posted 10-09-2014 06:19 AM               

To quote Siverstein, "Paperwork was created to act as scenery for what we had already decided to do."

As mentioned in my earlier post, Silverstein is recorded as recollecting that George Low brought him his proposition sometime during the second week in October and that the two of them came to an understanding that Low then wrote up in the form of a memorandum.

posted 10-09-2014 12:01 PM               

It sounds likely they may have decided it in the second week, and Low produced the memo over the weekend for signing on the Monday (17th) to make it official.

posted 10-10-2014 07:58 AM               

In this May 2009 NASA Glenn Research Center article What's in a Name? it is stated:

Silverstein chose the name "Apollo" after perusing a book of mythology at home one evening in 1960.

During the Month (January 1960) — At a luncheon in Washington, Abe Silverstein, Director of Office of Space Flight Programs, suggested the name "Apollo" for the manned space flight program that was to follow Mercury. Others at the luncheon were Don R. Ostrander, Director of Office of Launch Vehicle Programs, and Robert R. Gilruth, Maxime A. Faget, and Charles J. Donlan from Space Task Group. (Interview with Charles J. Donlan, Langley Research Center, June 20, 1966.)

That same January of 1960, the Apollo spacecraft was baptized by Abe Silverstein, head of the Office of Space Flight Programs. Silverstein had named Mercury a year earlier (Silverstein liked the image of a messenger in the sky), and since von Braun had named his new launch vehicle "Saturn" another Greek god seemed to Silverstein like a natural choice.

He remembered from his grade-schooldays the story of the god who rode the chariot of the sun drawn by four winged horses — Apollo, the child of Zeus. Silverstein, the meticulous research engineer, went back to his old book of myths and determined that Apollo hadn't done anything that "wouldn't be appropriate." Soon after, Silverstein tried out his idea on Gilruth, Faget, and Charles Donlan, Gilruth's deputy director in the Space Task Group. The four men were discussing the new post-Mercury spacecraft over lunch at a little restaurant near Dolley Madison House. In the middle of the meal Silverstein said suddenly, "There ought to be a name for this that stands out in people's minds. You know, something like 'Apollo.' for example. I'm not saying you ought to name it 'Apollo' necessarily, but something like that." And then throughout the rest of the lunch, Donlan recalled, he kept calling this new spacecraft "Apollo," seeing how it would wear. It wore pretty well, and the spacecraft became Apollo. Silverstein didn't have to bother with things like public relations departments. "I had the whole program," Silverstein said simply. "I was naming the spacecraft like I'd name my baby."

Space station and a circumlunar flight: That was the immediate agenda. To get plans moving, NASA announced in August that three $250,000 contracts would be let for design studies of the Apollo spacecraft. The Request for Proposals specified that the spacecraft had to be compatible with the new Saturn and it had to be capable of a fourteen-day mission — more than enough time to get to the moon and back. The proposals were submitted on October 9, 1960.

It was then, in the second week of October 1960, that a lunar landing moved from being an ambition to being a project. For one of the two men involved, Abe Silverstein, it was the natural next step — "the time had come," he said later. And perhaps it was as simple as that. The other of the two men, George Low, was asked directly about it less than four years later by an interviewer. What motivated him to act then? "I knew you would ask that question," said George Low, "and I don't know... This was the time, of course, that we were beginning to discuss with industry what the Apollo Program was... And we felt it would be most important to have something in the files, to be prepared to move out with a bigger program, should there be a sudden change of heart within the administration."

And yet it wasn't quite as simple as that either. For George Low, the most composed and deliberate of men, had an audacious streak, a fondness for the bold gesture that would break out repeatedly throughout his career. So probably it was a little of both. The time had come, but George Low also took it upon himself to give time, and history, a little nudge. Abe Silverstein's recollection was that Low brought him his proposition sometime during the second week of October. It was the kind of thing to which Silverstein had said no in 1959, but with planning for the new spacecraft under way and with the Saturn under development, enough had changed that they could go ahead now. The two of them came to an understanding and Low wrote it up in the form of a memorandum ("Paperwork was created to act as scenery for what we had already decided to do," as Silverstein once put it). Sixteen years later, when Low retired from NASA, the original was framed and presented to him; it hangs on the wall of the little study where his widow keeps some of his memorabilia. Presumably one day it will hang in the halls of the Smithsonian, for it is the closest thing the nation has to a birth certificate for the lunar landing program.

posted 10-10-2014 09:35 AM               

May I, in the interests of accuracy, add just a little... It is accurate in giving credit to Abe Silverstein for selecting my name for use, but is a year out in its first use. This came in January 1959 during discussions about tentative plans for a follow-up programme for Mercury. The only reason it was used was that it was simply an attractive name. Throughout the year it was frequently used to describe these plans and since nobody raised any objections was finally granted official status in a memo dated 25th July 1960 to the Goett Committee. The Hugh Dryden announcement... was during the course of a conference to discuss NASA's Industry Programme Plans when Dryden presented a paper on NASA's Mission and Long-Range Plan. Mummy and Daddy (Leto and Zeus) were pleased.

Only after the programme had been named did people start to look at my qualities that made it a suitable choice. ... Besides keeping myself busy looking after Light (though in these days of privatisation...!), Medicine (it is you lot that have made it expensive. I'd still be quite happy with the occasional sacrifice...), Progress (it's no co-incidence that the weather has improved since the forecasts have been commercially sponsored...) and Music (sorry about punk and the Sex Pistols - one of my off days I'm afraid..) I shoot. In fact it was in the Games at Delphi in — the date isn't important — that under an assumed name to conceal my professional status, I earned the reputation of being an archer that never missed his target, no matter what the distance involved. Quite appropriate don't you think?

So there you have it. Sister Artemis wasn't too pleased at being given the old heave-ho, but my burning chariot is so much more interesting than hers. Much more butch. It's better to leave the dim, soft, silvery light of hers for poets, romancers and lovers.

On edit - a postscript.
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