45 YEARS AND POINT 72 MILES

We didn’t know anything about Titusville other than it was just across the river from Launch Complex 39A and 39B. Being highly motivated space-buffs, we decided to just drive to Titusville and find a spot to park the car and wait for the launch. Driving down Grace Street in Titusville, we hit Riverview and the riverbank itself. Myself and my newly found fellow space-buffs Jennings and Brian had driven down from Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach in order to witness the United States first manned space launch in six and one half years- STS-1. The date was April 9, 1981 and the launch was scheduled to go on the following morning. For a few minutes we cruised up and down Riverview calculating a good place to park. I spotted a county pumping station and suggested we should park near it. That way if any of the locals gave us a hard time, we could just go onto county property. We pulled in, bailed out of the car and just stood there frozen by the sight of the white Space Shuttle bathed in those crossed spotlight beams. For a Moment, all three of us were kids again gazing at the wonder of spaceflight.

Unfortunately, that April 10 launch would be scrubbed due to a simple timing error of 40 milliseconds between the four primary computers aboard COLUMBIA and the vehicle’s back-up computer was the cause of the problem. It was easily solved the day following the first launch attempt by shutting everything down and restarting the system. That simple re-boot, however, could not be done at the point in the count where we were on Friday morning.

Everyone who was parked along the river, some said there was nearly a million of us, decided to come back Saturday night and camp out again in the same spot. On that Sunday morning we saw nothing but a silhouette of the Shuttle and Pad 39A as the sun came up. It was a bit hazy and so our view remained that of a silhouette against a stunning orange sky while the count ticked down. Like expectant parents we paced a bit and alternated between looking at the pad in the distance and focusing on the little TV set that one of the other campers had running in the trunk of his car. I kept running through my mind the fact that this was indeed history that could be considered on the scale of witnessing Freedom 7, or Friendship 7, or Gemini 3, or Apollo 8 or perhaps even Apollo 11. Countless space firsts were about to take place right in front of our eyes. The Space Shuttle was the next step in our nation’s space program. 

At main engine start we saw the silhouette of the steam cloud billowing from the engines working against the sound suppression water. Six seconds later the solids lit and we saw what looked like a second sunrise. Then the STS-1 stood up on two stilts of flame as bright as the sun. Everyone was screaming “GO!... Go Baby GO!... GO!” I heard myself screaming it and I heard it echoing up and down the riverbank. What I did not hear, was the Shuttle. Then I remembered something I read in Mike Collins’ book “Carrying the Fire.” He described watching the first Saturn V, Apollo 4, launch. Collins wrote that about the time he said to himself “You can’t hear it,” the sound hit him. And just as I had that thought, the sound hit us.

Just a dozen days short of exactly 45 years later, I again found myself on US1 cursing through the city of Titusville on my way to witness the next step in the U.S. space program. It was the launching of Artemis II and the return of mankind to the vicinity of the Moon. Again, I had driven down from Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach with a student, but this one was my oldest daughter Akie- who will graduate from the university in May. The mission today was Artemis II and this time instead of an early morning launch, liftoff was scheduled for the evening. Thus, rather than camping overnight, we’d simply find a good spot, park and be wait all day.

Just like STS-1 every press pass to the launch had been dolled out as soon as they were made available. Likewise, every ticket to any NASA visitor access had also long been sold. So, I told my daughter we were going “old school” with a cooler filled with ice, a bunch of “road trip food” a 12 pack of bottled water and the hope that the launch would not scrub. Leaving Daytona at 0530 we would drive through Titusville on US1 and just like my buddies and I had done on STS-1, we would simply look for any open area to park and wait.

No sooner had we started looking than we both shouted,

“There it is right there!”

I wheeled the car around and not only was this a vacant lot, but it actually had a paved driveway. Also, the lot had a TacoBell right across the street and a Duncin Donuts just a half mile farther down the US1. That meant two good things; 1) fresh drinks and snacks plus, and most important, 2) toilets. Indeed, we’d found the perfect location.

Before the morning expired, our little lot was filled with Artemis watchers. Near our car we formed a tight little group of launch watchers. Like a true space-nerd I brought up NASAspaceflight.com (NSF) on my phone and tuned into their broadcast with my high-speed data. Oddly, I realized that almost everyone there on the riverbank had no idea of what was going on over at KSC! There were only two of us who were following NSF. So, I took it upon myself to spread the word to get on NSF. Additionally, I’d shout out updates. Such as “The crew is walking out,” “They’re on their way to the pad,” “They’re strapping in,” and so on. Folks were really happy to get updates. In the final minutes of the countdown on of the guys nearby came up with a Bluetooth speaker and we plugged my phone in so everyone around could listen to the countdown.

A wide-open sky of blue opened downrange from our spot and as the SLS booster ignited nearly a half million voices cheered, screamed, and shouted. Having seen three shuttle launches from a similar location I knew that it would be more than a minute before the sound hit us. The SLS did not disappoint as Artemis II reached out and shook us all. Oddly, it seemed slightly less aggressive than a shuttle launch. Later when discussing that with Bob Castro. (the space nerd who has been at it just as long as me and was parked right next to us,) we pondered that it may be because the RS-25 engines were clustered between the SRBs rather than beside them.

Although my daughter had watched Artemis I launch, she had been a lot farther away. Now daddy got her up close. She was thrilled. I was satisfied that I had fulfilled one of my long-time promises to her. She had been watching and listening to spaceflight since she was a toddler. I always promised her that one day just her and I would go and see astronauts launch and after that we would do the whole KSC visitor bit together- so the day after the launch we did KSC too.

Our Artemis II riverbank gang

We had a great group with us on the riverbank for Artemis II, and just after liftoff I got a message from Verizon stating that I had used up all of my highspeed data. Watching NSF all day was worth it. Minus the internet, this all reminded me a great deal of doing STS1 back 45 years earlier. It was a long time ago, but when I looked on Google Earth, I saw that the place where my buddies and I had kept watch in 1981 was exactly point seven two miles north of where my daughter and I watched Artemis II. 

The circle is now completed.

It went that'a way!

ARTEMIS VS APOLLO

 

By Wes Oleszewski- Aero News Network Spaceflight Analyst

There is no way to avoid the phenomena of people comparing Artemis to Apollo. The simple fact is… Artemis is not Apollo.

That said there are some areas where both programs have similarity. First, both objectives are sending astronauts to the Moon. Secondly, the reentry profile of both spacecraft is very similar. Both projects used the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to prepare and stack their launch vehicles and add the crew’s spacecraft. Additionally, both programs used the Crawler/Transporter to roll their booster to the launch pad along the world-famous river-rock lined crawler way at the Kennedy Space Center. Yet during Apollo’s lunar missions, only one flight launched from Complex 39B- that was Apollo 10. All Artemis missions will use pad 39B. The Artemis’ SLS launch vehicle rolls to the pad in the company of a large launch tower which in general appearance is remotely kin to the Apollo Launch Umbilical Tower. Both Apollo and Artemis launch vehicles are equipped with escape towers that can serve to pull their crew modules away during a launch emergency. The launch itself will be controlled from the same Launch Control Center building that sent Apollo on its way. So, it may appear that both programs are very much the same… at first glance.

Especially close to the Apollo profile is the reentry profile for Artemis flights. Like Apollo, Artemis lunar missions will do what is commonly called a skipping reentry. Something that the Soviets learned the hard way is that a spacecraft returning from the Moon has such a high velocity that when it hits the Earth’s atmosphere the G’s encountered will kill any animal, turtle or human in the vehicle. Apollo’s Command Module (CM), however, had an off-set center of gravity and during reentry it was rolled to use it to create lift. So, the CM would dig into the atmosphere and use that friction to scrub off energy. Then it would roll back and use lift to gain some altitude. Once it was slower, it would roll back and continue the reentry. It worked every time. The Artemis Orion spacecraft will do the same basic maneuver. This was tested on the un-crewed Artemis I and it worked. But the angle was a bit too steep and caused some damage to the heat shield. Although the crew cabin remained at 72 degrees in temperature and no toxic gasses leaked into the pressure cabin, Artemis II will use a slightly adjusted reentry for greater safety.

Artemis, however, is cleverly leveraging all the best of past Apollo and Shuttle programs. The buildings, crawler way and launch pad were all there waiting. What goes into those buildings, however, is electronics and ground support equipment that are far more advanced than anything used in Apollo.

All of the people who worked on Apollo have long since retired. Yet, in their place are technicians, engineers, flight controllers and pad rats with the very same spirit. Artemis is definitely not Apollo, but that program’s motivation is still there. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman arrived and pooled together a team motivated with the same Apollo “Right Stuff.” Prior to hist taking charge Artemis missions were set to launch on a cadence that would have one flight about every three years. Both he and his staff found that to be lackluster and doomed to fail. In one of his first press conferences, he announced that NASA would be compressing the cadence to something closer to Apollo. That would sharpen the edge of ground staff and mission controllers.

“We’ve brought our history books with us…” Nasa Associate Administrator, Amit Kshatriya told the press.

Thus, Artemis I was similar to the Apollo 4 and 6 un-crewed tests. Artemis II is similar to the Apollo 7 and 8 crewed vehicle check-outs. Artemis III will be and earth orbital check out of the Orion spacecraft, and the lunar landing vehicle is a similar manner to Apollo 9. If all goes well, Artemis IV will attempt a polar lunar landing. Most of the hardware for all of these Artemis missions and many more beyond has already been produced and on-hand. Plus, the Congress has fully funded the program through at least Artemis VII.

Yet, one thing needs to be kept in mind. Unlike the Space Shuttle which was declared “operational” after its fourth flight, NASA is not under political pressure to try to make Artemis look like some sort of an airline. Spaceflight is an inherently dangerous activity and the best way to get people killed is for management to forget it is inherently dangerous. This is why I was pleased when Associate Administrator, Amit Kshatriya told the press,

“…40 years from Challenger, nobody sitting in these chairs needs to be calling any of these vehicles operational.”

Thus, in that way, Artemis is exactly like Apollo.

 

 

THE “SENATE LAUNCH SYSTEM” MYTH

 

By Wes Oleszewski- Aero News Network spaceflight analyst

NASA has launched astronauts aboard the Artemis II mission to the moon in 2026 as planned. The Artemin II mission was boosted by the Space Launch System, also known by the acronym the “SLS.” Interestingly this shuttle-derived launch vehicle has gone through a rough political history in order to get to this point.

The date was January 14, 2004, when President George W. Bush announced his, “Vision for Space Exploration.” This was just 11 months and two weeks after the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia. His directive called for the retirement of the Space Shuttle as soon as the International Space Station was completed. Thereafter, NASA was to press on to the Moon and Mars. Considering that the Shuttle would be retired, in order to achieve the President’s vision, NASA needed a booster that could loft more than the Shuttle’s 65,000 pounds of payload. Yet, NASA was also constrained to a very limited budget. So, building a whole new heavy lift booster from scratch was out of the question. Instead, it was decided to create a heavy lift booster using hardware adapted from the Shuttle Program.

Very shortly a new program was devised by NASA to meet the goals of President Bush’s “vision.” The program was called “Constellation” and a part of it was a heavy lift booster whose first stage was comprised of Shuttle hardware. Early on it was called the “Ares IV” and consisted of an extended Shuttle external tank with five RS-25 Shuttle main engines clustered on the bottom and two up-graded Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) on each side. All of which made up the first stage. The second stage was a very vaporous concept which normally showed something between one and four Apollo-era style J-2 engines. Over time that second stage never managed to jell while other elements of Constellation constantly evolved. By about 2007 the heavy lift booster’s first stage settled in with two enlarged SRBs just four RS-25 engines and was renamed “Ares V.”

The Bush administration expired with the first month of 2009 and the Obama administration took power. Obama had started his bid to become president telling voters that if elected he would cancel all of NASA and “…give all of that money to education.” When it was discovered that he could not be elected without winning Florida, which had several thousand voters employed in the spaceflight business- he promptly switched his banter to saying that he now supported NASA. In his first budget, however, Obama simply provided no funds for NASA’s Constellation, or any other human spaceflight. Thus, all the nation’s plans for human space exploration would be deleted. Yet, the program still enjoyed wide support (about a 2 to 1 ratio) in both houses of Congress. Plus, considering that the nation had already spent more than eleven billion dollars on Constellation, the members of Congress were not going to let the nation’s spaceflight heritage simply be red-penned away.

Although the Obama administration continued to attempt to cancel NASA’s human spaceflight efforts, a series of Congressional bills were passed which blocked his administration’s efforts. Foremost in those Congressional orders was fulfillment of the need for a national heavy lift launch vehicle. From that effort NASA created the Space Launch System, or SLS. Nasa engineers then revived the basic form of the Ares V and turned it into a launch vehicle that could send astronauts to the Moon. The Trump administration revived the program and re-named it “Artemis.” That program sent a test version of the crew vehicle, known as Orion, to the Moon on November 26, 2022 and saw it return safely. On April 1, 2026, that same launch vehicle sent the first crew of astronauts since December of 1972, to the Moon.

Notice that nowhere in this history did the Senate design anything. There were no engineers sitting at design desks working with spaceflight or rocketry software and there never has been. That is NOT the job of the Congress. SLS was designed by NASA’s spaceflight contractors such as Boeing, Northrop Grumman, ULA and countless sub-contractors. To slur the vehicle by saying that SLS stands for “Senate Launch System” is not only a childish vilification but especially is a slap in the face to the honest engineers, managers and technicians who have struggled so long to bridge the eight-year long void created by the Obama administration. The Senate had nothing more to do with this vehicle other than approving and insuring funding- exactly as they do with every other major government program plus specifying that it must be a shuttle-derived vehicle. Thus, when term “Senate Launch System” is used anywhere, it is nothing more than a myth.

APOLLO 8: ALUMINUM FOIL AND A WIRE COAT-HANGER ANTENNA

         How many of you were around on December 23 of 1968 when what is happening today, April 6, 2026, happened for the first time? I was among the millions of people who watched it live. This excerpt is from my book, “Growing up with Spaceflight: Apollo Part One.” Please keep in mind that it was a very different world back then. There was no Internet, no NASA Live, no NASAspaceflight.com, and only three TV networks to follow the mission.

Patch I  bought at KSC Feb. 1973

Note: the price...

Our little house at 3324 Lexington Drive in Sheridan Park was packed full of relatives and neighbors. It was Christmas eve 1968 and my folks were hosting a party for our closest family friends. All of the adults were laughing, talking, eating, drinking and smoking. Mostly smoking.

Being an asthmatic, I always had a very low tolerance for smokers and smoking, but in 1968 most people smoked.

My parents had both just quit that foul habit primarily due to my new doctor, an allergy-specialist, and the first true no-nonsense person that I have ever met. Dr. Goodwin was said to have, “the bedside manner of a bull,” but he got his points across to me and my family. Upon my second visit, where he reviewed my medical tests with my parents and myself, he pointed his pen at me and said, “If you ever smoke you will die.” Then he turned to my Mom and Dad and said, “If you two want him to get any better and to grow up to have a normal life, you both have to quit smoking. Today!” So firm and deadly-serious was his manner that both of my parents gave up cigarettes on the spot— cold turkey. Dad later took up a pipe, but at least he gave up the coffin-nails. So it was that at our household Christmas party seven months later, at least my Mom and Dad were not a part of making the blue haze that hung heavy in our living-room.

Although the TV was on, you really could not hear it and there was no place for a kid to sit and watch it. Besides that the party “atmosphere” was akin to sitting in a smudge pot. In short order I disappeared into my parent’s room where the “old” family TV resided. Every network had the same lead story to broadcast. It was a historic adventure called “Apollo 8.”

Stuffing one of my Dad’s T-shirts under the door to keep out the local pollution, I turned on the old TV and let her tubes warm up. After a few seconds the familiar crackle of static electricity began as the cathode-ray picture tube slowly built up to its 30,000 volt, shadow-mask face potential. Soon the blue tinted black and white image began to fuzz into clarity. With haste I spun the channel selection dial to UHF and channel 25; CBS. That channel was where Walter Cronkite was hosting and it came in the best on the old TV- primarily because channel 25’s broadcast antenna was located about 1,202 feet from my parent’s bedroom. Of course the aluminum foil that my Dad had wrapped around the distorted, wire coat-hanger that served as the TV set’s UHF antenna may have helped too.

Cronkite was saying that they were expecting another live TV broadcast from the moon shortly. There was not a hint that he had been on the air almost continually since about four o’clock in the morning. Just the excitement in his voice told me that something historic was taking place and it had my total attention. I sat, alone, cross-legged, on the foot of my parents bed, in the darkness. The party commotion happening just up the hallway seemed so distant it was as if I was in the studio with Cronkite myself. Perhaps countless other viewers across America felt exactly the same way at that moment. Now, Cronkite told us, the crew was ready to do their final TV broadcast from the Moon. The CBS “simulation” showed a model of an Apollo CSM from the rear with the expanse of the slightly curved lunar surface just below. Soon the voices and cross-talk from Mission Control made it apparent that the TV show from the moon was about to begin.

NASA’s Public Affairs Officer (PAO) announced that we were one minute… and then two minutes into acquisition of signal with Apollo 8, and CAPCOM Ken Mattingly, who had recently changed shifts with Mike Collins, told the crew that all of their systems looked great. Then the PAO announced that they had a TV picture in Mission Control. Quickly the picture shifted from the simulation of the flight to the fuzzy, slow-scan TV images of the lunar surface. It actually looked like a fishbowl with the words “Live Transmission From Apollo 8” superimposed on it. After a few moments, CBS cut back to Cronkite as the crew moved the camera to another window. The picture turned to a view inside Mission Control as the crew started out by saying that this was Apollo 8 live from the Moon, as if we did not already know that. Next they all gave their final descriptions of the moon and their impressions of the place that no human had ever before visited.

"The moon is a different thing to each one of us." Borman led the narration, "I think that each one of… each one carries his own impressions of what… of what he's seen today. I know my own impression is that it's a vast, lonely, forbidding type of existence or expanse of nothing; it looks rather like clouds and clouds of pumice stone. And it certainly would not appear to be a very… inviting place to live or work. Jim, what have you thought about most?"

"Well, Frank," Lovell picked up the narration, "my thoughts are very similar; the vast loneliness up here of the moon is awe-inspiring, it makes you realize just what you have back there on earth. The earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space. Bill, what do you think?"

"I think," Anders continued, "the thing that impressed me the most was the lunar sunrises and sunsets. These, in particular, bring out the stark nature of the terrain, the long shadows really bring out the relief that is here (and) hard to see in this very bright surface that we’re going over right now. We are now coming onto Smyth's Sea, a small mare region covered with dark material. There's a fresh bright impact crater on the edge towards us. And mountain range on the other side. These mountains are the Pyrenees.”

About then the signals from the moon were disturbed and the crew’s show became abbreviated.

“Apollo 8,” CAPCOM interrupted quickly, “we’re not receiving picture now, over.”

Anders continued with his description as Houston repeated that they were not getting a picture. Suddenly the crew fixed the problem and I found myself looking through the rendezvous window, over the sill and out toward the Moon. All of my thoughts of presents and Christmas morning were suddenly muted. There were three guys up there circling the Moon, and I felt as if I were right there with them. Of course their view of the Moon was a great deal better than my blurred, washed-out black and white TV view. But still, it was THE Moon, and we were all there— all of us who were growing up with spaceflight.

From the din of the Christmas party voices out in my living room I heard a few quips of “Look at that!” as the same show that I was watching was playing on the TV out there. They, however, could not hear the words of the astronauts who were pointing out craters and evaluating the proposed site for the first lunar landing. Although, from my perspective, I was alone watching the event, it was later calculated that this broadcast was watched by more humans than any other single event in history to that date. Suddenly the crew stopped their lunar observations and said that they had a message to those of us on earth. They read from the Book of Genesis. It was a fantastic moment that added a shade of faith and humanity to the pure technology of the mission. It also got them sued by an atheist.

My parents ended their big Christmas party about an hour later with half-drunken and completely-drunken neighbors and relatives stumbling happily out into the bitter-cold mid-Michigan winter night. Fortunately, most of them lived nearby in our subdivision. The one who was the most intoxicated ended up face down in a snowdrift near our driveway and was able to be poured into the back seat of his car and driven home by his wife. Mom and Dad were left to clean up the house and prepare for Christmas morning. That, of course, meant putting us kids to bed. We all scrambled into our sleeping nests having been told that the sooner we went to sleep, the sooner Santa would come. That worked well on my younger sister and brother, but I found that my thoughts were centered more onto my 1/96 scale model Apollo CSM. I lay there in the dark holding it up as if passing over the lunar surface, or peeking into its small windows and looking at the little crewmen inside. I also studied the big Service Propulsion System engine bell. Cronkite had told us dozens of times that it had to fire in order for the crew to return to the Earth. Oddly, at the ripe old age of 11, unlike some adults, I had no doubt at all that it would work. I fell asleep with that level of innocent confidence.

GEMINI 8: PRE-EMPT ANYTHING, BUT NOT “BATMAN!”

 

Command Pilot Neil Armstrong and Pilot Dave Scott had taken their Gemini 8 spacecraft and accomplished something that had never been done before by the U.S. They had docked with another spacecraft in orbit. The date was March 16^th, 1966, and as their spacecraft flew high over the Tananarive tracking station the crew proudly reported that they were going through the planned yaw maneuver with their Agena target vehicle secured to their spacecraft’s nose.

 While all of this was happening on the other side of the planet, I was just settling in at our warm little house in Sheridan Park in Saginaw, Michigan. It was just a bit after 7:00 in the evening Lexington Drive time and we had just returned from my Cub Scout “Spaghetti Dinner” that had been held in the common-purpose room at St. George’s Church.

 

My entire after-school time that day had been taken up preparing for the dinner. Since my Dad was the troop leader, not only did I have to attend, but I had to set-up, serve and then clean up! Gee, I’d always thought that Cub Scouting was about camping and junk… but fund raising? Ugh. Still, I returned home with a belly full of pasta and a face full of tomato sauce.

 

Now it was time to settle in by our black and white living room TV and watch my then most favorite show in the whole world- “Batman.” The show had only been running since January, but it hooked me like a drug. Everything I played somehow turned into Batman and so did everything I drew or talked about. Thus, no one else on Earth, or off of the earth existed from 7:30 until 8:00 on Wednesday and Thursday evenings- there was just me and the TV.

 

The Wednesday episode was presented with its cliff-hanger, then there was the following Thursday at school when we all discussed how Batman and Robin were going to escape Thursday evening in the conclusion. There followed six days of waiting for the following Wednesday to come and another “Batman” episode. If my third-grade teacher thought I was distracted before the “Batman” series came along, she was now without hope that I would ever recover.

 

“Batman” had just gotten started, the episode was called “The Purr-fect Crime” and Cat Woman looked quite fiendish tonight. Then, suddenly, just when things were getting good the ABC TV Network’s “SPECIAL REPORT” screen popped up!

 

What?! Not now! Not during “Batman!” What could this be? An atomic strike by the Soviets? Perhaps, but at least wait until after the cliff-hanger to tell us about it. Maybe it was just a short report and then we’ll be back to the caped crusader. Nope- there was Jules Bergman breathlessly announcing that something had gone terribly wrong on Gemini 8. Worst of all, the report eventually totally pre-empted the entire episode of “Batman.” No cliff-hanger, no Cat Woman, no Commissioner Gordon, no Bat-poles, no Bat-Cave… whatever had gone wrong with Gemini 8 could have at least waited until 8:00 when that stinking “Patty Duke Show” came on.

 

Additionally, the news people did not know much at all about what had happened, yet they talked on and on. I was beyond totally ticked off- I mean, pre-empt anything, but not “Batman.”

 

Launch time for Gemini 8 was 11:41:02 Nelle Haley Elementary School time on Wednesday morning. The whole event took place while I was sloshing my way home for lunch through the half-melted winter snow. Temperatures were hovering just above freezing and a gray overcast sky showed that winter was not yet willing to release its grip on the Great Lakes area. The whole launch was over by the time I came through the front door and the news folks on our living room TV were talking about the rendezvous and illustrating it with all sorts of gadgets.

 

NBC channel 5 had a model train set with a Gemini and Agena on rail cars going in circles. CBS had an actual computer with an animated set of orbits all of which could have held my attention all afternoon when I was back in school… except for the fact that Annex 3 where my classroom resided did not have a TV.

 

Later that day Gemini 8 went ahead with their mission and acquired Agena 5003. Once in the sunlight, Gemini 8 was also passing into range of the tracking ship ROSE KNOT VICTOR (RKV) at 06:32:17 mission elapsed time.

 

“We’re sitting about two feet out,” Armstrong reported as soon as communications were established.

 

“Go ahead…” the RKV controller, Keith Kundel, began.

 

“We’ll go ahead and dock.” Armstrong replied.

 

“Roger,” Kundel replied and then thought better of what he had just said, “Stand by for a couple of minutes here.”

 

It took 18 seconds for the RKV controllers to verify that they had good telemetry from both spacecraft in order to give the final permission to actually dock.

 

“Okay Gemini 8,” Kundel came back on the radio with confidence, “You’ve got T/M solid. You’re looking good on the ground. Go ahead and dock.”

 

Once cleared, Armstrong thrusted ahead and gently eased the nose of the Gemini 8 spacecraft into the docking cone of the Agena; it was 06:33:52 mission elapsed time. Everything looked fine for nearly a half hour- then Scott glanced at his attitude indicator.

 

“Neil,” he said casually, “we’re in a bank.”

 

Thinking Scott’s attitude indicator may have tumbled, Armstrong looked at his own and saw that the spacecraft was indeed in slight roll. He corrected with his hand controller, but as soon as he let go of the handle Gemini 8 snapped back into a bank and continued diverging. Thinking the trouble was in the Agena, which had caused trouble on its previous flight, Scott shut down the target vehicle. The roll, however, continued to increase. Now Armstrong became concerned that the tumbling may stress the nose of Gemini, which was rigid in the docking adapter. So, he decided to undock and thrust away. But with Agena’s mass gone the Gemini went completely out of control.

 Neither Armstrong nor Scott had recorded the exact moment that the two spacecraft began their un-commanded roll, and they were out of ground contact as it rapidly went out of control. Estimates are that about 20 minutes of normal flight went by before all hell broke loose. Gemini 8 soon came into acquisition range of the tracking ship Coastal Sentry Quebec (CSQ). James R. Fucci, CapCom aboard the ship, was concerned and perplexed. He could not get a solid electronic lock-on the spacecraft, and a blinking light signal indicated that the craft had undocked. Unaware that the spacecraft was rolling, so the antennas could not remain in position, he put in a call to the crew to try to find out about these strange signs he saw on his console.

 

Fucci: “Gemini 8, CSQ Cap Com. Com check. How do you read?”

 

Scott: “We have serious problems here . . . we're tumbling end over end up here. We're disengaged from the Agena.”

 

Fucci: “Okay. We got your SPACECRAFT FREE indication here. What seems to be the problem?”

 

Armstrong: “We're rolling up and we can't turn anything off.

Continuously increasing in a left roll.”

 

Fucci: [37 seconds later] “Roger, Gemini 8. CSQ.”

 

Armstrong: “Stand by.”

 

Scott: “We have a violent left roll here at the present time and we can't turn the RCS's off, and we can't fire it, and we certainly have a roll… stuck hand control.”

 

Once the crew realized that it was their own thruster and not those of the Agena that was acting upon them, they tried to quickly troubleshoot the problem. For a moment it seemed like a stuck hand-controller. Finally, Armstrong decided that he needed to shut down the OAMS thrusters completely and work with the RCS thrusters. That simple act under the current conditions was almost super-human. With his vision blurred and tunneling and the sun flashing into the spacecraft through the windows like a high intensity strobe light plus every loose object pinned to the walls, Armstrong had to reach into a panel of 64 switches and flip the correct one.

 

Upon accomplishing that task Armstrong activated both RCS rings and immediately went to work with the hand controller. Indeed, it was not stuck and was working just fine. In short order he had the slowed the rate of tumble and was regaining control of Gemini 8.

 

Once it was clear that he had control, Armstrong shut down one RCS ring in order to save fuel. Those thrusters, located in the nose of the Gemini spacecraft, were intended for reentry use only and were also the only form of attitude control the spacecraft had once the adapter section was jettisoned. If they were to begin to leak or fail in some other way, the crew would be doomed to stay in orbit. Armstrong then carefully reactivated the maneuver thrusters until he was able to tell that No. 8 was the culprit. It had failed in the “on” mode- meaning it had stuck open!

 

So… why had thruster No. 8 failed in the open position? After splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the spacecraft had been hauled back to its place of birth-the McDonnell plant in St. Louis- so the engineers could analyze its problems. Set up in a controlled laboratory where the investigations could proceed unmolested, the spacecraft was checked over completely for more than a month. Since the adapter section containing those thrusters had been jettisoned before reentry, only the most probable cause of the trouble could be identified. The evaluation team decided that the valves on thruster 8 opening unintentionally was probably caused by an electrical short. There were, however, several locations in the spacecraft at which such a fault could have occurred. To prevent a recurrence of the thruster problem, McDonnell changed the attitude control circuit switch so that when it was in the "off mode” no power could go to the thrusters. Formerly, turning off power to the electronics packages did not stop power going to the thrusters. Thus, they could still fire.

 

When I woke up the next morning the whole Gemini 8 business was over.  Armstrong and Scott were safely aboard the destroyer MASON and all was well. It all happened in the middle of the night while most of America, including myself, was asleep. Even my morning cartoons were not interrupted. So, I busied myself at the task of flunking the third grade. You may scoff, but it was not easy. Mrs. Bechtol was constantly on my case. One day she even had me up in front of the entire class so that she could ridicule my new Batman T-shirt and compare me to the class smart kid in order to set an example of what a failure looks like. I was often scolded for always looking out the window and she loudly chided me saying that no one would ever give me a job where I looked out the window all the time. Three decades later, while flying as an commercial pilot I sat there looking out the window of a Falcon Jet- and getting paid to do it. I always snickered thinking about that.

Me in the summer of 1966 wearing

the Batman shirt that so annoyed

my 3rd grade teacher.

ARTEMIS; NOW GOING TO DO IT RIGHT

 

By Wes Oleszewski- Aero-News Network Spaceflight Analyst

My model LEM with Rusty on the porch

On Friday, February 27, NASA announced a fundamental change in the plan for the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Artemis Program. Beginning immediately the cadence of SLS launches will be changed from the previous one launch every two or three years. Instead, the flight rate and profile will be closer to that of the Apollo missions in the late 1960s. This change injects a great deal of positive energy into the Artemis Program.

Artemis II’s mission will remain as a deep space lunar fly-by to check out a crewed Orion spacecraft at lunar distance. Artemis III, however, will not be a lunar landing mission. Rather, Artemis III will be an Earth Orbital mission to test the Orion along with the lunar landing vehicles as well at the new lunar EVA spacesuit. This is similar to the Apollo 9 mission where a Saturn V launched a crew of three astronauts, Commander (CDR) Jim McDivitt, Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) Rusty Schweickart and Command Module Pilot (CMP) Dave Scott, into Earth orbit where they exercised the Lunar Module (LM). Prior to the undocking and flight of both the Command Module (CM,) and the LM, the LMP suited up in the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) and exited the LM. He stood on the front porch testing the EMU before astronauts attempted to do so on the lunar surface. Later he and the CDR undocked and flew the LM out away from the CM, tested the LM decent engine, staged and tested its ascent engine. They then used the rendezvous system to rejoin the CM. The Artemis III crew will do the same and conduct similar testing. If all goes well, thereafter, Artemis IV will likely be the lunar landing mission.

The critical difference here is that the long-held cadence of one SLS mission every two to three years no longer exists. The flights will be spaced much closer together and if there is a problem on one flight it will no longer cause great delays in upcoming missions. This rapid cadence has a number of advantages. The primary being what Administrator Jared Isaacman termed “muscle memory.” That is, the human factor of  ground crews doing the job often in a short time, leads to instinctive responses and correct procedures. A symptom of this could be seen in the Artemis II close-out crew taking more time than expected during the first wet dress rehearsal. It had been more than three years between their doing that activity on a live SLS.

During the press conference on February 27, NASA officials said several times,

“We brought our history books with us.”

They also directly referenced Apollo and showed how the cadence of that program in the late 1960s and early 1970s had led to achieving what was once thought to be impossible. There is no reason to think that such cannot be done again in this era. NASA has the hardware in the works to make it happen. The Trump administration has provided the funding to make it happen. All that is lacking is the people-power, and NASA will now be hiring many more men and women to do the job. NASA will also be going far beyond these first four Artemis missions with launches taking place on a regular basis. The SLS is about to become a space work-horse.

For the aerospace industry and the peaceful advancement of human civilization, this is a very good thing.