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

404 Project Apollo: Americans to the Moon
in a highly emotional state; he thinks LOR is the worst mistake in the world.” 21
NASA was allowed to go ahead with its 11 July press conference, but could only
announce the LOR choice as tentative, with more studies to be conducted.
Wiesner spelled out his reservations about the LOR choice in a 17 July letter
to James Webb. (II-27) Wiesner was worried that the spacecraft weight limitations
imposed by using the Saturn C-5 launch vehicle provided no margins if additional
radiation shielding or zero-gravity countermeasures were discovered to be
needed. He suggested that
the matter of which mission mode is most consistent with the main
stream of our national space program, and therefore the one most likely
to be useful in overtaking and keeping ahead of Soviet space technology,
is also one that I believe requires further consideration. . . . the question
of which mode is likely to be most suitable for enhancing our military
capabilities in space, if doing so should turn out to be desirable, should
be reviewed with care.
Wiesner’s views were in substantial part based on the views of the Space
Vehicle Panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), which
was chaired by Brown University chemist, Donald Hornig. Wiesner forwarded
to NASA with his letter the panel’s preliminary 11 July report. (II-26) The panel
had concluded that a better approach to the Moon mission was to send a twoperson
crew, rather than the three astronauts that NASA had been planning on
since 1960, and to use the EOR or direct ascent mode rather than LOR. The staff
person supporting the PSAC panel was none other that Nicholas Golovin, who
had been replaced by Joseph Shea as Brainerd Holmes’s deputy and soon left
NASA, unhappy with how he had been treated. He was then hired by Wiesner as
his space specialist. Golovin and Shea were both self-confident individuals, with
diametrically different approaches to key aspects of their systems analysis work. It
is not possible to judge how much Golovin’s antagonism towards NASA figured in
the NASA-White House dispute over the choice of mission mode, but it certainly
was an element in the controversy that was to linger for several months.
James Webb replied to Wiesner on 20 July, saying that NASA would indeed
carry out the studies recommended by the Space Vehicle Panel and responding
to some of Wiesner’s criticisms. (II-28) In an attempt to smooth over the dispute,
Webb concluded his letter by saying “this constructive criticism by eminently
qualified men is of tremendous value, and I am looking forward to further
discussions with you as the results of our present studies begin to crystallize.”
However, this polite tone did not last. There were continuing tensions over
the next few months between Wiesner and Golovin on one hand and Webb and
his associates, particularly Joe Shea, on the other. On 11 September, the dispute
became public. On that day President Kennedy flew to Huntsville to be briefed
on the progress being made on Apollo at the Marshall Space Flight Center. As
21. Ibid, p. 141.