THE EARLY MILLER YEARS 



109 



go ahead with your engine?" Seamans answered: "We will carry out 

 the development of the Nova rapidly enough so that if the rendezvous 

 does not prove to be a satisfactory method, we can still get to the 

 Moon by the end of this decade by direct ascent. However, we think 

 we can get there a year sooner using advanced Saturn in rendezvous 

 than by direct ascent." 



On March 26, 1962, D. Brainerd Holmes, Director of Manned 

 Space Flight, testified before the committee that "It appears to be 

 logical to carry on the parallel although somewhat later Nova ap- 

 proach due both to the uncertainties as to the difficulties which may 

 be associated with rendezvous, and due to the fact that we will un- 

 doubtedly need these more powerful launch vehicles for explorations 

 deeper into space." 



Representative Richard L. Roudebush (Republican of Indiana) 

 raised the question: 



We find ourselves spending billions on a rocket, Nova, that would be old 

 fashioned, if I could use that term, by the time the engineering was completed. 



On April 4, Teague asked Milton W. Rosen, Director of Launch 

 Vehicles and Propulsion: 



Mr. Rosen, is there any wild guess what this Nova total will be? 



Rosen responded: 



I would say for vehicle development alone, assuming a 10-vehicle program, we 

 should expect a program of about $2 billion. 



Chairman Miller used this simile to describe transporting Nova: 



This is almost like rolling the Empire State Building back and forth a 

 couple of blocks. 



During the debate on the NASA authorization bill, on May 23, 1962, 

 Miller prophetically suggested that: 



In the next year or two, if we meet with success in the orbital rendezvous tech- 

 niques we will want to take another hard look at the Nova program to see if this 

 vehicle is really needed for manned space flight explorations. 



The Teague subcommittee moved ahead to prod NASA on a major 

 policy decision. It was not a case of the committee substituting its 

 judgment for that of NASA. Rather, it was a subtle type of pressure 

 on NASA to make a decision on what kind of a mission they really 

 had in mind for Nova and to relate that decision to a more precise 

 definition of how they planned to get to the Moon. In the spring of 

 1962, NASA officials still had their options open among the various 

 possibilities — direct ascent, earth orbit rendezvous or lunar orbit 

 rendezvous. 



35-120 - 79 - 10 



