Extensive analyses were carried out in preparation for Gemini rendezvous which led to our selection of a 130° terminal phase transfer angle. Entirely independent analyses on Apollo apparently have led to selection of 140° for the rendezvous transfer angle. More recently, however, people in the Flight Crew Operations Directorate have been re-examining this and, according…
Month: February 1968
Third “D” Mission Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting
We had our third “D” Mission Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting on January 29. I am afraid it was a rather frustrating meeting for everyone. But on second thought—what’s new?…
Some Sundisk idiosyncrasies
Here are a couple of things we learned during the Sundisk Pre-CARR meeting at MIT on January 25 dealing with preparation to make a guided maneuver. One dealt with the procedure for updating the permanent state vector in the command module computer (CMC). As you know, the CMC idling program (P00) updates the state vector…
Deletion of TLI steering by the spacecraft
You did better than you thought. The request for the change was prepared by ASPO, concurred on by Slayton, Kraft and yourself, and forwarded to Headquarters over the Director’s signature in the middle of January. My Headquarters spies tell me Phillips is only awaiting Mueller’s concurrence before issuing the directive, and it is my understanding…
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…
Spacecraft computer programs controlling DPS throttling need more changes
On February 14 we had a meeting with everyone at MSC, plus MIT and Grumman, who are interested in the way the spacecraft computer program throttles the Descent Propulsion System (DPS). There has been concern that the throttling programs as currently designed are not adequate for the Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI) maneuver on a lunar…
Landing radar reasonableness
Here is another request for information—this time dealing with landing radar reasonableness. The basic question is how well can the crew evaluate the quality of the landing radar data from the displays available to them prior to permitting the data to be accepted by the PNGCS? For example, is it possible for it to read…
TLI platform alignment
Something came out of Ron Berry’s Midcourse Mission Techniques meeting of February 7 that I think should be advertised widely. Apparently, we now have agreement among all parties, including FCOD and FOD, that the proper platform orientation for the TLI maneuver on a lunar mission is the one established prelaunch on the pad for use…
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,…
Landmarks for lunar tracking
On February 1 a bunch of us who had been working on operational procedures associated with lunar landmark tracking got together with some of the Lunar Mapping people who have the responsibility for selecting and precisely locating the lunar landmarks to be used. This was a rather refreshing get together since, as strange as it…