The Spirit Of Apollo

…is alive and well. Just not at NASA:

…the legacy of Apollo, at its core, isn’t about big rockets; it’s the boldness of new, game-changing ideas. It’s John Houbolt’s proposal for lunar orbit rendezvous in 1962, an idea that flew so wildly in the face of accepted wisdom that NASA’s uber-engineer Max Faget protested, “Your figures lie!” — before realizing it was the right way to go.

It’s Office of Manned Space Flight chief George Mueller pushing for all-up testing of the Saturn 5, because he knew testing one stage at a time would require too much hardware and too much time, and most important, wouldn’t reduce the risk of failure. All-up testing so horrified members of Wernher von Braun’s rocket team that Mueller basically had to tell them they had no choice.

And it’s George Low’s summer of ’68 realization that with the lunar module seriously delayed, the only chance of staying on schedule was to fly Apollo 8 around the Moon, without a lander. Once again, some resisted; NASA Administrator Jim Webb yelled at his deputy over a transatlantic phone line, “Are you out of your mind?” But once again, the wisdom of the idea won out. Like all of Apollo’s bold moves, it looked from the outside like a Hail Mary pass, but in reality it was a stroke of genius.

Four decades later the challenge is not just to follow Apollo’s trail into deep space, but to do it affordably and sustainably. That’s not going to happen if NASA continues to be run as a jobs program as much as a space program.

As I’ve noted before, today’s NASA would never be able to do Apollo 8. It’s far too risk averse. Of course, back then, space was actually important.

10 thoughts on “The Spirit Of Apollo”

  1. NASA isn’t risk averse Rand. The WORLD is risk averse now.

    That’s why 7 y/o’s wear bicycle helmets, trampolines have safety nets, and McDonalds, in many states, is required by law to tell you that coffee MIGHT be hot!

    I’ve never accepted the ‘necessity’ of a bicycle helmet. Personally, I’m anti skull bucket on a motorcycle! But on the bicycle thing, I just do not remember ever hearing about anyone getting a head injury on a bike severe enough that what passes for a helmet now, would solve the problem.

    And risk averse culture is not just a function of western culture either. I recently saw a documentary on Viet Nam. They showed downtown Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and their traffic problems. But everyone on a scooter or motorcycle was wearing a helmet. I saw several ladies on bicycles wearing helmets too.

    It’s GOT to be a law over there. Even in a Communist Country it’s gonna be the LAW getting that many people to wear those stupid things. In a place where money is so short, entire families ride on one scooter, no one is buying a helmet because it’s safer.

    1. And risk averse culture is not just a function of western culture either. I recently saw a documentary on Viet Nam. They showed downtown Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and their traffic problems. But everyone on a scooter or motorcycle was wearing a helmet. I saw several ladies on bicycles wearing helmets too.

      When I visited Saigon last March, I was told that it’s a city of 8 million people and 4 million motor scooters. It looked to me that both numbers were actually low. The motor scooters flowed like water in a stream. Crossing the street took a lot of guts. You waited for your moment, then you commit – walk straight ahead and don’t stop for any reason. The scooters will flow around you. If you stop, you’ll get hit. Here’s a video from 2007 (apparently before the helmet law was passed) that shows what I mean.

      They are required to wear helmets there because they were having so many fatal accidents and severe injuries. Funny thing, that only seemed to apply to the adults. I saw families of 4 on one scooter (I started calling them the Vietnamese Minivan). The father would be driving and wearing a helmet. One small child would be sitting in front of the father and another would be behind him sandwiched by the mother who was also wearing a helmet. Rarely did I see a child wearing a helmet. I don’t know why.

    2. “Personally, I’m anti skull bucket on a motorcycle!”

      All well and good, until one otherwise fine day when you lay your bike down on the interstate.

  2. Years ago I was going down a bike trail when a jerk stepped in front of me. I had three choices: take out the jerk, take out the bicycle next to me, or go down. I chose to fall. And I landed right on my head. It later occurred to me that if not for the helmet I would have been in a world of hurt.

    Rand is right. Today’s NASA would never do Apollo 8. Heck I doubt they could land on the moon. I find it funny that they talk of Mars yet they are afraid to go to Hubble.

    1. That happened about 100 times each when we were kids and none of us were wearing helmets. All these stupid laws have done is turn bicycle riding into a sport with spandex wearing assholes insisting on equal consideration of the road with cars. The days of jumping on your bike to GO somewhere are over. The precious little darlings being driven to and from school every day and the bike racks are empty.

  3. Many in NASA aren’t just risk averse, they are success averse. When Apollo succeeded, the result was traumatic to the organization.

    There’s an old tale of sadistic sociologists (but I repeat myself) who put five monkeys in a cage, with a ladder leading up to some bananas. One starts up the ladder, and cold firehoses get turned on all the monkeys, battering and soaking them. After a few repeats, any monkey heading for the ladder gets beaten mercilessly by the others and the dousing is averted.

    The sadistic sociologists (there’s an acronym in there somewhere) take out one monkey, add a new one. The new guy sees the bananas, heads for the ladder, get thrashed. It only takes a couple beatings for him to stay away from the ladder. One by one the other monkeys are replaced, each gets a few beatings but no bananas. Finally there are five really stressed-out monkeys in the cage, none of them with bananas. None of them have ever been blasted with a hose, either. Institutional memories can be long and cruel.

  4. The real problem is that space travel the way Apollo did it wasn’t important, except possibly as a Cold War propaganda stunt. And it never will be.

    I recently saw an old movie, made in the 1950s, that had the first Moon mission starting off from a large-scale orbital base. Gradualism is the issue here.

  5. Many in NASA aren’t just risk averse, they are success averse. When Apollo succeeded, the result was traumatic to the organization.

    Very true, and it carried forward into the Shuttle program. Alan Lovelace was NASA AA for Space Technology during the years Shuttle was being developed for flight. As the first flight date got pushed ever further into the future, he became frustrated. Finally, he pulled all of the program managers together and polled them on whether they were ready to fly. Every one of them said they’d like more time to improve this or that, to which Alan replied: “That’s not what I asked. Is it ready to fly?” Grudgingly, each in turn said “Yes, it is ready.” And it finally flew. Had Alan not done that, they might have continued to tinker with the Shuttle until it got cancelled. (As a footnote, I saw him at the Cape in February. We were both there for Discovery’s last flight. I was surprised to learn that that was only the second Shuttle flight he had ever attended — the first being STS-1. He said “When I retire, I mean it.” I think he was weary of what NASA had become.)

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