucky you were but whether management did an effective job of evaluating the known risks and then MORE IMPORTANTLY managing the large number of unquantified failure modes. Those unquantified failure modes are greater on the second flight of a vehicle. Good management really should effectively manage all the risks and only take those risks when the benefits to be gained cannot be achieved in another way.

posted 12-22-2012 01:00 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Grounded!:
I just finished reading Murray and Cox's wonderful book "Apollo, The Race To The Moon." which appears to put an earlier timeline on events leading to the decision of changing Apollo 8 to a lunar orbit mission.

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posted 12-22-2012 01:23 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Delta7:
I wonder how much the CIA reports of the Soviets planning a manned circumlunar mission, presumably before the U.S. could fly a manned lunar mission, actually factored into this decision.

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The major outstanding question of the influence of intelligence collection on the Moon race is the extent that intelligence information on the Soviet Zond circumlunar missions prompted NASA officials to make the Apollo 8 decision. To date, the evidence supports the conclusion that although the Zond program was a factor in the Apollo decision, it was a supporting factor, not the decisive one. Apollo was already going flat out, balls to the wall, within the limits of safety. NASA officials were moving as fast as they could and were less concerned with looking over their shoulder than in maintaining control of a massive bureaucratic machine that they were pushing to its limits. The Apollo 8 lunar module was not ready for its test flight, and NASA officials were unwilling to delay the mission in order to wait for the lander. They decided to send the astronauts around the Moon rather than simply into Earth orbit.

posted 12-22-2012 02:12 PM               

One could argue that the decision to do "all-up" flight tests of the Apollo-Saturn stack was risky, too, but it advanced the program. Someone also had to be the first to test out the interplanetary navigation techniques needed for a Moon mission.

Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo were perceived as potentially dangerous by those who flew them. I think every astronaut who flew in that era never considered any flight to be routine. Every one of them pushed the envelope farther than the preceding missions.

Wally Schirra said in his autobiography that as an astronaut and test pilot, he knew he was taking risks - but not unnecessary risks. He said he trusted that everything possible had been done ahead of time to identify and fix the potential failure points. He wouldn't fly in a machine in which he lacked faith. Nonetheless, he accepted that unknown failures would crop up, and he trusted that he, his crew, and the folks on the ground had the capability to troubleshoot the problems.

posted 12-22-2012 02:15 PM               

Borman writes (p. 189):

I flew a T-38 to Houston and walked into Deke's office. I knew something was up when he asked me to close the door.

We just got word from the CIA that the Russians are planning a lunar fly-by before the end of the year," he said. "We want to change Apollo 8 from an earth orbital to a lunar orbital flight. I know that doesn't give us much time, so I have to ask you: Do you want to do it or not?

"Yes," I said promptly.

I found out later that the Soviets were a hell of a lot closer to a manned lunar mission than we would have liked.Only a month after I talked to Slayton the Russians sent an unmanned spacecraft, Zond 5, into lunar orbit and returned it safely to earth.

posted 12-22-2012 03:33 PM               

Space historians and journalists have long speculated about the linkage between the Zond flights and the Apollo 8 decision, although most note that the actual decision to send Apollo 8 to the Moon occurred in August 1968, and Paine's announcement was merely the first public acknowledgement of the decision. Even today, over four decades later, that linkage between Soviet actions and the American decision is primarily circumstantial. Most of the evidence consists of either comments by the Apollo 8 astronauts, who were not actually involved in the decision itself but were told about it later, or oral histories. All of the records of the people who were directly involved in the decision point in a different direction.

...The only new piece of information that I found was a forgotten NASA scheduling document indicating that the option of sending Apollo 8 around the Moon had first been proposed in spring of 1968, several months earlier than previous historical accounts had stated, and before NASA or the CIA became concerned about the Soviet Zond flights.

To date, no smoking gun has emerged that directly connects Soviet actions to the Apollo 8 decision. That smoking gun would have to consist of a statement or document directly from someone who made the decision that indicated that the reason was Soviet actions.

...In the case of the Apollo 8 decision, the vast majority of evidence — cohesive, coherent evidence — supports the conclusion reached by Murray and Cox in 1989 that it was lunar module availability and the Apollo schedule, and not the Soviet Zond missions, that led NASA officials to send Apollo 8 to the Moon. This is not to say that the Zond missions were unimportant. They influenced the environment in which the decision was made, and probably made it harder to not fly Apollo 8 around the Moon once the agency's senior leadership started discussing it.

posted 12-23-2012 09:26 AM               

Worse than that. The problem of the o-rings was not seriously being investigated despite the evidence. The investigations were piecemeal and not urgent. Why? Cost. Replacing the o-ring joint would have been (and was) expensive in time and money. And what to do in the mean time. Should NASA launch shuttles with a known serious problem or should the program be halted until the problem was fixed. The program was already well behind predictions and the pressure to avert further delays was enormous. So safety was sacrificed and 7 Astronauts died.

posted 12-23-2012 09:45 AM            

Also, Apollo 8's launch decision necessitated damn near PERFECT performance of the CSM on Apollo 7. On a brand new vehicle there were plenty of ways that over 11 days problems could crop up that would require a second test-flight. There weren't. The SPS was worked out multiple times. The vehicle rendezvoused with a target, its S-IVB several times...the only problems were a mildly sick, cranky crew and some unacceptable condensation on the windows (the later which remarkably I have seen as criticism for NASA's decision to call Apollo 7 "101% percent successful")

posted 12-24-2012 03:53 AM               

Now what makes Challenger VERY different is not so much a matter of O-ring erosion, evidence of it on previous flights, but rather it was a complete 180 degree flip of NASA's safety review criteria. The normal procedure for a flight readiness review is for the contractor to come to NASA and say "we think this vehicle is safe and ready for flight" and NASA's view is "we do not think this vehicle is ready for flight, prove your case". The contractor then goes through a point by point presentation about the specific hardware, preparation, performance... etc. NASA's managers listen and ask questions, trying to shoot things full of holes if there is something they do not like. Only when all the questions are satisfied to the satisfaction of the managers is the stamp of approval given for the vehicle to fly.

What happened in that conference call was a case of the contractor (Morton Thiokol) saying to NASA "we don't think this vehicle is safe for flight" and NASA saying "we think it is, prove your case". Thiokol didn't quite have the data to back themselves up and NASA wasn't convinced. It was completely contrary to how a flight readiness review should take place. The engineers for Thiokol who witnessed this 180 flip take place were completely floored by what happened as it should NOT have happened that way at all. Unfortunately, the events of the next day proved the contractors right, there WAS a problem although the best guess was that the SRB joint would fail right at ignition and the casing would blow on the pad destroying the shuttle along with the pad.

posted 12-24-2012 10:35 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by DChudwin:
Does anyone know of evidence that anyone else besides George Low proposed what became Apollo 8?

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In August 1968, McDivitt's Apollo 8 (first LM manned test flight) and Borman's Apollo 9 (CSM deep space flight) missions were swapped, as preparations for the LM's maiden manned flight were falling behind schedule. The Saturn V for Frank Borman's crew was ready and so were the crew, so Borman actively campaigned for an ambitious flight plan — a Christmas flight to orbit the Moon. After a great deal of discussion, the mission was re-scheduled, and the launch was planned for just before Christmas.

posted 12-25-2012 05:02 PM               

September 20 1967

MSC proposed to the NASA Office of Manned Space Flight a sequence of missions leading to a lunar landing mission. The sequence included the following basic missions:

1. Saturn V/unmanned CSM development
   
2. Saturn IB/unmanned LM development
   
3. Saturn IB/manned CSM evaluation
   
4. Saturn V/manned CSM and LM development (A dual Saturn IB mission would be an alternative to the Saturn V for mission D)
   
5. CSM/LM operations in high earth orbit
   
6. Lunar orbit mission
   
7. Lunar landing mission (like Apollo 11)
   
8. Lunar landing mission (Apollo 12, 13, and 14)
   
9. Reserved for lunar survey missions (not used)
   
10. Lunar landing missions, upgraded hardware (Apollo 15, 16, and 17)

Memos, George M. Low, ASPO Manager, to distr., "Mission development and planning," Sept. 25, 1967; Low to Director, MSC, "Meetings with General Phillips and Dr. Mueller," Sept. 9, 1967; ltr, Robert R. Gilruth, MSC, to George E. Mueller, NASA Hq., Sept. 19, 1967; telecon, Ivan D. Ertel to John Sevier, Feb. 26, 1975."

posted 12-25-2012 09:15 PM               

The SPS design had already proven itself though with successful flight firings on SA-202 (201 had an SPS failure), Apollo 4, Apollo 6 and Apollo 7. The S-IVB's restart capability had also been tested successfully (and the SPS could abort the mission safely if the S-IVB didn't work as advertised). Apollo 7's mission had shown the navigation computer worked fine and if Apollo 8 had a failure of either the DSKY or the SPS on the way to the moon, Houston could have commanded correction burns to keep them on free return to come home using their own tracking capabilities.

posted 12-25-2012 10:31 PM               

1. "C Mission". Manned Saturn 1B flight with CSM but no LM in low earth orbit. Apollo 7: Schirra, Eisele, Cunningham.

2. "D Mission". Manned Saturn V flight with CSM/LM in low earth orbit to evaluate LM.
   Apollo 8: McDivitt, Scott, Schweickart.

3. "E Mission". Manned Saturn V flight with CSM/LM in high earth orbit (4,600 miles) to check CSM/LM operations and high speed reentry.
   Apollo 9: Borman, Lovell, Anders.

One article describes the proposed scenario:

Key figures in the plan to turn the E mission into something altogether more audacious included Chris Kraft, director of Flight Operations at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, and George Low, head of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. In April 1968, they proposed turning E into something called ‘E-Prime’, moving the test of the command, service and lunar modules from high-apogee Earth orbit to the vicinity of the Moon.

Almost as soon as NASA adopted an alphabetical stairway for reaching the moon in progressive flights (see Chapter 9), with the seventh, or G, step representing the ultimate goal, mission planners had begun looking for ways to omit a letter. In late 1967, when the ABC-scheme evolved, Low and Flight Operations Director Christopher Kraft had pushed for a lunar-orbital mission as soon as possible to learn more about communications, navigation, and thermal control in the deep space environment.

In the spring of 1968, Apollo officials in Houston were trying to upgrade the E mission (operating the command module and the lander in high-earth orbit) into something called E-prime, which would move the mission to the vicinity of the moon.

posted 12-26-2012 08:55 PM               

The "C" designation was for earth orbital flights of the CSM. Since there had not been final approval of a lunar orbit plan, planning went on for both possibilities —  if all went well with Apollo 7 then go for lunar orbit with just a CSM, otherwise do another test of the CSM in Earth orbit.

See this excerpt from The Apollo Spacecraft-A Chronology:

August 19 (1968)

In a Mission Preparation Directive sent to the three manned space flight Centers, NASA Apollo Program Director Samuel C. Phillips stated that the following changes would be effected in planning and preparation for Apollo flights:

Apollo-Saturn 503

Assignment of Saturn V 503, CSM 103, and LM-3 to Mission D was canceled.

Saturn V 503 would be prepared to carry CSM 103 and LTA (LM test article)-B on a manned CSM-only mission to be designated the C prime mission.

The objectives and profile of the C prime mission would be developed to provide maximum gain consistent with standing flight safety requirements. Studies would be carried out and plans prepared so as to provide reasonable flexibility in establishing final mission objectives.

All planning and preparations for the C prime mission would proceed toward launch readiness on December 6, 1968.

Apollo-Saturn 504

Saturn V 504, CSM 104, and LM-3 were assigned to the D mission, scheduled for launch readiness no earlier than February 20, 1969. The crew assigned to the D mission would remain assigned to that mission. The crew assigned to the E mission (Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., and William Anders) would be reassigned to the C prime mission. Training and equipping the C prime crews and operational preparations would proceed as required to meet mission requirements and to meet the newly established flight readiness date.

A memorandum from the ASPO Manager on September 3 summarized the basic and alternate missions for which detailed planning and preparation would be performed.

In the basic earth-orbital C prime mission the vehicle configuration would consist of the Saturn V 503 with a payload of 39,780 kilograms (CSM 103 and LTA-B with the service propulsion subsystem fully loaded). Insertion would be into low circular orbit of the earth. The earth-parking-orbit activities would include crew and ground support exercises related to spacecraft system checkout and preparation for translunar injection (TLI; i.e., transfer into a trajectory toward the moon). CSM separation maneuver would occur before TLI.

Alternate earth-orbital missions would include a manned TLI burn to a 6440-km apogee or an SPS burn to achieve a 6,440-km apogee. An alternate lunar orbit mission would include mission planning, crew training, spacecraft hardware, and software to support the mission. In providing support, top priority would be assigned to the lunar orbit mission. The memo indicated that following TLI, simulated transposition and docking maneuvers would be conducted; midcourse corrections and star horizon/ star landmark sightings would be performed during the translunar coast; lunar orbit insertion would be accomplished and a lunar parking orbit established for 20 hours.

posted 12-27-2012 08:27 PM               

Then two events intervened. First, there were significant delays in the development of the LM at Grumman. For example, there is this entry in the book Apollo Spacecraft-A Chronology:

July 17 [1968]

NASA Associate Administrator George E. Mueller, Apollo Program Director Samuel C. Phillips, and other high-ranking manned space flight officials from Headquarters visited Bethpage for an overall review of the LM program. Greatest emphasis during their review was on schedules, technical problems, and qualification of the spacecraft's principal subsystems. Mueller and Phillips cited several areas that most concerned NASA:

• Delivery schedules from subcontractors and vendors had slipped significantly during the past year, to the point where many components were only marginally supporting spacecraft deliveries.
  
• The large number of hardware changes made during the past year was affecting costs and schedules.
  
• Costs forecast for Fiscal Year 1969 exceeded the current LM budget.

Events and the situation during June and July had indicated to Low that the only way for the "in this decade" goal to be attained was to launch the Saturn 503/CSM 103 LM-3 mission in 1968. During June and July the projected launch slipped from November to December, with no assurance of a December launch. Later, Low recalled "the possibility of a circumlunar or lunar orbit mission during 1968, using AS-503 and CSM 103 first occurred to me as a contingency mission.

During the period of July 20-August 5, pogo problems that had arisen on Apollo 6 seemed headed toward resolution; work on the CSM slowed, but progress was satisfactory; delivery was scheduled at KSC during the second week in August and the spacecraft was exceptionally clean. The LM still required a lot of work and chances were slim for a 1968 launch.

At the same time the LEM was causing such headaches, CIA agents working overseas picked up even more disturbing news. According to the whispers coming from Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Soviet Union was making tentative plans for a flight around the moon by a Zond spacecraft sometime before the end of the year. Nobody knew if the flight would be manned, but the Zond line was certainly capable of carrying a crew, and if a decade of getting sucker-punched by Soviet space triumphs had indicated anything, it was that when Moscow had even the possibility of pulling off a space coup, they’d give it a try.

All the evidence that I have seen indicates that it was George Low, Apollo Spacecraft Program Manager in Houston, who came up with the idea of sending the CSM alone to orbit the Moon since the LM was not ready fro flight. The following indicates that he came up with the idea in July, 1968 but waited to propose it until August 7, 1968. From Chariots for Apollo:

But by August Gilruth and others had concluded that LM-3 would not be ready for flight that year. This finding left NASA with two excellent command modules, 101 and 103, but no lunar module companions. Low had already recognized this likelihood in July, after Kennedy found the many deficiencies in LM-3. If a lunar module could not be manned in 1968, he reasoned that Saturn V 503 and CSM-103 might be used for a circumlunar or lunar-orbit flight. Low kept his own counsel for a while, waiting for the Saturn V pogo problem to be resolved.

On 7 August, Low asked Kraft to work out a flight plan for such a mission during 1968.

posted 12-27-2012 08:34 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by DChudwin:
So studying the public documents from that era would not give a complete picture of what was happening behind the scenes.

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quote:

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The following indicates that he came up with the idea in July, 1968 but waited to propose it until August 7, 1968.

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posted 12-28-2012 08:02 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
As noted up-thread, Day found a NASA scheduling document proposing a circumlunar flight dated for the spring of 1968, which would pre-date Low's idea and proposal by several months.

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The planning assumptions for "E Prime" were that the LM would be on time, which did not happen, and that Apollo 7 would be successful, which did occur.

If Apollo 7 found problems in the CSM, then another flight in earth orbit would be necessary to confirm the fixes. This was the original assignment of AS-503.

posted 09-03-2013 06:59 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by PetesParkingLot:
5000 lbs of weight by sending a LTA vs. a non land able LM?

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posted 09-04-2013 03:41 PM               

"But von Braun, director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., hypothesized that the lunar module might not be ready for the lunar mission when all other launch vehicle and spacecraft elements of the Apollo/Saturn 5 will be. In that case, he said, NASA might elect to 'fly the lunar mission, but just not activate one phase of it,' presumably the decent to the moon."

This was a sidebox story within another article about how NASA was coping to get back onto a schedule that would let them make a landing attempt in 1969.

posted 01-04-2019 03:02 AM               

• changes in the ascent engine design
  
• problems caused by windows blowing out during pressure testing
  
• the discovery of corrosion cracks in the aluminium structure
  
• broken wiring especially in LM-3 designated for the Borman flight.

posted 01-04-2019 03:11 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Jim_Voce:
In August 1968, the decision was made to turn Apollo 8 into a circumlunar mission...

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