Apollo at 50: Why haven't we gone back?
Apollo 17, the last manned lunar landing for half a century.
Next month, July 2019, it will have been fifty years since the Apollo 11 mission and the first human landing on the moon. Six more missions would head to the moon, five would land, with the last mission, Apollo 17, occurring late in 1972.
The fact that nobody has gone back since makes these Apollo milestones significant in culture generally and hugely present in the manned spaceflight community. This 50th anniversary will be the big one because, speaking frankly, the remaining people who were involved are unlikely to make it to the 75th. It also brings into relief this enormous gap in human activity, rare in the modern world. We did not, for example, fly across the Atlantic ocean a few times and then stop for half a century. What the hell is taking so long?
I’m in a reasonably decent position to answer that question. I grew up around the manned spaceflight world, both my parents worked in it and I worked in it. I spent years working on NASA’s efforts to get back to the moon. So I’m going to try to answer that question but I fear the story is a long one. So get comfortable, pour yourself a beverage of some sort, and let’s press.
Part 1: Why Apollo Happened
The history here is super well documented so I’m going to just speed run through this part.
Post-WWII, with the Cold War running at full power, there was a lot of funding for military research and development, including rockets that could be used to carry nuclear weapons. At the same time there was a perceived need, on both sides, to demonstrate cultural superiority via various prestige projects. After the Soviet Union demonstrated an early technological lead in spaceflight by launching the first satellite (Sputnik 1) and the first human in space (Vostok 1), the United States felt the need to respond and overcome. Adding to this was the recent Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, which was an embarrassment to the Kennedy administration.
Kennedy had his advisors consider various goals in human spaceflight that were sufficiently difficult such that the United States would have time to catch up and then overtake the Soviet Union in spaceflight technology. They considered a manned Earth orbiting space station (too easy), manned flight around the moon (moderately difficult), and manned landing on the moon (very difficult). The extreme difficulty of the landing goal is why it was chosen as, in effect, the ultimate national prestige project.
On May 25, 1961, Kennedy went to congress and gave a speech asking for money to do four things: 1) Land on the moon before the end of the decade 2) Build a nuclear powered rocket 3) Build a network of communications satellites 4) Build a network of weather observation satellites. Obviously the first goal is the one that got all the press, and it’s the one people remember.
It’s important to understand that the total national experience in manned spaceflight at this point was about 15 minutes on one sub-orbital Mercury flight. This was a little like telling a 12 year old kid who had just driven his first go-kart that his goal was to win the Indy 500 within eight years. Still, congress was absolutely on board and threw giant piles of money at the problem. Here you go, kid, spend all the money you want but the clock is ticking. Indy 500. Eight years. Go.
And then, about two and half years later, Kennedy was assassinated and Apollo essentially became his memorial. The goal turned out to be perfect. It was easily understandable (“Man. Moon. 1969.”), motivational, and just barely possible. Had circumstances been slightly different, maybe the US orbiting a person first, it’s easy to imagine the first lunar landing taking place decades later in a much more gradual, modest, and sustainable program. Instead we got a crash program, like an aerospace Manhattan Project.
The bottom line is this: Apollo was a national prestige program that happened as the result of a unique set of circumstances. Tremendous advances in spaceflight technology occurred, but that was a means and not the goal. Tremendous advances in planetary science occurred in the sense that our understanding of the moon and solar system evolution grew enormously, but that was a side effect, not the goal. Given the tremendous cost of the Apollo program this explains why it was cancelled after the primary goal had been achieved and we used up most of the existing hardware.
Part 2: The Apollo Applications Program
What to do after Apollo? NASA’s first idea came in 1968, before the first lunar landing but when it was becoming clear that it would likely be a success. This was the Apollo Applications Program and it envisioned a follow-on program utilizing Apollo vehicles and technology. There were lunar surface bases, manned space telescopes, and orbiting space stations. The only part of this that actually happened was Skylab, an Apollo-technology space station manned by three crews for a total of about six months in 1973-1974.
The Skylab space station in 1974. It was damaged during launch causing both a solar array wing and thermal shield to be torn off. The wrinkled gold cover is the replacement thermal shield installed by a crew in orbit.
There was one last Apollo style mission. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was a joint United States and Soviet Union mission that demonstrated international cooperation in space including rendezvous and docking of international spacecraft. It flew in 1975.
Part 3: The Space Transportation System
NASA’s next post-Apollo plan came in the form of the Space Transportation System. This was to use a new generation of technology to build what was effectively space infrastructure. There would be a space station, orbital maneuvering vehicles, and even nuclear powered deep space tugs. Making all this viable, even affordable, was a reusable vehicle that would fly back and forth between the ground and Earth orbit. A so-called “Space Shuttle.” All this was viewed as the next logical step in human spaceflight. But not much would get built.
Artist’s concept of various Space Transportation System components.
Conceptual crew module for the Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle (OMV).
Conceptual space station, part of the proposed Space Transportation System.
The idea behind the shuttle was obvious. When you looked at an Apollo-era Saturn-V rocket sitting on the pad, ready to launch a mission to the moon, everything you saw was thrown away to conduct that mission. That giant rocket ended up a the bottom of the ocean or, for the uppermost stage, thrown away into deep space or crashed into the moon. The only part of the entire stack that came back was the small, conical Command Module containing the crew. But even that was a single-use component and, after it was cleaned up, just ended up in a museum. If you could design a reusable launch vehicle the cost would obviously be hugely lower. That would free up money to do all these other things you’d like to do in space.
The history and evolution of the Space Shuttle is another very long, complicated topic. Suffice it to say that development took longer than expected, cost more than expected, and the end result was a mostly reusable vehicle that, while hugely capable, was also extremely fragile. This meant that you couldn’t just land, refuel, and launch. Processing a space shuttle between missions became a hugely complicated and expensive thing but it was necessary for safety. In the way that Apollo was just barely possible using 1960s technology, the Space Shuttle was just barely possible using 1970s technology.
Shuttle first flew in 1981. In retrospect, it might have been wiser to fly for a decade or so, learn a lot, and then retire that first generation vehicle. A second generation Space Shuttle could have fixed a lot of problems and become much less expensive to operate. But by that time NASA had another big program in work, the Space Station.
Part 4: The International Space Station
In 1984 the Shuttle had been flying for only a few years and could only barely be considered operational. Still, the Reagan administration announced that it was directing NASA to build a space station. NASA, as you might imagine, was thrilled. This was, after all, what the Shuttle had been designed to do. The diameter of the payload bay, in fact, was literally sized for a minimum viable space station module. (The length of the payload bay was sized for spy satellites, but that’s a different story.)
The development of the space station is another super long, complicated story. Shifting budgets and priorities meant it took ages to finalize a design, build it, and launch it. The first piece didn’t launch until 1998, fourteen years after program start, and assembly didn’t finish until about 2011.
Talking about the space shuttle and space station seems like a digression. “When are you going to talk about the moon?” I can hear you asking. But please understand that the existence of these programs had huge implications for what comes next. Hang on.
Part 5: The Space Exportation Initiative (The First Opportunity)
In January 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed during launch. The immediate result was to implement a number of technical fixes and safety upgrades of the shuttle, but it also trigged some introspection along the lines of “What are we doing here? Is it worth the risk?” After all, seven people had died on a mission to launch a communications satellite, something that could easily be done with an unmanned rocket. As a result of this a task force was established within NASA to formulate a new, long term strategy for NASA. The task force was led by former astronaut Dr. Sally Ride and the result, a report to the NASA administrator, became known as the Ride Report. The report recommended a number of goals, one of which was the return to moon to establish a lunar outpost.
Three years later, on July 20, 1989, the twentieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, then President Bush (The Elder) announced what became known as the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). SEI called for building the space station, returning to the moon, and eventually exploring Mars. In response, NASA undertook a 90 day study to come up with an implementation plan and cost estimate.
A good summary of what happened next is available at The Space Review but here’s the short version. NASA failed to understand that this was intended to be a long term, affordable program. They thought this was going to be, effectively, another Apollo but bigger. They also felt the need to protect existing programs, Shuttle and Station, so any new program had to incorporate those elements even if it was a bad fit. Every constituency within NASA was appeased with some aspect of this giant new program. The end result was a hugely expensive proposal with an estimated cost of half a trillion dollars, about $1 trillion in today’s money.
As you might imagine, the administration and congress, having tried to tell NASA to keep the cost down, were both completely aghast at the price tag. SEI was dead on arrival. Given their first real chance to return to the moon, NASA blew it.
Part 5: The Constellation Program (The Second Chance)
Throughout the 1990s NASA human spaceflight settled into a comfortable routine. Shuttle flew mission after mission, gradually getting older. Station went through redesign after redesign as requirements and budgets changed. The idea of NASA as a research, development, and exploration gradually faded within the agency and was replaced with a focus on operations.
Here’s how things looked as of January 31, 2003. The space station was still being assembled but was complete enough that it had been crewed for a couple of years. The Space Shuttle manifest was almost exclusively dedicated to space station assembly and logistics missions with just a few outliers, like servicing the Hubble Space Telescope or the occasional free-flying research mission. Shuttle and Station needed each other. The Shuttle needed Station as a destination and Station needed Shuttle to finish assembly and provide logistical support. But the station had taken so long to build that Shuttle was now twenty years old and getting hard to maintain. Shuttle was full of 1970s technology parts that were long obsolete. And so NASA had established the Shuttle Life Extension Program (SLEP) that contemplated a long list of upgrades to keep them flying, well, basically forever. There was no visible end date to the program and no viable replacement plan.
And then, on February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia came apart during atmospheric entry and killed everybody on board. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) issued a report that, once again, asked if what we were doing in space was worth the risk and the general consensus seemed to be no. Among other things, it recommended that if Shuttle was going to fly beyond 2010 that NASA should implement some sort of recertification program to account for all the issues associated with vehicle aging.
And so it came to pass that on January 14, 2004, President Bush (The Younger) announced The Vision for Space Exploration. This was a broad policy announcement, not a specific architecture or mission. Boiled down it directed NASA to finish building the Space Station and then retire the Space Shuttle. This would happen by 2010, thereby complying with the CAIB recommendation. Then NASA would build an as-yet undefined thing called the “Crew Exploration Vehicle” and use it to return to the moon and eventually send people to Mars. And, with emphasis, DO IT AFFORDABLY.
NASA responded by establishing the Constellation Program. Making a very, very long story short, it eventually settled on the following plan.
First, NASA would build a (relatively) small rocket called Ares-I that would launch a new human spacecraft called Orion into Earth orbit. Orion looks superficially like an Apollo CSM with a conical crew module and cylindrical service module containing propellant tanks, engines, and so on. Development of Ares-I and Orion were expected to happen quite quickly and, once operational, they would be used to take crews to and from the space station. The gap between Shuttle flights ending and Orion flights beginning would be filled by paying Russia to carry American crews on their Soyuz spacecraft.
Orion spacecraft with solar panels, cylindrical service module, and conical crew module.
Next, after the Shuttle program ended, the money freed up would be used to pay for the development of a very large new rocket (Ares-V), a lunar lander (Altair), and a propulsion stage to push Altair and Orion out of Earth orbit and towards the moon.
Proposed Altair lunar lander, much larger than an Apollo LM and capable of carrying four people.
To describe what happened next, please allow me to make an analogy. Suppose you’re the head of a design team at an automobile company and you’ve been told to design a pickup with certain fuel efficiency, towing, and cargo requirements, and that the finished truck can’t cost more than some amount. After working on it for a while you report back to management that the design doesn’t close. You can only make everything work if you back off a bit on the towing requirement, or the cargo requirement, or the fuel efficient requirement so you can use a more powerful engine. The prudent manager would look at the options, decide what requirement is least important, and back off a bit. Maybe we’ll lose some cargo capacity to meet our towing requirement because that’s what really matters to our customers. The most important thing is to build a viable product.
The design for Ares-I and Orion didn’t close. In a nutshell, managers demanded that Orion be capable of carrying six people to the space station. This made the spacecraft very large for a capsule, which made it very heavy, which made it hard to launch and hard to land on parachutes. Managers refused to yield on the requirements saying, effectively, “Go figure out a way to make it work.” Robustness and capability were systematically stripped out of Orion in an attempt to make it as light as possible. The problems got to be so severe that schedules got longer and longer and costs went up and up. The Ares-I rocket was having lots of problems too, mostly stemming from changes made to increase its capability to launch the overweight Orion. From the inside it was like watching a misaligned machine grinding itself into particles that clog the gears and eventually drag everything to a halt.
Eventually it got so bad that another committee was established to review the entire program. It found that the program was so behind schedule, underfunded, and over budget that meeting any of its goals would be impossible. That pretty much killed the Constellation program; the Obama administration and congress cancelled funding in the FY11 budget.
Part 6: Orion, SLS, and the Gateway
The cancellation of Constellation caused a lot of uncertainty about the future of NASA manned spaceflight, but eventually congress approved the following plan.
First, to fill the need of transporting crew to and from the space station, and stop paying Russia for rides, the Commercial Crew program was established. Boeing and SpaceX would each build manned spacecraft capable of doing the job. NASA wouldn’t buy these spacecraft, they would buy transportation services and the respective companies would operate the vehicles. Boeing would subsequently decide to pay NASA to provide operation services, making for a slightly weird NASA pays itself through a third party arrangement.
Second, development of the Orion spacecraft would continue, albeit at a reduced pace. A deal was struck with the European Space Agency (ESA) to provide the cylindrical service module as a way of reducing cost.
Third, whereas Constellation called for two new rockets to be developed (Ares-I, Ares-V), now there would be just one, the Space Launch System (SLS). Developing SLS funds a lot of jobs in Alabama, home state of powerful Senator Richard Shelby, and SLS is sometimes jokingly referred to as the “Senate Launch System.” Unlike Ares-I, SLS would at least have the capability of launching Orion with margin to spare.
The Constellation lunar lander, Altair, was cancelled without replacement.
Assuming all this would come to pass, NASA would have a new spacecraft it could send out of Earth orbit. But with no lander, what to do with it? NASA started looking for a mission, preferably a cheap one. For a while there was serious consideration given to flying to an asteroid. That proved to be too difficult, so then the plan became that an unmanned spacecraft would tow an asteroid close enough for Orion to get to it. That, also, was too difficult. So then an unmanned spacecraft would sample an asteroid and bring the samples back close enough for Orion to pick them up. At that point everybody realized “Why not just have the unmanned spacecraft bring them all the way back? We don’t need Orion for that.” Good point, that.
Eventually NASA settled on the unimaginatively named “Gateway.” This would be a small space station in high lunar orbit that, theoretically, would provide a staging point for further exploration of the solar system. It had to be in high lunar orbit because so many capability had been stripped out of Orion during the Constellation days that it can’t do an Apollo style mission of getting into and out of low lunar orbit, and especially not while towing a second spacecraft like Apollo did.
An Orion spacecraft approaches the Gateway in high lunar orbit.
What would you do with the Gateway? That wasn’t exactly clear, but it created a handy symbiotic relationship with Orion, just like the Space Station did with Space Shuttle. Orion needs to the Gateway to have a destination, and the Gateway needs Orion so you can get to it. The science guys would probably figure out something to do out there. Officially, this would somehow support and lead to further exploration of the solar system including going to Mars.
Part 7: Artemis (The Third Opportunity, Maybe)
And then, in March 2019, the administration told NASA to land people on the moon within five years. The careful observer would note that this would be just about the time that a presidential election is spinning up, but that’s probably just a coincidence.
The new plan became as follows. Keep building the gateway but scale it back to the absolute minimum. Build a lunar lander that docks to the gateway. The crew flies to the gateway in the Orion, transfers to the lander via the gateway like you’re flying Delta through Atlanta, undock land on the moon, fly back to the gateway, transfer back to Orion, and fly home to a hero’s welcome.
Is this possible to do by 2024? Probably yes, given enough money and appropriate program management. Is it likely? No. Congress has yet to give NASA any money for Artemis and, given the state of our government, seems disinclined to do so.
Part 8: Looking Forward
As envisioned by NASA management, Artemis would not be a NASA project. They would simply write a giant check to some contractor, like Lockheed-Martin or Boeing, and have it delivered to the launch pad. NASA has been gradually outsourcing more and more technical work and is slowly becoming an agency whose core competency is outsourcing. The bulk of NASA’s technical workforce is near or at retirement age and it’s not hard to see why the best young people coming out of universities would choose to work for SpaceX, Boeing, or Lockheed-Martin where they can actually build and do things. The long term implications are obvious.
SpaceX, for their part, is working on a totally reusable deep space transportation system that could, potentially, take people to the moon and Mars affordably. This is hugely great news for anybody who wants to fly in space because NASA has zero interest in flying any more than a handful of people they want you to admire as heroes. To them it will always be 1969 and space isn’t for you, it’s for blue flight suit wearing Capt. Squarely Stable. Maybe you can ask for his autograph instead?
NASA has a tremendous legacy but the agency’s long term future looks very uncertain to me. Demographically they’re soon going to lose a large fraction of their workforce due to retirement. If SpaceX can get Starship operational there’s no real reason for Orion, SLS, and the Gateway to exist. NASA could shrink and return to being a pure research organization, like the NACA from which it formed, or a science organization like USGS, or possibly a combination of the two.
So, after all these twists and turns, when are going back to the moon? If you pressed me I would say it probably won’t happen within five years, but it’s fairly likely to happen within ten. I’d give even probability for NASA and SpaceX getting there first. It’s going to be interesting to watch.
Ad Astra.
