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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 2011.PDF
FLIGHT International, 14 November 1963 815 Missiles and Spaceflight MOON RACE —ON OR OFF S By Kenneth W. Gatland, FRAS, FBIS* I In his recent book, "Astronautics in the Sixties" (Iliffe Books Ltd, 47s 6d), the author suggests that a new Soviet heavy booster may be in preparation which has a performance intermediate between Saturn 1 and Saturn 5. This article, specially written for "Flight Inter national," takes the discussion further in the light of statements by Nikita Khrushchev and Yuri Gagarin. MR KHRUSHCHEV'S recent statement indicating that Russia does not intend to engage in a Moon-race with the United States has been received with caution in Washington. At his press conference on October 31 President Kennedy went so far as to say he did not think Mr Khrushchev really meant it. "I would not make any bets on Soviet intentions," he said. Perhaps the stress in the Soviet Premier's words lie in his remark that "At the present time we do not plan flights of cosmonauts to the Moon." And certainly there is no evidence that enthusiasm for lunar exploration has suddenly lapsed in the midst of a domestic grain crisis. The predominant theme of recent Soviet statements rather is one of caution for an exceedingly difficult technological venture in which any question of a "race" could be suicidal. And perhaps, too, there is just a hint that outstanding technical problems are taking longer to solve than had been expected in the flush of enthusiasm following the launching of Lunik 1 in January 1959, when it was being suggested that a lunar landing might be possible as early as 1967. There can be no doubt that Russia has suffered a number of set backs to her space-programme following the early, almost routine, successes of her Sputrliks and Luniks. First is the repeated failure of lunar and planetary probes to restart from parking orbits around the Earth. Little experience has therefore been obtained in the control and redirection of spacecraft, an essential prerequisite for a manned flight to the Moon; but the "guided manoeuvrable space-apparatus" Polyot-1 and its successors should go some way towards repairing this deficiency. Second is the lack of detailed knowledge concerning the surface characteristics of the Moon itself. After the Russians had passed, hit and circled the Moon in 1959, it had been expected that instru ments would soon be placed in working order on its surface, or at least in lunar orbit. Lunik 4, which missed the Moon last April, was almost certainly meant to soft-land. A third consideration could be that the Moon-race was enforcing manned landing attempts around 1970 when damaging solar- proton radiation will be at a predictable maximum. To judge from recent Soviet papers on this subject, this problem is being taken very seriously. Finally is the Soviet dependence on the technique of Earth-orbit rendezvous. At the 14th Congress of the International Astronau- tical Federation in Paris this September, Col Yuri Gagarin, com menting on the future course of manned spaceflight, remarked that "Projects being worked out in my country involve the assembly of components of spaceships in Earth-orbit and the introduction of ptopellant." He said this procedure was being adopted because it was not possible to launch vehicles of "several scores of tons" directly to the Moon. Although the group flights performed by Nikolayev and Popo- vich in 1962 and Bykovsky and Tereshkova this year have been impressive, particularly in terms of launch timing and orbital injection, they have not resulted in the completion of a full rendez vous and docking manoeuvre. Gagarin himself has emphasized that although it needs little extra propellant to achieve rendezvous When the distances separating spacecraft is down to a few miles, as in the case of the Vostoks, there are still difficult problems affecting communications, optics and manoeuvre." Sagarin's remarks in Paris are given added point in an article1 commemorating the sixth anniversary of the launching of Sputnik 1 «st month. In this he says: "It may, of course, be too bold of me Vlce~?resident, British Interplanetary Society. to conclude that interplanetary travel will be a fact within a few years. The preparations for these flights will call for a still greater effort and for many new flights in orbits round the Earth, including flights with more complicated programmes and lasting much longer than those so far carried out." He stresses again the key nature of Earth-orbit rendezvous. When these experiments are finalized, "we shall be able to assemble spacecraft of any size directly in flight and the refuelling problem, which is so important for long space voyages, will also be solved." What new information can we glean from these pronouncements ? First the statements concerning the assembly and refuelling of spacecraft in Earth orbit raise an interesting point concerning the respective paths of the Soviet and US man-in-space programmes. The Americans, in their Apollo project, have set themselves the task of providing a launch vehicle—Saturn 5—with a lift-off thrust of 7.5m lb. This vehicle is being developed to project a composite spacecraft of some 43 tonsf to the Moon, part of which will be a 15-ton secondary landing vehicle LEM (Lunar Excursion Module). The plan is to send this combination vehicle into lunar orbit, whereupon the LEM will detach from the orbiting parent and soft- land on the Moon with two of the three-man Apollo crew. After the scheduled period of stay on the lunar surface, the LEM vehicle will take off, using its leg-supported base-section as a launch pad, must complete a rendezvous and docking operation in lunar orbit to transfer the crew for the homeward flight. Re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere will be made directly by the detached command module of the parent vehicle at parabolic velocity, with final recovery by parachutes or paraglider. When NASA finally adopted this technique, in July 1962, they had rejected two alternative methods. The first was the direct- flight approach which would have involved a Nova-type vehicle of 12m lb lift-off thrust. Second was Earth-orbit rendezvous, which would have meant a docking operation between components of two Saturn 5s in a staging orbit around the Earth. In theory both techniques would have projected a spacecraft of some 78 tons to a soft-landing on the Moon, with provision for direct return. A breakdown of payloads for the alternative methods is given in Table 1. TABLE I Pay load comparison for Saturn 5, showing how use of lunar-orbit rendezvous permits one launch-vehicle to achieve a lunar soft-landing and return. Maximum estimated payload for a single Saturn escape mission is 45 tons. Apollo spacecraft components Command module Service module Lunar touch-down and lift-off modules Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) Totals (tons) Saturn 5: Two launch vehicles, Earth-orbit rendezvous (tons) S 23 50 78 Saturn 5: One launch vehicle, composite spacecraft, lunar-orbit rendezvous (tons) 5 23 15 43 New Soviet Booster Let us now turn to consideration of the new multi-stage carrier rocket which, by implication, the Russians must be preparing in order to meet the stated objectives of orbital assembly and refuelling. It is of interest that in his recent article Gagarin singles out as significant test-launchings carried out between the USSR and the central Pacific last autumn and this spring. "Judging by. published information," he says, these rockets "have a thrust powerful enough to put big spaceships into orbit which means that we can now tackle still more ambitious projects for striking out into space and studying the planets." Official Tass communiques announcing these particular tests t For convenience of comparison, US short tons are used throughout this article.
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