Attached are the ground rules and working agreements updated based on our September 9 Mission Techniques meeting. They reflect the new, simplified D Rendezvous exercise – primarily changes in the football trajectory and the “insertion maneuver” plus a bunch of things we were able to delete. As noted in my last report of this subject,…
Category: Mission types
Apollo 12 Descent – Final comments
There are a couple of new developments you should know about the Apollo 12 descent….
Some more trivia for the F mission
With regard to docked DPS burns we should remember that the LUMINARY program used on F is the same as the SUNDANCE program to be used on D, which due to scaling problems or something barely recognizes that the DPS is running when it is at only 10 percent thrust in the docked configuration. Accordingly,…
What can be done about the AOT?
One of the largest error sources affecting precision landing on the moon is the LM platform alignment accuracy at PDI. The AOT is adequate to fly an Apollo 11 type mission but it is simply not designed to support precise landings; AOT alignments, as currently carried out, leave something to be desired. The result is…
CSM Rescue Mission Techniques are complete and clean
On June 9 we had our final Mission Techniques meeting on CSM Rescue. I am pleased to report that this stuff appears to be in very good shape. After much hard work by many people, the CSM rescue rendezvous plans shake down to only two basic profiles. Each of these has minor modifications to account…
DPS low level propellant light
During our final review of the Descent Mission Techniques on May 28, GAEC presented a comprehensive review of the low level DPS propellant light – its operation and accuracy. The most significant piece of information coming from this was that we are assured of about 98 seconds more DPS operation at the hover thrust level…
LM IMU drift checks prior to descent for Apollo 13 and up
We are making some fairly substantial changes to the way we are aligning and checking the drift of the LM IMU before descent on the Apollo 13 mission. Just for the record I would like to document what it is we are doing and why….
AAP Rendezvous Mission Techniques
In order to help solidify requirements for the AAP CSM computer program we are having a Mission Techniques type meeting on Tuesday, January 27 at 9 a.m., in Room 378 of Building 4. The specific subject to be discussed is the rendezvous phase of the AAP mission. The thing we are particularly anxious to pin…
C’ Abort Maneuver Overburn Monitoring
In response to a C’ Mission Techniques action item, Rick Nobles informs me that they have established the burn monitoring procedure to guard against overburn during any non-nominal C’ maneuver. As a standard procedure the crew should manually shut down the SPS as soon as the duration of the burn exceeds the nominal value by…
We don’t have to change LUMINARY much for point landing but there’s gold in them hills!
On September 12 we had a spacecraft computer program requirements meeting for Apollo 13. We called it because there were a lot of proposals floating around which had been advertised as “needed for point landing.” On the other hand, these programs must be released for rope manufacture on about November 15 and so there obviously…