Apollo 50+: The Next Giant Leap.

It's hard to believe that it's been 50 years since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the Lunar Excursion Module in the Sea of Tranquility, 50 years since Neil Armstrong announced that it was "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind"* - 50 years since Apollo 11 opened the door to the universe.

We’ve been slow to go through that door, but as I've commented before, the Apollo moon missions weren't really part of a strategy for sustained exploration, they were markers in a game of political one-upmanship. After the United States had placed their flag on the lunar surface in advance of the USSR, there was actually no need to continue to proceed any further, as evidenced by the fact that the Soviet Union never bothered to make a manned Moon landing - that particular marker had been scored, and both sides moved on to another part of the board.

However, as time moved on, tensions eased, and the USSR fell apart, a more thoughtful and scientific approach was taken to the now-defunct space race. The development of orbiting space stations such as Skylab and Mir marked a shift from exploration to experimentation, eventually resulting in the cooperative initiative of the International Space Station. The ISS is essentially a huge experimental platform, but it's also an ongoing investigation into the long term effects of life in zero gravity on the human body, information which will now be invaluable as we once again begin to explore further into the solar system.

The key to NASA's strategy for that exploration is made clear in the Apollo 50th anniversary logo, which features both the Moon and Mars. NASA plans to create a sustainable human presence on the Moon through its Artemis program, followed by manned missions to Mars.

 

The Artemis program is currently composed of seven missions, starting with unmanned tests of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft next year, followed by a manned lunar flyby and the start of the assembly process for the Gateway lunar space station** in 2022. Once Gateway is complete in 2023, the Human Landing System will be transferred to it in stages by civilian rockets, with a manned lunar landing by Artemis III scheduled for 2024.

 

The next four Artemis missions will follow the same pattern of using Gateway as a transfer point from Orion to the HLS, and will presumably do the necessary groundwork (literally) to create a permanent sustainable human presence on the Moon by 2028. This exploration model will then be repeated for Mars, with a manned landing planned for sometime in the 2030s.

 

This all sounds very impressive, but it's important to remember that, regardless of international participation, NASA is the primary driving force behind Artemis, and as such, it is at the mercy of government funding and changes in political priorities.  As if to drive this point home, much of Artemis is made up of the remnants of cancelled NASA programs - the Orion capsule comes from the Constellation program, which was shut down in 2010 by President Obama, and the Power and Propulsion unit for Gateway is adapted from the Asteroid Redirect mission that was cancelled in 2017.

Hopefully Artemis will not suffer a similar fate, and we actually will see a permanent installation on the Moon, and subsequent missions to Mars.  After all, it's been 50 years - isn't it time for another giant leap?

- Sid

* I know, "one small step for man" is how this is normally written, but I honestly think that Armstrong's Ohio accent elides the missing "a" into the end of "for". Try repeating the statement in his voice and you'll see what I mean.

** The Gateway station has drawn some criticism as to whether or not an orbiting lunar platform is necessary, but intermodal stations like this allow for the use of dedicated space craft designed specifically for the role of launch from Earth, zero-g travel from the ISS to Gateway, and touchdown and return from the Moon.  I'd like to see a Mars space station for all the same reasons, but NASA hasn't mentioned that in their planning.

Apollo 50 Countdown: 5...4...3...2...1...

The Dark Side of the Moon.

“I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side.”

Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journey

Was anyone ever as alone as Michael Collins?

Not only was Collins left alone in the Command Module for 27 hours while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were on the Moon, he was cut off from contact with Mission Control and his fellow astronauts for 47 minutes every time that his orbit took him to the dark side of the Moon, alone, alone, alone.

Landing on the Moon almost seems easy by comparison.

- Sid

Apollo 50 Countdown: 5...4...3...2...

"IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER."

Across the stratosphere
A final message, "Give my wife my love"
Then nothing more...

Peter Schilling, Major Tom

The most astonishing thing about the Apollo 11 mission is that they didn't all die.

Think about it: your task is to put a man - two men, as it turned out - on the Moon. The president has just publicly announced that the United States is going to do this by the end of the decade, and now you have to deliver on that promise.

You basically have to create the required technology from scratch. You've put men in orbit, so you know you can get that far, but now you have to build a system that transports a crew of some sort across the void between the Earth and its satellite, successfully lands on the lunar surface, lets an astronaut -  or astronauts - explore the surface on foot, then get back up into space and return to Earth.

You can test parts of it, but tests are just as expensive and time-consuming as the real thing, and the clock is ticking - who knows what the Soviets are up to.  But not testing could result in a historic failure, so tests have to happen.  Apollo 4 introduces the Saturn V launch system and does a successful unmanned test of the Command Service Module, and Apollo 5 tests the Landing Module - not by landing it, unfortunately, just getting it into space.  Apollo 6 suffers from launch problems but makes it into orbit:  that's the last unmanned test, now the stakes go up.

You can only imagine - literally - what the conditions on the Moon will be. There's no way to practice the landing: the only way you will find out if you've done everything right is by doing it, so you make your best guess based on what the scientists tell you, and hope that they know what they're talking about.

And if you're wrong about anything, the astronauts will die, as you, their families, their friends, and the world listen helplessly from 238,900 miles away.

Think about all the places that it could have gone wrong!  If the Saturn V rocket had failed again during the launch, if one of the thousands and thousands of components had failed at any point in the mission, if there had been a leak in the capsule, if they had crash-landed, if the lunar suits had failed, or some completely unexpected aspect of the lunar surface had meant that they couldn't get back to Columbia, the command module.

The last one is the nightmare scenario, the one you really don't want to think about.  If something had gone wrong with the Ascent Stage of the Eagle, there would have been nothing Michael Collins could have done from his post on the orbiting Command Module - he would have had to abandon Armstrong and Collins to a slow death as their oxygen ran out, or to the more immediate conclusion of "deliberately closed down communications" - a euphimistic term for suicide.

In an acknowledgement of the grim necessities that would have followed, a speech was prepared for President Richard Nixon* by William Safire, the presidential speech writer:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations.

In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

- Sid

* I always forget that it's Richard Nixon who is president when they land on the Moon, it should be John F. Kennedy, but Kennedy had been dead for six years when Armstrong took his one small step.