Word: wernher
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...once the initial lunar landings are made. Internal feuds, once muted, are beginning to erupt in public; most notable was the resignation of Paul Haney, "the voice of Apollo." The NASA budget is down to $3.8 billion from its $5.9 billion 1966 peak. The army of skilled craftsmen, whom Wernher Von Braun calls 90% of NASA's investment, has dwindled from a high of 400,000 to half that number. At current attrition rates, the force will shrink...
Monster Rocket. Wernher von Braun, director of the NASA facilities at Huntsville, Ala., favored an earth-orbital-rendezvous technique; two or more rockets would be used separately to launch a spacecraft and fuel-carrying stages into earth orbit, where they would be assembled for a flight to the moon. Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is most concerned with unmanned space shots, proposed that extra fuel and supplies be rocketed to the surface of the moon and then be brought together into a supply depot by a remotecontrolled tractor. The astronauts would land near...
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...
Luigi G. Jacchia, lecturer on Astronomy, has predicted that the 31-pound satellite will fall from orbit in April 1970, much later than Wernher von Braun and other rocketry experts predicted when the satellite was launched...