As you suggested, I checked with Phil Shaffer – Chief, Flight Dynamics Officer on the C mission – to determine if the flight crew and flight controllers are following the mission techniques we developed. He is completely satisfied that everything is being done properly – at lease those things they are able to observe from…
Month: October 1968
Lunar orbit revolution counter for C’
This may seem like a trivial matter – however, before any confusion arises let’s firmly establish the means of identifying revolutions in lunar orbit by number. Specifically, unless there’s some good reason for choosing another way:…
Cis-lunar spacecraft navigation for C’
We are still thrashing around trying to figure out what to do with regard to cis-lunar spacecraft navigation for the C’ mission. It is not clear whether a couple of things are really necessary or not. If we could get rid of them, it would simplify things. Unfortunately, we aren’t confident it is safe to…
D Rendezvous Mission Techniques
On October 4 we met to review a draft of the D Rendezvous Mission Techniques. Although we spent the entire day we didn’t get past page 3 and so it is obvious we are going to have to beef up our effort in order to get all this cleaned up. In fact, I am going…
Lunar Rendezvous Mission Techniques
A number of people who know about the rendezvous radar (Myron Kayton, Richard Broderick, etc.) came to our little Lunar Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting October 2 and assuaged our anxieties regarding the possibility of poor shaft angle measurements when the line-of-sight to the command module passes close to the lunar horizon. According to the data…
Results of the October 8 Apollo Spacecraft Software Configuration Control Board (ASSCCB) meeting
In this memo I will briefly describe some of the highlights of the subject meeting:…
C’ Earth Orbit and TLI Mission Techniques Open Items
It appears we have the Earth Orbit and TLI Mission Techniques for the C’ pretty well under control. The only two significant open items that I know of deal with the optics check and the crew procedures for protecting against an SIVB engine cutoff failure during TLI….
C’ maneuvers – SPS versus RCS crossover
Neil Townsend (EP2) informed me by phone – and will supply written confirmation – that the minimum duration SPS burn for C’ should be no less than 0.5 seconds. We had been assuming something smaller. According to MPAD (Otis Graf, FM7) this makes the crossover point between use of the RCS versus the SPS engine:…
Transearth Spacecraft Navigation
During Jim McPherson’s Transearth Spacecraft Navigation Mission Techniques meeting of October 8 and 15, a potpourri of ground rules, working agreements and constraints was established. I may be duplicating other reports with this memo but figure better too many reports than not enough. All of the following apply specifically to the first batch of sextant…
D Rendezvous Open Items, Action Items or whatever you call them
I’ve reviewed my notes of the D Rendezvous meetings over the last couple of months and have found the following open/action items. I guess most, if not all, are being worked on. But time grows short and so I’m sending this list around to make sure of it. If you know of others, please give…