In this article, we will try to cover the space program and exploring the next possible steps in American crewed spaceflight.
Throughout the 1960s, the widely publicized national commitment to put two American astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade, and even before the Soviet Union. It gave the United States’ space program such purpose and urgency that Congress was moved to appropriate, in its peak years, more than $5 billion for Space Administration (NASA)and the U.S. National Aeronautics.
Where Should Space Rank in The Scheme of National Priorities?
Still, as the manned space effort entered the 1970s, it was under constant reassessment. The frequently asked question was where should space rank in the scheme of national priorities. The answer was obvious. As a national activity, space exploration was seen as far less important than it had been a few years before.
By the time of the historic Apollo 11‘s magnificent fulfillment of the lunar landing goal, the U.S.’s social difficulties were being pressed upon the public morals as never before; there was a public quest to improve the quality of life.
Inflation had become the country’s most determined headache, aside from the war in Vietnam itself, and there was an apparently immediate public conviction that environmental pollution was a national disgrace.
In this new atmosphere, it was sincerely questioned whether the manned space program—the country’s most renowned single undertaking of the 1960s—was spending limited technological resources and talent.
Congress, using its authority more than it had in many years, started taking a more robust attitude toward almost all high-cost engineering development programs—even those said to be important to the national defense.
Project Apollo Was Nearing its End
Rather of supporting manned space flight as an inevitable area of competition with the Soviet Union, public officials talked more precariously of substantive cooperation with the U.S.S.R., therefore supporting the concept of making space exploration an international pursuit.
So, by fiscal 1971—beginning July 1, 1970—NASA’s budget had been decreased to more than $3 billion. And Project Apollo was nearing its end; unmanned space projects were being delayed; both government and industry payrolls connected with space projects were being decreased.
The once-held desire of some officials to follow up the Apollo moon program with a similar promise to land men on Mars had long since disappeared.
So, a new blueprint, altogether different from the space plan of the 1960s, had set a year after the first moon landing. There would be no single goal like the moon landing deadline. The new approach intended to develop a broad capacity that could be used for effective returns: such a capability would include scientific research in earth orbit and continued research of the moon and beyond.
A New Family of Space Transport Vehicles
Although controversy remained over how fast the manned space program should advance and how much the U.S. could manage to spend, the general direction for the 1970s seemed to be charted.
Envisioned as a new family of space transport vehicles, intended for repeated use: a shuttlecraft to work routinely between the ground and low earth orbit; a so-called “space tug” to move such massive objects as space stations or scientific observatories from one orbit to another or to bring cargo between the moon and a space station in lunar orbit; and a nuclear-powered shuttle for long-distance moving, such as hurling a space station from earth orbit to lunar orbit, or starting a scientific payload on its way to neighboring planets from earth orbit.
Construction of the earth-to-orbit shuttle—which would also be used by the U.S. Air Force—emerged in 1970 as the first critical step in developing the new post-Apollo space program.
And close behind the shuttle in NASA’s plans was a permanent space station able to support a dozen or more engineers and scientists in earth orbit.
Skylab
The slowdown in space spending has created a gap between the end of the Apollo moon missions and the first orbital missions of the famous shuttle.
So, the bridge between these two generations is the program called Skylab. This was a forerunner of the space station. The huge Skylab will consist of the third stage of a Saturn V rocket transformed into an orbital workshop where teams of three astronauts will be able to work for periods up to 56 days.
Conducting scientific experiments in the fields of space physics, astronomy, biology, water management, oceanography, agriculture, forestry, geology, ecology, and geography. Skylab was scheduled for launch in 1972.
The workshop will be divided into two special “stories,” with recreational facilities and living quarters for the crew apart from the laboratory work area. Installed outside the vehicle will be a solar telescope, which the crew will use to examine portions of our sun’s electromagnetic spectrum not visible to observatories on Earth.
Rendezvous And Dock With The Workshop
With the telescope equipment, workshop, and docking hardware, Skylab will range 117 ft. in total length and have a wingspan of about 90 ft. after its large solar panels unfold to convert the sun’s energy into electricity for the space station.
Throughout a lifetime of about eight months, Skylab will be used by three separate astronaut teams. A day after a Saturn V rocket lofts the workshop into an Earth-orbit about 270 nautical miles high, three astronauts will be launched in an Apollo command module by a smaller Saturn I booster rocket.
Then, they will rendezvous and dock with the workshop. In a convenient “shirt-sleeve” environment, these first visitors will live in Skylab for twenty-eight days before returning back to Earth. This 28-day mission will also break the previous endurance record of 17 2/3 days set by the two Soviet cosmonauts in 1970. Approximately two months later, a second-team will fly to the laboratory for a mission lasting fifty-six days. A 56-day visit by the third team of astronauts will begin around a month after the second team of astronauts has settled in its Apollo spacecraft.
Long-Term Weightlessness
A prime goal of the three flights is to find whether there are still unknown hazards in prolonged exposure to weightlessness. Through Skylab, the data will be available soon enough to use in the form of the permanent space station.
If unexpected physiological problems arise from long-term weightlessness, then it might be required to design a permanent station that will be in the continuous rotation to produce artificial gravity.
Physiological and medical experiments will be assigned top priority on the first Skylab visit. The second crew of astronauts will have solar astronomy as its number one task. The third crew will emphasize earth resources work and use instruments aboard the laboratory—mostly cameras—to see how well orbital observatories, unmanned or manned, can detect natural resources, identify crop disorders, and aid planners in land administration.
Skylab is Launched at a Greater Angle
Skylab space station is to be launched at a greater angle to the Equator than any previous U.S. human-crewed space vehicle. And as a result, its earth resources cameras will be capable of covering any area of the U.S. and most of the most densely populated regions of the entire Earth. U.S. astronauts had before passed over the United States along with path cutting over southern California, Texas, Florida, and the Gulf of Mexico.
So, because a backup Skylab station is being assembled against the chance of losing the first in a launch malfunction, NASA might have the opportunity of launching a second workshop. The first—including the cost of the backup—is supposed to cost about 2 billion USD. And depending on how many changes are made, a second Skylab station could be launched at a comparatively low cost. A determination as to whether to fly the second workshop is expected in the summer or fall of 1971.
Apollo Program Cutback
So, whether or not a second Skylab is launched, it would not be able to span the gap between Apollo and the new programs completely. As the budget pressure began, NASA had already dropped one of its planned lunar landings. It further decided to convert a Saturn V rocket third stage into Skylab before launch, rather than using Saturn Is and equipping an expended upper stage as a makeshift workshop after it had reached its orbit.
And as the financial stress became more intense, NASA chose to cut further into the Apollo program to keep the plans for the space station and shuttle active. It sped the layoff of space entrepreneur employees and decided to mothball rocket test facilities in Mississippi and discontinue the Saturn V production.
A previous plan had been to fly Apollo missions through 17 and then take a break from examining the moon to conduct the Skylab before ending the Apollo program with two flights in 1974.
Moon Missions Through Apollo 19
But a cutback of two space flights by NASA determined that there would be two missions to the moon and back in 1971, two in 1972, and then Skylab station, which would be completed in June 1973. And after that, the United States would have no manned space project until the shuttle was ready in 1976 or 1977—except there was a decision to fly a second Skylab space station. So, by cutting the number of moon missions, NASA leaders expected that they would be capable of saving $600 million to $900 million for work on the space station and the shuttle.
Both of the scientific consulting panels advised on the decision urged NASA to go ahead and fly its Moon missions through Apollo 19. Rather than cutting back exploration of the moon, they maintained, the Skylab space program should be postponed.
And in a letter to NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine and John W. Findlay, chairman of the Lunar and Planetary Missions Board, and Nobel laureate Charles H. Townes, chairman of the Space Science Board, explained the reasoning of the scientific community:
It should be recognized that any decrease in the number of Moon missions will seriously threaten the strength of the total Apollo program to answer first-order scientific questions. We are concerned that an additional reduction in the present Apollo missions may well lead to our inability to answer these topics and the outcomes of such failure for the agency’s future, we think, for large-scale science in this country are inestimable.
The Space Shuttle Program
The space shuttle program NASA wishes to get approved in Congress in 1971 could cost, by the agency’s estimations, more than $6 billion. Some doubters put the figure much higher than that.
However, in spite of this cost, the prime motive behind the space shuttle concept is to decrease for all time the cost of sending astronauts and equipment into Earth orbit. It may be able to reduce Saturn V rocket’s freight rate of $1,000 per pound to $20 to about $50 per pound; besides that, it will be capable of hauling cargo from orbit down to Earth, which conventional rockets cannot do because they are lost after the launch.
Therefore, designers are aiming for a space shuttle that will operate much in the fashion of a commercial airliner. It must be able to be readied for launch in a period of two hours and must be capable of making at least 100 round trips from the Earth to orbit without significant refurbishment.
The Shuttle Consists of Two Vehicles, a Booster, and an Orbiter.
The space shuttle NASA wants to build consists of two vehicles—a rocket booster and an orbiter. Propelled vertically like other rockets, the booster rocket will carry the smaller orbiter to an altitude of approximately 200,000 ft., where they will separate. And the booster will descend and, powered by jet engines, later fly back to the launch base under two astronauts’ control. The orbiter will then continue to an altitude of about 100 miles or even more.
The orbiter will be much smaller than the power booster that will launch it, it will be approximately the size of a Boeing 707 jetliner. NASA has told builders working on a preliminary design that the space shuttle must have a cargo section 15 ft. in diameter and 60 ft. in length.
Able to Operate at Altitudes up to 600 Nautical Miles.
A space shuttle of these dimensions will carry as many as a dozen astronauts and make the transit to and from Earth orbit smoothly enough for middle-aged scientists to make the trip as conveniently as professional astronauts. Returning from space, it will land at the same base where it took off, touching down on a regular runway.
Able to operate at altitudes up to 600 nautical miles, the space shuttle will have a payload of up to 50,000 lb. Because it will be used by the U.S. Air Force as well as NASA, its design will presumably be somewhat influenced by military specifications. As preliminary design studies improved, NASA and the Air Force disagreed about whether the space shuttle should be delta-shaped or have fixed wings to give it enhanced maneuverability on reentry, as the Air Force required.
While the space shuttle is a transportation system that carries satellites and ferry astronauts and supplies to and from the space station, it will have the capability to operate in Earth orbit for a week and serve as a small space station-observatory until a bona fide space station is in operation.
The Shuttle Will Cut the Cost of Building Spacecraft by as Much as a Third.
Technicians working on the space shuttle believe that it can ultimately replace all rocket launchers. According to some estimates, the shuttle will cut the cost of building spacecraft by as much as a third. And this will be achievable because the shuttle will no longer require extensive protection against the crushing forces of rocket launches. Early NASA estimations were that the space shuttle would pay for itself in five to six years, assuming 30 flights per year.
Despite these remarkable characteristics of the space shuttle and the appeal of a permanent space station in Earth orbit. Both of these programs for the following decade in space had their opponents. Astronautics Committee’s Space Science and Applications Subcommittee, and Rep. Joseph Karth (Dem., Minn.), chairman of the House Science believe that much more research is required before a commitment is made to go ahead.
Even with this kind of opposition, Senate space committees and the House of Representatives authorized $160 million for the space station – shuttle work in fiscal 1971.
Nuclear Shuttle and Space Tug
While priority was given the earth-to-orbit space shuttle and the space station, preliminary work was also underway on the nuclear shuttle and space tug.
Preliminary expediency studies on the tug were due from contractors early in 1971. Early concepts foresaw the tug as a space vehicle capable of operating in either the unmanned or manned mode. As a manned vehicle, it would be capable of carrying a payload of about 5,000 up to 10,000 lb. from a lunar orbiting space station down to the lunar surface.
And unmanned, it might land 70,000 lb. on the lunar surface to aid in the buildup of a Moonbase. It could support a manned lunar expedition—three astronauts—as long as around 28 days on the Moon’s surface.
The agency’s design calls for the tug to come into operation approximately two years after the nonnuclear Earth-to-orbit space shuttle. A nuclear-powered space shuttle would then be ready soon after that. The following would be able to boost a payload of nearly 175,000 lb. from earth orbit to an orbit around the Moon.
Permanent Space Station
NASA invested nearly $6 million in fiscal 1970 on space station investigations. It had $30 million to extend its work in fiscal 1971.
Under the existing concept, the first permanent space station would be designed for a lifetime of about ten years. It would be laid out with long-range planning and the care that goes into a major research facility on Earth.
The space station would have a crew of three or four astronauts in charge of its operation, with the rest of its occupants working full-time on research projects.
The first space station, like Skylab, will be a trailblazer for better and bigger things to come if NASA’s present plan is accepted. After the permanent station, scientists expected to establish a space base where dozens or even a hundred or more crew members would work at pursuits extending from pure science to the construction of certain materials that can be better managed without the influence of gravity.
After the historic landing on the moon in July 1969, it was up to President Nixon to choose what to do in space after the Apollo Program. The book “After Apollo?” This fascinating book chronicles the decisions of the President, including ending space exploration and approving the space shuttle program. These decisions determined the character of the United States human space flight program for the next forty years.
That’s it. Thanks for reading. If you want to learn more about the Apollo Program then head over to this interesting article named; A Complete Guide to NASA’s Apollo Program.
In this video by Amy from The Vintage Space, talking about Space Exploration is All Politics.
