The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

His staff listened open-mouthed while von Braun said he readily admitted that when first exposed to the LOR proposal they were “a bit sceptical”, but so was the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston. It had taken quite a while to substantiate the feasibility of the method and finally endorse it. So it could be concluded that the issue of “invented here” or “not invented here” did not apply to either of the centers; both had actually embraced a scheme suggested by a third source!

Shea’s headquarters staff then costed the four contending modes of approach to the Moon, and reached the satisfying conclusion that LOR would cost almost $1.5 billion less than either EOR or direct flight – $9.5 billion versus $10.6 billion. On 11 July 1962 the media was told at a news conference that the NASA centers were unanimously of the opinion that a moonlanding was to be accomplished by means of a lunar orbit rendezvous. Not for the first time, nor the last, the abrupt change of policy came as a shock to space correspondents like myself. In this case we had been subjected to innumerable briefings stressing the hazards of such an approach. But Brainerd Holmes told the American Rocket Society a few days later: “Essentially we have now ‘lifted off’ and are on our way.” Events proved that he was right.

The Soviets planned to use the Earth orbit rendezvous technique to assemble a larger spacecraft. This would then take their cosmonauts to the moon.

Project Mercury

John Glenn personified the relationship between the development of jet aircraft and the exploration of outer space. Born on 18 July 1921 in New Concord, Ohio, he grew up during the Depression and in April 1941 joined a civilian pilot training scheme while he was at college.

In June 1941 he gained his private pilot’s licence. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he joined the Army Air Corps. He began training and was commissioned into the US Marine Corps in 1943, serving in a Marine fighter squadron. He flew 59 combat missions in the Pacific, air to ground strikes in F4U Corsairs.

His next posting was testing combat aircraft for Grumman. By the end of the war he had been promoted to captain and was offered a regular commission which he accepted. He joined a US mission to the Nationalist Chinese, in support of the Marshall peace initiative, flying reconnaissance patrols. By 1948 Glenn was serving as an instructor in an advanced training unit based at Corpus Christi, Texas, flying jets, the Lockheed P80 Shooting Star. He was sent to Korea in October 1952 where he flew F9 Panthers on close support missions. In 1953 he was attached to the USAF, flying fighter interceptors, the F-86. In the final days of the war he shot down three Chinese MIG jet fighters.

Posted to the Naval Air Test Centre (NATC) at Patuxent River, Maryland, he graduated as a test pilot in July 1954 and was transferred to the fighter design branch of the Naval Aeronautics Department. In 1957 he personally broke the existing supersonic transcontinental speed record, flying 2,445 miles from coast to coast of the United States. His flight involved air-to-air refuelling three times and broke the record by 21 minutes.