Let us return to an era where men were men, women were women, and steely-eyed missile men were steely-eyed missile men.
Back in the early ‘60s, JFK said, “Go to the Moon.” Before humans could land on the Moon, of course, they needed to know WHERE they could land. So NASA decided to build three types of spacecraft to photograph the moon. The Ranger series engaged in a series of kamikaze dives, swooping in at the Moon and transmitting photos until impact. Surveyor would soft-land at proposed manned sites.
But NASA needed something that would fly around the moon for a long period, and send sufficient photos back to map the Moon’s surface. A Lunar Orbiter.
Boeing was awarded the contract in 1964. The Lunar Orbiter vehicles were designed and built at the Kent Space Center, where I currently work. They were about three-quarters the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, and carried a camera made by Kodak.
Boeing delivered eight vehicles to NASA, five were launched and were totally successful. 99% of the Moon’s surface was mapped, with resolution as fine as one meter. Even today, that’s pretty good.
The first vehicle was launched in August 1966, and for a week and half, it mapped the moon. Why so short a mission? Because used up its entire roll of film. Literally...no digital imaging, here. Two cameras, both with film cartridges. The film was developed onboard, then optically scanned and sent digitally back to Earth.
One day, though, a Boeing engineer noted an interesting circumstance. LO-1’s upcoming orbit path would bring the Earth directly above the Moon’s horizon. A real opportunity for a spectacular photo.
NASA said no. They had good reasons. Only so much film was carried by the spacecraft…any non-mapping photos taken would leave a gap in coverage. Besides, the attitude profile for that orbit was already defined. Changing it might lead to mistakes. The Orbiter computer had memory measured in Bytes (Not Gigabytes, not Megabytes, not Kilobytes, BYTES) and if it messed up…the bird would tumble. Not only would it not take pictures, its high-rate antenna would no longer point at the Earth so they couldn't talk to it.
Worse, the Orbiter's solar arrays were not articulated...that is, they weren't installed on booms that could be rotated or angled to point at the sun. They were fixed to the body, and if the body no longer could point at the Sun.... well, the batteries would die, and that would be the end of the mission.
The data tag on the vehicle might say “Boeing,” but the big painted logo (and, effectively, the title) was owned by NASA. Word came down: No off-schedule photographs.
But…the Boeing engineers involved were pretty confident. The Boeing night shift manager wanted to try it. The Boeing flight dynamicist, Ted Hanson, repeatedly confirmed the orbital geometry, both by hand and with slide rule. They only had a short window to get the picture they wanted…and that window was approaching quickly. He and the manager, Dale Shellhorn, were convinced it would work.
The Boeing manager gave the go-ahead despite NASA’s refusal. The commands went out, the vehicle responded, and did SOMETHING.
Did it get the right picture? Who knew?…it would take hours to develop the film on the spacecraft and downlink the scan to Earth. But communications continued; there was a gap in mapping coverage but they at least retained command of the bird.
NASA was furious. They demanded Shellhorn be fired immediately.
But in the meantime, the photo was received and reassembled. NASA Public Relations saw it, and plastered it around the world:
The first photo ever taken of the Earth, with another major space body in the foreground.
Shellhorn kept his job.
Two years later, the Apollo 8 astronauts duplicated the shot, with a hand-held camera and without the “venetian blind” artifacts of the Orbiter photo.
But Boeing was first…..
Ron Wanttaja
