During a recent D mission rules review a couple of interesting things came up that I hadn’t heard of before. You probably ought to know about:…
Category: Apollo 9
Should LM RCS jet #10 be disabled for the “D” mission docked DPS burn?
The following paragraph is extracted from MIT’s Spacecraft Autopilot Development Memo #11-68, dated July 24, 1968, by William S. Widnall….
Review of the Mission Techniques for Saturn V/Apollo Launch Phase Aborts
This memo is to backup our phone call notifying you of the review of the Saturn V/Apollo Launch Phase Abort Mission Techniques Document to be held Thursday, October 3, 1968, at 1:00 p.m. in Building 4, Room 383. At that meeting we will thoroughly discuss the attached draft of that document, as it applies to…
“D” Rendezvous Mission Techniques Task Assignments for MPAD
Attached is a list of action items associated with our work on “D” Rendezvous Mission Techniques. Would you please see that all those assigned to MPAD are covered by proper Task Assignments (I expect that most of them already are). Specifically, items 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, and 11 are probably OMAB’s jobs and item…
Seventh “D” Mission Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting
At the seventh “D” Mission Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting on March 25, we spent most of our time discussing activity in the football rendezvous, specifically, under what circumstances and how to abort. It turned out that the same ground rules and techniques probably apply equally well to the pseudo-TPI maneuver halfway through the rendezvous exercise….
D Rendezvous Mission Techniques
The final review of the D Rendezvous Mission Techniques will be held on Wednesday, January 15, starting at 9:00 a.m., in Room 383, Building 4….
DPS Modeling
It might be worthwhile for you or your people to look into the DPS modelling in the RTCC. The “D” mission includes several maneuvers with manual throttling. Improper modeling of these burns may have some effect on the operation, although, offhand I would not think so….
Mission D Maneuver Monitoring Document
Included in the D mission are some special propulsion and guidance system tests. They consist of unique maneuvers which are not discussed in either the Rendezvous or Entry Mission Techniques Documents. They required development of special mission techniques which are documented in the attached book….
D Rendezvous Ground Rules and Working Agreements update
Attached are the ground rules and working agreements updated based on our September 9 Mission Techniques meeting. They reflect the new, simplified D Rendezvous exercise – primarily changes in the football trajectory and the “insertion maneuver” plus a bunch of things we were able to delete. As noted in my last report of this subject,…
Results of September 17 Apollo Spacecraft Software Configuration Control Board (ASSCCB) meeting
The first three hours of this marathon meeting were devoted to implementation of the descent program in LUMINARY. The currently approved plan is to implement the one-phase descent scheme proposed by Floyd Bennett and his merry crew. However, MIT has been directed to implement it in such a way that it would be possible to…