Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight)
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2. Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 250–57. Reissued in paperback as Apollo 13 by Pocket Books division of Simon & Schuster, 1995.
3. Lovell and Kluger, Lost Moon, 282–85.
Chapter 18. The Undaunted Warrior Triumphs: Apollo 14
1. Chaikin, Man on the Moon, 337–41.
2. Slayton’s medical problem was intermittent heart fibrillation.
3. Under Slayton’s unofficial system, a backup crew became the prime crew two missions later.
4. In this endeavor, the astronauts were following a rich tradition of previous great explorers. I am struck by the similarities of the astronauts’ lunar geology studies with the private tutoring as a field naturalist, biologist, botanist, and navigator that Meriwether Lewis obtained in 1803 before embarking upon his expedition to the northwest Louisiana Territory. (See chapter 7 of Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996].)
5. Chaikin, Man on the Moon, 347–52.
6. Ibid., 352–54.
7. Solder balls inside the case were a not infrequent problem with hermetically sealed switches and instruments. A small tube in the case was used to evacuate the air and refill with inert nitrogen; this tube was then pinched off and sealed with solder. If the pressure inside the case during sealing was negative, solder could be sucked inside. It would usually be detected at the factory by vibrating or shaking the switch.
8. Chaikin, Man on the Moon, 357–60.
9. Ibid., 374–75.
10. Thomas J. Kelly, annotations on personal copy of Apollo 14 Flight Plan, February 1971. In possession of author.
Chapter 19. Great Explorations: Apollos 15, 16, and 17
1. Chaikin, Man on the Moon, 412–15.
2. The Moon as we see it consists primarily of the dark maria, known from earlier missions to be created by vast lava flows about 3.85 million years ago, and the bright highlands, origins unknown. Both areas are pocked with impact craters of widely varying sizes, and littered with impact ejecta (rocks and boulders). See also Chaikin, Man on the Moon, 452–56.
3. The gimbal control system controlled electric motor-driven actuators which pointed the large SPS rocket engine. For stable flight when thrusting, the engine was pointed at the spacecraft’s center of gravity.
4. Chaikin, Man on the Moon, 456–62.
5. Ibid., 463–75.
6. Skurla gave the guilty parties a few days off until Petrone’s wrath subsided.
7. Scientists dated the glass beads as 3.5 billion years old, not far removed in geologic time from the extensive lava flows 3.85 billion years ago that created the vast lunar maria.
8. Scientists studied these boulders for years, and from them derived a reconstruction of the violent events that occurred when the huge Serenetatis asteroid slammed into the Moon 3.8 billion years ago, thrusting up the Taurus Mountains and the Massifs and showering debris thousands of miles across the surface.
9. The message on the plaque was “Here man completed his first explorations of the Moon, December 1972 AD. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind.”
10. Chaikin, Man on the Moon, 516–30, 535–45.
Chapter 20. Our Future Slips Away
1. This capability was known as “cross-range” because it permitted moving the reentry trajectory in the direction perpendicular to (across) the downrange direction of the spacecraft’s original orbit.
2. The phase B design studies would be followed by phase C, in which NASA would select and define a design approach for the spacecraft competition, followed by the industry competition (phase D).
3. Thruelsen, Grumman Story, 362–71.
4. In NASA’s source selection process, the SEB does not recommend a winner but evaluates the relative strengths and weaknesses of the proposals and rank orders them using a weighted scoring system for the technical and management proposals. It also evaluates the relative validity and realism of the cost proposals. The SSA considers the SEB’s report as a major input to his deliberations but makes the selection based upon the overall best interests of the government.
5. Thruelsen, Grumman Story, 372.