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Our First Lunar Program: What did we get From Apollo?

American plans now call for a return of humans to the Moon by around 2020. What can we hope to gain from such a program? It will be helpful to look back at our first lunar program, Apollo, and ask what we got from it, beside some 850 pounds of rock and soil – fascinating to geologists, but perhaps not to all taxpayers. I will try to summarize highlights of the payoff from Apollo. Image right: The insignia of the Apollo Program. Credit: NASA. What was the "Apollo Program"? There was much more to it than Neil Armstrong’s "one small step," and even more than the following five lunar landings – any one of which would have been a gigantic accomplishment. First, Apollo began with the Gemini Program, which was solely a technological warm-up for Apollo. Gemini was the first true American spaceship, with propulsion, radar, on-board computers, and extravehicular activity (“space walk”) capability. Ten manned Gemini missions were flown, developing the technological and operational capability needed for the following lunar program. However, the Gemini astronauts carried out many scientific experiments, in addition to practicing various space-flight techniques such as orbital rendezvous. The Apollo lunar missions are now in the history books. However, there were two Earth-orbital ones, Apollo 7 and 9, that carried out experiments such as multispectral terrain photography. This uses combinations of different types of light, such as infrared and ultraviolet, that reveal things not seen using only visible light, like diseased trees or crops. This photography was a feasibility test for Landsat (launched in 1972). But there was much more to the Apollo Program. First, the Apollo hardware was used for America’s first space station, Skylab, in 1972 to 1973. The Skylab astronauts carried out dozens of scientific experiments, such as orbital sea-surface radar, and operated a solar observatory with extremely valuable results. In 1975, the Apollo spacecraft flew for the last time, carrying out a rendezvous and docking with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft. This cooperative effort was at least one bridge across the political divide of the Cold War. In summary, the Apollo Program, properly defined, was much broader than most people realize. Furthermore, it was not enormously expensive relative to the American federal budget of the day. The several sub-programs mentioned cost a total of about $30 billion by the end of Fiscal Year 1975. To allow for inflation, a same-year comparison may help: the FY 75 NASA budget was $3.3 billion, and the FY 75 Food Stamp Program $5.5 billion. What did we get for this $30 billion? The term “spinoff” is often used, but this tends to trivialize the Apollo results. However, here are some of the eventual results of the Apollo Program. First, and perhaps most important: it was realized at the time of President Kennedy’s 1961 proposal that the primary motivation for sending a man to the Moon was political, not scientific. The Soviet Union at the time had a commanding lead in space flight, and was a belligerent and expansive power in the Cold War. Did Apollo end the Cold War? Of course it didn’t. But no less than Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov and two colleagues issued an open letter to the Soviet government in 1970, calling for democratization of the USSR, specifically citing the American Moon landing as evidence of the superiority of democracy. The Soviet Union did have a lunar program intended to put a man on the Moon, but as the world saw, the United States won the race. Even if the Apollo missions had never landed on the Moon, the program as a whole stimulated projects that learned an enormous amount about our own planet, Earth. The earliest and even now one of the most productive of these projects was Landsat, agreed by even the most severe NASA critics to have been an enormously valuable program. But how can Landsat be considered a result of Apollo? The answer goes back to the Gemini Program, whose astronauts took hundreds of high-resolution color photos of the Earth with 70mm cameras as part of terrain and weather photographic experiments. Even in 1965, weather satellite pictures were familiar, but the Gemini photos were stunningly better. Published widely, in magazines such as the National Geographic (circulation in 1966 some 6 million), they triggered interest in space photography of the Earth’s surface, as distinguished from its atmosphere. To summarize a long and complex story: As stated by the then-director of the U.S. Geological Survey, Bill Pecora, the value of the Gemini and Mercury photos stimulated the Interior Department to propose an Earth resources observation satellite program, EROS, in 1966. After interagency negotiation, this proposed satellite became ERTS, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite, managed by Goddard Space Flight Center, and shortly re-named Landsat. So Landsat really was an outgrowth of the Apollo Program, as testified to by the head of another agency, not NASA. The Manned Spacecraft Center, now Johnson Space Center, was built for the Apollo Program. It was realized that much orbital reconnaissance of the Moon would be necessary for the Apollo landings. Accordingly, JSC began a broad program of remote sensing, using airborne cameras and other instruments, in preparation for the Moon. This program soon triggered enormous progress in remote sensing in general, and combined with the Gemini photography led to Landsat and soon after its foreign counterparts such as France’s SPOT (Systeme pour l’Observation de la Terre). Needless to say, the JSC remote sensing efforts were soon applied successfully to the Moon, but they also stimulated orbital survey techniques of the Earth as well, techniques that have long since expanded to many American and international programs. But this revolution in remote sensing owes much to the Apollo Program. As mentioned above, Skylab was part of the Apollo Program, and carried out many remote sensing observations analogous to those of Landsat. However, one which was not analogous was sea-surface radar altimetry. Skylab carried a radar aimed down at the Earth, including the oceans. Microwaves do not penetrate electrical conductors, such as metals or water, and the radar return over oceans was from the sea surface. It was found that the Skylab radar over depressions in the ocean floor, such as the Puerto Rico trench, actually showed a subdued replica of such depressions in the overlying sea surface. Over seamounts – underwater volcanoes – the sea surface forms a slight mound. “Slight” is a relative term – the sea surface depression over the Puerto Rico trench is more than 20 meters (yards) deep. The explanation for this surprising discovery is that the excess mass of, for example, a seamount, pulls the surrounding ocean horizontally towards it, thus producing a slight bulge in the overlying sea surface. The opposite effect occurs over a trench, which is a mass deficiency. The Skylab radar results triggered long-term and continuing sea surface radar surveys, which have made possible detailed global maps of the sea floor impossible by any other method. So Apollo, properly defined, helped explore the part of our own planet hidden by the oceans.

Tiny 'tin whiskers' imperil electronics

By JORDAN ROBERTSON

 SAN JOSE, Calif. - They've ruined missiles, silenced communications satellites and forced nuclear power plants to shut down. Pacemakers, consumer gadgets and even a critical part of a space shuttle have fallen victim.

The culprits? Tiny splinters — whiskers, they're called — that sprout without warning from tin solder and finishes deep inside electronics. By some estimates, the resulting short-circuits have leveled as much as $10 billion in damage since they were first noticed in the 1940s.

Now some electronics makers worry the destruction will be more widespread, and the dollar amounts more draining, as the European Union and governments around the world enact laws to eliminate the best-known defense — lead — from electronic devices.

"The EU's decision was irresponsible and not based on sound science," said Joe Smetana, a principal engineer and tin whisker expert with French telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA. "We're solving a problem that isn't and creating a bunch of new ones."

Typically measuring under a millimeter long, tin whiskers look like errant strands of static-charged hair, erupting in every direction from tin-based materials like solder. Their cause is hotly debated. Other metals also grow whiskers, but not like tin.

Trouble arises when the whiskers bridge separate parts of increasingly miniaturized circuit boards. They also can flake off and interfere with sensitive optics.

While scientists debate their cause, they agree on one thing: Small amounts of lead mixed with the tin have been remarkably effective at preventing whisker eruptions for decades.

Lead, however, is a serious health concern. In children, it can cause learning or behavioral problems and has been associated with anemia and kidney problems. In adults, exposure has been linked to high blood pressure and reproductive organ damage.

Last year, Europeans barred the toxic metal from most electronics to prevent its being incinerated or accumulating in dumps after computers and other gadgets are tossed out. Similar measures are being considered or are already in place in other countries, including Japan, China, South Korea, Argentina, Australia and the United States.

Some companies say the EU rules threaten the reliability of their products, exposing them to unknown risks and possibly threatening people's safety.

But EU officials say the regulations banning lead, cadmium, mercury and three other hazardous substances are needed to protect people and the environment.

They also note that many types of electronics are exempt from the law, including military and other national security equipment, medical devices, and servers, data storage computers and telecommunications gear that use leaded solders.

Exemptions are also granted when alternatives to the hazardous materials don't exist yet, or because the substances can't be replaced without jeopardizing safety.

Still, even some companies with exemptions say it's getting harder to buy the leaded parts. They worry about the increased risk of pure-tin parts, the culprit behind the most devastating tin-whisker-related failures.

"Over time (the failures) are just going to get worse and worse and worse," said Jim McElroy, executive director of International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative, or iNEMI, a group of big electronics makers, government agencies and other parties active in tin whisker research.

"Even if the military is exempt forever, they will be forced to convert because they can't get the components they want," he said. "And that will eventually happen across the board."

Tin whiskers have left a trail of destruction in a string of important machinery, chronicled in an extensive database of publicly disclosed failures kept by researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Last year, for example, NASA engineers testing parts for the space shuttle Endeavour discovered that millions of tin whiskers were causing an electronic box to inaccurately point the shuttle's engine, knocking the rocket's trajectory off-kilter, according to Henning Leidecker, chief engineer of the electronic parts office of NASA's Goddard and a tin whisker expert.

It turns out NASA had approved the pure-tin-coated clamps used for holding circuit boards in place back when the electronics were made in the 1980s, before NASA adopted its current rule requiring a small amount of lead in its tin coatings.

"These whiskers have the potential to destroy missions," Leidecker said.

Failures blamed on tin whiskers have run the gamut of devices and manufacturers.

In the 1980s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recalled some pacemakers because of a high failure rate caused by tin whiskers.

In 1998, PanAmSat Corp.'s $250 million Galaxy IV communications satellite, which provided service to tens of millions of pagers across North America and thousands of pay-at-the-pump gas station machines, was deemed a total loss after two processors failed. The main spacecraft control processor, which governs the satellite's positioning and other functions, failed for an unknown reason, and the backup couldn't be used because tin whiskers had shorted it out a year before.

At least 10 other satellite failures have been blamed on tin whiskers, according to the NASA database.

Over the past two decades, also according to the NASA database, nuclear power plants have been temporarily shut down at least seven times after tin whiskers in the alarm system circuit boards triggered false alarms, alerting managers to threats that didn't exist. There have been no reported injuries.

"There's a real loss of money because the plant is shut down and stays down, and it also presents a situation where workers are taught not to believe the alarms," Leidecker said. "Are you comfortable with that? I am not."

The military also isn't immune. Whisker-related malfunctions have been reported in the radar used aboard fighter jets, in the target-detection system of certain missiles, along with various unspecified problems in other parts of the U.S. military's missile programs.

Little is known about those failures, other than the part that failed and the cause. Most involve military secrets and are only known because they're revealed in technical forums by defense contractors, who incur heavy repair expenses for malfunctioning tin-whisker-infested equipment and are active in scientific circles looking for a fix that doesn't involve lead.

Tin whisker experts said the industry is working fast to come up with a lead-free solution. So far, other materials have shown to be effective in preventing tin whiskers, but not as powerfully as lead.

One promising remedy is tin-silver-copper solders, said George Galyon, a senior technical staff member at IBM Corp. However, Galyon noted that lead-free solders often require much higher temperatures, which can warp circuit boards and cause materials to degrade.

Despite the setbacks, he said the major players realize anti-lead laws give them no choice.

"It's whistling in the wind if you think we're turning this back," he said. "China's full-bent on it, the major markets are into it. The world flipped over in one fell swoop."  

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