[X] My Assistant

[DDAVIS]

I have a page on Apollo which is updated annually. Do others feel more optimistic than i do on the prospects for return? I for one won't believe we will leave LEO until the hardware to do it is actually being built.

http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/Apollo30.html

[ilbasso]

...That's strange, because I watched all of the two Apollo 14 moonwalks live, and the TV struck me as being very good.  Of course, it may just have seemed that way by comparison with what had gone before...

Apollo 11's lunar camera was black-and-white (interesting note: it was a CIA-built article!). Apollo 12 had a color camera, but in setting the camera up on its tripod at the beginning of the first moonwalk, they accidentally pointed it at the sun and burned out the camera! I remember that NBC TV still covered the moonwalks - using marionettes to accompany the audio feed! That had to have been the only time puppets were used on to cover live national news!

My dad bought our family our first color TV specifically so we could watch the Apollo 12 moonwalks in color.

Have you seen the book "Virtual LM"? Scott Sullivan did a beautiful deconstruction/ reconstruction of all the lunar module's structures and systems. It is hard for me to imagine us building anything like that wonderful ship again.

[RedSky]

I remember that NBC TV still covered the moonwalks - using marionettes to accompany the audio feed!  That had to have been the only time puppets were used on to cover live national news! 

I remember that, also. However, I do recall way earlier that NBC used a Bill Baird puppet (a little silver space suited astronaut puppet, moved using thin black sticks like muppets) to try and cover a Gemini EVA, since there was no live TV. The EVA was where the astronaut went to the back of the craft (the big white adapter section of the Gemini) to test using some tools stored there in a tool box. The puppeteer tried to listen to the air-to-ground com in order to choreograph the puppet action to what was being said. Needless to say... with the early com available only when over ground stations (no TDRSS), and very scratchy and garbled, it didn't really work out very well. The puppet seemed a bit "lost" most of the time, not knowing what to do.
I do recall where the puppet was in the back section at the tool box (since he was following the timeline), but then heard on the com that the astronaut was really only halfway there. Because it was live with no "cutaways", the poor puppet had to scurry back out to where the astronaut really was!

I also remember the early Gemini-Agena dockings, where NBC again tried some innovative (but now, laughable) stuff: They had an HO scale model train track set in a huge circle, and another track that gradually spiralled out to this large "orbit". A motorized wheelset carried a model of the Agena on the outer orbit round and round. Another motorized set carried a Gemini model on the spiral track until it reached the switch track onto the final "orbit". Then, finally, they would "dock" (i.e., one would run into the other!). Even back then as a kid, I thought it was a pretty idiotic way to illustrate the concept.