Word: lunar
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...Braun's earth-orbital scheme, a minimum of two expensive Saturn 5 launches would be needed. Both plans called for the expenditure of as much as 100,000 lbs. of fuel merely to settle a spacecraft from 80 ft. to 100 ft. tall gently on the lunar surface. The JPL idea, while permitting the design of a smaller landing craft, would have required several separate launches and had the added risk that astronauts might be stranded on the moon if they landed too far from their previously launched supplies...
While the various factions wrangled, Engineer Houbolt, whose work at NASA's Langley Research Center was not directly connected with space flight, was impressed by still another moon-landing technique: the lunar-orbit rendezvous. Houbolt's plan was to leave the mother craft in orbit around the moon while a light, ferrylike craft descended from it to the lunar surface carrying only one or two of the astronauts. Later, the little craft could blast off, rendezvous and dock with the mother ship, and then be left behind in lunar orbit as the astronauts returned to earth...
Houbolt argued that the concept would save an immense amount of fuel. Because the lunar lander would not need a heavy heat shield for a return through the earth's atmosphere and would not have to carry additional equipment and supplies for the long trip to and from the moon, it could be tens of thousands of pounds lighter than other lunar landing vehicles. The weight reduction would be great enough, he calculated, for the entire mission to be launched by one Saturn 5-type rocket...
Dour Rejection. Sure that he had the answer, Houbolt attended meetings of NASA's moonshot planning group to promote the lunar-orbit-rendezvous (LOR) scheme. His reception was cool. "Your figures lie," shouted one excitable member of the group. "I don't believe a word of it." Wernher von Braun, present at the same meeting, dourly shook his head at Houbolt's proposal and said, "No, that's no good." Recalls Christopher Kraft, director of NASA's manned-flight operations: "When some people first heard of Houbolt's idea, they thought he was nuts...
Embarrassed Silence. One of the hardest to convince was Wernher von Braun. But when he was finally converted to the lunar-orbit-rendezvous technique, he became a formidable advocate. During a visit to Huntsville, President Kennedy stood in embarrassed silence while Von Braun argued heatedly with Presidential Science Adviser Jerome Wiesner, the last important holdout against LOR. Pressed for a final decision, Kennedy overruled Wiesner in October 1962 and gave NASA permission to proceed with the design and construction of a lunar module...