During our review of the G Mission Lunar Surface Mission Techniques Document on April 10, we came to a conclusion which may interest you. It deals with the need, or really lack of need, for the crew to do some things that are in the current flight plan. Specifically, in the crew LM timeline, we…
Category: Contingency plans
Some new ideas on how to use the AGS during Descent
This memo is to fill you in on a couple of late crew procedure changes proposed for the G mission regarding AGS operation during descent. The first is a technique to prepare the AGS for immediate ascent which can be used to quickly reinitialize the AGS LM state vector immediately after touchdown if there is…
F/G Mirror Image Targeting shall use a three-minute delay
As you know, we have established as a standard procedure during Apollo rendezvous having CSM backup LM maneuvers in order to retain the nominal relative motion during this critical mission phase. On the D mission these “mirror image” CSM maneuvers are targeted with TIG delayed one minute after the LM TIG. One minute was chosen…
LM rendezvous radar during Ascent is about to go over the brink.
It turns out providing justification for obtaining LM rendezvous radar data during Ascent from the lunar surface is as difficult as getting the data itself. This memorandum is to let you know that unless some sharp cookie comes along with sufficient justification we ain’t gonna get it!…
AS-258 RTCC Retrofire Time Computation
One step taken in an attempt to alleviate the RTCC program development problem has been to make major reductions in the area of retrofire time computations. Since these deletions have an impact on the Retrofire Controller’s capability and mode of operation, I felt it desirable to report these things in a memorandum devoted solely to…
Lunar rendezvous shaping up
On June 26 we took another wack at the “G” Rendezvous Mission Techniques. I think we now have most of the basic things squared away so that we can get into the detail with some confidence. The most significant decisions were:…
Descent Monitoring Mission Techniques – a status report
I think we are beginning to see the light at the end of the Descent Monitoring Mission Techniques tunnel. At the April 24 meeting on that subject we thoroughly discussed the integration of the onboard techniques with the activity at the MCC during powered descent and I feel the resultant is as reasonable and complete…
Rendezvous terminal phase guidance program in the Apollo spacecraft computer
On July 7, 1966, a team of MSC and MIT “experts in rendezvous” (including Paul Kramer, Ed Lineberry, John Dablen, and Norm Sears) met at MIT to discuss and review the preliminary Guidance System Operation Plan (GSOP)which MIT has unofficially distributed, covering the terminal phase and External ΔV programs for the AS-207/208 mission. This meeting…
Descent Aborts
We have finally started mission techniques meetings on lunar landing descent aborts. At the risk of losing whatever confidence you might have in my judgment, I would like to describe a technique we are probably going to propose for aborts early in the descent phase. That is, within about 25 seconds of commanding the DPS…
Descent Aborts – Part II
This memo is to carry on from that three page snowflake I sent you the other day on the same subject. It turns out we have encountered one of those rare situations when in doing something to fix an undesirable situation we actually improve something else at the same time. Specifically, the rendezvous people want…