[MID]

I shall begin this by quoting Gene Kranz:

"There have not been many years in American history to rival 1969"

That just about says it all.
As most of you who frequent these threads know, 1968 was a year that featured NASA "coming out of the ashes", as-it-were. It represented a recovery from a year that was tragic and tumultuous, in many ways.

For NASA, 18 months had passed since the fire. Three men had died in the Apollo effort, and a long period of "fixing" took place...straight through 1967, and well into 1968, while the country suffered mightily.

"Out Of the Ashes" came in October of 1968, with the stellar engineering test flight of the block 2 command and service modules on Wally Schirra's Apollo 7. Of course, that flight was plagued by a balky Commander and crew which almost sent Mission Control over the edge...but in the end, it man-rated the Apollo CSM.
And I had previously posted a commemoration of man's first voyage to the Moon in December of 1968, Apollo 8.
The bold step of taking the CSM all the way to lunar orbit and back again had been completed...the race to the Moon was won. But the mission hadn't yet been accomplished.


Christmas was good that year. It felt like we were finally out of the ashes in many ways.

But the mission itself would be left for 1969.

On JAN 3 1969, SA-504 quietly rolled out of the VAB and headed to pad 39A at the Cape Kennedy. It almost went un-noticed by the general public as another behemoth rolled along the gravel covered track to the massive launch pad...

On this day in 1969, this was the scene at 39A:



The year of Apollo was about to get underway--the most intense year of manned space flight activity ever, and the most dangerous.
The second Saturn V to carry men was on the pad...glowing in the lights of a Florida evening.

As with the prior flights, the year of Apollo featured firsts.
This Saturn V looked like 503, which left that very pad 2 months before. But it was indeed different.
This one wouldn't be going to the Moon, but in the adapter section, beneath the CSM, was stowed a Lunar Module, and this one would be the first flown by men.

On JAN 4 1969, the day after the Apollo 9 vehicle was rolled out, three men had a meeting with Deke Slayton to discuss their crew assignment. Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, and Buzz Aldrin were informed that their mission, Apollo 11, would possibly be the landing attempt. Their training was underway for such a mission on this day 40 years past. However, that opportunity depended upon the success of the missions preceeding it--first up, the one on that pad on this day, designated Apollo 9.

Every flight was critical. And 1969 was the most critical, exhilarating, and frankly heart stopping year in the history of manned space flight.

That year, we saw 4 Saturn Vs launch from Cape Kennedy. 4 manned spaceflight missions.
Those 4 Saturn Vs carried 12 men into space. Those 12 men spent 40 days of that year in space aboard 8 different spacecraft.
9 of those men went to the Moon.
4 of those men landed on the Moon on 2 of those 4 flights.

By the end of 1969, a year after Apollo 8, almost three years after the fire, those 4 men would've logged 53 hours and 3 minutes on the Moon, would've accomplished 3 lunar EVAs, totalling 10 hours and 22 minutes of lunar surface time; the scientists at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory would have a gold mine that was only a dream in February--123 pounds of lunar soil and Moon rocks to study--and we would be looking at over 920 photos, in both black and white, and color, taken by men standing on the surface of the Moon...

It was a hell of a year.

But as of this day, 40 years past, the "Year of Apollo" was "up in the air".

Everything hinged on that mission poised out at pad 39A. The year, and indeed, the success of the program, hinged on Apollo 9, the most important piece of the pie to date.


______________________________________________________


We're at F minus 7 days...at this time, the prime crew of Apollo 9 was in final preparations for the first mission of the Year of Apollo.


Apollo 9 launched on MAR 3 1969.
My intention is to post information about the missions involved in the year of Apollo as they happened...


I'll be back in a week to continue...

This post has been edited by MID: 25 February 2009 - 02:37 AM

[Czero 101]

Awesome idea, MID, and a great first post...






Cz

[Sky Scanner]

Bookmarked. Great idea for a thread. I'm looking forward to reading what follows!

[MID]

Czero 101 on Feb 24 2009, 11:58 PM, said:

Awesome idea, MID, and a great first post...






Cz

Thanks, Cz. I appreciate that pal.

I think it's a good time to lay it all out.

That was a hell of a time, 1969...

[MID]

Sky Scanner on Feb 25 2009, 02:35 PM, said:

Bookmarked. Great idea for a thread. I'm looking forward to reading what follows!

Super, Sky!

I shall endeavor to convey the reality of the situation, and make it interesting!

[MID]

As the winter of 1969 passed, I'm not sure how many in America were paying attention to what was going on vis-a-vis NASA. It was a fairly quiet time I would assume as far as the public was concerned. I'm sure folks knew there was an Apollo mission on tap, but Apollo 9 wasn't one of those missions that contained the kind of drama that was inherent in something like Apollo 8. I imagine that many who may have known that Apollo 9 was an Earth orbital mission were wondering why we were doing an Earth orbital mission when we'd just got done going to the Moon a couple months earlier.

A reasonable question, I suppose, from their perspective. I imagine they thought NASA was doing little. Hard to say, but it might help to fill you in on what was actually happening at NASA in late Fenruary 1969.

The fact is, Apollo was going full bore, on all cylinders, and the activity was frantic at all centers. It was all quiet from the public perspective, but a firestorm of activity was about to be unleashed.

From a personnel standpoint, we had these three guys who were about as ready as they could be for their mission. Meet the crew of Apollo 9:



From left to right, you're looking at CDR James McDivitt, USAF Test Pilot, and Command Pilot of GT-4 in 1965, which featured America's first space walk by Ed White; David Scott, CMP, also an Air Force test pilot, and vetreral of the 1966 GT-8 mission with Neil Armstrong; and Rusty Schweikart, on his first space flight, a former Air Force pilot, and holder of a master's degree in Aeronautics/Astronautics from MIT.

These three fellows were backed up by Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, and Alan Bean. Both crews had been on the training mill for many months and all six were fully qualified to fly Apollo 9.

Dave Scott would be a heck of a busy astronaut in the next couple years. The Apollo 9 backup crew would, within a couple months of Apollo 9, begin their intense training for Apollo 12 as the prime crew, and Dave Scott would be training with them as backup commander for Apollo 12, with Al Worden and Jim Irwin. He would them return to the training mill as CDR of Apollo 15.

Also involved in intense training were Tom Strafford, John Young, Gene Cernan, Gordon Cooper, Don Eisele and Ed Mitchell, prime and backup crews for the Apollo 10 mission, which was just a couple months away, and at the same time, beginning their training were Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell, Bill Anders, Ken Mattingly (after Anders assdumed a position on the National Aeronautics and Space Council), and Fred Haise...the prime and backup crews of Apollo 11.

All in all, at this point in 1969, 24 astronauts were in one phase or another of training for an Apollo mission.

At the Manned Spacecraft Center, concentrated training was also going on for the various flight control teams that would serve the missions. Gene Kranz' White team, Gerry Griffin's Gold team, and Pete Frank's Orange team were ready to take charge of Apollo 9, and concurrently, in other control rooms, training was intensely going on for the flight controllers under Glynn Lunney's Black team and Milt Windler's Maroon team, who would be working the Apollo 10 mission, scheduled for May(Griffin's Gold and Frank's Orange team would also be working Apollo 10, so they got no rest at all!).

Down at the Cape, the VAB was a crazy place. Inside that huge box, the behemoth rising up from the flats of the space complex contained the entire assemblies of the Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 space vehicles, again, in various states of erection and testing. Hundreds of people worked around the clock in various parts of that building, making ready for a flurry of constant spaceflight activity that would soon begin with Apollo 9. In fact, the Apollo 13 SIV-B would very shortly be enroute to the VAB as well, and would be on hand at the Cape before Apollo 9's mission was over.

Then you had the hundreds of members of the launch control teams, who were also in full preparation for Apollo 9 and in various phases of training for the subsequent missions.

Apollo 9 Launch Control Team...Firing Room 2 during the FEB 23 Countdown Demostration Test...lots of folks!




And this doesn't account for the activity going on at Marshall, and at North American, and Grumman, and Chrysler, and all the various contractors.

The entire Apollo team was full-up for Apollo 9, because this would be the first test of the entire Apollo lunar package in operational configuration.

All was pretty quiet from a public perspective, but Apollo was going full blast all over the country, and Apollo 9, was IMPORTANT...
Everything hinged on this one going off as planned.

Apollo 9 would be the first all-up test of the complete Apollo configuration, and of course the first manned flight of the lunar module. The testing would involve the CSM and SPS, the LM in all respects, environmental, guidance and navigation, DSP and APS operation, rendezvous and docking...Apollo MSFN support facilities performance, LM crew performance, consumables assessments, nominal and backup lunar orbit rendezvous procedures...the Apollo EMU test, assessment of EVA perfomance, and emergency transfer procedures from the LM to the CM in the docked configuration...

...basically, the entire Apollo lunar mission matrix, save a landing and surface EVA, were about to be tested "all-up" in Earth orbit.

Everything that would happen subsequently in the Apollo program hinged on what was about to occur in Earth orbit...

[Sky Scanner]

Just a quick question MID, if you don't mind. (great read btw ). Was there a budget limit placed on getting to the moon, or was it a case of "get there, whatever it costs"? Would be kind of hard to place a budget on such a goal I would imagine, particualarly given the technology available at the time!

[MID]

Sky Scanner on Feb 28 2009, 01:28 PM, said:

Just a quick question MID, if you don't mind. (great read btw ). Was there a budget limit placed on getting to the moon, or was it a case of "get there, whatever it costs"? Would be kind of hard to place a budget on such a goal I would imagine, particualarly given the technology available at the time!

Thanks, Sky.

No problem with questions!

Yes, there was a budget limit...always, on Apollo activities. It was never, get there no matter the cost. It was: get there, and do it on or under budget.

Apollo operations were budgeted from 1960 through 1973. 1964 was where the Apollo part of the NASA budget became a really significant percentage of the total NASA budget. In 1964 , Apollo was budgeted for 2.3 billion dollars, 57% of the NASA budget (1963 showed Apollo taking 17% of the NASA budget). Apollo budget peaked at 2.97 billion in 1966, and was cut from that point onward. In 1969, it was 2.0 billion, and by 1972, it was 600 million.

Part of any engineering program involves limits. One of those limits is money. You don't just design for fuctionality, reliability, etc... You do all that and do it cost effectively as well. Apollo was no different.

The total Apollo budget was about 20 billion dollars. I believe it came in at around 24 billion when all was said and done. Considering the trouble we had in 1967...and the work required to get things right, I thought that was pretty darn good!

[Sky Scanner]

24 billion total spend? That's considerably less then I imagined. I think that equates to about 130 billion in todays money. I'm surprised (and impressed) they achieved all that on that budget.

Thanks for the info!

[MID]

Sky Scanner on Feb 28 2009, 02:48 PM, said:

24 billion total spend? That's considerably less then I imagined. I think that equates to about 130 billion in todays money. I'm surprised (and impressed) they achieved all that on that budget.

Thanks for the info!

You bet Sky...

I think your dollars are just about right on.

It was in fact the most impressive engineering accomplishment in human history, and a pretty good bang for the buck (considering especially all that came from it).
I shall concede, however, that the ISS ranks right up there in terms of engineering acomplishment (that is an astounding thing if you know what's actually up there!).

At any rate, we're about to see just how the last run to the finish line of Apollo was completed.

We've proved the CSM. It's a fine spacecraft. We've proved the trajectory to the Moon and back. But there's a long way to go and a full court press to do it all. We've got that LM to play with, and the Saturn V is still a tempermental Godzilla that needs to be tamed. There's also the little matter of landing the LM...which is going to have to be tested by actually doing it! And, the race to land men on the Moon is still being run. We're about to turn on the afterburners.

[thefinalfrontier]

Quote

and the Saturn V is still a tempermental Godzilla that needs to be tamed.

Just want to say here MID that the Saturn V rocket most certianly was a monster,, I stood by one at the space center and I also seen the the capsule that sat atop that monster (Dwarfed by comparison), It would have taken some real men to climb aboard that thing and sit and wait for the countdown, Real men indeed,, Bless all those men who pioneered our space exploration,

Regards;

TFF

This post has been edited by thefinalfrontier: 28 February 2009 - 10:58 PM

[MID]

thefinalfrontier on Feb 28 2009, 05:56 PM, said:

Just want to say here MID that the Saturn V rocket most certianly was a monster,, I stood by one at the space center and I also seen the the capsule that sat atop that monster (Dwarfed by comparison), It would have taken some real men to climb aboard that thing and sit and wait for the countdown, Real men indeed,, Bless all those men who pioneered our space exploration,

Regards;

TFF

Frightening, isn't it?

She had some quirks during the early missions, too! It took a few flights to get the POGO out of her...so the crew's eyeballs didn't get shaken out of their heads!

[MID]

MAR 3 1969


Sometime before 6:00 am, the crew of Apollo 9 awoke...and at around 8:00 am, this was the scene at crew quarters as they waddled their way to the transfer van for the trip to LC 39.




A short time later up at the 320 foot level of the tower, ingress took place...



A nominal countdown had been running, at at 11:00 AM (EST), the awesome sight of a Saturn V lifting off signaled the beginning of the frantic Year of Apollo:




The birds were slightly excited by a noise that was louder than anything man had produced with the exception of an atomic bomb...

This Saturn V seemed to perform a bit smoother than Apollo 8's, and quieter in the overall...from the crew perspective. They experienced some low grade POGO vibrations during the second stage thrusting, and of course, the noise peaked during the period of maximum aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle at around 1 minute 25 seconds. The first stage was a little low on thrust and altitude at staging, but it was well compensated for, and the S-I/SII staging event itself was, as it would be for anyone who flew in the behemoth, a real bang, as the crew was thrown forward against their straps at engine cut off, and then slammed back into their couches by S-II ignition...

It was a hell of a ride to orbit...especially riding that first stage, which tended to steer all over the place during the early phases of ascent.

An orbit of 102 x 104 miles was attained at S-IVB cutoff, which occurred at 11:11:04 EST. The heaviest payload ever launched, at a bit over 91,200 pounds, had just been launched into Earth orbit.

This mission would rehearse almost all of the operations required for a lunar mission. The Saturn V had launched for the first time with an operational and to-be-manned LM on board, and at 13:41 EST, the CSM separated from the S-IVB. That, of course, had been done before, but now--

The next "first" of the mission would now take place, as Dave Scott took the controls of Gumdrop (the CSM's call-sign for this flight), and began the slow, meticulous process of moving out from the SLA, turning the CSM around, moving back in, and docking with the LM.

At 14:02, there was a little cheer as Gumdrop docked sucessfully with Spider (the LM's call sign). When all was ready, the Apollo spacecraft stack separated from the S-IVB, at 15:08.

Shortly thereafter, the Apollo 9 spacecraft executed an evasive maneuver to clear the S-IVB. A couple of S-IVB re-starts were accomplished that day, testing the re-start capability and performance of the J-2 engine over the course of various periods of idle time, and tests of the CSM's SPS engine were done to assess the behavior and dynamics of the mated spacecraft...something that we had not seen before.

Two S-IVB restarts and one SPS firing were done that day, and the crew began a sleep period at about 20:00 that evening. Quite a busy few days were planned in this docked configuration, and then some!

Some good sleep was advised...

[DONTEATUS]

I want a Copy or place to Go to Get a copy to Blow up For my Shop of the Apollo 1969 on 39A An Outstanding Image to Go thru the Next 30 years at my Shop! Any Ideas Mid! Great Post Great Pics!
P.S My son is going to do a project at school about the Apollo program.

[MID]

DONTEATUS on Mar 4 2009, 08:49 PM, said:

I want a Copy or place to Go to Get a copy to Blow up For my Shop of the Apollo 1969 on 39A An Outstanding Image to Go thru the Next 30 years at my Shop! Any Ideas Mid! Great Post Great Pics!
P.S My son is going to do a project at school about the Apollo program.

Cool stuff, D.
Thanks much.


Try contacting Maura White at JSC NASA
maura.white-1@nasa.gov


She's the official responsible for the digital image gallery at JSC.
Refer to photo S69-25879, FEB 23 1969.
You could ask about high resolution prints that might be available. This was taken on 4x5 black and white. I'd bet there are some spectacular prints available...!