Lunatic thoughts

I should hasten to say I’m using lunatic in the sense of pertaining to the moon. It seems incredible that we are at the 50^th anniversary of the moon landing in July 1969. After the shock of Sputnik’s from Russia the conquest of space became a surrogate for the Cold War. After early mishaps in 1957-60 the NASA program progressed steadily thro’ Mercury 1 man capsule; the Gemini, 2 man capsule through to Apollo , a 3 man capsule. Although there was a stepwise process NASA was taking a big risk with Apollo11. Although there had been the circumlunar flight in Christmas 1968 so arguably most steps had been tested the whole system was hardly technically mature.

On this occasion and for most succeeding ones this worked well. However the American taxpayer soon became bored and the final missions were cancelled. The drama had been with Apollo 13 where the fuel cell fuel container exploded on the way to the moon and a very risky plan paid off when the astronauts returned safely. Like many I followed the progress as 13 looped around the moon and successfully returned to earth. I remember we were due to go out on the evening of the return which was live on TV. We didn’t leave until we saw the successful splashdown. I had heard the famous “Houston, we have a problem” on the morning radio news a few days before and thereafter watched progress anxiously.

I was very interested in space as a teenager, joining the British Interplanetary Society ( BIS ), and attending one Birmingham meeting. However I was busy being a student through the Mercury, Gemini stages and was making my way as new worker through Apollo stages. I did listen to Al Shepard on an early Mercury mission. In an economy measure which I’ve regretted ever since I resigned from the BIS when I married in 1965.The fee wasn’t gigantic but I felt that as a newly wed I should make every possible saving.  I thus missed out on the BIS info over the most exciting phase of the manned space program.

For Apollo 11 launch work stopped in the lab ( I was working for Unilever at the time ) and we congregated around a TV in another lab. Generally I was following the regular updates in the news. The main exception was for Apollo 12 when the astronauts were due to descend onto the lunar surface at lunchtime. I lived close to our labs and with a few colleagues went home to watch the TV. We were disappointed as the lunar camera was accidentally pointed at the sun and the detector burnt out. For those too young to know NASA was deliberately broadcasting live with only a few seconds delay.

It is hard now to recapture the mood of the early 70’s. These was a general feeling of “job done”, the cost was large and the truth was the American public was bored. Although there was a vast amount of scientific investigation this was uninteresting to most people. There was also a sort of general assumption that space exploration would move along almost automatically. Although an era of space stations in earth orbit along with the space shuttle technology was entered the funding for NASA fell sharply. The robotic exploration program suffered setbacks in the 80’s and 90’s with lots of Mars lander failures. The shuttle disaster of 1986 was a big shock and NASA was shown to be less competent than was thought.

There has been a slow revival of interest. In some ways this has been partly led by the private sector. There is money to be made launching commercial satellites and in space tourism. While NASA has grown middle aged and risk averse its morale has been boosted by some big successes. I would particularly cite Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. These were expected to only have a life of a few months but in fact endured for 10 and 15 years respectively.. The technical reason is that periodically Martian winds blew accumulated dust off the solar panels enabling battery life to be much extended.

For me the spirit of the Apollo era is captured by Space X. Controlled by visionary entrepreneur Elon Musk, Space X is building and flying the largest rocket flying today. While still smaller than the Saturn V of the moon missions the Falcon Heavy is a remarkable machine. I got a similar excitement watching its first launch in February 2018 as the Apollo launches.

The most spectacular part of the Falcon Heavy flight is the landing of two side boosters back on earth. To explain the Falcon Heavy is effectively three Falcon 9 rockets together with only the first stages of two acting as boosters for the complete vehicle. All the first stages are designed to be reusable and to land back on earth. I can only say this was marvellously shown on video as the two side boosters landed back at the launch site almost simultaneously. The centre first stage was intended to land down range but narrowly missed the drone ship landing site.

Space X is currently building a larger rocket as are NASA and others. It appears that money is forthcoming to make a return to the moon more likely. A voyage to Mars is a possibility for the next decade.