Engineer John Houbolt: The masked man helps America win the Moon race

If not for the work of a character named John Houbolt, the United States could never bring people to the Moon. This silent hero just died on April 15 at age 95 because of illness.

John Houbolt was the one who succeeded in "selling" to the country's space program leaders a plan called The Moon Orbital Meeting (LOR) , which led to 6 successful meetings. of Apollo ships on "Hang's house" in the late 1960s and early 70s.

The only way to the Moon

Before Houbolt began to promote LOR, consider it the only path to the Moon, leading rocket scientists from the US Aerospace Agency (NASA), including the highly charismatic Wernher. von Braun, envisioned the operation to be very similar to a science fiction story.

In the original plan, they calculated that they would launch a lot of Saturn V missiles, the largest US missile at the time, carrying components onto Earth's orbit and assembling spacecraft to reach the Moon. up there. Another idea is to build a giant rocket, twice as big as Saturn V (called Nova), to fly straight to the Moon, landing by turning the missile head and landing down. After the mission is completed, the missile will fire and return to Earth in the same way it went to the Moon.

"They intended to launch a spaceship the size of an Atlas 30 meter long rocket on the Moon without any help and try to turn its head to land," Houbolt recounted in an interview. with NASA in 2008 - "I said it couldn't be done".

By the time the 60s and 70s, Houbolt was studying the approach and incorporation in space to serve the construction of space stations. He was also an assistant in charge of the Motion Unit at NASA's Langley Research Center, and he considered another approach to reach the Moon, which is LOR.

Resilient warrior

Instead of flying straight from the Earth to the Moon, LOR proposed launching a spacecraft to orbit the Moon orbit and use special landing modules. After completing the mission, the module will fly back into space and meet the spacecraft on the Moon's orbit to return to Earth. "I said that you have to add a space-meeting activity to your thoughts, to simplify the task and manage the energy better" - Houbolt said.

Despite being supported by several LORs, Houbolt still faces considerable opposition from members of NASA. In a letter to a NASA director, Houbolt calls himself "a lost voice in the wild" . "It turned out to be a two-and-a-half-year war just to convince people, because they won't listen," Houbolt recalls.

Houbolt dared to take bold steps and go through the usual process of sending a private letter to an upcoming NASA director to present his ideas.

Houbolt engineer said that the LOR is the only way to quickly bring people to the Moon

"Do we want to go to the Moon?" Houbolt asked in the letter - "Why is a less expensive program . left behind. I fully realize that contacting him in this way is unorthodox, but the problems is being considered extremely important to us, to the extent that it is difficult to relate in the usual way ".

It is known that Houbolt is not the father of the LOR idea, it actually has its roots in 1916. But if Houbolt's lack of persistent support for his persistence, especially his persuasive effort has been pleasing. Von Braun and the White House's famous "solid" adviser Jerome Wiesner, astronaut Neil Armstrong will be unable to reach the Moon.

The biggest reward

"Whether NASA's choice of LOR idea has been implemented in the summer of 1962 or later, Houbolt's research, effort and willpower still play a very important role" - historian James Hansen wrote in a book about Houbolt launched in 1995.

George Low, Director of NASA at the time of the Lunar landings, also suggested that Houbolt had a great impact on the program."If LOR is not selected, the Apollo program may have failed," Low said, adding - "Without Houbolt's persistence in attracting the attention of policymakers. by NASA, the agency may not have chosen LOR ".

"When the landing operation was done and the ship hit the ground . we all stood up and started to clap" - Houbolt recalled in an interview with NASA - " Von Braun was Come stand in front of me, give me a sign and say, "Thank you, John." That's one of the biggest rewards I've ever received. "