Direct ascent was a proposed method for a mission to the Moon. In the United States, direct ascent proposed using the enormous Nova rocket to launch a spacecraft directly to the Moon, where it would land tail-first and then launch off the Moon back to Earth. The other options that NASA considered for the mission to the moon were Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (which was the strategy used successfully in Project Apollo) and Earth Orbit Rendezvous.
The Soviets also considered several direct ascent strategies, though in the end they settled on an approach similar to NASA's: two men in a Soyuz spacecraft capsule and a one-man LK lander. The failure of the Soviets' N1 Rocket delayed their lunar program substantially, however, and they were nowhere close when Apollo 11 lifted off and made the first lunar landing. The Soviets had planned to use an LK, which looked much like a smaller version of the spider-like Lunar Module.
Science fiction movies such as Destination Moon had frequently depicted direct ascent missions. In real life, however, it was discarded due to the near impossibility of landing a rocket the size of the Atlas tail-first on the Moon.
Famous quotes containing the words direct and/or ascent:
“One merit in Carlyle, let the subject be what it may, is the freedom of prospect he allows, the entire absence of cant and dogma. He removes many cartloads of rubbish, and leaves open a broad highway. His writings are all unfenced on the side of the future and the possible. Though he does but inadvertently direct our eyes to the open heavens, nevertheless he lets us wander broadly underneath, and shows them to us reflected in innumerable pools and lakes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I lay awake awhile, watching the ascent of the sparks through the firs, and sometimes their descent in half-extinguished cinders on my blanket. They were as interesting as fireworks, going up in endless, successive crowds, each after an explosion, in an eager, serpentine course, some to five or six rods above the tree-tops before they went out.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)