MANNED MARS PRESENTATION NOT A PROPOSAL Dr. PAINE. I would like to emphasize that this is not a proposal and the 1981 is not a specific selected date. What we are talking here is if the space program continues in the decade of the 1970's to have the momentum that this committee participated in establishing and maintaining in the 1960's, these are the kinds of developments that we see coming down the road. This is the kind of capability that this Nation and presumably, also, the Soviet Union will be bringing into being in the decade of the 1980's. In planning the program for the 1970's, we have tried to be as forwardlooking as possible so we will avoid doing the developmental work which at the end of that time becomes obsolescent and has to be followed by additional development work. We tried to look ahead and find those projects which, if we invest in them, can be long-term investments which will pay a return to the country over many years. QUESTIONS BY COMMITTEE MEMBERS If there are any questions for Dr. von Braun, I am sure he will be glad to amplify. If not, I would like to ask Dr. Mueller to conclude our presentation this morning with a description of the Apollo 11 status and the future programs for manned space flight. DISCUSSION OF NERVA Senator GOLDWATER. I have one question. What kind of booster are you talking about to get this whole module off the lunar surface and into earth orbit? What boost are you using? Dr. VON BRAUN. Presumably, you are talking about the nuclear shuttle? Senator GOLDWATER. No, I understand you are going to have to use a Titan type or Atlas type to get if off the earth and into earth orbit before you go into nuclear power. Dr. VON BRAUN. The Saturn V can be used to fly a nuclear shuttle stage into orbit. It can fly it up almost completely loaded, not quite. It requires a little topping by the space shuttle. After its first flight and after it returns into that low earth orbit, it must be refueled again by the space shuttle. Senator GOLDWATER. The NERVA nuclear engine, as I understand it, has a little over a hundred thousand pounds of thrust and I think the other is about 75,000. What size engine are you visualizing? Dr. VON BRAUN. We are talking about this very engine, sir. We are told that 75,000 or so is the thrust level that meets the needs of this mission for the final flight version. Senator GOLDWATER. And that will be plenty of thrust for interplanetary moves, but you could never develop enough thrust, could you, to take off from the earth? Dr. VON BRAUN. We would never do that. The nuclear engine would never be turned on, say, at the Cape. We would only turn it on in space perhaps slightly before orbit, which of course, greatly enhances the safety of the operation, because should we have a mishap at the Cape and a Saturn V abort, we would have a nuclear engine that has never seen a neutron and as a result, is not in any way filled with radioactive fission products that can contaminate the launch site. We can break up that unused engine at the Cape and there would be no major harm. Senator GOLDWATER. The fuel tank for the NERVA engine you are experimenting with today is a very large tank. Would you use it or do you plan to use the same fuel? Dr. VON BRAUN. Yes, liquid hydrogen. It is a very large tank, which is due to the fact that the hydrogen is so very light. Senator GOLDWATER. I have never seen the engine, but I have seen pictures. I think this tank must be at least in the nature of 40 feet in diameter? Dr. VON BRAUN. It is 33 feet, in diameter and the length Senator GOLDWATER. You are using this same size on this engine that you propose to use on this? Dr. VON BRAUN. Yes, it is precisely the diameter of the Saturn V. We select that diameter so a complete NERVA-powered stage could be flown as a third stage on a Saturn V. Now, the tank-I have it right here-well, the entire stage is 160 feet long. That is engine plus tank. Senator GOLDWATER. So far, I think you have run that engine 1 hour or 55 minutes at the longest? Dr. VON BRAUN. That is correct. Senator GOLDWATER. Does this exhaust the fuel? Dr. VON BRAUN. No-let us say this. We do not have a flight stage yet. We have run the NERVA engine out of a stationary tank and I think they have enough propellant in the facility for our operating time. After that time, the tank is depleted, but, of course, the uranium fuel in the reactor is not. The liquid hydrogen tank is reloaded again and we go through another hour run and we can do that many times. Senator GOLDWATER. Can you tell us if the thrust can be controlled on this? Dr. VON BRAUN. Yes, sir. Senator GOLDWATER. And you would not need maximum thrust at any time, then? Dr. VON BRAUN. Maximum thrust would probably be used most of the time. Senator GOLDWATER. What are we talking about precisely in maximum thrust? Dr. VON BRAUN. Our examples here were calculated on the assumption of going maximum thrust throughout the burn period of the engine. But in interplanetary flights, where you are not fighting gravity, you might run them at a 50,000-pound thrust level part of the time and just operate them longer; in other words, extend the burn time. There is a very minor loss involved in doing that. Senator GOLDWATER. Thank you very much, Doctor. Senator SMITH. Mr. Chairman, I have quite a number of questions, but I will be glad to delay and give my time to other members of the committee if I can be sure that they are answered before we complete this record, because some relate to obtaining cost estimates for approved and planned programs. So why do I not delay? The CHAIRMAN. Senator Cannon? Senator CANNON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What I would like to know now is something about the estimated costs that we are talking about of these various stages and overall cost. Is somebody going to take us through that? Dr. MUELLER. I can talk to that, Senator Cannon. Perhaps the best way to do it might be to talk about the integrated plan first for the 1970 time period and then show how those costs accrue. Obviously, we have not by any manner of means firm costs. I would surely hate to have you think that those costs I can show you today are real costs, because we have not gotten that far in our planning activities. If you would like, perhaps the best way to do it would be finish up with Apollo 11 and then go directly into that. Senator CANNON. That would be fine with me, Mr. Chairman. STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE E. MUELLER, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR MANNED SPACE FLIGHT, NASA Dr. MUELLER. All right. Just to bring us up to date on where we stand with Apollo 11, at the present time. The biological protocol for the astronauts and the samples returned from the moon is proceeding on schedule. Unless we have some major delay, we would expect that they will be released at the time that we thought we would be able to release them; namely, August 11. So far, none of the astronauts has developed any reaction to the lunar environment or to their contact with the lunar rocks and neither has any of the biological specimens that we have inoculated, the white mice and so forth, developed any adverse reactions. So far, at least, and we are about two-thirds of the way through the analysis insofar as the astronauts are concerned, we have not had any indications of any lunar life forms returning to earth with the crew or rocks. DISCUSSES APOLLO 11 EXPERIMENTS With respect to the scientific returns from the mission, they are in many ways interesting and different than anyone expected. Let me take the rocks first. Although there was a school of thought that said that all of the Moon's maria would be made up of lava and in fact, that is what the indications are, there was also an equally vocal school of thought that said we were going to find this was not really lava at all but the ordinary kind of rock that would be associated with nonvolcanic activity. Now, however, there is clear evidence of volcanism in the rocks that we have obtained. On the other hand, they are also different from the kinds of rocks that we have found here on the surface of the earth. In our first limited set of measurements, we are beginning to have evidence of fairly sizable amounts of titanium oxide and of lesser amounts of some other ones, like phosphorus, than we have here on earth. I think it is too early to be able to reach any definite conclusions in this area, but it looks like we will find similarities and differences. Now, one of the interesting things we came across is that in the dust that they picked up from the lunar surface, they found that there were a large number of finite glass spheres, some ranging up to a quarter of an inch in diameter. These were highly polished, in many cases perfect spheres, in other cases, ellipsoids. The scientists are beginning to think that perhaps that is one of the reasons why the reflections on the moon are directed back toward you; in other words, that they are working very much like these reflector signs that we have on the highway with little glass beads on them. The interesting thing here is that there is a far higher number of these than anyone expected. It also explains why the astronauts thought that the Moon was slippery, because these little balls kind of act like ball bearings. Of course, they are embedded in the dust, a very fine particled dust, but they have that kind of slippery feeling, as if you were walking on a set of ball bearings instead of on ordinary soil. There is evidence, of course, of crystalline-like formations inside the second box of samples and good evidence of feldspar, they think, as well as some of the other kind of mineral activities, which indicate that these were formed under reasonably high pressures. The size of the crystal structures says that they were formed not at the surface but below the surface. This is just that first box. I am told that the second box that they have opened has even more interesting rocks in them and they are looking forward to learning more about that. Now, turning to a second area of science, the seismometer is working quite well and there have been three major events which the scientists have identified as being surface events, but they are not sure what the source of the disturbance was, whether it was a meteor activity or some activity within the surface of the Moon itself and it will take some time and several weeks of observation before they will be able to pinpoint that. They have also had something like 25 to 30 quake readings which they have attributed to rock slides on the side of craters, so that the Moon itself is quite active with rock sliding down the sides of craters and sending rumbles through the surface. In the third scientific area, the laser reflector, as you have all heard, has now been picked up on the earth. The Lick Observatory was the first one to find it. It now is getting signals back regularly, and we would expect, because of the calibration of where the reflector is, that all of the other observatories will be picking it up and working with it profitably. There is every evidence it is working just the way it was supposed to. I think that about concludes the status of the experiments at this point in time. I believe all of you have had some samples of the pictures that have come back. They are still being developed because we have had to sterilize them before we could bring them out of the lunar receiving laboratory. The lunar receiving laboratory is working well. There are, of course, some problems associated with starting up a device of this sort. I know you have heard that we lost the integrity of a glove and exposed the arm of one of our technicians in the vacuum chamber where the lunar rocks are held. That then contaminated him and so we took him and his companion and put them inside the quarantine laboratory and they are there now, again without any ill effects. At least our safety precautions worked there. I think that that is about the status of Apollo 11. LUNAR EXPLORATION SCHEDULE Apollo 12 is now on schedule for a launch in November, during the November launch window. It will land at site No. 7 on the Moon. Site No. 7 is the same site where Surveyor III landed. We are trying to land alongside of Surveyor III so as to do two things: In addition to collecting the second set of rock samples and in addition to deploying an ALSEP, we would like to get, if we possibly can, some material back, from Surveyor III, from the standpoint of trying to find what 3 years of exposure did to Surveyor. Additionally, we would like to get a good set of pictures of the land around Surveyor III to compare with those we took with Surveyor III cameras to see what, if anything, happened in the last 3 years, how many meteors came in and struck. We do not really have any idea of the frequency of meteors hitting the Moon. So that is the strategy for Apollo 12. As I discussed with the committee, we have tentatively assigned sites for the remainder of the Apollo vehicles, the ones in our present order. Each one is more exciting than the last time, including the landing within the crater Copernicus on Apollo 16 or so. If I can, I would like to turn to where this leads us in the future. The CHAIRMAN. May I ask you one question about this-how much of this is to be classified? Dr. MUELLER. None of this is classified, Senator Anderson. We have released all of this information and we have now adopted the practice of forecasting when we can launch the Apollo vehicles. We find that we have the system working well and we are able to predict fairly well when each one of these flights will take place. The CHAIRMAN. I was asking about this, wondering if you can put it in the record. Senator HOLLAND. Off the record. (Discussion off the record.) Mr. GEHRIG. Dr. Mueller, would you put in the record, then, the tentative schedule for lunar exploration? Dr. MUELLER. Yes, I will be pleased to. (The material submitted for the record follows.) The tentative schedule for Apollo lunar exploration launches is indicated on the attached chart. (Figure 27.) The next launch, Apollo 12, is planned for November 14, 1969. Apollo 13, 14, and 15 are planned for March, July, and November of 1970. Apollo 16 and 17 are planned for April and September of 1971 with Apollo 18, 19, and 20 planned for February, July, and December of 1972. |