[X] My Assistant

[dvandorn]

This is a subject I brought up several years ago on Usenet, and I still have an interest in it.

There were several landing sites heavily scrutinized for Apollo landings. There were four alternate landing sites for the G mission, for example. There was an alternate landing site for Apollo 12. And there were landing site proposals for many places that never 'made the cut' for an actual mission. Several of these sites had detailed planning put into them, including traverse planning.

It seems to me that it is now possible, with our knowledge of how the lunar surface looks in general and of how major terrain features look in specific, to use CGI techniques to create panoramas from landing sites and traverse stops from Apollo missions that never flew.

For example, the Apollo 14 crew spent several months training for a landing at Littrow -- a site out on Mare Serenitatis about 45 km from the later Taurus-Littrow site -- which was designed to sample the dark mantling unit and to visit a wrinkle ridge. It was a nice H-mission landing site, available in late summer and early fall of 1970. (Had Apollo 14 flew later than this, the landing site would have been near the crater Censorinus -- for which similar detailed planning was done.)

There were also detailed plans made for Alphonsus, Davy, Gassendi, Copernicus and Tycho landings. All included a number of traverse plan concepts and sampling site recommendations.

I would really enjoy seeing these vistas that, for the roll of the dice, might have been seen by American moonwalkers in the 1970s.

I know that Phil Stooke is working on a book... any idea if we might see something like this in it..?

-the other Doug

[Bob Shaw]

oDoug:

Ages back I posted some Copernicus images on UMSF which related to one of the proposed Apollo landing sites. The 'picture of the century' shot from Lunar Orbiter was taken from such an angle that the landing zone appeared behind the central peaks, and the view of the rim wall of the crater (there! that shows my age!) was comparable to that which a landed observer could have seen (with obvious differences due to height etc). So you can already get a hint of what that site might have been like...

Here they are again - the red dot indicates the landing site.

Bob Shaw

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[Phil Stooke]

dvandorn asks:

"I know that Phil Stooke is working on a book... any idea if we might see something like this in it..?"

A great idea! But I won't be doing any CGI work like that.

What I do on this topic is: (1) describe the convoluted site deliberations, from the minutes of the meetings which are all in Houston. Incidentally, I only summarize them, but they could be reproduced by Apogee Books or some such folk if they had a mind to... (2) use maps galore to illustrate all the hundreds of sitres considered, (3) present detailed maps of the sites which made the final lists, including EVA plans. I have EVAs for Alphonsus, Tycho, Gassendi, Rima Prinz 1, Copernicus, numerous sites at Hadley other than the one they actually used...

But no CGI... but that could be done ... by somebody else.

First you need topography. There are good topo maps for these sites, which could be digitized and turned into DEMs. Alternately, there are stereo images from Lunar Orbiter and Apollo (for instance, Copernicus and Tycho are covered by stereo Lunar Orbiter imaging which is being reprocessed and made available through the USGS Flagstaff website). Somebody with stereo-mapping software today could make DEMs better than anything Apollo planners had at the time. Then the CGI kicks in...

I do think this would be a great thing to do. But I'm not the person to do it.

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

oDoug:

Here are the other Copernicus images (the board stopped me in my tracks last time!).

Bob Shaw

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[Phil Stooke]

And an example... five possible sites at Hadley, and EVA plans for two of them:



From an Apollo Site Selection Board meeting in September 1970.

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

Phil:

Is C at site 5?

Bob Shaw

[Phil Stooke]

Yes.

Phil

[gndonald]

Phil,

The more 'snippets' I see from your book, the more I am interested in reading the whole thing, whats the ETA?

[Phil Stooke]

It goes to the publisher in about October (impact of SMART-1 is the last item to be added). Publication is targeted for approximately 4 October 2007.

Phil

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Don't forget the Marius Hills, which apparently ran a pretty close second to Hadley as the final choice for Apollo 15. (The story I've heard is that they were rejected because the site was bad for quake triangulation from the three ALSEP seismometers, and because David Scott said he was a bit uneasy about the landing approach.)

[dvandorn]

I've heard the same thing, Bruce, but I've never heard exactly *what* about the Marius descent plan Scott found displeasing. Especially compared to the Hadley descent plan, which seemed to me to be a lot more dicey. I mean, at Hadley, they had to maintain a high, flat profile so they could clear 12,000-foot-tall Mt. Hadley, and then descend at a much steeper angle (something like 25 to 30 degrees, as compared to a 10 to 12 degree descent angle for previous landings) to reach the surface at a reasonably slow speed before the fuel ran out.

I know there are a lot of low domes as you approach the Marius landing point, but they can't have anything like the relief that Mt. Hadley and the associated massifs of the Appenine Front provided.

-the other Doug

[ElkGroveDan]

It goes to the publisher in about October (impact of SMART-1 is the last item to be added).

Can you give us all a hint how that story turns out Phil?

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

IF I remember correctly (and I'm nowhere near sure I do), Don Wilhelms' "To A Rocky Moon" specifies in a bit more detail what made Scott uneasy about the Marius Hills approach. I'll take a look (how TIRED I am of saying that) next time I'm at the local library to check.

[Phil Stooke]

I don't have a quote in front of me, but my recollection was that Scott said he could land at either site, but preferred Hadley. And that might have been more to do with it being a more dramatic site. I don't recall him saying anything very negative about Marius. But I may just have overlooked something.

Phil

[gndonald]

Phil,

Is site '2' the landing site for the mission where they considered having the crew rendezvous with an Unmanned LRV or is site '3' the landing area for that mission?