TRW Systems released the AS-207/208 Preliminary Spacecraft Reference Trajectory during the first week of May. This report was put together on a compressed schedule, starting from rather hastily defined mission requirements. As a result, there are a number of things about it which were recognized as being in error even before release; however, since we…
Category: Apollo missions
Spacecraft computer program status for AS-501
This memorandum is to give my impression of what went on during the meeting MIT on September 12, 1966, regarding the AS-501/502 spacecraft guidance computer program. Primarily I would like to describe the status of this program as we see it now….
Apollo Spacecraft Computer Program Schedule
Since last week I promised to start quoting some delivery dates, here goes. We are currently planning release of the flight programs for rope manufacture as follows:…
AGC program for AS-501/502 – Final status report
The attached memorandum lists all of the program changes required to the AS-202 program to fly AS-501 and AS-502. As you can see, there are quite a few, although most are quite simple. For example, some of these changes are merely corrections to bugs that were known to be in the AS-202 program when we…
Small program change needed in the AS-501/502 AGC program
In the course of development of the AS-206 computer program at MIT, a coding error was discovered which was immediately recognized as being common to the AS-204 and AS-501/502 programs. It is a scaling error, if you know what that means, which imposes the operational constraint of not operating one of the integration programs (i.e.,…
LGC program status for AS-206
We spent a lot of time at MIT last week wrestling with the AS-206 problem. Although in a previous note I expressed some optimism regarding possibility of recovering some of the one month slip MIT draped on us, they have convinced me now that there is really not much chance. As a result we pretty…
Rope manufacture for AS-502
This note is to inform everyone that the AS-502 spacecraft computer program ropes will be made precisely the same as those for AS-501. Specifically, it is MIT assembly Solarium 55. You recall Solarium 54 was our original AS-501 A-release, but it was necessary to make a modification in one of the rope modules to correct…
Uplink will be on LM-4
A decision was made yesterday which I am sure will make a lot of people happy. ASPO has finally decided to equip the LM-4 with a digital uplink. Obviously, the associated computer programs must be added to the AS-504 LM program. I assume that these are the same as those developed for AS-208 and should…
State vector update situation for AS-501 and AS-502
The AS-501 and 502 missions have been designed to update the state vector (position and velocity) in the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) with a state vector from the Manned Spaceflight Tracking Network (MSFN) prior to the Saturn (S-IVB) out-of-orbit burn and again prior to the second Spacecraft Propulsion System (SPS) burn. If these updates are…
State Vector Update Criteria for AS-501
Because of the decision to utilize the AS-502 Apollo Guidance Computer programs for the AS-501 mission, the mission was designed and developed on the premise that the state vector updates __would__ be made. ���������� this, the situation exists that a __perfect__ launch vehicle spacecraft combination __without__ guidance or propulsion errors of any kind will land…