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Brown's Lunar Exploration Working Group Michael's Paper on a "Parking Orbit" The Feelings Against Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous The Space Task Group's Early Skepticism President Kennedy's Commitment Houbolt's First Letter to Seamans
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The
Rendezvous Committees (continued)
The second Houbolt rendezvous committee met for the first time six months later, on 24 May 1960. This was one year and one day before Kennedy's "landing on the moon in this decade" speech and one week after representatives from the Goddard and Marshall Space Flight Centers and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had met at Langley (16–17 May 1961) for an intercenter review of NASA's current rendezvous studies. At this meeting—at which Houbolt gave the principal Langley presentation (based on a paper he had just delivered at the national aeronautical meeting of the Society of Automotive Engineers in New York City, 5–8 April)—there was "complete agreement" that rendezvous was "an important problem area" that opened "many operational possibilities" and warranted "significant study." The strength of Houbolt's presentation made it obvious that of all the NASA centers, Langley was "expending the greatest effort on rendezvous." It had eleven studies under way, compared to three at the Ames Research Center and two each at the Lewis Research Center and the Flight Research Center. The Marshall Space Flight Center had an active interest in rendezvous only in connection with advanced Saturn missions. With their "leanings toward orbital operations," Wernher von Braun's people at Marshall had done little work specifically on rendezvous and were not prepared to talk about it.25 This second rendezvous committee was part of the Lunar Mission Steering Group created by Floyd L. Thompson, who had become Langley Research Center Director in 1960. Chairing the group was hypersonics specialist John V. Becker, chief of the Aero-Physics Division.26 Becker's organization incorporated the Brown group, with the dynamic Brown himself serving as the chair of a committee on trajectories and guidance. Five other committees were quickly organized, with Howard B. Edwards of the Instrument Research Division chairing an instrumentation and communications committee; Richard R. Heldenfels of the Structures Research Division, a committee on structures and materials; Paul R. Hill of the Aero-Space Mechanics Division, a committee on propulsion, flight test, and dynamic loads; Eugene S. Love, Becker's assistant chief of the Aero-Physics Division, a committee on reentry aerodynamics, heating, configuration, and aeromedical studies; and John C. Houbolt, the rendezvous committee. Serving with Houbolt were John Bird and John Eggleston, who were also members of his other rendezvous committee, plus Wilford E. Sivertson, Jr., of the Instrument Research Division. Becker's organization, as a whole, was supposed to take a "very broad look at all possible ways of accomplishing the lunar mission." At the time, NASA was conceiving it as a circumlunar rather than a landing mission. (By the late summer of 1960, Lowell E. Hasel, the secretary of Becker's study committee, was referring to the organization in his minutes as the "LaRC Circumlunar Mission Steering Group.") More specifically, the Becker group wanted to determine whether there was any reason to quarrel with the STG general guidelines for lunar missions established a month earlier, in April 1960.27 Over the course of the next six months, this group met six times, sent representatives to NASA headquarters and the Marshall Space Flight Center for consultation and presentation of preliminary analyses, and generally educated itself in the relevant technical areas. Its exploratory experimental data eventually appeared in twelve Langley papers presented at the first Industry/NASA Apollo Technical Conference held in Washington, D.C. 18–20 July 1961. Long before, however, Langley's Lunar Mission Steering Group had discontinued its activities. In mid-November 1960, when the STG developed its formal Apollo Technical Liaison Plan, which organized specialists in each problem area from every NASA center, there was no longer any need for the group, so it simply quit meeting.28
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