The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

Von Braun’s Huntsville team already had a class of large boosters on the drawing board. Called the Saturn (after Jupiter’s neighboring planet in the solar system), the first generation of large boosters incorporated a cluster of Jupiter-type engines as the first stage, to produce 1.5 million pounds of thrust. Von Braun also envisioned a second-generation superbooster he called the Nova, whose first stage would cluster the big F-1 engines that were then being studied by the Defense Department. Each F-1 produced a thrust of 1.5 million pounds.

In December 1959, Abe Silverstein and his advanced development group went even further than von Braun’s ambitious initial plans for the Saturn class of rockets. Following conventional design philosophy, the first stage of the new boosters would use proven kerosene and LOX propellants. Silverstein, however, knew that the upper stages of any eventual moon booster would require a much higher thrustto-weight capability than LOX-kerosene technology could provide. His group recommended fueling the upper stages with supercold (cryogenic) liquid hydrogen and LOX, a high-energy combination whose use was fraught with technical problems. This was the technology that the rocket pioneers Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, and Goddard said offered the most efficient and lightweight conversion of fuel to thrust. Von Braun knew this, of course, but was hesitant to embrace this unconventional propellant technology. His years of trying unsuccessfully to interest America in spaceflight had taught him to be cautious in his recommendations. Now that senior NASA officials were backing this method of fueling the booseters, he was more than happy to follow.

Silverstein’s insistence on the high-energy cryogenic upper stages for NASA’s eventual Saturn rockets would become the key that would unlock the door to the first moon landing. After the fall of 1959, Wernher von Braun began participating to an even greater extent in both NASA’s Project Mercury and ambitious advanced spaceflight plans. Eisenhower, recognizing that if America was going to compete with the Soviets it would need large civilian boosters, finally gave in to Glennan’s repeated requests and transferred von Braun’s Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency to NASA, effective July 1, 1960. On that date, Wernher von Braun became director of NASA’s new Marshall Space Flight Center (named for Ike’s wartime colleague General George C. Marshall) in Huntsville, Alabama. Eisenhower even attended the dedication ceremonies on September 1, 1960. NASA had finally acquired the Army-funded Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the nation’s preeminent satellite laboratory, the year before.

Von Braun’s Huntsville center had an in-house industrial capacity unlike anything seen before. His policy, from Peenemunde days, was to have his team actually build their own prototypes, rather than farming out the work to industry. So Marshall was actually a booster factory, not simply an R&D laboratory. JPL had the same type of operation for the construction of prototype satellites and spacecraft systems. NASA now had the ability to begin practical work on a manned lunar landing program. All they lacked was White House approval.

Abe Silverstein again drew on his knowledge of mythology for the name of NASA’s post-Mercury manned spaceflight project. Apollo, “the name of the sun god who rode his flaming chariot across the sky, was suitably evocative for this exciting program. Administrator Glennan agreed on the name, but Project Apollo, George Low quickly admitted, had as yet no official standing.” That was probably the understatement of that year.

Eisenhower may have supported unmanned scientific and military reconnaissance satellites, but he only grudgingly approved Project Mercury and refused to back any post-Mercury plans until an ad hoc panel of science advisers assessed NASA’s future goals for cost-effectiveness. The committee concluded that a manned lunar landing would cost almost $40 billion. Ike was outraged and demanded to know why America should undertake such an expense. When a staff man compared the proposed lunar mission to Columbus’s voyage to the New World, Eisenhower noted that Queen Isabella of Spain had raided the royal treasury for that adventure, but he was “not about to hock his jewels” to put Americans on the moon. When another adviser suggested the lunar flight was actually just the first step toward manned exploration of the planets, the cabinet room rang with scornful laughter. NASA planners realized that they would have to look to the next administration for a more ambitious American space program.