During a Data Priority meeting a couple of months ago in which we discussed need for lunar landmark tracking, we uncovered what we felt to be a deficiency in the Colossus computer program. It was in the program which is used for determining the location of the landing site. Implicit in the program was the…
Year: 1968
Reentry from lunar missions
On January 12 a group of Flight Crew, Flight Control and Mission Planning guys got together to talk about the lunar reentry and some rather interesting things came out which I am recording here for my records and your amusement….
“Final” review of Spacecraft (Mission “C”) Retrofire and Reentry Mission Techniques
On January 10 we had a “final” review of Spacecraft 101 (Mission “C”) Retrofire and Reentry Mission Techniques as documented in the logical flow charts prepared by TRW based on a series of meetings we have had here at MSC. These flow charts, which show the operations starting several hours prior to the retrofire maneuver…
Mission “D” Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting
The second of the subject meeting was held on January 17. Some odds and ends were resolved, and one other significant operational procedure was proposed dealing with CSM operations during CSM active rendezvous….
Second Mission “C” Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting
On January 17 we held our second Mission “C” Rendezvous Mission Techniques meeting. I feel we have this mission phase pretty well in hand conceptually. There are a number of numerical limits yet to be set….
LM-2 not expected to fly
George Low announced at his January 29 staff meeting that the LM-2 mission will not be flown unless something unexpected turns up in the postflight data analysis now underway. He termed this a “reversible decision” until the final review date, now set as March 6. As I understand it, they intend to continue development of…
Landmarks must be referenced to Irene’s earth.
We were informed at the Sundisk Pre-CARR meeting at MIT on January 25 that the CMC landmark tracking initialization data the crew is to use must be referenced to the Fischer ellipsoid. I’m talking about the numbers listed on their landmark photographs, etc., used during the navigation exercise. I could not remember what we were…
Can we plan nominally to burn the APS to fuel depletion?
During our Ascent Mission Techniques meeting on January 31, something rather important came up. It was thought by several of the people there that it is now considered acceptable to burn the APS engine to fuel depletion. If this is the case, I am sure we would change the way we intend to perform the…
Rendezvous radar will be available during critical mission phases.
Something rather astounding happened at the Apollo Spacecraft Software Configuration Control Board meeting on Tuesday, January 30. It was so shocking the word spread like wildfire! But just in case you have not already heard, it looks like we are going to get rendezvous radar data on the downlink during the critical LM powered flight…
Average g
During a discussion about reentry at lunar return velocities the other day, the question came up as to when it was okay to turn on Average g. There was some reason for wanting to do this about one-half hour before arrival at 400,000 feet altitude. We all recognized the inaccuracy which results from accelerometer bias,…