Von Braun and the Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous Decision: Finding a Way to Go to the Moon

摘要

Wernher von Braun's historic talk at Huntsville on 7 June 1962, when he endorsed "lunar-orbit rendezvous" (LOR) as the mode for landing on the Moon, has long been seen as one of the most critical dates in the Apollo program. It effectively ended a months-long, divisive debate inside NASA over LOR versus "earth-orbit rendezvous" (EOR) versus "direct ascent" (a single huge rocket to launch a lander directly at the Moon, with no rendezvous). Von Braun and his Marshall Space Flight Center had a long-standing commitment to EOR. While historians have long emphasized the significance of this surprise endorsement of LOR, there has been little analysis of how and when he arrived at that decision. This chapter will discuss the process by which von Braun finally picked LOR in the spring of 1962 and attempts to pinpoint the date of that decision. But it also examines his long prehistory of Moon proposals, beginning in public with his October 1952 Collier's articles. In 1961, after President Kennedy's endorse- ment of the Apollo landing goal, he leaned toward EOR primarily because he did not want to build the huge launch vehicle required for direct ascent. He only gradually and somewhat reluctantly changed his mind. How that came about will be the fundamental substance of this chapter. A list of acronyms/abbreviations used in this paper and in the endnote section is given at the end of the chapter to help the reader.