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Apollo 9: 50th Anniversary of the Lunar Landing
We are midway through the fiftieth anniversary year of the culmination of the Apollo program. Fifty years ago, this week, Apollo 9 was circling the Earth, testing the lunar module. The module had not been ready in December, when the Apollo 8 crew went to the Moon, tested out lunar orbit and safely returned. Now astronauts were putting the lunar module through all its paces except for actual lunar landing. Remember that, two flights after Apollo 9, the world witnessed the first human steps on ground beyond Earth, meeting President Kennedy’s challenge. This monumental achievement marked a shift in the balance of the Cold War and happened at the same time as the West seemed to be waning down here on Earth.
From the official NASA Apollo 9 page:
The flight plan’s top priority was the [command and service module] CSM and [lunar module] LM rendezvous and docking. This was performed twice – once while the LM was still attached to the S-IVB [Saturn 4B rocket stage], and again when the LM was active. Further goals included internal crew transfer from the docked CSM to the LM; special tests of the LM’s support systems; crew procedures; and tests of flight equipment and the extravehicular activity, or EVA, mobility unit. The crew also configured the LM to support a two-hour EVA, and simulated an LM crew rescue, which was the only planned EVA from the LM before an actual lunar landing.
The LM descent and ascent engines fired on orbital change patterns to simulate a lunar-orbit rendezvous and backup abort procedures. The CSM service propulsion system, or SPS, fired five times, including a simulation of an active rendezvous to rescue an LM that had become inactivate.
The S-IVB was a single engine stage with so much capability that it could be used for many of the Apollo program test stages. According to the official NASA history “Stages to Saturn:”
On 25 January 1962, NASA Headquarters confirmed the role of MSFC as the lead center to proceed with the two-stage C-1 and to design and develop a three-stage vehicle, the C-5. Mission planners envisioned a series of development flights, testing each stage in successive combinations before a full-dress flight test of the three-stage C-5 vehicles. Eventually, the C-5 would be topped off by an improved S-IV, known as the S-IVB. For this stage, a single J-2 engine would provide the thrust to escape Earth orbit and boost a 44-metric ton payload to the vicinity of the moon.10 Under this scheme, the S-IVB would have been the last stage to be flight-tested and the “junior member” of the Saturn C-5 vehicle when the big rocket finally lifted off as a complete stack. The reverse happened. The single-engine S-IVB became the real veteran of the Saturn program, active in more launches than any other stage. This was because it became part of an interim Saturn vehicle, between the C-1 and the C-5.11 The new Saturn class vehicle, designated C-1B, relied on an uprated version of the original C-I first stage but included the S-IVB as the second stage. [emphasis added]
The crew was: James A. McDivitt, Commander, Russell L. Schweickart, Lunar Module Pilot, and David R. Scott, Command Module Pilot.“Rusty” Schweickart dared to leave the capsule, performing the first EVA with the space suit that would be used on the Moon.
McDivitt and Schweickart later test-flew the LM, and practiced separation and docking maneuvers in Earth orbit. They flew the LM up to 111 miles (179 km) from Gumdrop, using the engine on the descent stage to propel them originally, before jettisoning it and using the ascent stage to return. This test flight represented the first flight of a crewed spacecraft that was not equipped to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere.
The two components of the lunar module stayed in Earth orbit for years, until their orbits decayed terminally. The rocket stage was launched into orbit around the Sun, an orbit it still keeps. The EVA was captured on beautiful medium format film with a Hasselblad 500:
It is worth remembering the Apollo program’s context. The Soviets had vaulted into the lead in space, communicating to the world that communism was beating capitalism, and that the Russians could drop a nuclear warhead on any point on the globe.
The Soviets won the first round of that race when they put Sputnik 1into orbit on October 4, 1957. It was a huge win for Soviet pride and propaganda and a major kick in the pants for the fledgling U.S. space effort. The Soviets followed up with the launch of the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. Then, they sent the first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova, 1963) [NASA kept itself an old boys club for another 20 years with John Glenn falsely testifying to Congress about women’s unsuitability] and did the first spacewalk, performed by Alexei Leonov in 1965. It looked very much like the Soviets might score the first man to the Moon, too. However, problems piled up and pushed back their lunar missions due to technical problems.
President Kennedy responded in 1961, after Yuri Gagarin’s flight on 12 April:
President Kennedy understood the need to restore America’s confidence and intended not merely to match the Soviets, but surpass them. On May 25, 1961, he stood before Congress to deliver a special message on “urgent national needs.” He asked for an additional $7 billion to $9 billion over the next five years for the space program, proclaiming that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” President Kennedy settled upon this dramatic goal as a means of focusing and mobilizing the nation’s lagging space efforts.
As the decade wore on, it was unclear which superpower would reach the Moon first. The Soviet space program pressed ahead with a lunar rocket program.
[Sergey] Korolyov’s next target was to try and land a man on the moon before the United States. To achieve this goal he had designed the N1 rocket in conjunction with staff at his OKB-1 design bureau, as well as working on the design for the Soyuz manned spacecraft. Then, in January 1966, Korolyov died from a heart attack during a routine operation. It was only at this point that the world learnt the identity of the Russian’s Chief Designer. His identity had been kept secret during the 1950s and 1960s, but he was now buried with state honours in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
Responsibility for landing a man on the moon now passed to Korolyov’s second in command, Vasily Mishin, who approved the launch of Soyuz 1 in 1967. The spacecraft crashed, killing the cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Further problems were experienced when each of the unmanned N1 test flights exploded.
At the same time, we were entangled in Vietnam and beginning to lose the propaganda war. Victor Davis Hanson reminds us of the political and social turmoil we faced in 1969, and of our resilience:
Fifty years ago, the United States was facing crises and unrest on multiple fronts. Some predicted that internal chaos and revolution would unravel the nation.
[These included:]
… In Washington, D.C., about a half-million [anti-war] protesters marched to the White House.
… Native American demonstrators took over the former federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay…
… My Lai heated up the already hot national debate over whether the Vietnam War was either moral or winnable.
… Meanwhile, the trial of the so-called Chicago Seven, involving the supposed organizers of the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, roiled the nation.
… Footage of free love and free drugs at Woodstock shocked half the country but resonated with the other half…
… [In] Altamont, Calif., the concert ended up an orgy of murder, drug overdoses, random violence and destruction of property.
… In July of 1969, liberal icon Teddy Kennedy ran his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass., and his young passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, was left to drown.
… The next month, members of hippie psychopath Charles Manson’s “family” butchered seven innocents in Los Angeles, among them actress Sharon Tate.
All of this happened the year after the assassinations of Senator Robert Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., assassinations that triggered a wave of riots and violence across American cities. Yet, we were on the verge of seizing the high ground in space, and our economic and technological progress dwarfed the Soviets’ best socialist central planning efforts.
It was fitting, this month, that Americans are once again advancing in space. Russian and socialism propagandists have been happy to point out that Americans have been dependent on Russian (old Soviet) rockets to get into space since the end of the space shuttle program. Elon Musk just ended that talking point with the successful flight test of the Crew Dragon.
As with Apollo 9, Crew Dragon performed the maneuvers required for the final intended mission. It docked, undocked, and returned safely to Earth with its test dummy Ripley, named after the Alien movie protagonist. The Space X mission 2-8 March 2019, overlapped with the dates of the Apollo 9 mission: 3-13 March 1969. With this successful test, we may see astronauts fly in Crew Dragon capsules this summer.
Demo-2, the first crewed test flight, will carry NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on the spacecraft’s final flight to certify Crew Dragon for routine operational missions.
In the face of the 24/7 spin machine, it is worth remembering the great accomplishments in the midst of past turmoil, and to find and celebrate current accomplishments in the face of the dominant cultural, political, media narrative. Review the American accomplishments listed and challenges issued in the 2019 State of the Union address.
We must choose whether we are defined by our differences — or whether we dare to transcend them.
We must choose whether we will squander our inheritance — or whether we will proudly declare that we are Americans. We do the incredible. We defy the impossible. We conquer the unknown.
This is the time to re-ignite the American imagination. This is the time to search for the tallest summit, and set our sights on the brightest star. This is the time to rekindle the bonds of love and loyalty and memory that link us together as citizens, as neighbors, as patriots.
This is our future — our fate — and our choice to make. I am asking you to choose greatness.
Fifty years ago, we were in the midst of doing the incredible, defying the impossible, and conquering the unknown. This week, an American space vehicle test showed that we have our legs back under us again. Americans are ready to ride into space on new rockets of our own modern, private industry, design. The Russians and Chinese are living off past engineering and espionage successes. Only we can defeat ourselves. It is truly “our future — our fate — and our choice to make.”
The dawn of a new era in human spaceflight pic.twitter.com/BHsfg1zYLN
— Anne McClain (@AstroAnnimal) March 3, 2019
If you are interested in the Apollo 9 photography, NASA offers a brief history of still photography cameras used during the Apollo program. A Hasselblad enthusiast offers a fan perspective. The images captured communicated to the public that NASA was getting close to realizing President Kennedy’s great challenge to the nation.
Published in Science & Technology
In retrospect, it all happened so unbelievably fast. We went from Explorer 1, our first unmanned satellite, to driving cars on the Moon in roughly 15 years.
But there’s something about those days that may or may not be obvious through the veil of time: In our anxiousness to get there first, Apollo seemed to take forever to arrive, and the January 1967 fire had an effect in its day not unlike 9/11, at a time when no US astronaut had died. That’s what made fall 68–fall 69 so amazing. In short order, not only did we get back in space, this time with live television (Apollo 7), we had the extraordinary Apollo 8 Christmas Eve, we had the LM checked out in Earth orbit (9), the whole ensemble tested at the Moon (10) and finally the landing (11). Quite a year.
So, both Soyuz 1 and Apollo 1 were catastrophic failures in 1967. From there, the two programs diverged, with sustained Soviet failure and renewed American success.
Thanks for an excellent post. I took my family to see Apollo 11 last Friday, and it’s just like I remember it. I was fortunate enough to get a press pass for the launch of Apollo 14. There will never be anything like a Saturn V again.
I will be happy to send an Audible promo code or two to anyone here who would like to listen to either or both books. Just send me a message.
Minor nit – Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983. I suggest that you change the 30 years to 15 since she was selected in 1978.
Note also that the U.S. caught up very rapidly to the Soviet Union in unmanned satellites. By 1959 we were ahead of them in the quantity and quality of satellites.
Somewhere in my parents’ house is the track of part of Glenn’s third orbit signed by the astronaut. I assume that it’s from the Naval Space Surveillance System which my Dad invented in 1958.
The Russians sent a woman into space in 1963. John Glenn and the rest of the old boys ensured women, who were at least as qualified as them on the objective battery of space specific tests, did not complicate their self-image until 1983, when President Reagan sent the first of a number of American women into space. The Soviets recognized the propaganda value of claiming to be a society with equal rights for women.
I’m not disagreeing with you but the 30 years is incorrect.
Selection does not equal flight. The two first flights were
3020 years apart. The Soviets then ended the female cosmonaut program, deciding that women should stay on the ground and have children, but did not publicly say so. They sent a second woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, into space in 1982 as a spoiler to NASA’s announcement of Sally Ride’s first mission.The rest of the story is that America proved to be the real land of equal opportunity, of positions open to talent. 4 women have flown as cosmonauts, compared to 50 women who have flown with NASA. That is the difference between the central planning of socialism and the dynamic of a constitutional republic with relatively free enterprise.
1983 – 1963 = 20
The female astronauts are astronauts who happen to be female. The female cosmonauts are/were media figures. Also, the Russian space capsule was almost entirely automated, so the pilot was more passenger and test subject than anything else. American astronauts didn’t tolerate that state of affairs.
For anyone who opines that women can’t be as good as men in the astronaut biz, I have two words: Eileen Collins.
Right you are. Fixed it.
Alrighty then!
My brother-in-law was amused that they attached it using a thumb tack (though it may have been a copy).