17 thoughts on “The New Moon Race”

  1. Wouldn’t it be more fair to say that Johnson declined to extend Apollo’s lifespan (principally by refusing to authorize a second buy of Saturn V’s beyond the initial batch of 15 in August 1968), punting the decision to his successor?

    Not that I am here to single out Nixon particularly. He was no fan of Apollo, especially to the extent that it had become perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a Kennedy legacy; but, in the end, Apollo died because there was little political support across the spectrum for continuing it once the Soviets had been beaten to the Moon – especially once it became apparent that the Soviets weren’t going anyway.

    1. If you wish. Either way, it was Johnson’s decision, not Nixon’s. Nixon can only be blamed for not restarting production, for which there was no political support.

      1. Under Johnson, Jim Webb disapproved the manufacturer’s request to proceed with long-lead-time articles for Saturns SA-516 and -517, because he though the decision on Apollo/Saturn’s future should be made by the next administration. That was the beginning of the end of the production line, but only the very beginning. Saturns were still being delivered into 1971 and NASA continued to study Saturn V-launched space stations. NASA was paying to maintain production facilities at least as late as June 1972. At some expense, additional Saturns could have been produced.

        Nixon wasn’t even willing to use all of the hardware that was produced.

        1. I’d say that, at worst, Nixon didn’t resurrect the program, something for which there was no national appetite and for which he had no political capital to spare. As you note, the beginning of the end occurred in the Johnson administration, but it’s a lot more fun for many people to blame Nixon.

          1. Webb deferred further production of /additional/ Saturns, so as not to commit his successor*. I say additional, because SA-516 and -517 had been ordered early, under the Johnson administration, for Apollo Applications. There was no cancellation of the original order of 15 Saturn 5’s for Apollo. I know of no evidence that Webb’s decision went to the White House.

            Contrast that with Nixon, whose administration definitely canceled Apollos 18 and 19. Per Logsdon’s book, Nixon personally was on the warpath to cancel Apollo 17 at one point, because he had mistakenly got it into his head that it was a particularly risky mission.

            It’s also the case that under Nixon, construction of Apollo spacecraft was terminated before fulfillment of the contract. That’s an out-and-out premature cancellation of an Apollo contract.

            To put it another way, what difference did Webb’s decision on SA-516 and -517 make: had they been produced, they simply would have become additional lawn ornaments, due to the Nixon administration’s policy.

            My point isn’t to pin Apollo’s end on Nixon. I agree with you that it is incorrect for the New Yorker to say that Nixon canceled it. I’m just saying that it’s no more correct to say that Johnson canceled it.

            “… but it’s a lot more fund for many people to blame Nixon.” — Please don’t suggest my argument is based on political bias unless you have good evidence. It’s just not constructive, and by dismissing my argument on that basis, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to reflect and sharpen or correct your own views.

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            * T. Keith Glennan had done much the same thing for his successor, who turned out to be Webb, by writing a letter (available online from the Apollo-Saturn archive at UAH). Glennan said therein that despite enthusiastically supporting the Saturn C-2, he had not committed NASA to funding it, because it would be inappropriate to saddle his successor with such a major eleventh-hour decision.

          2. I’d still say that canceling mission wasn’t canceling Apollo (and after Apollo 13, there was a legitimate fear of losing a crew if they continued). If you’d like to say that Congress killed it, that would be the most accurate.

          3. “… after Apollo 13, there was a legitimate fear of losing a crew if they continued….”

            Is the author of Safe is Not an Option expressing the view that the Apollo missions were not worth the risk?

          4. No, I’m just describing history.

            But maybe they weren’t. They were expensive, and we weren’t getting that much from them. Your question would indicate that you don’t understand the premise of my book, which is that the risk should match the potential reward.

          5. There was a legitimate fear of losing a crew before Apollo 13 too.

            I am floored by your suggestion that the cancelled Apollo missions may not have been worth the risk. To my mind, they were prime examples of justified risk-taking. With their greater stay times, longer traverses, larger sample collections, and more interesting sites selected with the benefit of previous flights’ results, the later missions were of far greater scientific value. Safety was likely modestly improving as the team gained experience and bugs were wrung out of the system. The marginal cost would have been small, given that most of the hardware had already been paid for (low cost does not improve safety, of course, but it enhances the risk-reward trade-off by increasing net reward).

          6. I am floored by your suggestion that the cancelled Apollo missions may not have been worth the risk.

            They were worth it as far as I was concerned. I’m describing the opinion of the decision makers at the time. Apollo 13 heightened the sense of how dangerous it could be, and since we’d won the race, and Apollo was never really about science, the administration didn’t consider it worth it.

  2. When was peak Apollo? Probably 1966?

    I’ve long lived with many myths about Project Apollo, chief of which was that Nixon killed it. But the more I dive into the topic the more myths get burned.

    I was surprised to discover that the follow on missions to Apollo 11 were not originally intended to be mere carbon copies of the Apollo 11 sortie mission. It was the budget cuts of 1967 and onward which apparently reduced Apollo 11+ to that.

    Project Apollo was beginning to die even before the first man set foot on the Moon.

    1. Yes, about 1966, though it might vary a bit depending on whether you’re talking about fiscal or calendar years and whether your talking about appropriations or budget authority. But that peak doesn’t mean that Apollo was ending. It was a sign that the bulk of the development work had been accomplished. A peak like that is normal for such programs. The lack of such a peak for Orion/SLS, which is designed for approximately constant funding levels, is one of the signs that it is principally a jobs program.

    2. “I was surprised to discover that the follow on missions to Apollo 11 were not originally intended to be mere carbon copies of the Apollo 11 sortie mission. It was the budget cuts of 1967 and onward which apparently reduced Apollo 11+ to that.”

      Who “intended” all of those advanced missions? There were lots of plans, but little was ever actually funded. You could equally look at NASA’s many plans — never funded — to go to Mars in recent decades.

      To be specific, I’m looking at a memo (downloaded from NTRS) by Charles Frick, manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Project Office, on the subject of “Designations for Apollo Missions.” Dated October 26, 1962 — just over three months after NASA had selected lunar orbit rendezvous for Apollo, I would say it is about as “original” as possible with regard to Apollo. It lists all flights planned at that time on all boosters (and without any booster, i.e., pad abort tests). Missions AS-509 through -515 are lunar landings, with no indication that later landings were more sophisticated than the first (the flight hardware for each is listed as “CM, SM, LEM”). Given the state of the art of space technology at the time, I would imagine that most would have thought the schedule optimistic, and guessed that fewer than six landings would be accomplished with 15 Saturn 5’s.

      Ironically, NASA managed exactly six landings. I would say Apollo came off pretty much as planned, and I don’t see that it was downscoped from what was “originally intended.”

      1. Sorry, I committed a fence-post error: with missions AS-509 through 515 intended to land on the moon, there would be *seven*, not six landings — which is, of course, exactly the number NASA attempted.

  3. You people is crazy. They didn’ cancel Apollo. They still buildin’ new ones at Michoud, with SRB’s for even more awesome. Them engineers went and stretched the S-II stage all the way down to the pad. So it’s still goin’. It just got delayed is all.

  4. To be honest the Moon Race was basically the civilian competition aspect to the rush during the so called “missile gap” era. Now we know there was no missile gap at all. But Kennedy was basically elected with that, among other things, as his platform against Eisenhower’s administration. So to be honest I doubt he would have cancelled it while he was President. I agree that it wasn’t Nixon who cancelled Apollo though. But, Apollo never made economic sense. So it could never have gone on long term like that.

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