January 25, 2009
What Apollo was …. and wasn’t
Lost glory?
Miles O’Brien, late of CNN, recently wrote a column reflecting on the accomplishment of the Apollo program and the space program since then. He believes that Apollo was a great leap forward in space, a capability and step from which we then walked away. O’Brien asks why the country has turned its back on the promise of space and what it will take to re-establish the resolve we once showed in reaching for the Moon.
These thoughts are common enough in the space community. Why doesn’t the nation see the conquest of space as critical? Why didn’t wonderful accomplishments of the Apollo program propel us onward to the planets? Why do we continue to condone a space program of such apparent mediocrity?
None of these questions are the right ones because they misunderstand the true purpose of Apollo. The O’Brien column is only the latest in a long series of missives that long for a new renaissance of space travel, to pick up the mantle of space greatness promised by Apollo but abandoned afterwards.
Apollo was not about the Moon, or even about space. It took place in space and ultimately, on the Moon. But Apollo was a battle in the Cold War. John Kennedy did not say, “Go to the Moon and press onwards to the planets.” He challenged America to show the superiority of its economic and political system by landing a man on the Moon and returning him to Earth “before this decade is out.” The key objective was not going to the Moon – it was to beat the Soviets to the Moon. This objective was attained with profound consequences, critical to our Cold War victory to a degree still not fully appreciated.
Most space program observers acknowledge this distinction, but they have only accepted it intellectually, not emotionally. To them, Apollo was a miscarriage of Wernher von Braun’s dream of interplanetary flight. Indeed, von Braun himself thought this. As a firm believer in large engineering projects in service of national goals, he was willing to postpone his incremental, stepping stone architecture to the imperative of reaching the Moon before the Russians. But after the battle was won, he wanted to return to the classic, sequential framework he had always advocated: shuttle, station, moon tug, Mars craft.
The political will for such a program did not exist then and doesn’t exist now. We stopped going to the Moon for a very simple reason – after you win a battle, you don’t keep fighting it. We beat the Soviets to the Moon – the reason for Apollo’s existence. It required a significant fraction of the national wealth to pull off the Moon landing (at peak, almost 7% of the federal budget was spent on Apollo) along with the personal commitment of thousands of engineers and technicians across America, many of whom destroyed their marriages working double hours and weekends to meet tight deadlines. This kind of effort on behalf of a government program is not expended lightly; the Apollo program had the mentality of a war effort. And indeed, that’s exactly what it was.
So what does this mean for our future? Has America lost its way? Is it simply that we no longer dare to do great things in space? I think not. What’s needed is a space program that doesn’t require an industrial war footing. The opportunity given to NASA called the Vision for Space Exploration tried to foster a return to the Moon using small, incremental and cumulative steps. Such a program is congruent both with fiscal realities and with our aspirations to explore.
Miles O’Brien challenges us to drum up a heightened level of public enthusiasm, one that would support a new program that rivals Apollo in scale and ambition. But the experience of the last 30 years shows that in the absence of a credible external threat, the fiscal and human cost of such a space program is simply more than America is willing to pay.
I argue that the challenge for space advocates is to craft a program that matches the level of public support. Much can be done with existing resources if they are obtained and deployed in a rational and ingenious manner. Humanity instinctively gravitates toward exploration. People sense that engaging in these pursuits is about much more than politics, diplomacy or prestige. It’s about human survival.
Are we willing to build a lasting spacefaring infrastructure – to change wartime resolve and bravery into an enduring legacy of human achievement? If so, the greatest days of our space program may yet lie ahead.
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There are two issues that need to be addressed if you are talking about “drumming up more support for space” from citizen’s enthusiasm for more government programs:
#1) Most ordinary tax payers think we are still paying the 10% of the federal budget (give or take a little bit) for NASA. I’m talking Baby Boomers here and older senior citizens, not the younger folks… but keep in mind these are the folks that actually vote, run for office, and chair all of the committees from local precinct-level parties to the congressional science committees that directly fund appropriations. When you point out that the amount of the Federal Budget for NASA is about 5% of what they think it is, they literally drop their jaw and wonder what happened. I guess the rest of us ask that same question too.
#2) There is more than one “space agency” in the U.S. Government. Indeed, NASA isn’t even the largest in terms of budget or personnel. Other space agencies of the U.S. Federal Government include the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), FAA-AST (Office of Commercial Space Transportation), and even NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. I’m sure a full review of the federal government would indicate a few more… and I wouldn’t put it past all of these group to eventually have professional astronauts in one capacity or another. The predecessor of the NRO did in fact have professional astronauts with the “Manned Orbiting Laboratory” project that were eventually transferred to NASA.
Of the various “space agencies”, the one I wouldn’t mind seeing expand a little bit and certainly take on a mission of being an advocate for space development is the FAA-AST. This at least would be the “best bang for the buck” in terms of what would encourage further development and infrastructure for the development of space.
Comment by Robert Horning — January 26, 2009 @ 12:18 pm
We should not expect growth in the “collectivist” large scale approach of NASA, but try to stimulate an analog of the microcomputer. We are in the “mainframe era of space exploration”. Big in scale, high in cost, and with limited participation.
A ‘microlauncvher’ system for flying thousands of very tiny spacecraft amoung the NEOs is now possible and should stimulate and excite many as the Altair 8800 did in mid-70′s.
There’s a website and Youtube video explaining this.
Comment by Charles Pooley — January 26, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
Thank you for this article – you nailed it.
All the U.S. Presidents after Johnson have wanted to give Kennedy’s Man to the Moon speech. Many of them have tried, touting various programs. None of them have been willing to pay the true costs to fund their proposals.
NASA plays along with this game. Senior Agency officials promise Congress relatively cheap, re-usable Space Shuttles, a Space Station, and other programs for a fraction of their true (known) costs. In their eyes, the ends justify the means.
It’s time for some honesty. Unless there is a return to the Cold War climate, there will be limited tax dollars available for NASA. Let’s build a long term space infrastructure and exploration effort based on a realistic budget.
It’s also time to make some hard choices instead of funding the status quo, which is primarily a high-tech jobs program supported by specific members of Congress with a vested interest.
Comment by Mike Nottle — January 27, 2009 @ 6:18 am
Of course Mr. Spudis is right–intellectually. Beating the Soviets to the Moon and back was what drove government policy and the money. But I think you can make the counter argument that below that level, when he talks about the double duty and breaking marriages, as many people or more did it for emotional or visionary reasons as for the “cold war” aspect of it. And that is what drives them today. I can’t back that up other than providing anecdotal thoughts gained from working at NASA for six years.
I don’t think too many voting citizens deal with space travel intellectually. If they deal with it at all, they deal with it emotionally. At some sub-level they may understand the science and engineering gains we have received from space exploration, but at the center of their emotional sweet spot they want somebody to go out there and break through those barriers for them. To do what they dreamed of as kids sitting up watching the moon out of their bedroom window. However, the cost is another reality and one that inescapably brings us back to an intellectual discussion. Because unlike in the 1960s cost matters very much.
So while I don’t disagree with Mr. Spudis, I would rather read and dream along with Mr. O’Brien. It’s just where my right brain leads me. My left brain, while understanding the intellectual reasoning, willingly follows.
Maybe we need to interweave both discussions into one. Could we combine the emotional and mystical with the logical and pragmatic? Maybe when we do that we can energize political leadership to lead us into a new generation of sustainable space exploration. Maybe we can catch an LED light in a bottle (lightning might be asking too much). Maybe.
Comment by Dan Carpenter — January 27, 2009 @ 2:51 pm
One thing that the public — and all too often supposedly knowledgeable historians — forget is that the Apollo program yielded incredible spinoff benefits that has harvested profits in the form of taxes collected by the federal, state and local governments across the country.
It was a technological stimulus that has yet to stop giving. It greatly jump-started the microprocessor revolution, it advanced materials science, it evolved communication, it evolved navigation systems in the form of inertial guidance, it evolved energy science in terms of fuel cell and battery technology and it even evolved medical science to boot.
Sitting in front of your computer, you are using a machine whose internal parts’ provenance goes straight through the Apollo program. Kilby and Noyce may have built the first integrated circuits, but it was Apollo’s need for small electronics packages, along with the Minuteman program, that fueled the first mass-production of them. At one point Apollo consumed over 60% of the world’s IC supply. The computer you are using right now has dozens of IC’s, including its CPU. Knowing that, it’s fair to say that Apollo jump started the development that led to the Personal Computer Revolution and their ubiquity.
As far as energy goes, take a look at how NASA and the space program took the laboratory curiosity of fuel cells and advanced the technology such that it could stand the rigors of spaceflight. Those very same technologies sit at the heart of modern fuel cells, the ones we hope to power our future Hydrogen Economy. At the very least, Apollo advanced our knowledge of fuel cells and gave a very good basis for further research. This, of course, will help shorten our lead time towards energy independence.
Apollo also greatly advanced our knowledge of the moon and its creation — which of course advanced our knowledge of the history of our own planet. As one lunar geologist remarked recenty, “seventy-five per cent of what we know about the moon came from the contingency sample Neil Armstrong put in his pocket when he stepped onto the lunar regolith.”
Moreover, it was Apollo samples that proved the presence of Helium-3′s abundance in the lunar regoltih. This rare material on the Earth holds great promise to power nuclear fusion power plants economically, because it has lower radiation output than does Hydrogen. That would mean plants would last longer and of course be more cost-efficient. This discovery is relatively recent, and once again proves that Apollo return samples are gifts to science that keep on giving, decades past their collection.
That is the true legacy of Apollo, and it is one that seems to be almost completely ignored by historians and even NASA. While it is more than fair to say that Apollo was a Cold War propaganda battle, it is folly to ignore the long-term ramifications of it, and it is also suspect to think that even more ambitious projects wouldn’t yield similar benefits for generations to come.
Comment by Charles Boyer — January 28, 2009 @ 9:49 am
Charles,
I don’t disagree that Apollo produced a lot of technical innovation, much of which has produced enormous wealth. The problem with the spin-off argument is that you can never prove that a given development wouldn’t have happened anyway in the absence of the Apollo program. Thus, the spin-off line of reasoning has no power as a convincing argument in favor of large, government space programs. I could easily argue that much of the spin-off benefits claimed for Apollo were actually produced by military R&D during the Cold War (e.g., integrated circuit chips). Of course, such a distinction is meaningless as both were part of the same effort, but that fact lessens its value as an argument for space.
Comment by Dr. Paul D. Spudis — January 28, 2009 @ 10:16 am
Dr. Spudis,
Your points are fair, but I will point out in riposte that as someone who held clearance that I have noticed military R&D’s dissemination into the public sector is far slower than the same process from the civilian space program. Carbon-fiber tech comes to mind, but that may not be the best example.
Indeed, you could argue the integrated circuits point, however, the counter-argument would be the Charles Draper-MIT Apollo Guidance Computer development which used the lion’s share of IC’s, far above and beyond Minuteman.
Back to your central question — would it have happened sans Apollo? Certainly.
But would it have led to the creation of Intel in 1968, which quickly went to work on mid-scale integration and eventually large-scale integration? Probably not. IC’s would have been kept black because the Soviets were still using vacuum and relay technology, and indeed, badly trailed the US in computational ability. That would have been an advantage our military would have been loathe to surrender.
That’s why I posit that Apollo greatly stimulated the PC revolution. I seriously doubt we would have what we have on our desks, cellphones, televisions and even microwave ovens had that original IC tech been confined to our armed forces.
Comment by Charles Boyer — January 28, 2009 @ 10:45 am
Silicon ICs were invented by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1958. They were a private invention, using no public R&D money. They were in large scale use by the early 60′s, well before the Apollo program existed. They have as much to do with the space program as velcro.
Comment by Chris — February 1, 2009 @ 5:12 am
[...] What Apollo was …. and wasn’t Apollo was not about the Moon, or even about space. It took place in space and ultimately, on the Moon. But Apollo was a battle in the Cold War. John Kennedy did not say, “Go to the Moon and press onwards to the planets.” He challenged America to show the superiority of its economic and political system by landing a man on the Moon and returning him to Earth “before this decade is out.” The key objective was not going to the Moon – it was to beat the Soviets to the Moon. This objective was attained with profound consequences, critical to our Cold War victory to a degree still not fully appreciated. [...]
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I recently published a book about the recovery of Apollo 11 called Hornet Plus Three.
One thing it makes clear is the nexus between the hot spot of the Cold War (i.e., Vietnam) and the space race. Like most Apollo recovery ships, the Hornet had just returned from a combat tour on Yankee Station when it was selected as primary recovery ship of Apollo 11.
There is no doubt in the mind of anyone with geopolitical knowledge of that era, the space race to the Moon was simply a “technological battlefield” with the Soviets; an effort to avoid a nuclear confrontation stemming from some low-intensity conflict that got out of hand. JFK chose not to risk another “eyeball” confontation with the Soviet Union. Thus, the prioritization of the large percentage of GNP that went into the Moon race and the overt emphasis on the civilian nature of this endeavor.
It seems clear the U.S. would not have “naturally” placed a human on the Moon in the 20th century if not for the all-encompassing confrontation between communism and capitalism.
While it is far more emotionally satisfying to place a human on another planet, America’s predilection for safety, and high-probability of success, raises the cost of further manned solar system exploration to unacceptable levels. Unfortunately, true exploration of anything does not come without sacrifice.
Without a doubt, in the absence of another major geopolitical challenege like the Soviets in the 1960′s, space probes and robots will rule the next decade or two.
Comment by Bob Fish — June 16, 2009 @ 2:09 am
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