During Chris Kraft’s staff meeting of July 17 there was a long discussion regarding the necessity of a beacon to help the recovery people find the spacecraft. It was pretty well concluded that it was not needed as long as we knew where the spacecraft landed to within several hundred miles. Of course, if the…
Category: Recovery
Reentry guidance is perfect for S/C 101 regardless of L/D
This memorandum is in response to your question regarding the reentry guidance with low L/D. It was erroneously reported to you in the August 3 MPAD Weekly Activity Report that, although the program could be modified easily to handle L/D as low as 0.2, it probably would not be implemented for Spacecraft 101. Actually, some…
Lunar Reentry Mission Techniques meeting – March 7
On March 7 we had a Data Priority Mission Techniques meeting on lunar reentry. This was the first on this mission phase with contractor participation. Our objective was to understand the current status of the business and to begin pinning down the operational procedures to be used onboard the spacecraft and on the ground. We…
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…
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:…
Transearth midcourse maneuvers are getting easier and cheaper all the time
On June 6 we had a Transearth Midcourse Maneuver Mission Techniques meeting at which we discussed implementation of the philosophy as described in my June 3 memo. The technique proposed, you recall, involves making a number of small RCS burns using the SCS, solely for the purpose of corridor control. I have discussed this with…
“C” Mission Retrofire and Reentry Mission Techniques meeting
On Friday morning, July 19, we had a “C” Mission Retrofire and Reentry Mission Techniques meeting to clean up some open items. It is evident that a distribution of correction pages to our previously distributed Mission Techniques document will be inadequate and it is our current plan to republish the whole book. Some of the…
C’ Transearth Midcourse Correction (MCC) and Entry Mission Techniques
On September 13, we conducted a review of the Transearth MCC and Entry Mission Techniques for a lunar mission. Although, originally developed for an F or G type mission, the discussion was almost completely devoted to C’. Participation included all interested MSC organizations (including the C’ flight crew) as well as representatives from North American,…
C’ Communication Loss
A lot of work is going into the subject contingency – with respect to:…
C’ Mission Techniques
Attached are a list of ground rules and working agreements I compiled from my notes taken at the September 13 and 14 Mission Techniques meetings and the September 20 Lunar Abort meeting, all on the C’ mission. This list is far from complete. Basically, these items are only the changes and additions to the material…