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…
Category: Lunar descent
Throttle up time is fixed during the powered descent maneuver
We learned something interesting during our Descent Mission Techniques meeting June 28 from the MIT people there. It dealt with the way the DPS gimbal trim phase of the powered descent maneuver is programmed….
More about LM radar rendezvous data processing
This note is in answer to some questions you scribbled on the bottom of my LM radar observations memo (67-FM-T-81). You asked if there is any smoothing process on the LM radar data prior to its input to the spacecraft computer. My understanding is that there is not. That is, when the computer wants it,…
Ascent newsletter
This memo is to report several interesting things regarding lunar ascent, both nominal and after a descent abort….
F Mission Techniques – LM Checkout
On December 6 we had our first F Mission Techniques meeting dealing with pre-DOI activity. It resulted in a lot of things I never expected, since I thought the timeline and procedures for LM checkout and CSM landing site tracking were pretty well organized and acceptable with just minor tune-up. At this meeting we really…
Descent, Lunar Surface, and Ascent Mission Techniques with the H crew
On May 20 and 21 we reviewed Descent, Lunar Surface, and Ascent Mission Techniques with the H crew (Pete Conrad and co.). This get together had two major objectives – to tell the H crew how we think these things should be done and conversely, for the first time to get a flight crew reaction…
Manual Ascent revisited
On July 2 we had another meeting regarding Manual Ascent. As I have pointed out previously, the consensus is that the crew should have an excellent chance of achieving a safe orbit by manually steering the LM from the lunar surface if they have a rate command attitude control system by using the horizon view…
How to land next to a Surveyor – a short novel for do-it-yourselfers
As you know a decision has been made for the H mission to land next to Surveyor III. Considerable amount of work has already been spent in figuring out how to perform a so-called point landing, but a number of computer program and procedure changes are required which cannot be implemented prior to this mission….
A small change in CSM DOI confirmation procedures
We ran into a little snag on confirming the CSM DOI maneuver which has forced us to change the mission technique a little bit and I think you should know about it….
Status of the lunar module “quick return” guidance capability
This note is in response to your query regarding the “quick return” capability being provided in the lunar module (LM) for aborts during the lunar descent phase. As you recall, I reported deletion of a program in the LM computer for generating coefficients to be used in an abort polynomial to retarget the LM powered…