NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with John Cornelius Houbolt, aerospace engineer behind the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR), part 4 of 4

Ok. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. How annoying. The food cut off? The meat? Yeah. Nothing. Just kind of美國 food. τ份? Yeah. Let me stay. How much food do you need? me? I'm hungry. A And look over this way, John, we're going to have to draw something right there so you can really see your face, that's it. Yeah, a little bit longer, I need you to draw that. Okay, all right, cut, okay, slowly go ahead, come down to us please.

Okay, keep trying, just stay in there and keep trying a little bit. Keep going, just go to the same line again, we'll just need it long enough to hit this picture. Okay, John, show me what, what do you have there, what are those three things, don't shout. Well, I have here the more or less outline of the three different plans for going to the moon that eventually came out of our thinking, of course, to begin with only one was, and that's the direct flight mode, which all label up here. But then in contention came the earth orbit round of the moon, which is the second one

here, but I felt myself that neither one of these would work, or that if when we did the EOR, you have to do the same thing, the land of the moon needs to do in the direct mode, but if we couldn't do it by the direct mode, you couldn't do it by the earth orbit round the moon mode. So, the third plan is the LOR mode depicted at the bottom here, which means lunar orbit round of the moon mode for doing the whole moon mission, which meant that the round of the moon was going to be conducted around the moon, not around the earth. Why couldn't they conduct the round of the moon around the earth? They could, but the craft that had to go to the moon thereafter was too large, and it was, nobody to this day has ever decided or figured out how they would land a big craft like that and take off from the moon. So in my mind, it was an impossible task to do it either direct or the earth orbit round of the moon mode, and the only viable way in my mind was the lunar orbit round of the moon mode.

How many times, stepping close to the blackboard, because I want to have an interesting angle here, Sean, you're awfully tight, let's get wider, I was tight and then I went wide. Okay. How many times have you made this presentation, John? Oh, good Lord. Countless numbers, but I would estimate anywhere between 50 and 100 times I've made these presentations to begin with, to no avail with people, and finally, enough for perseverance, people began to understand that L.O.R. was a viable way of doing the whole job. Talk to me again. Tell me how many times, give me a whole story, how many times have you made this presentation? Had you made it on blackboards just like this? To whom did you make it? Did you feel like you were shouting against the wind? Very much so, because in one of my, I felt like I was shouting against the wind. A shot against the wind to get this across, yes, because there's negative feelings about L.O.R. to begin with, nobody really wanted to study it, and actually, when I wrote my

minority report, I started it off, I say, as a voice in the wilderness, that's exactly the way I felt that situation was. I've made presentations like this, wrote letters, taught me for the workers in the Space Task Group, and everything, over and over again, and made countless number presentations before various committees, but always to be received with a negative aspect about using L.O.R. Why? Why would they so negative? Because they were, thought it was an uncertain feature of being able to rendezvous about the moon, but to us, rendezvous was the easiest thing in the world. There was no, more difficult than driving a car in the garage. Why would they think that was particularly dangerous, though, was it because it was out around the moon? I believe their fear about L.O.R. was that nobody was certain that rendezvous itself could be conducted, and particularly some 20,000 miles away from us, and so they were very, very much upset, really, about the notion of trying to do a rendezvous around the moon.

Good. Let's just get that again, because it used to be 20,000, it's 29,000, 29,000. People didn't believe, just give back. People didn't believe that L.O.R. was safe and tell me why, start me off now, okay? All right? And the point is, start down there, Sean, start down there. Why should I? Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. People were sort of objecting to L.O.R., the plan depicted here. I think chiefly to begin with, because of the aspect of conducting an uncertain maneuver called rendezvous around the moon itself. Firstly, we were uncertain that rendezvous was easy to do, and that the fact that they're going to do something 240,000 miles away from us, frightened them all the more. But to us, that was inconsequential to us, rendezvous was a very elementary kind of maneuver, space maneuver, as easy as driving a car in the garage, and that's why it took

about three, three and a half years to convince people that it indeed was a viable solution, and the only way, actually, to get on the moon and come back safely, and why again, just to quickly review what we meant, we were sending a small craft to the moon, much smaller than either the director of L.O.R. mode, we were going up there, we could go into orbit around the moon, then make a decision to land, so we would land with the small lander, but keep the command module in orbit. He was the lonely vigil observing everything. After we explored, we'd take off again, make the rendezvous again with the command module, dispense with the lander, because it's done its job, and then we'd return to Earth in a very normal way. Good. Terrific. Let's do it direct. What was the scheme on direct, and why wouldn't it work? On the scheme, or planned, or going to the...

Did you get it? You were wrong through the whole thing, right? Yep. OK, it's OK. What faction was advocating in the direct white mode, which was depicted in the upper sketch here? That came primarily from the space staff's group, which is the origin, or origin of the space people that eventually moved to Houston. Their notion was to build a ponderous booster, some 12 million pound, the 14 million pound booster, and send a very, very large rocket to the moon, and we depict that over here as the large rocket going to the moon. Now my worry about it was, how are we going to land and take off on the moon service with this enormous vehicle? And to this day, nobody's ever figured out how this job could be done, and the idea there was, of course, to send this enormous thing there, land on it, explore, come back, and

then come back to the Earth. But again, I was not in favor of the idea, because the notion of landing an enormous vehicle like this on the moon, and taken off, to me, was an impossible task. Great. Cut. EOR. OK. Or EOR. All right. What's the next plan up there? A second plan eventually fell into Werner von Braun's hands, in which he favored, is a plan called the Earth Orbiter von der Wuh. The basic notion there is that it could reduce the size of the rockets necessary to go to the moon or perform the whole mission. The idea is, instead of in the direct light mode where we'd have a 12 million-pound rocket booster, we'd have two 6 million-pound rocket boosters here. We'd put up one, which would be essentially the tanker, put it in Earth orbit, and everything was all right.

Then we'd send up the second, or 6 million-pound rocket, and make a rendezvous in Earth orbit with the tanker that was already in orbit. We'd transfer fuel from the tanker to the empty spacecraft that is to go to the moon. Then we'd boost ourselves to the moon, but we'd be boosting a very, very large package. Actually, the same size that was involved in the direct light mode. Then we'd go to the moon. The concept of an idea was that we'd land on the moon, explore, take off, and come back. But again, my notion is, since the package we're sending by EOR was identical to the package we send by a direct light, if it wouldn't work in the direct light mode, it wouldn't work for the EOR mode either. Good. Cut. Okay. Now, and tell me about the last point, and tell me about being a voice in the wilderness. Well, depicted here is what we've termed the lunar orbit rendezvous mode. The notion there is we could take off with a very small, a relatively small booster to

begin with because we're sending only a small package of the moon, and that package actually would contain three elements. The command module, the service module, and the lunar module. One time we called it the lunar excursion vehicle, sometimes we called it the bug, sometimes we called it the lunar schooner. The idea was that we go there, go in orbit around here, and when everything was right, we would take the lander, go down and land on the moon surface, explore, take off, and rendezvous with the command module that was left in orbit. Now, basic idea that was behind this is when we get to the moon, why take the whole living room down to the moon surface with you, when you could descend in a very small distance. And this whole thing involved in all of this had to go down. Okay, here we go.

Ready? Good. Okay. Who bought 186? What's the difference between this and this, and why would this work, and this wouldn't? You were just telling me, you were very excited about it. Tell me. The catch I put up here really doesn't bring it out very clearly, but this is the situation when we're talking about lunar orbit around the moon, only three packages that were going to the moon. The command module, the service module and the lander. Now all in the direct flight or the Earth orbit around the moon, all these plus other things were all immersed into one great big package here, which accounted for the very large weight that had to go to the moon and which had to then land and then take off from the moon to the surface. We ought to keep in mind that it was a vehicle about the size of an atlas down to the cape, it takes 3,000 men, a launch pad and a launch facilities to get an atlas off the ground from the Earth. They were going to land something the size of an atlas on the moon backwards with no

help whatsoever. I thought that was preposterous. Now with respect to the LOR, let me back up a little on that. At first, one of the apprehensions people had was the fear about making a rendezvous around the moon. They came up with the notion, well if something fails, the astronauts are stranded up there with no possibility of rescue. I didn't believe that either because we could send up a rescue calf. They felt that Earth over at rendezvous was superior because you could rescue a person immediately if something happens. But the same thing could have happened with EOR. So that one really didn't concern me. Plus the fact I felt rendezvous per se, it was a very elementary kind of maneuver and that's why I was so much favored this thing in addition to the weight saving and back effects. What about the weight? Tell me that. What was the difference in weight between LOR and EOR in direct? Well, a good way of talking about it is to think in terms of the weight in escape that's

going to the moon, either by the direct Earth over at rendezvous, there'd be identical. But the weight that's required to go to the moon by the LOR method was only a third to one half the weight required by these other two moments, which is a tremendous back saving and with respect to being able to do the job. Did you present those figures to the folks in NASA? Oh, over and over, I was discounted right away and met a real fact. Some people said my figures lied. Did you think they did? Absolutely not, because history shows that doing it this way all required one boosters doing it this way required two boosters and in my mind calculations in algebra and calculus one is one half of two and therefore vindicated by drawing that I had to begin with. Okay? Great. Ready? Yes.

Okay. Ready? Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you. On my mark, Chad, okay, no blocking, no blocking.

Action! Action! Action! Action! Action, Chad. Action!

Action! Go ahead, Chad. Great, Chad. Action!

Action! Action! Action!

Action! Action! Action! Okay. Reach down, get some more papers, grab a stack of a few of them up through the, pick a few of them up, that's it, yeah. And look over to this corner here, like you're looking for something, that's it. Nice and tight on the eyes from here, okay?

Okay, and again, look over to this right, that was good, Chad, when you did that before. And over this way, grab this right here, you would, yeah, but then hold it up, looking in that direction, that's it. Yeah, just hang on here for a minute, yeah. Could you open it again, yeah, just hold it there for a second. Hold it up the way you were, looking at the right-hand corner of it so we can see your eyes. Bring the paper a little closer to your face, and look up into the right-hand corner, yeah. Just hold that right there, that's perfect.

All right, then fold it up. Okay, sure. Looking over the paraphernalia, good. It's a wild sound light switch in the storage area for Apollo 1 capsule. And wild sound light switch. It's fine the way it is.

There's something, see how this shadow is, I don't know, that's just one blind that's off. It just needs to be popped down. You got one right there, right there, plug it right in. Yeah. Just plug it in the light. Okay. I can just trace over what you're doing here, but I want to get your face, so I want to get in here tight like this. Any John's face? Okay. Oh, okay. It's on direct. Yeah. Yeah, why don't you just draw a direct again? That's good. How tight are you going to be? I don't want to get a boom shadow in. You just said the face, so. Just the face. Yeah. Okay. Erase a little bit of direct. Okay. Real tight, okay? Okay. Yeah. I was sorry, you want to mark it rolling out. That's just a change. Okay. Yeah. Really tight. Real tight. Okay.

Well, my original thing was really on the back of an envelope kind of calculation that convinced me that this is the way to do it. I said that before, but it more or less was that way. When were you doing it? That was in 1959. Were you like sitting at home one night or was it at work or what? A little bit of both. Sometimes at home when I'm a shaving, the thoughts would come to mind and then I'd go home after work and do a little bit of calculation and say, oh my god, I hear something that I got a pursue. Great. Rest at some set of chalk on the chalkboard. Just some more, you could erase some and rewrite some whatever you like. Oh. I'm just going to record the sound of the chalk. Oh, okay. It doesn't matter what you write here. All right.

That was wild sound chalk on the board and John Hobel talking. What's the camera one now? 25. Coming up on 185, John. Very small lander. And the amount of energy required to do the whole job that way was much less than any other mode that couldn't be conceived. Roll that up. Okay. That was great. We're going to have to finish that up though. He's like, sure we do. Continuing sound roll 48 camera roll 186. That's a great sound running here. Two and one. By the LOR mode, you send just a smaller package here and do this job. Don't have to expand all the energy to take the living room down to the moon service and bring it back. And now let's relate what this package here is compared to this package. That's what this diagram here is, which changed the course of history.

Up top here is the weight in escape, which is this one, by the lunar orbit method. This is the weight in escape by the direct or EO load. So we have a ratio here. And we can plot that. And this goes back to my original analysis of it. I've taken the weight of the lander here. That's the weighted lander divided by the weight of the command module. And we have this graph. Notice the weight put in Earth, I mean in the escape by this mode, compared to that mode, is only a quarter to one half of what it would take. And that shows you one heck of a big savings back on Earth. And what it would amount to by Von Braun's method, it would take two boosters. By this method, it would take one, isn't one, one half of two, which is what this value is right here. No, figures five. That's exactly what Peshay said.

That's exactly what Peshay said when I said this. They lie, you know what I mean? Isn't two, I mean isn't one, one half or two? Your figures lie. That you're going to see on the chart tomorrow when you come to the house. You're going to have a live stuff out for it. All these three are merged and went in one great big package here.

But they all separated. And this is the only thing that went down in the surface. And this is the whole thing involved and all of this had to go down. Okay, here we go, ready? Okay, people, who bought 186? What's the difference between this and this? Why would this happen?