The Apollo Chronicles

by Brandon R. Brown

  Reflecting on Apollo, I keep thinking of my father’s lifelong fascination with the aboriginal history of Texas. With a cousin of mine—a moonlighting archeologist—he’s spent many hours hunting arrowheads and even visiting a few of the precious raised aboriginal mounds. He pursued flint knapping for several years and has recently returned to it. By bringing rock pieces clacking together over meditative hours, he eventually holds a convincing arrowhead of his own. The warm flint smells like a campfire from centuries past.

  He’s no anthropologist, but my father likes to talk of mound building as a natural human drive. Whether it’s a pyramid in northern Africa or a temple in Central America, or a larger-than-needed ceremonial mound in pre-Columbian Texas, given full stomachs and a little spare time, it seems that many human cultures drive themselves to collective efforts as large as they are whimsical. These are not pragmatic outbursts from human groups. The projects often appear useless in terms of survival.

  And my father has always seen Apollo in the same light: a cultural peak of inspired collaboration, driven by a mix of curiosity, vision, and irrational fear, instead of by hunger or exposure to the elements. As astronaut and physicist Joseph Allen put it, Apollo was “the aggregate of virtually every bit of human skill and knowledge,” from computing and transmitting to welding and sewing. That makes it a rarified and precious act. But as many others have noted, it’s impossible to ascribe meaning to Apollo. Every time someone tries, the resulting verbiage tumbles out disheveled. The words sound vapid, incomplete, vague, or cliché.21 In the end, perhaps it was this simple: A child-like species decided it would try to leap and touch a branch of heaven that once seemed impossibly high.

  Fifty years later, surviving engineers tend to avoid surrounding it with meaning. Apollo did not necessarily start a sustained colonization of the cosmos. It did not bring world peace or permanently reform the myopic ways of humankind. Maybe Apollo’s memory will inspire a future culture to go further into the inhospitable universe, or maybe the program will be forgotten or even denied. To many engineers, it’s just something they leave behind, their built mound. The data tapes, photographs, and blueprints will all eventually fade and crumble here on Earth. But on the Moon’s stark landscape, the retired rovers and leggy landing stages will abide for millions of years to come.

  * * *

  i This is “Dunbar’s number,” named for anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar. Some now refer to the idea as “the monkey sphere,” given the millions of years that fine-tuned the wiring of social brains.

  ii Before painting too simple a picture, we shouldn’t forget that engineers who didn’t look like everyone else sometimes received smaller allotments of trust or had to earn it one task at a time.

  Notes

  Preface

  1McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, pp. 7, 140, 145; Murray and Cox, Apollo, p. 24.

  Chapter 1

  1Lasby, Project Paperclip, p. 26; Neufeld, Von Braun, pp. 159–160, 190, 61–62.

  2Von Braun background thanks primarily to: Neufeld, Von Braun, Chapters 2 and 7; Ward, Dr. Space, Chapter 6; DeGroot, Dark Side of the Moon, pp. 20–21; and Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, Chapter 1.

  3Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, pp. 5–6, 8; Ward, Dr. Space, p. 65.

  4Ward, Dr. Space, pp. 55–59; NASA Oral Histories interview with Ernst Stuhlinger.

  5Gainor, To a Distant Day, pp. 43–44, 58, 19–22; Neufeld, Von Braun, pp. 24–25.

  6Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, pp. 1–3; DeGroot, Dark Side of the Moon, p. 17.

  7Kennedy, Henderson, and Siley, Prelude to Leadership, pp. 6–8.

  8Interview with Guy Faget, 2017, and official naval records of the USS Guavina.

  9Interview with Carol Faget, 2016.

  10Murray and Cox, Apollo, pp. 40–41.

  11Interviews with Henry Pohl, 2016 and 2017, and unpublished written recollections of Henry Pohl.

  12Interviews with Marlowe Cassetti, 2016 and 2017.

  13Gainor, To a Distant Day, pp. 41, 58–60, 63–64.

  Chapter 2

  1Neufeld, Von Braun, p. 27.

  2Werner von Braun amalgam here via Neufeld, Von Braun, pp. 256–262; Kraft, Flight, pp. 62–63; Piszkiewicz, Werner von Braun, pp. 74–78, 100; and Ward, Dr. Space, Chapters 9, 10, and 13.

  3McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 224.

  4Interviews with Henry Pohl, 2016 and 2017; unpublished written recollections of Henry Pohl.

  5Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, p. 25.

  6Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, p. 30; Reeves, The Superpower Space Race, p. 18.

  7Dickson, Sputnik.

  8Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, p. 32.

  9Launius, Logsdon, and Smith, Reconsidering Sputnik, pp. 270–271.

  10McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, pp. 140, 145.

  11As reprinted in Launius, NASA, pp. 144–146.

  12Interviews with Robert Austin, 2017.

  13NASA Oral Histories interview with Ernst Stuhlinger.

  14McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 150; Gainor, To a Distant Day, pp. 119–120.

  15Ward, Dr. Space, pp. 112–113.

  16NASA Oral Histories interview with Marlowe Cassetti.

  17NASA Oral Histories interview with Joseph “Guy” Thibodaux, who was Faget’s friend in the car; 2016 interview with Henry Pohl.

  18NASA Oral Histories interview with Max Faget.

  19Murray and Cox, Apollo, pp. 39–40.

  20NASA Oral Histories interview with Max Faget.

  21Kraft, Flight, p. 63.

  22NASA Oral Histories interview with Guy Thibodaux.

  23McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 154.

  Chapter 3

  1Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, p. 52.

  2Interview with Marlowe Cassetti, 2017.

  3Hal Beck, unpublished historical writing.

  4Interview with Marlowe Cassetti, 2018; Ward, Dr. Space, pp. 120–121.

  5Murray and Cox, Apollo, pp. 51–52.

  6Bilstein, Stages to Saturn, Chapter 3.

  7Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, p. 84.

  8Interviews with Thomas Parnell and Nesbitt Cumings, 2017.

  9NASA Oral Histories interview with Henry Pohl; interview with Karl Pohl, 2017; interview with Henry Pohl, 2017; Marshall Space Flight Center film of Saturn model, 1959, courtesy Henry Pohl.

  10Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, pp. 138–139; Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, pp. 39–51.

  11McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 222.

  12Kraft, Flight, p. 351.

  13Von Ehrenfried, The Birth of NASA, p. 316.

  14Shetterly, Hidden Figures, pp. xvi–xvii, 138–139, 171; interview with Catherine Osgood, 2016; NASA Oral Histories interview with Catherine Osgood.

  15Shetterly, Hidden Figures, pp. 135, 168, 181–185.

  16Interview with Catherine Osgood, 2016; NASA Oral Histories interview with Catherine Osgood.

  17NASA Oral Histories interview with Caldwell Johnson and Robert Chilton.

  18Launius and Jenkins, Coming Home, pp. 16–18, 26–28.

  19NASA Oral Histories interview with Aleck Bond.

  20Launius and Jenkins, Coming Home, pp. 71–72.

  21Newport, Lost Spacecraft, p. 49; NASA Oral Histories interviews with Peter Armitage and Robert Chilton.

  22Ward, Dr. Space, p. 84; NASA Oral Histories interview with Henry Pohl.

  23Von Ehrenfried, The Birth of NASA, p. 56; NASA Oral Histories interview with Ronald Rose.

  24NASA Oral Histories interview with Owen Maynard.

  25Smithsonian interviews with Robert Gilruth.

  26Kraft, Flight, pp. 118–119.

  Chapter 4

  1NASA Oral Histories interview with Max Faget.

  2Interview with Ken Young (re: rendezvous), 2016.

  3McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, pp. 229–230.

  4Murray and Cox, Apollo, p. 69; de Monchaux, Spacesuit, p. 143; Brooks, Crimwood, and Swens
on, Chariots for Apollo, p. 15.

  5Kraft, Flight, pp. 124–126; NASA Oral Histories interview with Peter Armitage.

  6Respectively, Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, pp. 52–54, and Kraft, Flight, p. 131.

  7Following de Monchaux’s Spacesuit, pp. 132–133, 144.

  8NASA Oral Histories interview with Arnold Aldridge.

  9de Monchaux, Spacesuit, p. 144; Johnson statement via McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 8; NASA Oral Histories interview with Robert Gilruth; Ward, Dr. Space, Chapter 14. For further drilling see Logsdon, The Decision to Go to the Moon.

  10Scott and Jurek, Marketing the Moon, p. 112.

  11Steigerwald, The Sixties and the End of Modern America, pp. 101, 13.

  12Ward, Dr. Space, pp. 127–128.

  13NASA Oral Histories interviews with Henry Pohl, Caldwell Johnson, and Marlowe Cassetti.

  14Interview with Marlowe Cassetti, 2016.

  15Bilstein, Stages to Saturn, Chapter 9.

  16NASA Oral Histories interview with Henry Pohl.

  17Ward, Dr. Space, pp. 101–108; interview with Don Woodruff, 2017; interviews with Thomas Parnell, 2016 and 2017.

  18NASA Oral Histories interview with Marlowe Cassetti; Dethloff, Suddenly Tomorrow Came, pp. 38–40.

  19De Groot, Dark Side of the Moon, p. 170.

  20Interview with Marlowe Cassetti, 2016; NASA Oral Histories interview with Hal Beck.

  21NASA Oral Histories interview with Aleck Bond.

  22NASA Oral Histories interview with Caldwell Johnson.

  23Kraft, Flight, pp. 351, 83.

  24Recounted by Henry Pohl in a 2017 interview.

  25Benson and Faherty, Moonport, p. 4; “V-2, off Course, Falls near Juarez,” El Paso Times, May 30, 1947.

  26Wolfe, The Right Stuff, pp. 162–163.

  27Interview with Don Woodruff, 2017.

  28Murray and Cox, Apollo, pp. 61–62.

  29Murray and Cox, Apollo, pp. 61–62; Benson and Faherty, Moonport, p. 37; Seamans, Project Apollo, p. 6.

  30Seamans, Project Apollo, pp. 34, 39.

  31Tsiao, “Read You Loud and Clear,” pp. 30–32.

  32NASA Oral Histories interview with Arnold Aldridge; Tsiao, Read You Loud and Clear, pp. 35–36.

  33Interview with Marlowe Cassetti, 2016.

  34I am indebted to Hal Beck for sharing his documentation of the early manned space program.

  35Interview with Marlowe Cassetti, 2016.

  36Credit to Tribbe’s No Requiem for the Space Age, where this idea is a central, convincing theme.

  37Kraft, Flight, pp. 153–154.

  Chapter 5

  1Rothery, Moons, pp. 17–59; for the stabilization argument, see, for instance, Ward and Brownlee, Rare Earth, pp. 221–223; for the tidal pool limb development argument, the idea traces to paleontologist Alfred Romer in pre-Apollo days, but for more recent developments see, for instance, the work of astrophysicist Steven Balbus and his collaborators.

  2Compton, Where No Man Has Gone Before, p. 27; Beattie, Taking Science to the Moon, p. 18.

  3NASA Oral Histories interview with Caldwell Johnson; Beattie, Taking Science to the Moon, p. 15; Pfeiffer, “Moon Mysteries Ranger Didn’t Solve.”

  4NASA Oral Histories interview with Caldwell Johnson.

  5Interviews with Hal Beck and Frank Hughes, 2018; NASA Oral Histories interview with Frank Hughes.

  6Reeves, The Superpower Space Race, pp. 46–48; NASA Oral Histories interview with Frank Hughes.

  Chapter 6

  1Tribbe, No Requiem for the Space Age, pp. 162, 298–299.

  2Kraft, Flight, p. 156.

  3Interview with Marlowe Cassetti, 2016; NASA Oral Histories interview with Kenneth Kleinknecht.

  4NASA Oral Histories interview with Marlowe Cassetti.

  5Von Ehrenfried, The Birth of NASA, p. 176; Wolfe, The Right Stuff, p. 350.

  6Interview with Carol Faget, 2016.

  7NASA Oral Histories interview with Aleck Bond; von Ehrenfried, The Birth of NASA, p. 93.

  8As in Brooks, Crimwood, and Swenson, Chariots for Apollo, pp. 61–64.

  9Interview with Thomas Moser, 2016.

  10John Mayer’s analogy as relayed in Murray and Cox, Apollo, pp. 327–328.

  11NASA Oral Histories interview with Hal Beck.

  12Interview with Marlowe Cassetti, 2016; NASA Oral Histories interview with Hal Beck; interview with Hal Beck.

  13Interview with Ken Young, 2016; Mindell, Digital Apollo, pp. 125, 127.

  14Interview with Marlowe Cassetti, 2016.

  15Primarily following Bilstein, Stages to Saturn, Chapter 4; NASA Oral Histories interview with Joseph “Guy” Thibodaux; Kelly, Moon Lander, p. 133.

  16Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, pp. 89–90; Bilstein, Stages to Saturn, Chapter 7.

  17Bilstein, Stages to Saturn, Chapter 5.

  18Murray and Cox, Apollo, p. 98; Benson and Faherty, Moonport, p. 118.

  19Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, p. 62.

  20Ward, Dr. Space, pp. 91, 170.

  21Interview with Henry Pohl, 2017.

  22Unpublished written recollections of Henry Pohl.

  23Murray and Cox, Apollo, pp. 148–151; Bilstein, Stages to Saturn, Chapter 4.

  Chapter 7

  1Jastrow and Newell, “Why Land on the Moon?” Atlantic Monthly, August, 1963.

  2Murray and Cox, Apollo, pp. 152–153.

  3Fries, NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo, p. 126; NASA SP-4214, pp. 30–31; Kraft, Flight, pp. 212–213; 349–350.

  4Brooks, Crimwood, and Swenson, Chariots for Apollo, p. 365; NASA Oral Histories interview with Harold Beck.

  5Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, pp. 67–71.

  6de Monchaux, Spacesuit, pp. 154–155.

  7Wolfe, The Right Stuff, p. 435; McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 394; Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, p. 153; S. Khrushchev in Launius, Logsdon, and Smith, Reconsidering Sputnik, p. 283.

  8Poignant technological detail courtesy of McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 396.

  9Reeves, The Superpower Space Race, p. 67.

  10Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, p. 76.

  11Neufeld, Von Braun, p. 405.

  12Ward, Dr. Space, pp. 77–78.

  13Steigerwald, The Sixties and the End of Modern America, p. 23.

  14Kelly, Moon Lander, pp. 134–135; Bilstein, Stages to Saturn, Chapter 4. The contractor in question was Grumman, and the engineers were traveling to Bell Labs.

  15Bilstein, Stages to Saturn, Chapter 4; Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, p. 97.

  16Interview with Len Worlund, 2017; Murray and Cox, Apollo, p. 313.

  17Interview with Len Worlund, 2017.

  18Interview with Bill Sneed, 2017.

  19NASA Oral Histories interview with Henry Pohl; interview with Henry Pohl, 2017.

  20Ward, Dr. Space, pp. 149–150.

  21Brooks et al., Chariots for Apollo, p. 165.

  22Kelly, Moon Lander, p. 93.

  23NASA Oral Histories interview with Max Faget.

  24Kelly, Moon Lander, p. 63. Quote attributed to Tom Kelly himself.

  25Various Faget attributions in this section are from the NASA oral histories interviews.

  26Mindell, Digital Apollo, p. 183; Brooks et al., Chariots for Apollo, pp. 244–247.

  27Brooks et al., Chariots for Apollo, pp. 146–147; Kelly, Moon Lander, p. 66.

  28Kelly, Moon Lander, p. 132.

  29Murray and Cox, Apollo, p. 336.

  30Kelly, Moon Lander, p. 82.

  31De Monchaux, Spacesuit, p.189.

  32De Monchaux, Spacesuit, p. 239.

  33De Monchaux, Spacesuit, pp. 189, 211, 209.

  34Interview with Aldo Bordano, 2016.

  35Interview with Lee Norbraten, 2016.

  36Interview with Aldo Bordano, 2016.

  37Interviews with Lee Norbraten and Mack Henderson, 2016.

  38Murray and Cox, Apollo, p. 173.

  39NASA document SP-4214; Brooks et al., Chariots for Apollo, p. 204.
>
  40Interview with Henry Pohl, 2016.

  41Interviews with Ann Faget and Carol Faget, 2016; interview with Guy Faget, 2017.

  42Interview with Marlowe Cassetti, 2018; Kurlansky, 1968, p. 89; Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, pp. 123–124.

  43The Surfaris, “Wipe Out” (on the album of the same name), Dot Records, 1963.

  44Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, p. 123; Ward, Dr. Space, p. 173; Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, pp. 121–122.

  45Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, pp. 116, 118–119.

  46Kraft, Flight, p. 205.

  Chapter 8

  1NASA Oral Histories interview with Henry Pohl; interviews with Henry Pohl, 2016 and 2017.

  2Van Nimmen and Bruno, NASA Historical Data Book, Volume 1, pp. 148–155; Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, p. 46.

  3Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, p. 79.

  4Interview with Len Worlund, 2017.

  5Interviews with Len Worlund and Nesbitt Cumings, 2017.

  6Interview with Robert Austin, 2016.

  7Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, pp. 89–90; Bilstein, Stages to Saturn, Chapter 7.

  8Newport, Lost Spacecraft, p. 53; Brooks, Crimwood, and Swenson, Chariots for Apollo, pp. 239–240.

  9Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, pp. 79–81; NASA Oral Histories interview with Larry Bell; de Monchaux, Spacesuit, p. 112.

  10De Monchaux, Spacesuit, pp. 192–194.

  11NASA Oral Histories interview with Alec Bond.

  12NASA Oral Histories interview with Caldwell Johnson.

  13Interview with Marlowe Cassetti, 2018. He recalls Canadian imports Richard Carley and Richard Chamberlain being two of the chief proponents of a Gemini Moon mission.

  14NASA Oral Histories interview with Ernst Stuhlinger; Brooks et al., Chariots for Apollo, pp. 180–181.

  15Kraft, Flight, 228–233.

  16French and Burgess, In the Shadow of the Moon, p. 34.