ptalk > Shoot the Moon¹

Shoot the Moon¹

Dr. John C. Houbolt

I’m travelling today to Champaign, Illinois to the University to participate in a celebration of my father-in-law, Dr. John C. Houbolt, who is donating his papers to the university library. John (whose pronounces his last name as if it rhymes with cobalt, despite what the university site says) is an unassuming man, his name is not the first that comes to mind when thinking about the moon landing², but he was actually a key figure in our getting there.

LOR Sketch

Dr. Houbolt did not invent the concept of “Lunar Orbit Rendezvous”³, but he was an avid mathematician, and in researching and teaching himself orbital mechanics (in order to teach others, including the astronauts), he realized that the concept of orbital rendezvous (Earth or Lunar) had far-reaching ramifications in simplifying the task and reducing the cost of getting to the moon. He felt this idea was so important that it became his mission to champion the idea.

John F. Kennedy

Dr. Houbolt promoted the concept of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous by demonstrating the weight and cost savings that would permit using existing booster technology, as opposed to the “direct ascent”⁴ method which relied on developing new boosters, or the Earth Orbit Rendezvous⁵, which required twice as many conventional boosters. Although he was mathematically sure his plan was the best, bureaucracy, politics, and fear (of losing the astronauts should the rendezvous in lunar orbit fail) hindered his proposal.

First Step

Eventually Dr. Houbolt had to resort to going around the chain-of-command to get his point across. Coincidentally, his actions occurred just as President Kennedy set the challenge to America to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Through Dr. Houbolt’s persistence, the bureaucracy was finally turned in the right direction, and at 16:17EDT on 20 July 1969, mankind first set foot on the Moon, using Houbolt’s Lunar Orbit Rendezvous plan.⁶

While John’s promotion of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous is perhaps his most well-known accomplishment, his career as Chief Aeronautical Scientist at NASA was long and productive. We have been told by the University, that his papers represent the foremost modern historical collection of their library.