Chapter 73: What Does The James Webb Want To Do?
“Professor Lin, you’ve finally arrived.”
At Redstone Arsenal, James Webber saw Lin Ran and first gave him a hug, with an extremely enthusiastic attitude.
He had no choice but to be enthusiastic.
He had been appointed NASA Director half a month earlier than Lin Ran, and obviously, in this place where PhDs were everywhere and Master’s degrees were less valuable than dogs, he, a former lawyer, found it hard to quickly take control of the situation.
And this White House administration had given them the goal of completing manned moon landing within Kennedy’s term.
Kennedy had not yet publicly announced the moon landing program, but whether it was the White House or NASA, everyone was very clear about this—it was their most important task.
The current NASA could hardly give everyone this confidence; not to mention the outside public, even internally at NASA, there were doubts about whether they could achieve it.
“Mister, that’s right. I originally thought Mr. Johnson would give me some time, but with one order, he kicked me from Washington D.C. to Alabama.” Lin Ran joked.
James Webber explained, “That’s Johnson’s style—simple and direct.
You’ll get used to it.”
Then he pulled out a stack of documents from the drawer of the oak desk and handed them to Lin Ran:
“Professor Lin, this is NASA’s important work for this year.
It includes the first space flight two months from now; if it goes smoothly, there will be a second suborbital flight in July.
Additionally, this year we also plan to launch the Ranger program, sending a probe to the Moon to take photos.
This is NASA’s plan; the stack of materials below is what I want to do.
Because NASA was only established three years ago, it’s more like a loose alliance of multiple research institutions than a single institution; it includes multiple research centers like Langley, Lewis, Goddard, etc., lacking unified direction, and even more loose in management.
I’ve roughly thought of a plan to adjust the entire NASA’s organizational structure.
Finally, our current annual budget is 500 million US dollars, which is far from enough; I think this budget needs to be raised to at least 1 billion US dollars to possibly complete manned moon landing by the end of the 1960s.
That’s my rough conception; after you’ve looked it over, I hope you can give me a reply as soon as possible after sorting it out. I’m very much looking forward to your suggestions.”
James Webber knew Lin Ran’s scope of authority, and he didn’t mind giving this great mathematician an opportunity if he could really demonstrate sufficient ability.
He would be responsible for management, while the other would be responsible for control over research.
Even without Lin Ran’s existence, James Webber would give similar authority to Deputy Director Hugh Dryden in the original spacetime, letting him make decisions together with himself.
Now with Lin Ran here, James Webber wanted to see what Lin Ran was made of, whether he could shoulder this heavy responsibility.
After taking the stack of materials from him, Lin Ran nodded and said, “Okay, I’ll give you a reply as soon as possible.”
What followed was a silence lasting half a month; during this half month, aside from specifically understanding NASA’s upcoming suborbital orbital flight, Lin Ran made no other moves.
Of course, during this half month, Lin Ran kept pulling James Webber along instead of doing it alone.
“Mr. Webber, for the next half month, I need you to be with me. I’ve got a rough idea, but you have to vouch for me—it’s not me playing tricks.”
Lin Ran insisted on pulling James Webber along, even though the other felt overwhelmed with work, a complete mess, with too much to handle.
What James Webber needed to do was reform, reorganizing NASA’s existing structure from the bottom up; facing Lin Ran’s request, he was very puzzled: “What do you want me to do?”
Lin Ran explained, “Our first manned space mission is to start in May; the Freedom 7 spacecraft was delivered to Cape Canaveral on December 9 last year.
It will be used as the spacecraft for this manned space mission.
The earliest planned launch time for this project was December last year, right at the time it was delivered to Cape Canaveral.
Later they found the reaction control system still had issues, so it was postponed to March 6, which is five days from now.
But because the launch device had a small problem, its launch needs to be postponed further, requiring re-simulation tests and equipment debugging.
The current planned time is May 2, and reinstalling the reaction control system is five days from now; I need you to come with me to see with our own eyes how they do this.
I have some inspiration, and I need to go to the site in person to see.
Additionally, I also need to prove that the failure of this plan has nothing to do with me—it’s not my doing.
So you must participate throughout, and it’s best if the White House sends another trustworthy person to participate fully.”
James Webber suddenly perked up: “Are you implying that this manned space program will fail?”
America really couldn’t afford another failure.
The Soviet Union had already sent Gagarin into space; if they failed again, the newspapers from the other camp mocking them would be one thing, but America’s own newspapers would mock them too.
James Webber came to NASA to make NASA great, not to turn it into a joke again.
Lin Ran explained, “Hasn’t NASA experienced few failures in the past five years?
At the hearing, I even counted them all out completely—NASA’s failure count can’t even be tallied on one hand.
Plus this manned spaceflight, hasn’t it already had two problems, postponed twice from the original October to this May?
Is it strange for there to be another problem?
Mister, you need to approach it with the mindset that problems at NASA are the norm, and no problems are the rarity.”
James Webber was at a loss for words, because what Lin Ran said was spot on.
In the more than a month since he started working at NASA, the internal archives he’d seen were full of failure records beyond count.
And it was precisely because he’d seen so many failures that he wanted to adjust the organizational structure.
Lin Ran continued, “Opportunity often hides in difficulties.
I vaguely feel that this might just be an excellent opportunity to turn around NASA’s image in the public’s mind.
Not only to reconstruct NASA’s image in the public’s mind, but also to make our reorganization of NASA’s organizational structure smoother.”
After hearing this, James Webber said, “Professor Lin, tell me, what to do—I will fully cooperate with you.”
“Let’s go to Cape Canaveral first to personally check the reinstallation of the Freedom 7 spacecraft’s reaction control system.”
Lin Ran was very clear that during Allen Shepard’s first manned spaceflight aboard the Freedom 7 spacecraft, a key control system failure occurred: the automatic attitude control system failed to correct the spacecraft’s roll, forcing Shepard to manually intervene to stabilize the spacecraft.
This failure was an opportunity for Lin Ran, an excellent opportunity to further seize discourse power and influence.
