The following paragraph is extracted from MIT’s Spacecraft Autopilot Development Memo #11-68, dated July 24, 1968, by William S. Widnall….
Category: Apollo missions
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…
Invitation to an Apollo 13 Lunar Orbit Mission Techniques meeting
“The time has come” the walrus said, “to talk of many things.” This classic quotation apparently now applies to the Apollo 13 lunar orbit mission techniques and this walrus is suggesting Tuesday, September 23. Bob Lindsay has subjected his flight plan to three iterations already and it’s shaping up nicely; the FOD guys have a…
EMS will always be used on “C” if G&N fails
Mr. C. C. Kraft announced at his Monday morning meeting that the EMS will be used for controlling reentry on the “C” mission in the event of a G&N failure regardless of when that failure occurs. This was decided over his mild objection at George Low’s CCB meeting last week….
“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…
Mission C DAP initialization procedures
In a memo dated November 28, you recommend that “DAP initialization procedures for Mission G be established where either crew input requirements are eliminated entirely, or restricted at most to one inertia update following the largest SPS burn.” I am writing you this note to let you know that what has been planned is entirely…
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….
F mission lunar orbit attitude sequence
This belated memo is to describe the results of our March 10 Mission Techniques meeting on the F mission lunar orbit attitude sequences as well as I can remember them….
Manual Steering for LM Ascent
Over the years various groups have attacked the problem of if and how the crew can manually steer the LM back into orbit from the lunar surface. These studies were started before GAEC was even selected to build the LM and some analysis is still going on to define the optimum pitch attitude profile, which…