How Apollo Flew to the Moon

W. David Woods, Praxis 2011, second edition ISBN 978-1-4419-7178-4, Central 629.454 w868h 2011

A useful reference, which I cannot afford to add to my groaning library. Borrowed January 2017

Notes:

• p118 ARIA: Apollo Range Instrumentation Aircraft, EC-135 (like Boeing 707) that relayed voice and recording telemetry.
• p127 PAD: pre-advisory data, spoken numbers uplinked to astronauts to a small form, used for navigation and manual operation in the event of automatic equipment failure
• p130 passing through van Allen belt at "10 km/s": minutes through the inner belt protons, 1.5 hours through the outer belt electrons. In lunar orbital plane, not through the densest equatorial portions of the belts.

• p133 EMS Entry Monitor System

• p134 TD&E Transposition, docking, and extraction of LM

• p136 SLA (spacecraft LM adapter) panel, 4 panels per mission, as many as 36 in heliocentric orbit. 6.6 meter diameter S-IVB (third) stage to 3.9 meter diameter service module. Estimated ( 6.6 x 4.3 to 2.8 ) meters.

• p138 COAS Crewman Optical Alignment Sight, aligned to target on LM

• p139 probe and drogue docking mechanism

• p149 "asteroid" J002E3 probably the S-IVB from Apollo 12

• p157 Unified S-Band, combination of all signals into one 2.1064 GHz (CSM) or 2.1018 GHz (LM) uplink carrier, used for distance and speed doppler. Transponder multiplied frequency by 240/221 for downlink.
• p160 Sextant telescope on opposite side of CM main hatch, 0.01 degree precision
• p161 SLOS = Star Line Of Sight.
• p163 Jim Lovell made P23 measurements and calculated state with P21 to within 500 meters of ground/doppler calculations

• p166 Apollo Guidance Computer at peak consumed half of the world's output of integrated circuits, 75 AGCs built between 1963 and 1969. NASA bought most chips for test. 80 KHz, 15 bits plus parity, Apollo 15 ran Colossus III software, 44 programs in 64 kilobytes of core rope.

  • ie. P51 to 54 guidance system alignment, P61 to P67 planetary descent.
  • Programs had verbs (instructions) and nouns (access to numeric values)

• p173 REFSMMAT Reference to a stable member matrix, numerical definition of an orientation in space to which the platform could be aligned.

• p220 TV bandwidth 2 MHz, 200/262.5 lines per field, 60 fields per second with RGB color wheel to make 20 color frames per second, reformatted at NASA with video recording tapes and drums
• p231 LOI = Lunar Orbit Insertion. SM used hypergolic fuels. 2 impulse to lunar orbit, first to capture and second two orbits later to a 110x20 km altitude orbit.
  • apolune/apocynthion

• p269 28 power sextant on LM, program 24 rate-aided optics tracking program

• p269 CM had DAC 16 mm Maurer data acquisition cameras monitoring LM departure. Cameras intended for engineering data, not history or publicity

• p270 normal movie speed is 24 frame/s, Apollo cameras were 1, 6, or 12 frames per second, wrong speed playback before recent advanced video processing
• p271 LM descent:
  • P63 at 1400 km and 22 minutes to landing.
  • PDI Powered Descent Initiation: perilune at 500 km and 11.5 minutes to landing
  • HIGH GATE begin approach, P64, 7 km downrange, 2.2 km altitide, 3 minutes prior to landing
  • LOW GATE terminal descent, P66, about 600 meters to landing

• p283 landing radar antenna on page 243, figure 2.2-15, phased array?

• p300 fuel slosh interfered with attitude, RCS (reaction control system) firings oscillation, 2 second computer cycle time (baffles added later)
• p300 P1201 and P1202 program alarms, radar left on purposefully by "Dr. Rendezvous" Aldrin so it was warmed up for abort and rendezbous.

  • author claims not alarms radar, but phase mis-synchronization of 800Hz clocks in the computer and the ATCA attitude and translation control assembly, software counters continuously incremented or decremented, which used up too much computer time.

  • resilient software by MIT's Hal Laning, "Executive and Waitlist" system

• p316 Silver Spur photo by Dave Scott Apollo 15, layered, stratified ejecta. biological layers between lineaments?

• p375 Apollo 15 core sample, 2.5 meters, 58 layers
  • idea: in between the "big" layers of lunar impact ejecta may be microscopically thin layers of earth impact ejecta

• p386 Mass spectrometer package in SM SIM bay matched ALSEP (Apollo lunar surface experiment package) experiments: natural Moon total atmosphere 10 tonnes, doubled by LM descent and ascent engine exhaust

• p392 Ultraviolet spectrometer ditto
• p398 plane change from 28 degree launch inclination LEO to lunar orbit inclination as costly as GEO to lunar transfer orbit perigee change
• p398 plane change by CM to match lunar rotation from LM descent to ascent, 10 to 20 seconds of SM engine fire, P30

• p400 PGNS primary guidance and navigation system.

• p406 Diagram of direct ascent, LM does all the work and performs a perfect rendezvous - way too risky.

• p408 Diagram of coelliptic sequence rendezvous (2 orbits, 4 hours, difficult after whole day of exploration)

  • first LM burn, launch to 17x84 km orbit
  • CSI (coelliptic sequence initiation) second LM burn to 84 km CDM (constant delta height), 24 km below CSM orbit.
  • TPI (terminal phase initiation) third burn to CSM orbit height
• p410 Diagram of "direct" or "short rendezvous" technique, fractional orbit in CDM to TPI, shortened time by 2 hours, and a goaround added only two more hours.

• p415 Neil Armstrong tried using AGS (Abort Guidance System) to dock Eagle LM with Columbia CSM, left it on during attach, which caused LM thrusters to fight what Collins was doing.

• p419 LM jettison: fully suited in case of leak (which killed Soyuz 11 cosmonauts after undocking)
• p425 Flight controllers in mission control a small part of the team, many more in the Mission Control Center

• p429 TEI (trans-Earth injection) on lunar far side, retrograde to lunar orbit (what delta V??)

• p431 J missions 14-17 delayed return by a day, enabling more surface mapping by Apollo 15 and 17 with northerly landing sites.
• p431 35.6 kg lunar subsatellites deployed from Apollo 15 and 16 SIM bays.
• p434 15 subsatellite seven months before telemetry failure, 16 subsatellite 34 days before orbit changes collided with lunar farside.
• p440 TEI burn of 1000 m/s with error of 6 cm/s. Predicted 2 min 28 sec, actual 3.4 seconds longer because of different mixture ratio compared to LOI.

• p441 AOS (acquisition of signal) time tells MCC whether burn was successful and sped up the CSM.

• p443 CSM left with 18.5 tonnes of propellant, for Apollo 11, 12% left over was contingency in case CSM had to rescue a stricken LM.
• p444 Apollo 17, only 4% was left in CSM because more was delivered to Moon.
• p446 Apollo 12 eclipse photo, with some red and green bands captured by the 16-mm movie camera
  • p447 Astronauts see lightning flashes
• p448 Apollo 15 astronauts observe solar eclipse on Earth; Moon's shadow passing over the surface over 2 hours
• p449-50 Commanders went into business and management postflight, LMPs became politicians, ministers, etc. Mitchell: Institute of Noetic Sciences to investigage paranormal
• p454 Jack Schmitt exercise, heart rate 115, interfered slightly with barbeque roll, and destratified tank 3 O₂ .

• p454 equigravisphere, where Earth and Moon gravity are the same magnitude.

• p455 RCS consumables measured indirectly, by reduction in helium pressure on fuel bladders.
• p458 Apollo 16 and 17: EVA to retrieve SIM film cannisters
• p460 Apollo 16: Mattingly's lost wedding ring floats out, bounces off Mattingly's helmet, caught by Duke
• p466 ablative heat shield lighter than thermal tiles (carries off more heat), will be used on Orion. 300k honeycomb cells hand filled with epoxy resin, then shaped on large lathe
  • at shield 7 cm, center shield 2 to 4 cm (over most of the cone???), metal skin covered with kapton tape, most of which survived reeenty and was removed as souvenirs.
• p468 850 m/s at lunar/earth gravity strength crossover point. Two days to reach half of maximum entry speed, two hours to reach full speed
• p469 entry interface altitude at 400kft 121.92 km, 6.5° ± 1°, 0.05 gee event at 90.66 km altitude, computer flies and EMS (entry monitor system) monitors
• p470 entry pad example
• p472 orientation of entry REFSMMAT illustration, reminiscent of launch loop diagram on wikipedia

• p475 ... some have suggested that for such answers, NASA should have sent artists and poets. A few crewmen have pointed out that had artists and poets comprised the crews. they would never have returned alive. The sheer degree of detail involved in flying the Apollo spacecraft explains why NASA preferred highly proficient pilots as astronauts.

• p476 GDC gyro display couplers, backup orientation system

• p477 Diagram of the front panel of the EMS. The entry scroll shows through the velocity window in the center, which is a small paper chart fed past on a rotating drum, see scroll images at ApolloEntry .