Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program (49 page)

Apollo Launch

In getting ready for the re-docking, Slayton had the same problem as Stafford with the COAS, which is a sighting device to aid in docking. There was too much sunlight coming directly into the instrument. This was making it difficult to see well for the re-docking. Slayton did bring the vehicle in to capture, and the closing rate was less than the first contact. But after capture, there were some roll thruster firings commanded by Slayton for three seconds. This caused the combined vehicles to oscillate and the Soyuz control system quickly dampened the motion. The retraction and hard docking by the structural latches were nominal. The motion looked worse than it was and had people nervous for a few minutes. Syromyatnikov was satisfied that the docking system performed properly in this off-nominal condition.

After the second undocking, Slayton moved the Apollo away to begin the UVA experiment. This was a very exacting and complicated set of maneuvers. The Apollo ship was out of plane to the Soyuz, with the nose of Apollo pointing at the side of Soyuz and then swinging around the Soyuz from slightly ahead to slightly behind it. The data takes were at distances of one hundred fifty meters, five hundred meters and one hundred meters by sending a beam to hit the reflectors on Soyuz and back to Apollo to be captured by the spectrometer. The task of flying Apollo, operating the computer and operating the experiment doors and the sensors took the combined efforts of all three crewmembers. At the end of this day, the team was very happy with the success we had with the re-docking and the two experiments. It was a full and at times intense day. On the next day, the cosmonauts finished their stowage and entry preparations. When it was time, they began the entry checklist. The entry was nominal and they had a good landing in the Soviet Union. The report of their safe entry and landing was watched on TV in our MCC and reported to the Apollo crew. We had three more days of flying, which we used to conduct the unilateral experiments. Finally on July twenty-fourth, it was time to come home.

All preparations went by the book and the deorbit maneuver was at 3:37 in the afternoon. Telemetry and voice reports from the crew were the standard ones and they landed a few miles from the carrier, New Orleans. In the MCC, we were in a celebratory mood, totally unaware that our crew was struggling with a life or death condition on board the spacecraft.

Tunnel Meeting Alexei Leonov and Tom Stafford

When the ship gets to thirty thousand feet in altitude, there is a checklist call for two switches to be engaged, ELS AUTO and ELS LOGIC. “ELS” stands for earth landing system, and it controls the jettisoning of the apex cover, deploying the drogue chutes and the main chutes and shutting down the control system. All are done in a certain sequence. These two switches were not actuated when they should have been because of cabin noise or some distraction. And the apex cover stayed on and the drogue chutes did not deploy. At about twenty three thousand feet, Brand manually fired the apex cover and the drogues. He reported later, “Almost at the same time, the cabin was flooded with a noxious gas, very high concentrations it seemed to us.” They could see it, smell it and it was irritating the skin. They started coughing and Brand actuated the two ELS switches. That stopped the RCS firings that were trying to counteract the swinging on the drogue chutes. However, in that short time, the cabin pressure relief valve opened automatically and was drawing in outside air as it should and unburned oxidizer from the RCS system that should not have been firing. This all happened in seconds and left the crew in a very dangerous environment. Nitrogen tetroxide is hell on people. They worked through the checklists while struggling to breathe and coughing the whole time. The spacecraft landed hard and flipped upside down. This left the crew strapped in their couches and hanging against the straps. The location of the incoming air mixed with the fumes was closest to Brand. Stafford made his way to the oxygen masks and secured one on Brand. Soon they all had oxygen flowing, Brand activated the uprighting system. Stafford opened the vent valve and fresh air came in. They began to feel more in control. And their recovery proceeded normally except for the exposure and its effects. But they would have to spend two more weeks in Honolulu and in the hospital.

I have to say that, at first, I did not appreciate the severity of the conditions on board and the effect on the crew. Nor did I think that this was any more than a precautionary, conservative approach to the treatment of the crew. It gradually dawned on me that this was a very close call and not just a precautionary stay in the hospital. I felt better in a few days when the report was more favorable and the crew would be back within the two week forecast. And so they were, with Slayton delayed after a check on a lesion in the lung, which was benign. This problem cast a damper on our reactions in the days after the flight. It was a more sober mood than it might be otherwise. Still, ASTP was a remarkable accomplishment. And we came back to seeing our project that way, and even more so as time went on.

Several times in late 1974 and 1975, the issue of a follow-on flight was discussed. The Soviet suggestions were mostly in the category of repeats of ASTP, probably with different experiments. The Soviets were happy with the idea of a near-repeat, or even more than one flight. That is essentially what they proposed for our consideration. We did not have anything more attractive to propose. In reaching a decision, it was necessary for NASA to recognize the very different conditions that were bearing on the manned programs of both countries.

The Soviets were just beginning a Salyut/Soyuz program of understanding how to use a space platform in their development of space. This led to an ongoing Soyuz program, including its continuation for the foreseeable future. As we had learned, they were capable of producing additional Soyuz systems at costs that were very acceptable to them. On the other hand, NASA was at a transitional point away from the Apollo space systems to the development of the new Space Shuttle authorized in 1972. Within NASA, the Shuttle was a major budget challenge from the beginning and there was not much incentive to continue funding for the Apollo production and sustained engineering support unless there was a compelling reason to do so. We could not find one. We felt that we had already taken a very big step forward with ASTP and repeat flights would not add very much to the program or even its legacy. Furthermore, NASA believed that there was not much support in Congress for more repeat flights. NASA HQ was of the same opinion and there was simply no champion for the idea. I believe the Soviets were disappointed, but had to accept the NASA conclusion.

In the fall of 1977, during the Carter administration, the subject of another joint flight surfaced. I traveled to Moscow again in pursuit of a follow-on mission that would be compelling. The assumption was that the Shuttle/Salyut combination coupled with more time and new ideas for science experiments might lead to an attractive mission. In order to emphasize the science, Noel Hinners, the Associate Administrator for Space Science at NASA HQ, was the head of the delegation. Besides Jerry Bostick and I, the rest of the team was from the Space Sciences community with both NASA and university personnel.

I believe that Noel and his science team were aggressive about seeking new ideas and different ways to use the Shuttle/Salyut capabilities. They worked that issue hard over the several days that we were there. Jerry Bostick and I gathered some information and data relative to the Salyut. After the joint discussions, it still did not seem that any new breakthrough was on the table or even in the offing. We were not there to reach any firm conclusion, but rather to bring information back to NASA HQ for wider U.S. consideration (including the White House). But, there was no tentative proposal that looked like it would attract much or any support. And we were still years from flying the Shuttle, with all the uncertainty that portended.

I did encourage Hinners to conduct a private U.S. delegation discussion before we left Moscow so that we had a consensus package of observations for all of the members of the delegation to take back to the U.S. It was emphasized that the delegation was not authorized to decide on a follow-on flight one way or the other. This was worth doing because the delegation, once home, would scatter to very many institutions across the country and we members should avoid individual speculation on another flight. The issue of a follow-on flight was soon decided and communicated to the parties, including the Soviet side, by NASA HQ. The U.S. would not pursue a follow-on flight at this time.

Jerry and I had a great wrap-up to this trip. We visited my brother, Bill, his wife Becky and sons, Will and Tim, where they lived in Kilkenny, Ireland. Bill was there as the manager of a Fieldcrest project to build a textile plant in this small town. We visited the Kilkenny pub tht had just been chosen the best in Ireland. The locals called Bill the “Man from Fieldcrest.” We enjoyed a hurling match, sort of a hockey game on grass. We had a super visit catching up with all of the differences that Bill’s family experienced in their time there. They lived in Ireland about a total of three years.

Apollo started as a reaction to the mortal threat posed by the Soviet Union. And fourteen years later, the last flight of Apollo was a cooperative effort with the Soviet Union to make space flight safer for all who would travel there and perhaps in ways even beyond docking systems. In 1993, eighteen years after ASTP, the circumstances were right to return to cooperation with the new/old country of Russia. The Berlin wall was down and the old Soviet Union was gone. It was a disruptive time for all who lived behind the Iron Curtain. There was a U.S. interest in engaging the Russians in the Space theater in order to maintain the focus of that segment of Russian industry on Space (rather than proliferate those technologies to more threatening parties and purposes). The Russians also had significant experience in long duration flight.

This U.S. interest lead to an agreement to cooperate in merging the Russian MIR-2 plan with the U.S. space station development and the joint project was renamed the International Space Station. This initiative was begun by the Administration of Dan Goldin, NASA Administrator, with significant help from Tom Stafford of ASTP. At first, this cooperative effort lead to eleven Shuttle flights to MIR-1, the latest Russian space station, as a training base for the ISS. This extended from February 1994 to June 1998. The first flight to begin the ISS assembly was in November 1998 when a Russian rocket delivered the Zarya module to orbit on a Proton rocket. The first crewing was with the Expedition 1 flight in November 2000 and the ISS has been continuously occupied since then.

Just as the ISS assembly began to accelerate, the Space Shuttle, Columbia, was lost during entry in February 2003. The Shuttle flight of Discovery in July 2005 was the return to service of the Shuttle fleet. During this Shuttle hiatus of two-plus years, the ISS crewing and resupply was serviced by the Soyuz. So in this case, the partnership with the Russians clearly paid dividends.

In 2014, the U.S./Russian partnership is failing because of geopolitical conflict and it remains to be seen what the outcome will be. The lesson is that you have to anticipate some problems with partnerships and plan accordingly. That does not invalidate the cause of partnerships. The U.S. put itself in an inferior position by cancelling the Constellation Program (Return to Moon and eventually Mars) in 2010 and the Space Shuttle in 2011. The original understanding after the loss of Columbia was that NASA would cancel the Shuttle in 2010 in order to make funding available for Constellation. Early Constellation capability in spacecraft and launch vehicles would have enabled crew ISS visits by the middle of the decade. Instead, NASA lost both programs and had to rely on the Russian Soyuz again. This condition is planned to be relieved by the development of commercial crew vehicles. They seem to be making good progress, but are still not available. They are scheduled for first manned ISS flights in 2017.

I am hopeful that an exploration mission beyond low earth orbit will be approved in the future. If so, I believe that the program should be based on an international and commercial coalition. Yes, that presents difficulties and dependencies. It is also possible that the “partnership well” has been tainted/poisoned by real or perceived disappointments. I hope not. Such a coalition would bring political support, the prospect of reduced cost and an increase in the brainpower available. Smart people should be able to manage the risk of “failures of partnership” because they do add value to sustainability and cost reduction.

Cost is a major hurdle. I believe that the U.S. budget and debt posture will remain hostile towards major new starts. Since these programs extend over years and new administrations, any hope for such a start and its continuation requires a real-world approach towards cost that is both credible and sustainable. The only programs promising lower costs today are the commercial vehicle programs (unmanned and manned). Assuming that works out to be true, how can that capability be brought to bear on the next program start and can the commercial lessons be infused into NASA contracting? Or will some other solution prevail?