Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in ... - The Black Vault

Exploring the Unknown
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use to send crews to the Moon. (The process of making that decision is described
in the following section.) This was the second reason for the delay in identifying
the launch vehicles for Apollo; it was hard to define what kind of launch vehicle
would be needed without knowing what requirements it would have to meet.
Still, as the end of the year approached there was a need to make some basic
launch vehicle decisions. The NASA-DOD study had come out with a general set
of recommendations that did not provide an adequate basis for NASA’s decisions.
So on 6 November, Milton Rosen of NASA Headquarters organized a two-week
study to recommend to the NASA leadership “a large launch vehicle program”
which would “meet the requirements of manned space flight” and “have broad
and continuing national utility.” (Volume IV, I-31) On 20 November, Rosen
reported that “to exploit the possibility of accomplishing the first lunar landing
by rendezvous,” NASA should develop an “intermediate vehicle” that had five F-1
engines in the first stage, four or five J-2 engines in its second stage, and one J-2
in its third stage. (The J-2 was an engine powered by high energy liquid hydrogen
fuel that would have the capability to stop and restart in orbit.) Since a direct
flight to the Moon was at this point still NASA’s stated preference for the lunar
landing missions, Rosen also recommended that “a NOVA vehicle consisting of
an eight F-1 first stage” should be developed on a “top priority basis.” He added
“large solid rockets should not be considered as a requirement for manned lunar
landing.” (Volume IV, I-32)
The recommendation for a five-engine first stage for the advanced Saturn
launch vehicle, soon called the Saturn C-5 and ultimately the Saturn V, was
quickly accepted by the NASA leadership. That decision, as will be seen later,
soon became a key to NASA’s choice of how to get to the Moon. 15
Choosing Apollo’s Managers
From the time that Kennedy announced his decision to go to the Moon,
it was clear that the responsibility for developing the Apollo spacecraft and
training the astronauts to operate it would be assigned to the Space Task Group.
This group was headed by Robert Gilruth, a widely respected veteran of the
National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), NASA’s predecessor. As
soon as it was decided that NASA would build a new Field Center for Apollo and
that it would be located in Houston, Gilruth and his team began to move their
base of operations to Houston and to hire the many additional staff who would
be needed to carry out the spacecraft development, astronaut training, and
flight operations. It was equally clear that Wernher von Braun and his German
rocket team, now working for NASA in the new Marshall Space Flight Center
in Huntsville, Alabama, would be the core of the group developing the launch
vehicles for Apollo.
15. For more information on the origins and development of the Saturn launch vehicles, see
Bilstein, Stages to Saturn and Ray Williamson, “Access to Space: Steps to Saturn V” in John M. Logsdon
et al., eds., Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Program (Washington,
DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration Special Publication-4407, Vol. IV, 1999).