NASA Squirming and a New Moon Order

Introduction

Mankind's history is filled with outstanding technological achievements. Contributions coming from the patronization of ancient kings to modern corporate laboratories. The single greatest technological achievement however happened on 20 July 1969 at 10.56pm EDT. Neil Armstrong planted his foot on the moon. A moment immortalized in the global psyche through TV coverage. An achievement cutting through political affiliations and silencing the world in awe and admiration of the greatest superpower they had ever seen. The pinnacle of American Exceptionalism. To have one of their kind actually stand on the orb that every person and each of their ancestors could only stare at in wonder. For most global citizens from here on, the Cold War was ideologically over and the USA could do no wrong. This achievement has been unsurpassed since.

This remarkable journey started on 25 May 1961 when John F. Kennedy proposed in Congress to land a man on the Moon within the decade. This gave NASA a little over 9 years to accomplish this goal in the midst of the US-Soviet space race, with the US lagging far behind at the time.

In fact what is remarkable is how little the US had managed to achieve by this time vis-a-vis the Soviets, even as both countries had started out at the same time. Both the Soviets and Americans derived their technologies from Nazi rockets. After the war they both scrambled to get hold of V2 missiles, facilities, scientists and engineers. 16 years later at the time of Kennedy's speech, the Soviets had launched the first man-made satellite (Sputnik, 4 Oct 1957), they sent the first living being in Earth Orbit (Dog Laika, 3 Nov 1957), they sent the 1st man-made object into a solar orbit (Luna-1, 2 Jan 1959), they sent the 1st man-made object to touch the moon (Luna-2, 13 Sept 1959) and the crowning achievement was Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man not only in space but also to orbit the earth on 12 April 1961. At the time of the speech NASA's greatest claim was firing Alan Shepherd on top of a rocket to a height of 187km, before falling back to Earth; but nevertheless having left the atmosphere he was the first American in space. Technologically however, this was no match for Gagarin's achievement as it required only a fraction of the rocket power, rocket speed, rocket manoeuvrability, communication systems and re-entry technology.

And thus in 16 years NASA's greatest foray towards a manned lunar landing had been a hi-tech extension of the human cannonball and they had 9 years to land a man on the moon and safely return him to Earth.

Listening in to Kennedy's speech from the astronaut office complex at Langley Air Force base, Gordo Cooper, one of the original seven astronauts of Project Mercury, and also the first American to sleep in space, remarked, Ain't no way. First, we don't have the rockets. Second, we don't have the spacecraft, and third, we don't know how to get there and back.¹ He was right. The science, engineering and technology for this mission would need to be developed, tested, made reliable and implemented, pretty much from scratch.

First the rocket. It was calculated that to get to the moon and back would need a rocket capable of placing about 140 tonnes in low earth orbit (LEO). At the time NASA was using the Atlas-Agena (A/B) rocket launch system to put into space its MIDAS² and SAMOS³ Satellites, and its Ranger moon probes. The Atlas - Agena rocket launch system was capable of placing only 1 ton in LEO.⁴⁵ Thus a payload increase of 140 times would be needed. The reliability of the launch system then too was appalling.

Name Launch Date Status

SAMOS 1        Oct 11, 1960          Fail

SAMOS 2 Jan 31, 1961 Success

SAMOS 3        Sept 9, 1961 Fail

SAMOS 4        Nov 22, 1961 Fail

MIDAS 1          Feb 26, 1960 Fail

MIDAS 2          May 24, 1960 Partial Success

MIDAS 3 July 12, 1961 Fail

MIDAS 4          Oct 21, 1961 Fail

RANGER 1      Aug 23, 1961 Fail

RANGER 2      Nov 18, 1961 Fail

So in the period around Kennedy's announcement NASA's latest rocket launch system boasted of about 1.5 successes out of 10; that too with an LEO payload 140 times less than what would be needed to fulfill Kennedy's mission.

The rocket however is just the start.

Communication and deep space radar systems would need to be developed using a combination of satellites and star light within newly developed spheroidal coordinates. Attitude controls would need to be developed to orient spacecraft properly using ancillary thrusters. Space craft docking and undocking systems would need to be created. Space suits would need to be made which could withstand not only the vacuum but temperatures of 100s of degrees in the sun to minus 100s in the shade. Retro rocket technology would need to be perfected to soft land the astronauts hurtling towards the moon at near 2km/sec; that too with no atmosphere to break their fall. For the way back atmospheric re-entry technologies would need to be created to smoothly transition a yet to be encountered atmospheric entry speed of 11 km/sec to manageable speeds for parachute deployment; all the time ensuring that neither the capsule incinerate nor the deceleration be so severe that the tremendous ensuing G forces on the astronauts cause their eyes to pop from their sockets.

Further, the yet to be discovered effects of space radiation would be the biggest hurdle. The Sun emits massive amounts of harmful radiation which are kept out of the Earth by the dual action of the atmosphere and the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere actually captures these radioactive particles in what are known as the Van Allen belts. The effect of this radiation is not only very harmful on biological specimen but also on the electronic equipment on board. Thus spacecrafts and space suits must be adequately shielded, and the electronics must be made radiation resistant. All this adds complexity to an already complex problem.

All this in 8 1/2 years! To an observer, such a gargantuan undertaking would require hundreds of research, design and testing facilities and hundreds of quality controlled engineering industries for support. The labour pool, unfortunately, by default would have no experience and thus no expertise.

If ever there was a time for the motto, In God We Trust, this would be it. For when one starts to unpeel the layers of the US space program's progress from Kennedy's speech to the landings, it is easy to see that without God playing a leading role in this endeavour, it would not be possible.

More mind boggling than the achievement itself is the technological journey which shockingly skimped and skipped entire stages of R&D and testing, and yet was successful not once but six times, successfully walking 12 men on the moon between 1969 and 1972.

Consider this:

No biological specimen was sent to land on the moon for testing before Apollo 11

No unmanned test spacecraft had made a return trip from the lunar surface before Apollo 11

In fact the lunar lander was NEVER tested on the moon for its descent and ascent capabilities. Let that sink in.

All biological specimen before Apollo 11, both US and Soviet, that went out through the radiation belts and beyond returned with negative health results. In fact NASA launched the Biosatellite 3, a mission with a pig tailed monkey named Bonny, on June 29, 1969, less than a month before Apollo 11. Biosatellite 3 was initially planned to be a 30 day exercise to determine the health effects of Van Allen radiation on Bonny. The mission was cut short to 9 days due to the monkey's rapidly deteriorating metabolic condition. Bonny died 8 hrs after spacecraft recovery. Apollo 11 launched a week later.

By virtue of never sending an animal to the moon first, it follows that space suits too were never tested in field conditions. The moon surface is a very very hostile environment.

Atmospheric re-entry from the moon was never tested with an unmanned capsule or with a non-human biological specimen before the Apollo 8 manned lunar circumnavigation mission. It must be noted that the atmospheric re-entry speed is about 50% higher from the moon than from LEO. The exponential relation of Kinetic energy to speed makes this an exponentially more complex problem to solve. More deaths have occurred on re-entry than in space itself.

In the over 50 years since Apollo there have been other moon orbiters and landers sent by the Soviets, Japan, China and India. Not one of them has conclusively verified the Apollo landings through any photographic evidence.

Barring the Apollo astronauts, no other person, either before or after, American or otherwise, has ventured beyond Low Earth Orbit.

The Saturn V rocket used for the Apollo missions, out of the blue, was capable of carrying more payload than all the payload NASA had placed in orbit till then! Where was the technological evolution - the in-between rockets? It must be noted that increasing payload follows diminishing returns. It's much more difficult to go from heavy to heavier than from light to heavy.

To hedge themselves against so much risk, with millions of untested interconnected moving parts, NASA could only have pulled this off with divine intervention. The other possibility, and the correct one, is that the Apollo missions did not go the moon. The Apollo missions only stayed in Low Earth Orbit; a technology that NASA had developed to relative comfort with their Gemini missions.

To hide a crime, the first step is to cover your tracks, and so it was with NASA. Layoffs before and during the Apollo program dropped NASA's peak workforce of 26,000 to 9000.⁶ The Saturn V production and assembly line was shut down in the early 1970s, and even the machinery and tooling necessary to build the rocket was inexplicably destroyed.⁷ In 2006, NASA admitted that the original video recordings of the moon landing were 'lost', and then stated in 2009 that the tapes had been 'erased and re-used'.⁸

The ensuing years has seen NASA embark on disastrous programs like the Space Shuttle to promoting fantasies like Mars habitation by 2030. Successive presidents continue making false promises to keep the public in suspended disbelief. All the while as NASA over the years increases layoffs and diverts funds from real space exploration to extraneous things like climate monitoring and children's education. The situation has become so dire that NASA is incapable of sending its astronauts to the International Space Station using its own rockets, and instead rely on R-180 Rocket Engines from their Russian friends. The Atlas II to Atlas III transition, saw the first launch of the Atlas III employing Russia's R-180 rocket engine on 24 May 2000. The upgrade to Atlas III involved replacing the American Atlas II's booster engine (MA5A) + 4 strap on boosters (Castor 4A) + 1st stage rocket engine (MA5A) with a SINGLE RD-180 rocket engine,⁹ and still increased payload by 30%. How the mighty have fallen.

The post Apollo years have also seen a pernicious attempt by the US to thwart the rise of other indigenous space nations. The preservation of NASA's questionable hegemony is achieved through a web of political coercion, disinformation and sanctions on trade and technology. It is easy to notice that countries better shielded from US foreign policy have more developed space programs.

The purpose of this book is not to disprove the Apollo Moon landings. That is a fact.

The purpose of this book is to provide the reader with a picture of the global state of affairs and the challenges facing the quest of the final frontier. And concurrently apprise them of principles behind the technology. The present level of space technologies are abysmally short of where we would have expected to be by now 60 years ago. This book tries to explain why.

The silver lining of course is that the moon race is still open and has the potential to morph into a peaceful multi-polar global competition - a potential clash of civilisations. With NASA squirming, this could well usher in a New Moon Order.

2. Satan Saturn V

The objective of a rocket launch system is to place payload (materials, equipment, machinery, spacecraft, satellite, men...) into Earth Orbit or beyond. Low Earth orbit (LEO) is the easiest orbit to get to and stay in.¹⁰ It is an orbit that is just sufficiently outside the effect of atmospheric gases which would cause drag on the satellite, slow it down and make it spiral back to earth. Low Earth Orbit starts from about 150 km above sea level, and its upper limit is somewhat arbitrary extending from 400 km to 2000 km depending on whom you ask. For consistency we will consider Low Earth Orbit at an altitude of 200 km for calculations in this book.

The payload that a rocket system can deliver to low Earth Orbit is the key indicator of its power.

Placing a payload into orbit is no trivial task. While the Nazis had launched man-made objects into space, their V2 rockets were only capable of small sub-orbital hops. This in itself was a gigantic achievement as it would take both the USA and USSR a good part of a decade just to duplicate this technology. Five days after the first satellite Sputnik was placed in orbit, in an attempt to quell the growing American public anxiety President Eisenhower assured reporters that they have put a small ball in the air.¹¹

The American response to Sputnik was the Vanguard rocket tasked to place an American satellite and thus restore parity in the space race. In response to Sputnik, the small ball in the air which weighed 83.6 kg and was 58 cm in diameter, the Vanguard on its 3rd attempt managed to place a satellite in orbit (17 March 1958) weighing 1.5 kg and 15 cm in diameter.

The Sputniks also encouraged China to pick up the pace in space exploration. After Sputnik 3 (15 May 1958), a massive 1.5 ton satellite, Mao is said to have remarked we should put a 2 ton satellite, our satellites should be large and not the size of the small American satellites.¹² While nowhere near 2 tons, China did manage to put a 173 kg satellite (Dong Fang Hong) into orbit; but it was in April 1970, 12 years of hard work and not without initial Soviet support.

India's first indigenous satellite, Rohini, launched in July 1980 was all of 35 kg. It took another 7 years to increase the payload to 150 kg.

The tortuous path to higher payloads is deeply coded in the physics of rocket science itself.

With massive backings of capital, institutions, industries and ideologies on either side of the Cold War, the early years of the Space Race were fascinating times. At the heart of it all was the need for a powerful rocket - the quest for more payload.

FIG 2.1.a - The anomalous Progression of NASA's LEO Payload and the regression of technology post Apollo

2.1 Tsialkovsky and the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation

Rockets operate on the principle of conservation of momentum. Momentum is the mass of a body multiplied by its velocity (M x V), thus giving us a sense of mass in motion. If a 5 kg ball is moving at 8 m/s, its momentum is 40 kg m/s. Mass is colloquially called weight, but mass only possesses a weight force because of Earth's gravity. If a 5 kg ball is put somewhere far in space where there is no effect of gravity, its mass will still be 5 kg but its weight will be 0 (its floating).

The Law of Conservation of Momentum states that in an isolated system, momentum is neither created nor destroyed but remains constant. That means that the total momentum before and after an event is the same.

A way to visualise this is a man on roller skates or really slippery ice and throwing a ball. He will roll or slip in the opposite direction. To make the conditions ideal consider the man afloat in space with no effect of gravity or friction. Say he weighs 75 kg and has a 5 kg ball in his hand. As he is currently stationary the net momentum of the system of man and ball is 0 as velocity is 0. If he throws the ball at 10 m/s, he will be pushed back in the opposite direction. The momentum of the ball will be 5 kg x 10 m/s = 50 kg m/s. The man's momentum will thus be 50 kg m/s in the opposite direction of the ball, so as to cancel it out. Momentum needs to be conserved.  Thus 75 kg (Man's mass) x Vm (Man's Velocity) = 50 kg m/s, or Vm = 50/75 = 0.67 m/s.

Intuitively we can sense that if the man threw the ball faster he would go faster in the opposite direction. If the man threw the ball at 25 m/s, his speed would be Vm = (5x25)/75 = 1.67 m/s. We can also sense that if the man threw a heavier ball (or technically a ball with more mass), he could project himself yet faster. Say the ball was 10 kg instead of 5 kg, and he threw it at a speed of 25 m/s, then:

Mass of Man X Speed of Man = Mass of ball x Speed of ball, or 75 kg  x  Vm = 10 kg x 25 m/s. Vm would now calculate to 3.3 m/s.

What else can the man do to move faster? He can reduce his own weight...hypothetically. Say in the last example the man only weighed 50 kg, his speed would then increase to 5 m/s.

In a nutshell this is how rockets operate. They 'throw' propellant in one direction (like the ball) and the remaining rocket moves in the other direction (like the man).  To go faster they try to expel as much propellant mass as fast as they can. In the example given unfortunately the payload is not the ball, it is the man. The ball was the propellant. To get the man to orbit the Earth while in space he needs not a speed of 5 m/s but more like 7500 m/s. To be launched from Earth we need to factor in gravity and air resistance and that will bring the equivalent required speed to about 10 km/s. For our 75 kg man that would require him to throw a 7.5 ton ball at 100 m/s. If balls were being thrown continuously at fixed intervals, we get a sense that that over time we will get faster and faster; starting slow and heavy, but getting lighter and faster as we go along. This process can be envisioned via a hypothetical 'Rifleman Astronaut' wherein an astronaut continuously fires rounds of ammunition to gain ever increasing speed in the opposite direction.

FIG 2.1.b - An illustration of conservation of momentum with a man throwing a ball and being projected in the opposite direction

FIG 2.1.c - Another illustration of conservation of momentum using a hypothetical 'Rifleman Astronaut' who propels himself in space by firing an automatic weapon. As his ammunition or propellant gets used up, his 'rocket' gets lighter and he moves faster and faster.

The device used to expel the propellant is the rocket engine. At liftoff the rocket boosters of the space shuttle consumed 11,000 pounds of fuel per sec. That's two million times the rate at which the fuel is burned by the average family car.¹³ To counter the effects of gravity the rocket has to continuously expel sufficient fuel or else it will fall back to Earth, or in other words there must be enough upward thrust to counter the weight of the rocket. The issue of thrust is a big one, but once in space it doesn't matter as much.

A rocket essentially tries to achieve a certain velocity for its payload. Once in space, unless an external force acts an object at a certain velocity will keep going at that velocity forever. Keeping this in mind we can now see what Tsialkovsky's Rocket Equation means:

ΔV = Ve ln (Mo/Mf)

Where ΔV is the change in the Payload's velocity, Ve is the exhaust velocity of the propellant, Mo is the total mass of the rocket system at start, Mf is the final mass of the rocket (the payload). ln is the natural logarithm.

In other words consider we start with a rocket in space with an initial mass Mo (propellant + payload), and after consuming the propellant we are left with a final mass of Mf (the payload). Also say the exhaust speed of the propellant is Ve (in the opposite direction of payload travel). Then the difference from the initial speed of Mo to the final speed of Mf is ΔV, and it is given by :

Ve ln (Mo/Mf).

The exhaust velocity Ve for all chemical rockets presently is between 2.5 - 4 km/s.

For e.g. say your rocket has a Ve of 3 km/s and your rocket is in LEO orbiting Earth at 7.8 km/s. It now wishes to leave Earth orbit for interplanetary travel. To leave Earth's gravity it needs a velocity of 11.2 km/s (Earth's escape velocity). So the needed ΔV is 11.2 - 7.8 = 3.4 km/s. Now say your final spacecraft (the payload) has a mass of 500 kg. How much propellant would the rocket need to leave LEO?

So ΔV = Ve ln (Mo/Mf) or 3.4 = 3 ln (Mo/500) or Mo=1553 kg

The fuel then is Mo - Mf = 1553 - 500 = 1053 kg. Thus a payload of 500 kg theoretically needs 1053 kg of fuel to get out of LEO and leave Earth. If we double the payload we need to double the fuel requirements. However if we double the ΔV, to 6.8 km/s, and substitute in the Rocket Equation we see:

6.8 = 3 ln (Mo/500) solving for Mo, we get 4823 kg, or a propellant requirement of 4323 kg, which is over 4 times what we previously needed.

The 'tyranny of the rocket equation '¹⁴ is based on the above observation, which is that as we want more ΔV, the propellant requirements increase exponentially.

Thus from the Rocket Equation, to obtain a requisite ΔV, we can play around with only 2 variables. We can try and improve the Ve through better propellants and engine design, or we can reduce the payload weight. The best Ve's in the industry are 3 - 4 km/s for chemical rockets and chemical propellants are the only propellants that can provide the requisite thrust to lift the massive rockets off ground. While Mf has been referred to as the payload all of it is not useful payload. It includes a lot of unnecessary things like the tank shells, the rocket covering, the fairings and the rocket engine itself. The effective payload mass is even less - which includes the experiments, the passengers and their life support systems.

FIG 2.1.d - The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation. Shown here is the exponential rise in the theoretical minimum launch weight needed for increasing values of ΔV

Liftoff from Earth adds more dimensions to this already difficult problem. To orbit Earth in LEO a speed of 7.8 km/s is needed to keep the satellite from falling back to the surface. The effective ΔV to get from ground to orbit is however about 10 km/s. This is because Tsialkovsky's equation is for ideal conditions  and considers no gravity, no drag.

Under these circumstances, to get the 500 kg payload to orbit Earth in LEO we now need, at launch, a rocket weighing:

ΔV = Ve ln (Mo/Mf) or 10 = 3 ln (Mo/500) or Mo=14,016 kg

So theoretically we need a minimum 14 ton rocket to put up a paltry 500 kg. One can now appreciate how difficult it starts to get if we want more payload. Also note that as the rocket gets bigger so will its non useful empty mass. Rocket engines can weigh up to 5 tons by themselves. Sputnik 2 which put Laika in orbit had an LEO payload of 500 kg and weighed 267 tons at liftoff.

Further complications exist. To minimize the effect of gravity on fuel consumption we would ideally like to get the rocket out