Here's the Wikipedia page. It seems quite misleading, if not downright
inaccurate. Perhaps he did authorize the recategorization of the mission
to keep the option open, but he resigned before final mission approval.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8
On 2018-12-22 21:00, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Sat, 22 Dec 2018, Rand Simberg wrote:
The Wikipedia page for Apollo 8 says that Low et al eventually persuaded Webb to approve the mission, but that doesn't jibe with my previous research. I thought that he was resistant, and resigned in October (in part because he disapproved?), and then Paine approved it in November as acting administrator?
According to "Chariots for Apollo" (NASA SP-4205, the NASA History
book on the Apollo spacecraft, not the later Pellegrino&Stoff book by
the same name) and several other sources, when Webb was first
approached in August, he was shocked at first, and Phillips and Paine
couldn't get him to officially buy it. I don't recall ever seeing
mention of him changing his mind. He *did* authorize confidential
planning and quiet preparations, but not a public announcement --
officially, Apollo 8 was still an Earth-orbit flight. At the very
least, no official change would be made until after Apollo 7 (in
mid-October), which did make sense -- full success there was certainly
a prerequisite.
Webb announced his resignation in mid-September, after a meeting with
LBJ; it was effective early October, leaving Paine as acting
administrator. Nobody can say for sure whether Webb would have
approved the lunar Apollo 8 in the end. It was bold, for sure... and
the Apollo fire had hit Webb hard; people who dealt with him regularly
said he was sounding tired and had become more risk-averse. Some have
suggested that he resigned partly because he didn't want to face the
Apollo 8 decision and the possible aftermath of a failure.
(As far as I know, there is no documentation of the reason for Webb's
sudden departure; there are other theories. But even if all went
well, he wouldn't be in office for Apollo's triumph. Since LBJ wasn't
running for re-election, Webb had only a few more months as
administrator -- like any other political appointee, he would formally
resign as the new administration took office, and almost certainly a
new president would not ask him back. So it's certainly *plausible*
that he just decided that he didn't want to deal with this, and it was
simpler to retire before the request for final approval hit his desk.
It would explain why he chose to leave *before* the first manned
Apollo flew -- you'd think that sticking around only a few more weeks
would have let him leave on a high note.)
Paine approved and announced the lunar Apollo 8 in mid-November, after
several meetings and considerable back-and-forth.
Henry