Project Hermes, or, Brits On The Moon

[KiwiZac]

I've been wanting to share the photos for the last week but wanted to do the story first. Enjoy!

Project Hermes - The Royal Air Force Moon missions

Unlike the American Apollo program, the United Kingdom's Project Hermes was run by the Royal Air Force as a military initiative and details of the missions themselves and the identities of the crews involved will be classified Most Secret until 2063. This piece is based on what is publicly known and acknowledged by the MOD, UKSA and RAF.

In late 1962 the Royal Air Force expressed interest in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's activities to put humans in space and their stated aim of landing on the Moon. After being extensively briefed, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Marshal of the RAF Sir Thomas Pike met with US President John F Kennedy and NASA Administrator James E Webb in March the following year. The two nations are understood to have signed an agreement on March 12 enabling UK licence production of five Saturn V rockets and four sets of Apollo spacecraft (one dummy or "boilerplate" Command Module would also be built), as well as use of NASA training facilities for UK astronauts.

Using the NASA programme as a base the RAF would fly five missions: the first unmanned to test the boilerplate spacecraft and launch facilities, the second a manned orbital flight (similar to Apollo 9) and the remaining three to be return manned missions to the Moon.

The de Havilland Aircraft Company was contracted to licence-build Grumman Aircraft's Lunar Excursion Module with Bristol Siddeley providing the two engines, while the British Aircraft Corporation and Rolls-Royce teamed up to produce the Command and Service modules. Hawker (Stage 1), Handley Page (S2) and Avro (S3) produced the launch vehicle itself, which was sufficiently modified from the US-built Saturn V to be renamed the Saturn VI. Numerous other British companies contributed smaller elements and structures, such as Martin-Baker (Launch Escape System) and Racal-Decca and Marconi (Instrument Unit). Australian firm Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation was awarded the contract to build several intermediate components including the Spacecraft LM Adaptor and interstage shrouds.

In 1963 Avro, de Havilland, Hawker, Gloster and several other Hermes contractors were merged into Hawker Siddeley, however work on the project continued uninterrupted.

As the missions were not to be as publicised as the NASA flights the RAF elected to base the operation at Woomera in central Australia, a remote site with strict security. Part of the 1962 agreement is believed to have been that the RAF missions would not predate the NASA flights, enabling Apollo to be the true historic milestone. Because of this, the first, unmanned Hermes mission could not take place until after Apollo 7 and the final moon landing had to be before the final NASA mission.

Hermes 1 launched at Woomera at 5am on October 14 1968, the Command Module re-entering intact and being recovered two days later. Some parts of the first stage were also recovered, however the rest of the launch vehicle was believed to have been destroyed on re-entry.

The first manned mission, Hermes 2, took place between April 9 and 16 1969. It is understood that the LEM, the first built outside of the United States, performed as expected and burned up on re-entry later in the month.
Hermes 3 was the first to land on the Moon, on January 18 1970. Each of the three Moon mission LEMs was named for a British explorer and the Hermes 3 craft was named Walter Raleigh. The RAF later declared the extra-vehicular activity - EVA or "moonwalk" - by the two astronauts was 3hr 22min in duration. This remains the only Hermes EVA duration ever disclosed to the public. On January 19 the pair rejoined the third crew member in the CM and returned to Earth, arriving in the Indian Ocean on January 24.

Hermes 4 launched on April 5 1970, and the LEM Ernest Shackleton landed three miles from Apollo 11¡¦s LM in the Sea of Tranquility four days later. S3 of the Saturn VI launch vehicle did not re-enter Earth's atmosphere as planned and was destroyed in an anti-satellite missile test in 1986 (this event prompted the first disclosure by the RAF of the existence of Project Hermes in a sensational press conference shown across the world).
Hermes 5, the last RAF moon mission, took off from Woomera on the night of August 4 1972. LEM James Cook landed in the Ocean of Storms on August 8 and its ascent stage departed three days later. The CM splashed down off the Perth coast on August 15 and with that, Project Hermes' spaceflights were at an end.

Upon their return to Earth each Command Module was returned to the UK on board the light cruiser HMS Lion and taken to Boscombe Down airfield for inspection and storage. The five CMs are the only remaining components of Project Hermes on Earth.

Because of the strict terms of the agreement signed by the UK and USA governments and space agencies in 1963, the names of the astronauts, the mission profiles and radio/television recordings were sealed for 100 years. This information will not be released until March 12 2063 despite countless attempts to gain early access by academics, enthusiasts and journalists. To date only the most basic information has been released, despite two of the CMs ¡V from Hermes 3 and 5 ¡V being put on public display at the RAF Museum and the destruction of S3-4 in July 1986.

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This model is the old Revell 1/96 kit, reissued several times and - in this case - with glue and paint to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and landing. From what I've read online this kit dates back to before then and represents the Block I spacecraft - compare the CM and SM to photos of the real deal in space and you can see a lot of differences. I bought the kit cheap while on a big space kick and ended up shelving the build because there were so many changes to be done. But then, thanks to Secret Projects, I saw a picture of an RAF-marked mockup capsule...and so, Project Hermes was born!



One of the daunting bits that made me return the kit to the stash was the gold foil on the LEM. A small sheet was provided. In the end I just breathed deeply, cut each panel using the assembled lower stage as a template and attached using supermarket super glue. Anywhere the gold came off (and onto my fingertips - felt very odd!) I just went over with thinned Tamiya Gold Leaf acrylic, which is a great match, to cover the silver patches. And there's foil left over! Well... did wimp out and not do some of the struts...



Being an old Revell kit it has play features, such as a detachable Ascent Stage. I kept this because it's fun!


And the completed de Havilland Lunar Excursion Module, with an RAF astronaut inside (trust me, he's in there):




The Command and Service Modules are the least lunar-Apollo-accurate bits, hence the whiffing. But they build up nicely. Again you can't see the crew member in his seat, and again they are made to be pulled apart to simulate the different stages of the mission.





And, finally, the completed diorama with a moonwalker. Of course I didn't think to align the "feet" of the LEM with the moulded indentations on the base. Why would I be smart enough to do that?!



Anyhoo, there you have it.


And am I tempted to build a Saturn VI with RAF roundels and Union Jack? You bet!

[The Rat]

As it should have been! 

[Weaver]

Nice one Zac - like it. The foil looks great.

Apollo remains popular: I've just sold two Airfix Apollo Saturn Vs at the first attempt and the third (and last) already has early bidders on Ebay. Skylab Saturn Vs? Can't give 'em away....


Can I put my JMN hat (helmet?) on for one minute to make a small point?

The third stage of a Saturn V would never have 'remained' in LEO (para 9) because it was used for the trans-lunar injection burn, i.e. to take the craft on it's way to the Moon. Once the S-IVB (as it was called) had burned out and the LEM had been extracted from it, it was directed to either swing past the Moon (Apollos 11 & 12) or impact it (Apollo 13 on) once seismic sensors were in place to benefit from the impact. The swing-past flights were intended to slingshot the stage into solar orbit, but this didn't quite work with Apollo 12 and the stage remained in a complicated series of weak captures and departures, being rediscovered by an asteroid-hunting astronomer in 2002.

It couldn't have been the second stage that remained in LEO either, because that only ever went onto a sub-orbital trajectory, circularisation being achieved by the S-IVB. Even if the second stage did somehow reach LEO, Apollo's parking orbit was so low that atmospheric drag would have pulled it down again in short order.

[KiwiZac]

Thanks Rat! It's surprising to read how much work was done by the Brits in spaceflight, or really how little compared to the US and USSR.

And thanks Weaver, 12's heliocentric orbit is what I was thinking of. I still think having to destroy a rogue stage is a cool way to force the government's hand in revealing the project! ;-)

[The Wooksta!]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_of_Death

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x14wr51_the-ambassadors-of-death-s07ep53pt1_shortfilms

[Weaver]

And thanks Weaver, 12's heliocentric orbit is what I was thinking of. I still think having to destroy a rogue stage is a cool way to force the government's hand in revealing the project! ;-)

Oh I agree, and you could probably concoct a story whereby it came back on a more dangerous orbit and had to be destroyed. My point was simply that it was never planned to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, and if it didn't go out at least as far as the Moon, you wouldn't have a mission at all. One possible (I think) scenario would be that they'd intended it to hit the Moon like the later Apollos, but it's motor failed before the burn was complete, leaving it on a very tight orbit around the Moon instead. That might rob it of enough orbital velocity to leave it falling back into Earth orbit on a relatively short orbit.

I might have a play with this in Kerbal Space Program tonight. The Kerbal system isn't the Earth system of course, but the principles are roughly the same.

[Weaver]

Well I had a go at it in KSP and I've found a potential failure mode that gets you the 'desired' result of an S-IVB coming back at us.

When the CSM/LEM have separated from it, I'm presuming the S-IVB turns 90 deg and burns 'anti-radial' (i.e. towards the centre of it's orbit) to turn it's near lunar-orbit trajectory into a direct impact one. If it were to suffer a runaway motor at that point (i.e. the motor didn't shut down when commanded to) AND it had enough fuel left (big 'if'...), it could potentially push it's impact point right across the face of the Moon and off the other side.

This doesn't, as you might imagine, result in it going around the Moon the wrong way (that would require WAY more delta V), but it does put it into a highly eccentric Earth orbit that then gets its apogee tweaked outwards and slowed down by the Moon's gravity, thus making it even more eliptical. I couldn't get it onto a really dangerous path, but given that the Kerbin system isn't Earth's and the physics shortcuts that KSP takes, it demonstrates the potential.

[KiwiZac]

I really need to get that game, how cool that you could do that!

[Weaver]

Yep - all the hilarious crashes and explosions you could wish for and nobody dies....

[Nick]

Fantsatic model work there!

I just don't get the backstory. Why would a govt spend billions on something like this for no public benefit? Surely it'd be something to shout about?

[rickshaw]

I like your models.  They look excellent.  Problem I have with your story is using Woomera as the launch site.  Woomera is badly sited, too far from the equator (it'd be like launching from the UK) and the actual range itself, points to the NW, away from the rotation of the Earth, rather than to the NE in the direction of the rotation, so you don't get any assist from the rotation.

If you changed it to some place, somewhere closer to the Equator, such as say, Christmas Island or Thursday Island, it would work.  Otherwise I doubt even a Saturn V would be able to loft an entire Apollo mission from Woomera to orbit. 

[Weaver]

A decent launch site has always been a problem for any UK space mission. There are various islands in the Carribean that are ideally sited (Barbados, Trinidad, The Bahamas) but the trouble is that they're highly-populated tourist traps: how much of paradise are you willing to concrete over to build a space centre?

The French really hit the jackpot with Kourou: that's another reason for mostly projecting joint European programmes.

[lenny100]

we could always use Diego Garcia in the Indian ocean, near to the equator and no local population, or tourists, to worry about. has a good deep water port and a large airbase.

[Weaver]

we could always use Diego Garcia in the Indian ocean, near to the equator and no local population, or tourists, to worry about. has a good deep water port and a large airbase.

Trouble is, we signed it away to the USA before the the timeframe for Apollo shots in exchange for a discount on Polaris (you could always rewrite history, of course).

How about RAF Gan in the southern Maldives? That got a base in 1941 and remained in UK use until 1976.

[PR19_Kit]

How about RAF Gan in the southern Maldives? That got a base in 1941 and remianed in UK use until 1976.

There's not much to Gan, it's little more than an airstrip with very little extra area to each side. But maybe a humunugous reclamation programme could enlarge it.