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

426 Project Apollo: Americans to the Moon
the proven Proton launch vehicle and a modified Soyuz spacecraft called Zond,
aimed at flights around the Moon, without the capability to land. In April 1968,
the CIA issued an update of a 1967 assessment of the Soviet program. (II-57) The
report said that “we continue to estimate that the Soviet manned lunar landing
program is not intended to be competitive with the US Apollo program. We now
estimate that the Soviets will attempt a manned lunar landing in the latter half
of 1971 or in 1972, and we believe that 1972 is the more likely date.” However,
added the CIA, “the Soviets will probably attempt a manned circumlunar flight
both as a preliminary to a manned lunar landing and as an attempt to lessen the
psychological impact of the Apollo program. In NIE 11-1-67 [the 1967 estimate],
we estimated that the Soviets would attempt such a mission in the first half of
1968 or the first half of 1969 (or even as early as late 1967 for an anniversary
spectacular). The failure of the unmanned circumlunar test in November 1967
leads us now to estimate that a manned attempt is unlikely before the last half of
1968, with 1969 being more likely.” Senior Apollo managers could not help but
have this intelligence estimate in the back of their minds as they moved toward
the beginning of crew-carrying Apollo flights, although there is little direct
evidence that it influenced their thinking.
In addition to getting Apollo hardware ready to fly, there was an immense
amount of detailed effort required to actually design the lunar landing
missions. That responsibility was assigned to a veteran NASA engineer named
Howard W. “Bill” Tindall, who in August 1967 was named Chief of Apollo Data
Priority Coordination, an opaque title that gave no indication of his sweeping
responsibilities. Tindall had an exuberant personality and viewed Apollo “as one
long stretch of fun that had by some miracle given to him instead of work.” One of
the results of Tindall’s approach to his duties was a series of what became known
as “Tindallgrams.” While dealing with the myriad of serious issues involved in
getting ready to land on the Moon, these communications adopted a breezy,
irreverent tone, and “became a sensation” around the Manned Spacecraft Center.
As one example, Tindall told George Low on 8 August that “a rather unbelievable
proposal has been bouncing around lately”—to delete the rendezvous radar on
the lunar module as a weight saving measure. Tindall continued “because it is
seriously ascribed to a high ranking official [George Mueller],” it was being taken
seriously. He told Low, “I thought I’d write this note in hopes you could proclaim
it to be a false alarm or if not, to make it one.” 64 (II-59)
While the redesigned Apollo spacecraft seemed ready for a crewed launch,
the same could not be said of the Saturn V or the lunar module. The second
test launch of the Saturn V took place on 4 April 1968. In contrast to the almost
perfect first test launch the preceding November, there were multiple problems
with this flight. Each of the three stages of the vehicle had a separate failure. It
took all of the skill and experience of the von Braun rocket team to diagnose the
64. For a discussion of Tindall’s contributions and style, see Murray and Cox, Apollo, pp.
292–297.