johnson@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM (Wayne D. T. Johnson) (07/19/89)
In article <1188@bcd-dyn.UUCP> dbp@bcd-dyn.UUCP (dbp) writes: > > >I watched the CBS special about Apollo 11 last night. >(Thanks to whoever posted the notice; I wouldn't have known >about it otherwise.) Can anybody answer two questions? > The one thing that stuck me was the pictures of the LEM lifting off. And in color at that. If I remember right, the first color TV camera was on Apollo 12, and I thing this was also the first time that they left the camera on for lift off. -- Wayne Johnson (Voice) 612-638-7665 NCR Comten, Inc. (E-MAIL) W.Johnson@StPaul.NCR.COM or Roseville MN 55113 johnson@c10sd1.StPaul.NCR.COM These opinions (or spelling) do not necessarily reflect those of NCR Comten.
mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) (07/20/89)
In article <1989Jul15.214136.8236@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
<
<The early Saturn Vs had little camera pods that separated, reentered,
<and were recovered. The purpose being, obviously, to monitor how well
<things like staging worked. (Other than staging, the one thing I know
<that was photographed by the pods (via fiber-optic bundles) was fuel
<movement inside the tanks; those films are pretty boring, though.)
<
On the Apollo 6 mission, one of the cameras was lost. It was finally
found about 4 years later, having washed up onto the beach of some
south sea island. The film was still good.
Most of the footage of staging is from the unmanned missions, I don't
think that any of the manned boosters had the cameras on board.
*** mike (still looking for a publisher) smithwick ***
"Los Angeles : Where neon goes to die"
[disclaimer : nope, I don't work for NASA, I take full blame for my ideas]mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) (07/20/89)
In article <1398@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM> johnson@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM (Wayne D. T. Johnson) writes: >In article <1188@bcd-dyn.UUCP> dbp@bcd-dyn.UUCP (dbp) writes: >> >> >>I watched the CBS special about Apollo 11 last night. >>(Thanks to whoever posted the notice; I wouldn't have known >>about it otherwise.) Can anybody answer two questions? >> >The one thing that stuck me was the pictures of the LEM lifting off. And >in color at that. If I remember right, the first color TV camera was on >Apollo 12, and I thing this was also the first time that they left the >camera on for lift off. >-- The Apollo 12 camera was burned out by Al Bean about 45 minutes into the EVA. Even had the camera lasted, it could not have shown the liftoff since it was powered by the LM, and had no remote control facility. The first liftoff views came from Apollo 15 since the TV was controlled by earth, and being on the rover it was completely independent of the LM. Due to Bean's screwup, Apollo 13 and 14 carried a backup black and white camera (similar to the Apollo 11 model), and were instructed to cover up the lens whenever it was moved. The thing I wonder about is why no-one caught Bean's error before it was too late. It took about 25 or 30 seconds before it was killed, plenty of time for someone on the ground to say "hey you idiot, aim the camera down!!". What was interesting is that at one point after the burnout there was a brief flash of the LM that was visible. On the Emmy awards later on, the crew was given a special award, and on it was inscribed something like "never before have so many watched for so long for so little". The Apollo 12 crew was known to be rather clumsy. In "Chariots for Apollo" they told about a sim in a real LM on the ground with Bean and Conrad. The LM's cabin was banged around pretty bad. Whereas, I think it was the Apollo 9 crew, which were so careful they left the cabin neater then when they arrived. *** mike (still looking for a publisher) smithwick *** "Los Angeles : Where neon goes to die" [disclaimer : nope, I don't work for NASA, I take full blame for my ideas]
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (07/20/89)
In article <28852@ames.arc.nasa.gov> mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) writes: ><The early Saturn Vs had little camera pods that separated, reentered, ><and were recovered... > >Most of the footage of staging is from the unmanned missions, I don't >think that any of the manned boosters had the cameras on board. I'm not sure about that; remember that there were only two unmanned Saturn V launches. I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of the early manned ones had camera pods aboard, especially given that the second unmanned flight hit problems. (It took considerable boldness and a lot of confidence in the engineers to fly Apollo 8 on the third one.) -- $10 million equals 18 PM | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology (Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
jwp@larry.sal.wisc.edu (Jeffrey W Percival) (07/21/89)
In article <1398@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM> johnson@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM (Wayne D. T. Johnson) writes: >The one thing that stuck me was the pictures of the LEM lifting off. And >in color at that. If I remember right, the first color TV camera was on >Apollo 12, and I thing this was also the first time that they left the >camera on for lift off. Yeah, and sound too. The journalistic equivalence of colorizing. I was surprised and offended by this, coming from an organization that takes out full page advertisements in the Times slobbering about excellence in news and reporting. I next expected them to superimpose pictures of Michael Jackson over the LEM. Bah. -- Jeff Percival (jwp@larry.sal.wisc.edu)
lesc@nmsu.edu (Lief Kirschenbaum) (07/23/89)
Hello again, I've been off the 'net for a while. As a direct result of Eugene Miya's gracious posting last December concerning summer jobs with NASA I am now working for Lockheed Engineering and Sciences Company at NASA'a White Sands Test Facility. Thanks Eugene. In a few days I shall have more info., but right now I'm not sure what I'm allowed to post concerning White Sands. We do rocket engine testing (though not right now). We also do materials testing, tests for offgassing and stuff, for everything that flies on the shuttle. Pens, mascara, toothpaste, flight coveralls, etc. etc. There's even a painting in one of our lobbies that will be flown for one of the astronauts. We also do H2 O2 combustion research to determine their properties of combustion. This is to know what would happen if the shuttle blows up on the pad and also to have a good characterization of those and other fuels such that they can be better used and more safely handled. Materials research also includes testing valves and other parts for performance under odd condidions: high pressure, pneumatic impacts, etc. I don't have all the details because I (a physicist by academic study) am in their computer department (and I've never taken a CS course, and don't plan to -- that's the government). Lastly they have a hypervelocity gun to simulate micrometeroid impacts in order to determine what would be the best shielding for the space station. Last Thursday all site employees were encourage to go and see two movies during working hours in one of our conference rooms. One was on Apollo 11, the other was on Apollo 17. Both were pretty good and were produced at the time of their respective flights. Friday we saw a 30 minute new movie on Apollo 11, some really good footage of Saturn V take off. Question: after the engines fired, some very large structures swung up and away from the base of the Saturn V, like an oil well pump arm swinging up. What were those? Were they clamps used to hold the Saturn V to the crawler? We also saw a 60 minute taping of a press conference with Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins taped last March. Some of the questions were sort of sticky. Things like: why haven't you done anything to encourage support for NASA since '69? or How do you justify NASA spending over social programs? I liked Collins answer the best. (paraphrasing) 'Jamestown and the other colonies were squalid places, a lot worse off than many of our cities today, and yet we did not endeavor to make them 100% perfect, but expanded westward. In the same way, we still have problems here at home but must continue to expand outward.' He also said something about space helping us solve our Earthly problems. Their answers to questions concerning the future of NASA were interesting. They said that NASA should go on to Mars and maybe Titan. When asked about Bush and budgetary appropriations they were clearly discomfited. They never said it outright, but they all seemed to strongly wish that the U.S.'s involvement in space greatly increase and speed-up and had no faith in the current administartion actually doing anything of the sort. Bush's lack of details concerning timelining of goals and budgetary apportioning has not made me or any co-workers any more hopeful. In summary, I found the Apollo films quite depressing, not because the films were depressing, but because it made me think about where NASA has not gone since then. NASA is like an airplane which was pulled up to go into a stall; in 1969 the plane was at the peak of the stall, and lost all lift after that. I'm waiting for stall recovery. (Yes, I'm currently working on my pilot's license. Next is IFR, then multi-engine, then jet engine, then high altitude and high performance jets, then a space shuttle :-) ) Any queries concerning White Sands Test Facility address to me. The views presented here are not those of my employer, but are solely mine. -Leif S. Kirschenbaum, Technical Associate, Lockheed Egineering