Lesson Learn from John C. Houbolt Whose Ideas Ridiculed by NASA Top Leaders Yet His Persistence is Key to Landing Man on The Moon

During cold war, amid pressure from Soviet's progress in space exploration race, President Kennedy vowed in front of the Congress on 25th May 1961 that America will go to the moon by the decade out. That was such a bold promise!

At that time, America already tasted success of launching satellite to orbit and received the signals back on earth as well as sending the first American to space named Shepard on 5th May 1961. But compared to Soviet's, those were just minuscule progress.

So the top engineers, scientists and leaders of NASA scramble to find solutions. That was such a gigantic 'burden' to shoulder on, to back up the President's promise. Their deliverance would decide whether it was the embarrassment or the pride of the nation. The whole world was watching.

Let's dive in. At that time, America already had rocket technology, thanks to the genius of Wernher Von Braun and his department. The improved version of the rocket had sent the first USA's satellite and man to the space. But going to the moon? It needed even gigantic rockets to do it, especially when original plan was 'leave earth, land on the moon, return' , all as one spacecraft . At that time that was the 'popular' idea, in fact, Von Braun worked with Disney to spread the ambition to land man on the moon which was a rather 'childish' idea that time, only existed in dream or fairy tale.

A lot of challenges to be addressed, but this article here just focus on one aspect, how to land the spacecraft safely to the moon once it reached its orbit and than returned back home. The problem was the big overhead payload for descending to moon and ascending back to earth. The payloads included the heat shield, parachutes, and other features only used for reentry to earth only. To support this big payload during landing and taking off the moon would mean more propellant needed and therefore adding again to the already big payload. It was quite impractical, however that was the accepted 'popular' idea that time.

This was where John C. Houbolt came into picture. He proposed the idea of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR), instead of landing the whole spacecraft, it divided itself into two main modules, the Control Service Module (CSM) used for earth re-entry and Lunar Module (LM) used to land on the moon. Once Apollo spacecraft reached moon's orbit and decided to land on the moon, LM separated from the CSM. CSM would orbit around the moon waiting for the return of the LM. Once moon exploration finished, only a part of LM would return back for rendezvous to CM, making it even lighter. This approach had save huge amount of cost and made the testing and development approach much easier. Well the idea of LOR itself was not originally from Houbolt, but he was the one passionate about it and saw the chance to promote the idea as best fit to answer the challenge. He presented this idea in front of NASA top engineers, leaders and management, and how they responded?

""Your figures lie!" shouted Max Faget. He had just seen a presentation by fellow NASA engineer John C. Houbolt, who was passionate about a cost-and time-saving plan for getting to the moon. "He's being misleading," Faget explained to the audience, which included Seamans, von Braun, and other top NASA officials. Von Braun was also dubious. "No, that's no good, he said about the scheme.'" (from book 'Destination Moon' by Richard Maurer).

Before you judge Max Faget being cocky, he was not just any ordinary engineer, he was the designer for the Mercury spacecraft, patented it and approved in 1963. He proposed a blunt-cone shape for a spacecraft to address the overheat issue upon earth re-entry. Basically the CSM module was actually 'his spacecraft'. His designed gave big contribution as well to its successors: Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle Space. Although his critics of Houbolt's idea was rather cold and harsh, he must have had his own good reason.

So, put your shoes on Houbolt? What would you do? Offended? Angry? Escalate it to social media to get sympathy, how you are victim of the cruel world? I would not be surprised if this is typical response especially with nowadays in the era when people just get offended so easily even on trivial matters and like to play being victim in social media war. We should be ashamed to be honest living in this era to have this soft and absurd mentality.

But not with Houbolt, he was just being stubborn. He clung on to his ideas and faith. The objective was crystal clear: to land man on the moon. Apart from the LOR idea, was there any other better alternative? None. But was LOR easy? No, it was extremely difficult, the main concern that made NASA nervous was the difficulty to perform rendezvous procedure, in which the CSM and LM needed to dock to each other again. To do it on earth orbit already extremely difficult, be it on moon's orbit where no margin of error allowed. We should by now appreciate and understand better why his LOR idea faced such a big opposition. Sometimes, two parties that disagree with each other was paradoxically united by common spirit. Although there was such a disagreement between Houbolt and Faget, however they were both actually having same concern, to land astronaut on the moon and bring them back safely.

Many times conflicts occurred at the heat of the moments. Guaranteed, emotion would heat up, but we should learn to control it. Lock your mouth when in anger, keep cold headed and give it sometime. Reassess again the problem with cool, calm and peaceful heart. After a while, all the concern parties study again the proposal and concerns and finally they saw it was the best alternative. This included Max Faget and Von Braun. I called this a gentlemen sparing. I admired those who put the ego aside for the common good and admit other person being right though he was strongly against of in the beginning, so hats off to Max Faget and Von Braun.

By that time, it was clear then. To land man on the moon, LOR was the best approach. But what about the difficulty to perform rendezvous? Well solve it, work together! NASA launched a series of Gemini programs, sending astronaut to space to master the docking skills. One of them was Neil Armstrong and would later to become the first man to land in the moon. To his dedication, it deserves a dedicated article, probably entire book, but not now.

So what is my take on this? When faced with cold criticism, don't get offended. Does the critics hold a valid concern? If yes, then step back, study, and reassess. Or is it just a personal rant directed towards you? Then ignore it! Promote team spirit that attack the problem not the person. At times, those person that strongly disagree with you are in facts your good friends. Vice versa, person who seem to always agree with you might just stab you on the back. It is difficult to comprehend that two person can be united without any 'conflict', after all we are all imperfect persons. When finally USA won the space race and land man on the moon and returned earth safely, Von Braun sat in front of John C. Houbolt, made an 'ok' sign and said "Thank you John!". That was his biggest reward as claimed by John C. Houbolt.

Indeed, thank you John for showing us a great example!