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The Apollos That Never Were, Hardware fates and the dynamics of the program
jmknapp
post Jun 19 2008, 07:47 PM
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I was reading up on this mission and have a few questions:

1) Some of the instruments, e.g., LAMP (or LAVA LAMP, haha) will be used to identify any water ice in the "permanently shadowed" parts of polar craters. But with the Earth at least, the pole is said to have migrated quite a bit. Is the Moon conversely so locked in synchrony that its own pole can't wander appreciably? Seems like even if transient, it might not take too long to burn off any ice.

2) I was wondering what the first "earthrise" opportunity might be for LRO postcard purposes. According to the available SPICE kernels the initial orbit comes in around longitude 90 over the south pole and so from the point of view of earth circles without eclipse initially until it eventually precesses around or whatever.

3) The launch has been delayed by a month. Is there any possibility this mission might be cancelled? I.e., has NASA (read: US Congress) ever cancelled a mission where the spacecraft had essentially been built?


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ilbasso
post Jul 23 2008, 08:22 PM
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QUOTE (jmknapp @ Jun 19 2008, 02:47 PM) *
I was reading up on this mission and have a few questions:

...

3) The launch has been delayed by a month. Is there any possibility this mission might be cancelled? I.e., has NASA (read: US Congress) ever cancelled a mission where the spacecraft had essentially been built?


Sorry for the late reply here, here's another Yes answer. Apollos 18 and 19 had the hardware completely built. They were forced to cancel essentially because the money was not allocated to run the support operations.


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Manning the LCC at http://www.apollolaunchcontrol.com
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dvandorn
post Jul 25 2008, 04:39 AM
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There is a truly excellent resource to answer all of these questions:

A Field Guide to American Spacecraft

This site identifies each and every mockup, boilerplate and flight-ready spacecraft and booster ever built for NASA, what flight (if any) it was used on, and, if it still exists and hasn't been scrapped, where in the world it is located and if it is on public display. When available, it provides links to pictures of each item.

To answer the general question, as of the end of the Apollo era, with the splashdown of ASTP, there were two Saturn Vs left over and two full CSMs left over. There were three full LMs left over, but one was LM-2 which suffered from so many problems it was pulled from consideration for even unmanned test flight. Of the two flyable LMs left over after Apollo concluded, one was an H-mission LM originally scheduled for Apollo 15, and one was a J-mission LM. Another two LMs, in J-mission configuration, were built; one is confirmed as having been scrapped, while the other's fate seems unknown.

-the other Doug


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Paul Fjeld
post Aug 4 2008, 01:18 AM
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QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jul 24 2008, 11:39 PM) *
There were three full LMs left over, but one was LM-2 which suffered from so many problems it was pulled from consideration for even unmanned test flight. Of the two flyable LMs left over after Apollo concluded, one was an H-mission LM originally scheduled for Apollo 15, and one was a J-mission LM. Another two LMs, in J-mission configuration, were built; one is confirmed as having been scrapped, while the other's fate seems unknown.

LM-2 was committed to be an unmanned flight after the '67 fire in the Command Module. All manned flight vehicles had to be fire-proofed but the LMs were so far behind they decided not to fire-proof LM-2 in case it was needed if LM-1 failed. It was the only LM that was planned to be either manned or unmanned (until the fire). They abused it in tests after LM-1 was (barely) considered a success, doing power on drop tests in Houston with Haise along for the ride. They mainly wanted to know if the stupid, too skinny wiring would break on worse-case touchdowns!

Actually LM-13 was only built up to the bare structure of the Ascent Stage, no tanks nor most of the rest of it. The Descent Stage was only into its first month of construction when it was stopped in Sept. '70 and, I >think< scrapped. What goes for the LM-13 Descent Stage is an LTA whose ID I am trying to track down. LMs 14 & 15 barely had their faces welded when the stop orders came down for each of them. I really want to know what is at the Franklin Institute. Some Grummanites did both that one and the Cradle of Aviation LM at the same time (I think late '70s) and may have done some mixing and matching with test articles. When LM-13 came back to the Cradle after its HBO duty, the entire outer (fake) stuff was ripped off and new (fake) stuff was built and applied.
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