[X] My Assistant

[Phil Stooke]

Doug - a few members may still be around but the best place to start is LPI in Houston where the full set of minutes of the Apollo Site Selection Board and its associated bodies (Group for Lunar Exploration Planning, Science Working Panel) are preserved. Thousands of pages! I went through them page by page, and also through a set of binders of ASSB materials assembled by Don Wilhelms and left in the Branch History Collection at USGS Flagstaff.

The material you are talking about occupies half of my atlas. It includes dozens of EVA alternatives at places like Rima Prinz, Copernicus, Marius Hills, not to mention multiple potential landing sites around Hadley. I have sampling objectives but not specific EVAs at Littrow (this is not the same site as Taurus-Littrow). I have landing points but not EVAs for Davy. One unfortunate note, the Flagstaff material lacked some of the last few sites (including details of Tsiolkovsky) because they had been borrowed by Harrison Schmitt when I was there (and are still out). I'll have to put it in a second edition.

The ASSB stuff and lots more was rescued from the dumpster, literally, by Fran Waranius, then librarian at LPI (Lunar Science Institute as it was then). At the end of Apollo the wretched engineers who run JSC just stacked it all up to be thrown out. She shuttled her car back and forth between JSC and LSI with her trunk full of these unique goodies.

Anyway, hang on a bit and you'll have what you need.

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

In this age of CGI wizardry, it ought to be pretty easy to paint realistic pictures of what, for example, a LM landing about five kilometers away from the central peaks of Copernicus would have looked like...

-the other Doug

Doug:

Like a bunch of isolated hills, I expect, in a flat-to-rolling plain - and unless you got off the plain, no sign of the crater wall...

Bob Shaw

[Phil Stooke]

Bob, what you say would certainly apply to Ptolemaeus and many another very large shallow crater - what Patrick Moore would call a "walled plain". But not to Copernicus. It would be an incredible sight, with central peaks on the scale of the Apollo 17 massifs and walls easily, spectacularly, visible from the floor even near the peaks. The so-called picture of the century, the oblique Lunar Orbiter view across Copernicus, gives a very good idea what it would be like.

Phil

[dvandorn]

hang on a bit and you'll have what you need.

Fantastic! And maybe -- just maybe -- Jack Schmitt has more than just Tsiolkovsky materials. Maybe he also has the details on the Littrow traverse plans, and the Davy traverse plans, as well. I'm as sure as I can be (without ever actually having seen them) that these must have been worked up by someone, and I'm hoping against hope that they still exist somewhere...

Do you have decent copies of the Apollo 13 traverse plans, by the way? I've seen very poor PDF scans of them -- the target point for 13 was about 300 to 500 meters further west than the point designed for Apollo 14, and Lovell was supposed to make a call during final approach as to whether it was better to land short (to the eventual Apollo 14 landing point, between Triplet and Doublet) and attempt a traverse east to Cone Crater, or land west (beyond Doublet) and attempt a traverse to the smaller, slightly less "fresh" Star Crater. Traverse plans were developed for both contingencies, plus another plan designed for landing west of Star Crater (which would have been about 1.5 to 2 km downrange of the Apollo 14 point). And after the abort, as they rounded the Moon, Lovell radioed back to the ground that he was "still looking for Star Crater," which makes you wonder whether Apollo 13 would have ever even *tried* to visit Cone.

As for myself, I never could figure out why they didn't target for a landing point in the valley between Cone Ridge and the Triplet craters -- it was relatively flat and smooth, and would have obviated the need for a 1.5 km trek to get to the most important sampling site there. It's not like Cone Ridge was so high as to pose an impact threat to the LM as it descended, and beginning with the very next flight, the descent profile was adjusted to allow for passing over *much* taller mountains on the way to the landing point. It would have been easy to do.

-the other Doug

[Bob Shaw]

Phil:

OK, we're talking about a crater which is about 95km across, central peaks 1.2km (some sources) or 400m (other sources) high, greatest extent of the peaks about 15km. If the moon's diameter is about 3,500km, then surely only the tops of any ring wall mountains will be visible?

Where's VistaPro when you need it!

Bob Shaw

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[Bob Shaw]

I take back what I said about a rolling plain - Copernicus is anything but! No large-scale lava flooding, loadsa baby rilles, hills and debris.

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[Phil Stooke]

Doug, yes, I have Apollo 13 EVA plans, which differed in many details from Apollo 14 plan. Also a map of lots of potential landing points around the actual Cone Crater site - they wanted to sample the fra Mauro formation, but you can do that in lots of places.

It would have been easy to land east of Triplet, but they were being cautious, gradually expanding the envelope. It wasn't just the elevation of the ridge, I think they needed to be sure the landing radar could keep track of rapidly changing altitudes over rough terrain.

For all the Apollo enthusiasts out there... here's another puzzle - answer tomorrow! - Apollo 12 was supposed to demonstrate a pinpoint landing. The prime site was Surveyor 3. But what about the backup site? What was the pinpoint landing option at the backup?

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Bob, yes, Copernicus is an amazing place. The fabulous images you posted do make it clear, I think, that the rim would not be below the horizon even at the foot of the central peaks. In fact the LM landing position was to be chosen specifically to allow the best view of the walls, as the peaks would hide a big chunk of the walls.

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

It would have been easy to land east of Triplet, but they were being cautious, gradually expanding the envelope.  It wasn't just the elevation of the ridge, I think they needed to be sure the landing radar could keep track of rapidly changing altitudes over rough terrain.

Phil

Phil:

Al Shepherd don't need no steenkeen' landin' radar!

As he almost demonstrated...

Bob Shaw

[Bob Shaw]

David Shayler's Apollo: The Lost and Forgotten Missions (Springer-Praxis, 2002) contains several images of unflown Apollo landing targets.

These include the *original* Apollo 17 Marius Hills site (p262) and the Apollo 18 Copernicus site (p263).

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[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

If I remember correctly, Apollo 12's backup target was Surveyor 1. (Don Wilhelms, in his book "To A Rocky Moon", bemoans at length the fact that S-1 wasn't Apollo 12's primary target, becuase the geology of its landing site was much more important.)

[Phil Stooke]

Bruce, the backup site for Apollo 12 and Apolo 13 was Apollo Site 5, north of Flamsteed. A site in Flamsteed was considered for the second landing, but it was not at Surveyor 1, it was next to one of the hills in the big ghost crater surrounding the Surveyor site. It was called Site 6R in the terminology of the time. After 13 there were no backup sites.
(but what was the pinpoint target? - answer tomorrow!)

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Bob, the Shayler book is good, though hideously expensive. The interesting thing which it does NOT make clear, though, is that those examples of EVAs were only a few of many others that were considered, I found at least 3 different variations on each of the Tycho, Copernicus and Marius missions, and lots for Hadley.

Phil

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Does anyone have maps of the traverses for a landing at Alphonsus? My tentative conclusion has always been that, if Apollo 13 had succeeded and #14 had been sent to the Littrow lava wrinkle ridge as planned, the Alphonsus site (near the western crater wall) would have been the most likely additional Apollo landing site (besides Hadley Rill and Descartes).

[Phil Stooke]

Yes, I have an Alphonsus traverse map, though without sample stations etc. Alphonsus was always popular as a second choice, but never made it to the top of the list. One problem was that the later Apollo sites had to have multiple objectives - at Taurus-Littrow you had the valley floor basalts, the Serenitatis basin massifs, the supposed volcanic vent at Shorty (incorrect interpretation) and a young landslide. Alphonsus had the dark halo craters, but the pre-Imbrian walls (suck old material was a major objective of the last 2 missions) were likely covered with a thick layer of Imbrium ejecta.

Phil