On January 12 a group of Flight Crew, Flight Control and Mission Planning guys got together to talk about the lunar reentry and some rather interesting things came out which I am recording here for my records and your amusement….
Category: Reentry
F/G Mission Techniques – except for the lunar orbit phase – are ready to eat
Some of the decisions and open items that came out of our F/G Mission Techniques meetings in late January are listed in this memo. Basically, I would say that all mission phases aside from the lunar orbit activity are very well understood at this time – primarily as a result of the C’ mission -…
Operations required for communication loss on F and G are sure better than on C’
I think we have pretty well established how to handle a communication loss situation on the F and G missions. In effect, we have defined which Block data must be sent and what onboard cis-lunar navigation needs to be carried out. In both cases, of course, it is possible to cut back substantially from the…
Spacecraft computer program newsletter
I learned some things at MIT last week that seemed interesting enough to justify this note. Of course, it deals primarily with the spacecraft computer programs and their influence on the mission techniques we are developing….
Apollo 12 Mission Techniques
On September 15 and 16 we had the second (and last) Mission Techniques meeting for Apollo 12. It was advertised to be a “catchall” and it was. It all went smoothly enough considering how many people were there – the place was stuffed (even the projection room!) – and the exhaustion and emotion these things…
C’ Mission Techniques clean up – Translunar and Transearth
On November 8 we went over the Translunar and Transearth phases of the C’ Mission Techniques – pretty well cleaning all this up, I think. The following paragraphs describe the more significant decisions and agreements reached. They deal with block data, onboard navigation, and returnto-earth with no communications….
April 9 Lunar Reentry Mission Techniques meeting
Almost the entire April 9 Lunar Reentry Mission Techniques meeting was spent in discussion of the second and third midcourse correction maneuvers made on the way back from the moon. Ron Berry presented some really interesting data which I think gives us an insight into the character of these maneuvers needed to assure the techniques…
C’ Spacecraft Navigation Mission Techniques
It appears we have completed basic development of C’ Spacecraft Navigation Mission Techniques both for Cis-Lunar and Lunar Orbit. Documentation of these techniques will be distributed in the near future. No further meetings will be called specifically for their subjects. Whatever open items come up will be handled in our weekly C’ Mission Techniques Reviews,…
Transearth midcourse correction philosophy – a major operation break through!
In trying to establish mission techniques for the midcourse correction maneuvers on the way back from the moon, we reached a point beyond which we could not progress without first establishing some sort of maneuver philosophy, like:…
C’ entry initialization with no communication
Bob Weber, Jon Harpold, and some of their friends got together to work out the procedure for the crew to determine the landing point for targeting the GNCS entry program (P61) in the event of a no communication/return to earth. The procedure is essentially as we laid it out during one of our big meetings…