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

428 Project Apollo: Americans to the Moon
Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space), since it would be most
important to move out as quickly as possible once the plan was adopted.” (II-60)
With all of the key managers of the Apollo meeting agreed, it would be
difficult for NASA’s top officials to overturn Low’s plan, but it turned out that
they also were not willing to give it their total approval. The senior managers
from Houston, Huntsville, Cape Kennedy, and the NASA Headquarters Apollo
program office met with the new NASA Deputy Administrator, Thomas Paine, on
14 August as planned. (Paine was a newcomer to space; before he came to NASA
he had been an executive of the General Electric Company, most recently the
manager of GE’s Center for Advanced Studies. He had assumed the number two
position at NASA in January 1968, following the resignation of Robert Seamans.)
At the 14 August meeting, Paine “congratulated the assembled group for not
being prisoners of previous plans and indicated that he personally felt that this
was the right thing for Apollo and that, of course, he would have to work with
Mueller and Webb before it could be approved.” There was a decision not to send
Sam Phillips to Vienna because his sudden appearance there might compromise
what were still considered secret plans. Instead, interactions with Webb and
Mueller were by secure telephone and diplomatic couriers.
Webb was “shocked” when he first heard of what his staff was planning, but
quickly both he and Mueller saw the logic of what was being proposed. However,
they added a note of caution. While the Apollo managers could begin to plan for
a lunar mission, they could not commit NASA to undertaking such a bold step
until the October C mission, designated Apollo 7, was a success. Following this
constrained approval of the plan, Apollo Program Director Sam Phillips on 19
August issued a directive announcing the revised program plan. (II-61) The new
mission would be designated C’ (C prime) and Apollo 8. Whether it would go to
the Moon, stay in low Earth orbit, or follow some other mission plan would not be
decided until the results of the Apollo 7 mission were available, said Phillips.
As Low noted, the implications of this tentative decision were dramatic in
terms of when the first attempt at a lunar landing could be scheduled. At the 14
August meeting,
We also discussed the mission sequence to be followed after the proposed
mission and proposed that the best plan would be to fly the D mission
next, followed by an F mission, which, in turn, would be followed by the
first lunar landing mission. In other words, the proposed mission would
take the place of the E mission but would be flown before D. MSC also
proposed that for internal planning purposes we should schedule the
D mission for March 1, 1969; the F mission for May 15, 1969; and the G
mission for July or August, 1969. However, dates two weeks later for D,
one month later for F, and one month later for G should be our public
commitment dates. (II-60)
Following Phillips’s 19 August directive tentatively approving the C’ mission,
Low on 20 August issued his own directive to those working on the Apollo