Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Somewhere I think I once did a blog review of Robert Altman's Countdown. I know I've mentioned it several times, including during my review of The Martian. It's a 1968 movie with Robert Duvall and James Caan about a juryrigged mission to put an American on the Moon, using a mixture of Apollo and Gemini parts -- because the Russians were going and the full Apollo wasn't ready.

I hadn't heard of it until just a few years ago when it was on Turner Classic Movies. Pristine print in letterbox widescreen. It is by no means a great space movie -- to me it is memorable because it was a big studio production with Altman at the helm which had the misfortune to come out the same year as Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Oops.

In looking it up when I did The Martian review, I was reminded that it was based on a novel. So... off to Amazon, where I found a used copy for a couple of dollars. And it came the other day and I read it Monday and Tuesday night.

The Pilgrim Project / Hank Searls. 1964.
used via Amazon.com, paperback, $3.00 + $3.99 S+H.

Opening the package took me right back to my early SF reading. Books tended to be shorter -- this paperback was some 200 pages, with a small heavy font with very small margins and gutters. The three cut edges of the paper had been dyed a deep purple or burgundy -- the dye spreading onto the pages just a little bit. The cover art, as you can see, very stylistic and simple.

One of my favorite books in junior high school was Martin Caidin's Marooned, later made into a lackluster film much like Countdown. But Marooned comes in two versions -- the one I read was Apollo/Skylab. I finally tracked down a copy of the 1964 Mercury/Gemini version and am partway through it. (My used copy is slightly mildewed and so I can't read it in very long stretches -- one area that e-books have solved.) Marooned is much the better story, and the 1964 version is contemporary with The Pilgrim Project

This is cheap and dirty spacecraft design, a Just-in-Case Apollo isn't ready when the Russians try for the Moon. A Saturn I launch vehicle, with a Centaur third stage. A one-man Mercury capsule with extra supplies, using a Polaris solid rocket engine to get close to the surface and then a liquid fuel engine for maneuvering and landing. No launch vehicle. You're stranded on the Moon... and have to find the shelter sent up the week before and use that until Apollo is ready and you can hitch a ride on a LEM to go home. Huh. Doesn't this sound a lot like the plot of The Martian, except doing it deliberately?

This book doesn't make sense at first -- this isn't the NASA we grew up with -- until you understand the Cold War subplots between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Space Race wasn't just about firsts -- it was also about controlling the high ground. There really were fears that the Moon could be militarized and by the Russians if we didn't get there first!

“I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon” -- Lyndon B. Johnson

And as NASA secrets go, Pilgrim makes a lot more sense as a positive thing than the conspiracy of Capricorn One when they realized their environmental equipment couldn't make it to Mars and back -- and they had to fake the Mars landing so as not to kill O.J. Simpson.

Like Capricorn One, there is a lot of lying going on. Including an abort of a manned Apollo mission for really poor reasons.

What is more unbelievable is the sort of standard issue 1950s/1960s matter of alcoholics, spies and interagency and interservice rivalries. The flight surgeon is against the whole project and behaves unprofessionally and -- in the Cold War spirit of the story -- treasonously. My take away is that Searls is a competent technical writer and researcher -- the basic parts and engineering are there. I read up on all this stuff in every book I could find in our school and public libraries when I was a kid. Today, you could research all this stuff on Wikipedia and make it sound convincing.

But technical accuracy does not necessarily a great plot make.

In the movie they used a Gemini capsule as a one-seater, so there'd be more room. But in the book, it's a Mercury capsule. Mainly for weight. But one of the things I forgot about Mercury was the periscope. If you're trying to land on the Moon and you're lying on your back facing up, it sure would be nice to see the surface. In the LEM, you're standing and looking through forward and downward canted windows.

They used the "little Saturn" rocket for launching, just as they did to get the Apollo capsules up for Earth orbit work in Apollo 7 and the three Skylab Apollo missions. They used Launch Complex 37, not the more famous Saturn V Launch Complex 39. As they start talking about the firing of the engines, I suddenly had to remember that the Saturn IB first stage did NOT have five engines like its big brother the Saturn V Moon rocket, but eight. Off to Wikipedia where I realized they were talking about the original Saturn I, not the IB: S-I first stage with 8 H-1 engines, burning RP1 kerosene and LOX, S-IV second stage with 6 RL10 engines, burning LH2 and LOX. And the never-flown S-V (Centaur-C) third stage, with 2 RL10 engines. The Saturn I flew some of the early unmanned boilerplate Apollo capsules, such as the one in Grand Rapids MI. (grin) The Saturn IB didn't fly until 1966, with an upgraded S-IB first stage, still with 8 H-1 engines, but the second stage was the S-IVB third stage workhorse of the Saturn V rocket, with its single J-2 engine, also used in the Saturn V's second stage.

Pretty clever to manhandle the mass around to make the Saturn I a manned Moon rocket.

Technical details are easy. People are hard, especially when we all know who the Mercury Seven are. Glenn is mentioned by name, as having left the program to run for the Senate. One of the main characters is the colonel -- he talks a lot about the commander. I'm assuming the latter is Shepherd, but is the colonel Grissom? That's who I assumed in my mind the whole time. It's an almost clever way to deal with NOT inventing extra original Mercury astronauts, which is the usual conceit. It's like 555- phone numbers and the endless number of made up large airlines in stories. It's one of the reasons it's easy to write in the 29th century -- or secret kingdoms. (grin)

And then on the top of page 170 I was suddenly thrown out of the story because one of their markers was Shiaperelli crater. What, wait? Sure enough, I was right and there is a Schiaparelli crater on the Moon AND one on Mars. Now I REALLY am wondering if Andy Weir ever read The Pilgrim Project when he wrote The Martian.

If I was a few years older, I probably would've found The Pilgrim Project on my own in the mid-60s and I would've liked it okay. Today, I am really glad to have found a copy and see where the movie came from. Has some good technical stuff, but the story... seems desperately far fetched today. For my money, Marooned is far superior and the 1981 Shuttle Down by Lee Correy is a decent more modern technical and engineering romp -- but the latter also suffers from some poor writing in some places.

RECOMMENDED for its historical value

As a footnote, I should add that McDonnell-Douglas, the manufacturer of the Gemini space capsule, really was investigating post-Gemini missions and adaptations, including a 12-man Big Gemini orbital resupply ship and:

A range of applications were considered for Advanced Gemini missions, including military flights, space station crew and logistics delivery, and lunar flights. The Lunar proposals ranged from reusing the docking systems developed for the Agena Target Vehicle on more powerful upper stages such as the Centaur, which could propel the spacecraft to the Moon, to complete modifications of the Gemini to enable it to land on the lunar surface. Its applications would have ranged from manned lunar flybys before Apollo was ready, to providing emergency shelters or rescue for stranded Apollo crews, or even replacing the Apollo program.

It's like the paper I discovered last year or so about the concept of using an Apollo capsule for Mars and Venus manned flyby missions!

In other words, there were a lot of hairbrained schemes for dangerous manned flight missions talked about, so that part of the story isn't completely bonkers.

Dr. Phil

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Crossposted on LiveJournal

One Last Step For A Man

Over the weekend I was surprised to hear that Neil Armstrong had died. I knew he'd had a heart attack or heart incident the other week, but it sounded like they'd caught it in time.

Most of the missile booster era astronauts were military test pilots. Neil was a NASA civilian astronaut. There were always people who thought he'd gone that route to be politic. He was, after all, a naval aviator in the Korean War and resigned his commission around 1960. But I always thought that he didn't want to serve two masters -- he joined NASA to be an engineer and test pilot.

I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow.

Others carped about the scraps that he got into, but hell, test flights and space missions are dangerous, and he did walk away from those flights.

I thought he'd earned his astronaut wings on the X-15. But in his seven flights on two of the three X-15s he reached only some 39 miles (!) in altitude and just shy of 4000 mph. On one of those flights the X-15 went squirrelly on him and he had to regain control.


Neil Armstrong and X-15 56-6670 (I think).

From the desert dry lake beds, Neil went into the second class of NASA astronauts and flew on Gemini VIII with Dave Scott. This was the second attempt to dock with an Agena target vehicle after Gemini VI's Atlas-Agena exploded during launch.

Neil Armstrong in Gemini VIII.

The docking was successful, but a stuck thruster on the Gemini forced a separation and an early emergency landing.

Agena docking vehicle seen from Gemini VIII.

During the ramp up to the Apollo moon landing missions, Neil had to fly the infamous LLTV -- Lunar Lander Training Vehicle -- a nasty open frame that combined a lunar module descent engine with a vertical jet designed to cancel 5/6ths of the LLTV's weight.

Neil Armstrong and the sinister looking LLTV.

Another control problem and with seconds to spare, Neil ejected safely.

The LLTV crapping out. This is test flight.

History Channel was running the 2009 TV movie Moonshot today. First man on the moon. What I loved about Neil Armstrong is that he`was there for the mission -- had no use for the fame. With his status, he was never going to fly in space again and he "retired" to teaching engineering.

So I recognize his achievements and contributions, as I think he'd want. And as I'll point out on Friday (DW), when you look up at the Moon sometime, his boot prints will be there for a long time.

There Was A Time...

... when news organizations would have obits already set for famous people. I suppose we can be grateful that the person typing this breaking news story on the web didn't pick Lance Armstrong's name. But really.

Of course, not everyone got the Right Stuff memo.

Dr. Phil

Rocket Science Sighted On This Side Of The Pond

The drought is over. (DW) When the Rocket Science anthology launched in April at Eastercon in the U.K., they ran through the first print run and now with a second print run delivered, editor Ian Sales finally was able to ship contributor copies to those who weren't at the two launch events. Ian's also put up a link to reviews.


Three copies was just stiff enough that they didn't try to stuff it in the P.O. Box, but gave me a key to one of the lockers. So they all arrived in perfect shape. (grin)

Of course part of my interest is my story The New Tenant. But it's nice to see an anthology of near term space SF stories. One of the one's I read is an interesting alternate history piece with a hoax lunar landing -- by the Soviet Union.

You can order through Mutation Press -- U.S. delivery is £8.99 + £5 discounted airmail shipping ($14.00 + $7.30 approx, depending on currency). Both Amazon and Amazon (UK) have it listed, but the U.S. site says Out of Print--Limited Availability and the U.K. site has it out of stock.

There will be a Kindle version -- I'll pass on the word when it gets out.

Dr. Phil

An Anthology Sale to the U.K.

In all the work and hubbub of this month, I'd mentioned how I'd written one last new story at the last minute for an anthology -- and then later mentioned that it'd sold. Hell, I've even been paid. Now that I've had a chance to sit down for a few minutes, I can dole out more information.

"The New Tenant" by Philip Edward Kaldon to appear in Rocket Science, edited by Ian Sales and published by Mutation Press. Expected to be released in April 2012.

They have a cool graphic of the Table of Contents over on the Rocket Science News blog. It breaks the stories into locale -- "The New Tenant" is listed under LEO, Low Earth Orbit, for example, since it's set on the International Space Station at the end of its NASA service life.


I've a limited number of near-term SF stories, though of course my WOTF XXIV story "A Man in the Moon" is one, so when I ran out of stories to sub, I wrote one more over a weekend. And it sold. You never know... except if you don't submit, you can't sell. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Zero Expectations

There were two movies we wanted to see this weekend. The Debt we saw on Friday, because, well, it had Helen Mirren in it. The second, because, well, the Holland 7 makes really good popcorn. I expected this one to be awful, just a bad horror flick, but we were pleasantly surprised.

Apollo 18 [PG-13]

Holland 7 #2, 3:10pm

Of course In Real Life, Apollos 18, 19 and 20 were cancelled and their parts used for Skylab and the ASTP. The trailers looked good -- low res NASA video and film stock. Turns out that the whole movie is done conspiracy theory style with "leaked" footage a la The Blair Witch Project. But this time the footage is convincing. Of course we grew up on this stuff, peering at low res low contrast video Live From The Moon on B&W TVs, trying to see what was going on. Yet you want to see this on the big screen, even if there are only three people total in the theatre.

The movie is really Alien, minus the cat or the happy ending of either Alien or Capricorn One. (grin) But it has the look -- the right gear, the right cast -- without the high res polished look of Apollo 13. And I've seen pictures of the 1968-era Soviet lander and it was plumbing and wiring all over the place. Unflyable -- hell, you had valves to manually control. But this was 1974-ish, so they could've stolen some more LM friendly controls systems.

Okay, okay, there are a few problems with the story. There is no way to secretly launch a Saturn V rocket -- multiple STATES could feel it take off. The cover story for the launch, uh, we would remember it. Of course this movie could ignite the passions of the Moon Landing Was Faked and the There Really Was A Secret Moon Landing crowds at the same time. (conspiratorial-grin) And there's the little matter of how the footage got to Earth. Though the movie stock was said to be 10,000 feet of Kodachrome, I suspect they used something else, since the last Kodachrome lab shut down last year and they probably used something faster anyway.

You know you're in trouble when following a loud bang against the Lunar Module you look out the window and the flag is gone. Best part of this as a horror flick is that we never get a good look at the creatures.

We thought we'd go see Apollo 18 for the camp value. But despite the obvious flaws, I'm awarding this a:

(Surprisingly) Highly Recommended

Dr. Phil

STS-135 Begins... and The Beginning of the End

One of the benefits of not teaching Summer-II session is that I was able to be home at 11am and await the launch of Atlantis. All week they'd been worried that weather would be an issue -- even this morning they were figuring on only a 30% chance they could go as scheduled. Worse, with a million gawkers clogging the roads all around the Cape, if they had to scrub, NASA wasn't sure that their workers could fight the traffic home and come back the next day, so was considering a second launch window for Sunday.

But... there was a suitable weather hole opening up for around 11:30am EDT this morning and once they had a clear twenty minutes for the Shuttle runway in case of an RTLS Return To Launch Site abort, they began the final nine minutes of the count. NPR had started coverage at eleven. But I went to the living room and found TV coverage on CNN and MSNBC. I assume FoxNEWS covered it, too. But I noted that C-SPAN was not, and I found no evidence that CBS interrupted The Price is Right or the other networks. Maybe they did. But if so, they switched to live coverage at the last minute. So very unlike the Old Days of Uncle Walter or Huntley and Brinkley of CBS, NBC and ABC during the early Space Race.

This morning NPR had a piece about a man whose dad worked at Cape Canaveral -- taking his 18 month old son to witness the first launch. The man grew up to become an artist and allowed to view launches from the restricted park near the big countdown clock. Indeed, his usual haunt is to sit to the left of the flagpole. Seeing the countdown clock and the flagpole, I felt an extra attachment, knowing there was a man probably right there to the left of the flagpole, camera in hand, to witness and record and possibly later paint history.

There was a moment of drama -- actually over three minutes -- reminiscent of so many of the early space launches of my youth, as the countdown clock stopped at T-minus 31 seconds. The hold had to do with the gantry arm that caps the external fuel tank. They had to check camera 062 to verify that it was indeed retracted fully and out of the way for the launch.

Then Commander Christopher Ferguson said, "Let's light this fire one more time, Mike, and witness this great nation at its best." One last firing of the three main engines -- horribly complicated and powerful machines -- one last moment of suspense awaiting the three blazing exhausts to all settle into their full power regime. The simultaneous firing of both external solid rocket boosters, followed by the immediate leap from the launch pad. The amazing video feed from the external fuel tank, allowing us to ride up into space. A far cry from the tracking photos from the enormous telephoto lenses, followed by the networks' animation, from the 60s and 70s.

Alas, I have never seen a space launch in person. This last year of Shuttle flights, I had once considered making a trip to Florida -- there was even a SF/F con during the one launch -- but in the last year I have been dealing with a compressed nerve in my leg which has precluded airline travel. So no Mercury, Gemini, Apollo or Shuttle launches for me. The closest was seeing TWO Gemini rockets on the pads at the same time -- Gemini VI and VII -- in November of 1965 prior to their historic rendezvous missions.

It'll be a while before there are U.S. manned space launches from the Cape again. Whether we regain our will to do great space achievements in the future, well, such carping will be reserved for another post on another day.

For the moment, Godspeed Atlantis.

Dr. Phil

Twenty-Five Years Ago Today...

In January 1986 I was in grad school. Doug came by and said that the Space Shuttle had blown up. I knew there was a launch attempt that day, but this was the first word I'd heard of the Challenger Disaster. I raced over to the MTU Union and through the back door into the "rubber room" -- before the renovation, they had this dingy basement TV room with these oddly discolored plastic/foam blocks which formed "chairs". The room was packed as we watched the seventy-odd seconds of the launch over and over, interspersed with watching debris raining down into the Atlantic for what seems like forever. I'd thought maybe it'd gone up on the pad. The reality though... right on the cusp, right after "Go for throttle up" and passing through Max Q -- the maximum aerodynamic forces on the spacecraft. Clear sailing ahead, or so the crew must've thought.

Eventually the word came out about what had happened, and the stupidity which caused the tragic results. I still get mad thinking about it. And yet, it had to happen sometime. Twenty-five years of manned spaceflight and we thought we'd never lose a crew? Wasn't possible. And Challenger provides a powerful teachable moment to our young scientists and engineers.

Forty-Four Years Ago Yesterday...

In January 1967 I was in the third grade. And after a tremendously successful Gemini space program, NASA was winding up towards the first manned Apollo mission. And then the Apollo 1 (Apollo/Saturn 204) command module burned up on the pad, killing Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.

In an article on Mlive from the Grand Rapids Press on "NASA honors Grand Rapids native Roger B. Chaffee, other astronauts killed in space exploration", one of the commenters mentioned that they had been watching Time Tunnel when the announcement came. Huh -- we definitely would've been watching that. But The Time Tunnel was on ABC. I imagine that as soon as ABC News broke in, probably Jules Bergman, that we eventually switched to CBS -- and found Walter Cronkite crying on the air.

Interestingly, Jules Bergman "covered all 54 manned American space flights, from the first Mercury launching to the Challenger disaster" before he died in 1987.

Eight Years Ago Come Tuesday...

In February 2003, we were pretty much entrenched here in West Michigan. I was a year out from going to Clarion in 2004, but I'd already been submitting stories to markets for over six months. Didn't yet have a blog, but I was doing class web pages -- the memorial graphic below was one I made to add to my homepage in memoriam of what was about to happen.


Saturday's began as lazy days, lying in bed, listening to NPR Weekend Edition, when just after 9am EST, NPR reported a problem with Columbia and we jumped out to the living room TV and saw video of streaks of fireballs separating over the Texas skies as the space shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry.

As we began to understand what happened and why, the old fears about bad management reared their ugly heads. And perversely, one was amazed at the rain of debris which survived the breakup and fall from the top of the atmosphere.

Three Events, Three Eras

Three crews -- seventeen astronauts. It's a lot to commemorate. And odd that it all falls in a narrow window at the end of January and the beginning of February.

Though Challenger and Columbia were both Space Shuttles, in 1986 we'd not lost a flight crew on a mission. There was considerable finger pointing, soul searching and redesign before NASA sent another shuttle into space. In 2003, we wondered if the old NASA sloppiness of 1967 and 1986 was back. I wasn't sure we'd ever fly another shuttle mission -- and knew that was wrong on so many levels. I think NASA got too risk averse after Columbia, not wanting to lose a third shuttle over anything. And while the shuttle program is not without its flaws or its expenses, I myself would've extended the program with one or two next generation shuttles and we wouldn't be facing a loss of manned flight capacity by the end of 2011.

Good God, man, we ripped apart the Apollo program in 1967 and by 1968-69, achieved the impossible -- to send Man to the Moon and return safely.

This, then, is the time to remember the seventeen men and women -- their support crews and colleagues and families. We utter phrases like "Their deaths shall not have been in vain", but then we have to back it up. Although I marvel at and applaud all the wonderful work being done with satellites and robotic rovers and probes, and don't want to give any of that up, I also believe in a manned space program and think it essential to our very being that we keep chipping away at the boundaries of space.

And not just to honor the seventeen. Or those lost in accidents near space from other programs. But because we shouldn't give up. It's the right thing to do.

Dr. Phil

That Fabulous 60s Show

Mercury

. Gemini

. . Apollo 1 (RIP)

. . . Apollo 7

. . . . Apollo 8

. . . . .Apollo 9

. . . . . . Apollo 10

Apollo 11

Forty years ago tonight, raise a glass to commemorate Michael Collins -- the loneliest man in the universe. Riding Columbia, the Apollo 11 Command Module, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the Lunar Module Eagle to Tranquility Base and history. Charlie Duke***, surrounded by Mission Control, sitting as CapCom -- the only voice allowed to talk to the crew a quarter of a million miles away...

I was there. I was ten at the time. I was there, Walter Cronkite was there. Everyone I knew was there.

Watching Moonshot on History Channel -- a mix of actual footage and re-enactments. And some speculation, as they said, for when the cameras were not rolling.

We came in peace, for all mankind.

Dr. Phil

Odd thought I've had for a long time -- does anyone else think that Neil Armstrong looked like Dave Bowman?

*** Charlie Duke handled the landing. After a shift change, just before the moonwalk, Bruce McCandless took over as CapCom.

Every Sunday

... the Grand Rapids Press runs all the major obits of the week. For some reason the top three this Sunday got me to thinking.

The Controversial Celeb Death

Leading off was the death of David Carradine, 72. Nearly all the radio and TV pieces I ran across talked about Kung Fu. Only the out-of-town TV talked about Kill Bill. But this one will be in the tabloids for a while. Found in hotel room! Hanged! Suicide! In Bangkok! Then the details get murkier. Maybe not suicide. Maybe involving kinky behavior.

My first thought: Never, especially if you are any kind of a celebrity or role model, get yourself involved in any kind of behind closed doors activity that you would hate to be revealed in public as the first paragraph of your obituary. Just sayin'. After that, though, this is less than Earth shattering news, especially as we don't know what really was going on. Yet. Or ever.

The Interesting But...

Millvina Dean, 97, the last Titanic survivor. As much as I love the movie Titanic and the whole real story and technological issues of the RMS Titanic herself, this is but a historical footnote. Unlike the impending moment where the last two U.K. World War I vets die and Britain loses its eyewitnesses to history, Ms. Dean was a baby on 15 April 1912 -- hardly a participant or observer to disaster.

The Most Important Obit Of The Week

Paul Haney, 80. Who? Well Paul Haney went to work in 1958 as an information officer for a new government agency, NASA. By 1962 he was working at Houston's Manned Spaceflight Center and became known as "the voice of Mission Control." Yup, through many of the years of the U.S. space program, up until Apollo 9, the calm, reassuring and informative voice you heard was Paul Haney. And the style of reporting he gave the space program continued on.

This is the voice I grew up on, as I watched every Mercury, Gemini and Apollo mission. Ironically, as a "grown up", both the news media and my own work life have kept me from following every moment of the Shuttle program with as much dedication.

Mr. Haney not only witnessed history as it was being made, he announced it. Walter and all the other news commentators could report the news or write the poetry of how we felt about these amazing times, or even just weep on air with joy or sadness. But all of the networks used Mr. Haney's voice to give us the official NASA reports. It was all such a part of everything, I remember being struck twice by surprise -- once when I heard another voice announcing part of a space mission, as if there could never be but one voice of the space program, and again when one of the networks, ABC I think it was, actually captioned not as something authoritative like "The Voice of Mission Control" but someone's name followed by Mission Control.

As an interesting footnote, Googling "wikipedia paul haney" pulls up as the first Wikipedia entry, only one on The Ancient Order of Turtles.

Maybe you had to have been there...

Dr. Phil

NOTE: An unfortunate typo was fixed 6-15-09 Mon.