This March 1 meeting conflicted with the President’s speech but a few of us dedicated jokers pressed on as follows….
Category: Orbital rendezvous
Fourth Mission “D” Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting
The first item discussed at this February 18 meeting really involved all Apollo rendezvous, which accounts for the long attendance list. The subject was whether or not to change the orbital travel between Terminal Phase Initiation (TPI) and theoretical braking from 140° to 130°. It was stated that this change would make necessary reworking the…
First “E” Mission Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting – March 4
On March 4 we had the first “E” Mission Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting. It was devoted almost exclusively to understanding what the mission requirements and mission plans are for this phase of the flight. The discussion raised a few questions and some action items were assigned to get them answered….
Fifth “D” Mission Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting—don’t miss Paragraph 5; it’s great!
We spent just about the entire February 26 meeting discussion the way the AGS and PNGCS should be used during the “D” Mission rendezvous. I feel as though we have accomplished quite a lot in this area having reached agreement on how the AGS should be used throughout that mission phase, with one minor exception….
Let’s add a plane change into the lunar rendezvous timeline
The June 13 Lunar Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting was devoted to how to handle the plane change. As noted in my last bulletin, this problem had to be solved before we could do any meaningful work in the development of lunar rendezvous mission techniques. In my opinion a pretty good approach has been agreed to….
Seventh “D” Mission Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting
The “D” Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting of March 10 was probably one of the least productive so far, and I sincerely apologize for it. I must have been tired or something. Even so, with all that talent present, there must be something worthwhile reporting….
CSM should have good rendezvous navigation in the lunar mission
As you know, I have been pushing to get the capability back into the command module computer program to compute CSI and CDH rendezvous maneuver targeting. The reason I consider this valuable is that with both VHF ranging and sextant data, the command module potentially has a better rendezvous guidance system than the LM. Thus,…
G Rendezvous
In spite of the feverish activity we have on three swinging missions C, C’, and D, a few of us found a couple of minutes to spend on the G Rendezvous. Some things came out of it that are probably worth reporting:…
X-axis or z-axis for LM TPI?
This memo is in response to a question that came up at the October 21 D Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting. The question was: What is the additional LM RCS propellant cost if we use the z-axis RCS translation rather than the x-axis for TPI? Chuck Pace checked with the MPAD Consumable people who figured the…
Fourth Mission “C” Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting
As a result of our deliberations today (February 16) I think we have finally determined what to do about delta V residuals on the NCC₁ maneuver. Previously, it had been stated that we would probably trim out small values but, in order to save RCS, would allow larger values to propagate to the subsequent maneuvers,…