On February 14 we had a meeting with everyone at MSC, plus MIT and Grumman, who are interested in the way the spacecraft computer program throttles the Descent Propulsion System (DPS). There has been concern that the throttling programs as currently designed are not adequate for the Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI) maneuver on a lunar…
Category: PDI Abort
Lunar rendezvous abort summary
A great deal of work has gone on over the years on the subject of lunar abort rendezvous, spearheaded by Morris Jenkins, Ed Lineberry, Buzz Aldrin and others. The results of some of this work have already been documented and more detailed reports are in the works. The primary reason I’m writing this note is…
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…
When is the rendezvous radar designate routine (R29) needed?
George Cherry (MIT) asked if it is possible to drop the rendezvous radar designate routine (R29) out of the descent abort programs (P70 and P71). He gave me the impression that to do so now would significantly reduce their work and permit concentration in testing in more profitable areas. I don’t know when the next…
Descent Aborts – Part III
We have had a couple more Descent Aborts Mission Techniques meetings resulting in substantial progress which I would like to tell you about in this memo, if you haven’t already heard….
Descent Abort Mission Techniques
On February 13 we went over our Descent Abort Mission Techniques with the world. In general they were accepted as is. That isn’t to say we didn’t have some lengthy discussions resulting in some improvements and/or changes but we didn’t make any substantial changes to the basic ground rules, philosophy, or overall procedures. I would…
Simplification to the pre-PDI abort procedure
As a result of a passing comment in one of my previous notes, Tommy Gibson and George Cherry looked into what it would take to provide automatic PGNCS targeting for LM aborts at initiation of powered descent (PDI). They found the capability already exists in the LUMINARY program. How’s that for great!…
Some G Mission Techniques action items
This memo is just a list of action items assigned to MPAD and/or MIT which I remember coming from our recent G descent/descent abort meetings. In addition to reminding those responsible for them, they serve as some sort of indication of what’s going on in this business which you might find interesting….
F Rendezvous Mission Techniques Clean-up
On April 5 we had what I expect is the last of the F Mission Rendezvous Techniques meetings. We resolved a number of open items which had not been covered before, or which popped up during simulations. This memo is to list them for the record. Some are trivial, some are really quite significant….