“ONE SMALL STEP FOR THE EMPIRE!” - ENGLISHMEN ON THE MOON BY 1971
By 1960, Britain’s influence on the world stage was waning, however desperate it was to prove otherwise, and it had now come to rest under the shadow of the largest superpower in the west, the US.
At this time, the space race was now in full swing, with manned space programmes underway for both the US and USSR, these being the Mercury and Vostok programmes respectively. One may naturally assume that Britain was much too disadvantaged at the time to even dream of meeting and outdoing the programmes of the other two superpowers.
Post-War, Britain believed that the air force had won the war (a reasonable assumption, given that Germany was now completely level as a result), and began to devote large amounts of money towards building up a strong air force in lieu of the deterioration of relations with the USSR, with projects like the V-Bombers made for this purpose. Another of these projects, made to keep up with the US’ developments in the Ballistic Missile sector, began development, this being the Ill-fated Blue Streak ICBM, developed by De havilland.
Ultimately, Blue Streak was a failure, being hindered by a string of governments that saw no need for it and were more obliged by the previous cabinet to continue it, a treasury that refused to pay for it on a regular basis, and being made redundant as soon as it was accepted into service. At last, blue streak was canceled in April 1960, much to the chagrin of all those who had worked on it, however, prior to its cancellation, it had been paraded to the public on several occasions, and post-cancelation, many scientists and engineers considered if it could be turned into a space vehicle.
ENTER THE BIS
The British Interplanetary Society (hereafter BIS) had long advocated for british spaceflight since 1933, creating various proposals that could be made cheaply and efficiently, such as a manned V2 in 1946, that was sent to the Ministry of Supply, however the document was politely filed away deep in its archives and ignored, what with Britain being destitute at the time.
However, with rationing gone, and Britain beginning to recover from the War, by 1960, the opportunity for Britain to step up to the Space Age was beginning to dawn upon the Society.
Enter P.A.E Stewart. Stewart was a fellow of the BIS and member of the Astronautics Section and Advanced Projects Group at Hawker Siddeley Aviation. He presented a paper on September 17, 1960, that was published in the society’s Journal the following year. The paper detailed how Britain could place a man on the moon by 1973, and make the most of his time there.
THE DETAILS
The proposal begins by detailing the nature of the lunar terrain, and how this could affect the selection of a potential landing site. He suggests that the nature of the terrain itself would cause the nature of the mission to vary, with some requiring 100 mile operating radii, and others a 300 mile operating radius. He posits that for the selection of his landing site, he considered other criterions, such as:
“(A) For a working expedition, some degree of movement is required and therefore due to its rough terrain, the southern hemisphere has been discarded.
(B) In order to allow tolerable working conditions, the base should not lie in a high temperature zone, but in one of the cooler latitudes. This condition is fulfilled in the choice of Sinus Roris, Harpalus, and northern Mare Imbrium*.
(C) Lunalogical (geological equivalent) factors suggest that the Mare Imbrium was the scene of one of the best impacts in Lunar history, this in fact, caused the formation of the mare.”
Map of the projected Exploration area to be covered and explored by the manned team. Approximately 360 square miles
By following these factors, Stewart was able to narrow down the potential site to an approximately 360 square-mile are in the vicinity of the Piazzi Smyth crater, basing this off of “a review of the accessible surface features”, although he did concede that “the landing site itself will be the subject of a closer reconnaissance by satellite vehicles”.
Stewart then detailed the various surface features that would make the Mare Imbrium area a prime geological site for study: features like Plato Crater, the Lunar Alps, Cassini Crater, the Alpine Valley, and Mons Piton and Mons Pico are listed as “exploration objectives”, with the Aristullus and Archimedes craters being described as particularly good examples for study.
In addition, he posits that the crater Timocharis, located at 26.7°N 13.1°W (then perceived to be a volcano, due to the central peak resembling the central vent), to be a “feature worthy of study”, however he acknowledges that this could likely only be explored if “time permits” and could not be considered a prime objective
HOW THOUGH?
Amazingly, Stewart actually gave consideration as to how an integrated space programme could realistically place an englishman on the moon to meet the specifications of the mission, while his predecessors in the 50s essentially just thought of the craft, rather than the development required to get it there in the first place.
In the paper, Stewart discusses this in the segment titled “THE NEED FOR AN INTEGRATED SPACE PROGRAMME”, stating that the basic aim of the programme should be to land enough equipment on the surface to carry out an expedition analogous to prior Trans-Antarctic expeditions, citing the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by Dr. Fuchs two years earlier.
He even includes a full timetable of how the development of the necessary equipment, testing and crew training would go to facilitate a lunar landing by the start of the following decade, being remarkably similar to the eventually completed timeline of the actual Apollo Programme.
The proposed schedule for the programme, beginning in 1960 and running up to a manned Lunar expedition over a period of 2 months and 10 days
Furthermore, under the section “CREW SELECTION AND TRAINING” he posits the requirements that the recruited astronauts would have to fit to be able to participate in the mission. He based these off of the paper presented by Brigadier General Flickinger (who would go on to provide recommendations on the test screenings for astronauts in the Gemini Programme) at the 10th International Astronautical Federation Congress, held in London on the 5th August in 1959. The requirements Stewart made are as follows:
“(1) High biological efficiency of the body with no latent defects
(2) High intelligence
(3) A stable and compatible psychological personality (required for Stewart’s months long expedition)
(4) Tolerance of isolation and Agoraphobia (or intolerance of open spaces)
(5) Physical and Psychological endurance
(6) Resourcefulness and inventiveness
He also states that the astronauts once selected would be trained in “hostile environments”. These hostile environments, Stewart writes, would be “Underwater Swimming, climbing, cave exploration, and polar travel”. The examples he gives seem eerily similar to how NASA trains their astronauts, especially the “underwater swimming” although whether he means something like Neutral Buoyancy training, or just swimming in the ocean, is up for debate.
These would be followed up by experience (presumably space-suited) in vacuum chambers, and for field practice at a desert site, fully suited, with full equipment, including a full-size albeit modified Surface Exploration Vehicle, modified with beefier motors to reflect the higher terrestrial gravity.
It is strange to note however, that the astronauts would not even enter space until the programme's final stages of development, making orbital flights to LEO, and making shorter lunar forrays “at selected points on the expedition route to prove the landing and return capabilities”.
THE NEED FOR MACHINES
During the prior decade, electronics were still extremely rudimentary when compared to their apollo counterparts. For example, the flight computer wasn’t necessarily flying with the plane, or when it was it was a slide rule in the pilots hands. By the turn of the decade into 1960, things had changed, electronics had advanced leaps and bounds. The microchip had been invented, integrated circuits had come about, allowing the prior idea that there had to be a man supervising the machine at all times, could be dropped, allowing to make much smaller, and most importantly autonomous, machines.
Naturally, Stewart seized upon these developments, and implemented the latest ideas for unmanned spaceflight into his proposal, stating that “some types of information are better obtained by automatic probes than by humans, and vice versa”.
Stewart suggested that the period from 1960-1965 would be used to determine the proper role and integration of automatic tele-controlled spacecraft. In a very forward-thinking statement, he suggests that “the expedition will be analysed by operational research and may even be simulated by computers on ‘games theory’". Deciphering this, he implies that the expedition would first be evaluated using information already at hand and information obtained from the Automatic Probes, followed by simulating the expedition on a computer to determine if anything must be changed. Visionary stuff, considering that a similar system was used by MIT during pre-flight testing of the Apollo Programme’s DSKY computer.
He also hypothesised that the Manned landings would naturally be preceded by unmanned payloads to be soft-landed on the moon. These would be a series of different kinds of probes, beginning with what he describes as similar to the “ranger” hard impact probes proposed for the then in development Ranger programme by NASA, apparently able to survive impacts of 1000 G at 300 mph via usage of crushable honeycomb structures.
These were to be followed by soft-landed payloads, which he compares to the “Surveyor" series of probes, or the “Migrant” probe proposed by the BIS in the late 50s. These he says will “carry out point investigations of the lunar surface in detail”, likely in a similar role to the “Luna” series of probes at the turn of the decade.
The design Stewart proposed for the larger, soft-landed probes
The picture above demonstrates the sort of probe Stewart had in mind. It is somewhat large for an automatic probe, being 6 ft in diameter, and 15 ft tall (with the landing legs fully retracted). For the landing, the craft was to descend under braking by 4 motors powered by Hydrazine Hydrate and High Test Peroxide.
The launch profile for the probe is as one would expect for an automatic lunar probe, although with one small difference in that the probe is mounted upside down on top of the third stage. This is done to save fuel for the primary braking motors for the landing, so instead of using them, a Course-Correction package is placed on top of the lander, and is used for mid-course corrections before being jettisoned prior to landing.
Interestingly, determining the probes position is done much differently than how the Surveyor or Ranger programmes. Rather than use ground-based Tracking of the spacecraft, or simply using radar or something similar, Stewart suggested that the probe could check its position by Ground tracking… from the moon.
He posits that the probe could determine its position in Lunar orbit, or on its descent via a series of hard-impacted radio beacons, allowing the craft to check how close or how far it is from the beacons. He even suggests that the beacons that either land away from the designated site, or are faulty could simply be switched off or be destroyed (how they’d destroy a probe 300,000 miles away on the moon is unknown).
Looking past his grandiose schemes he posits that the first satellites that would be placed in earth orbit would be for communications, and general scientific research.Finally, he takes a step back and enthusiastically declares that just a few years in the future “an attempt may be made to soft-land a payload of 50lbs” on the lunar surface, a statement that would become outdated in just 5 years when Luna 9 landed a payload of 218 lbs, over quadruple Stewart’s estimation.
In addition, he suggests that the successful proving of the launch vehicle (likely a derivative of the Blue Streak booster, in a similar configuration to the Black Prince design), he suggests that High-Energy stages using HydroLox could be developed, possibly increasing its Low Earth Orbit Payload to 2,500 lbs (1133 kg). Stewart uses this statistic to hint that this may cause a Manned capsule to be of interest to the R.A.F.
The end.. For now
Unfortunately, due to the sheer length of the original article, and the nature of my analysis, it is doubtful that you, dear reader, would be willing to sit for at least an hour reading 10000+ words about how an Englishman cooked up an entire space programme, but no one came to eat.
As a result, I shall be splitting this article into multiple parts, to include a full analysis of the proposal in its entirety, and then a “what-if?” article to cap it off.
I thank you for reading, and hope you read the other articles to come, see you again soon!
REFERENCES
Surface Exploration Of the Moon, Peter A.E Stewart. pp, 1-5
https://dl.iafastro.directory/event/IAC-1959/paper/IAF-59-53/ - Personnel Selection and Training for Spaceflight, Don Flickinger - USAF
