[X] My Assistant

[jmknapp]

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?

[ilbasso]

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.

[ilbasso]

A great place to start for people interested in the 'Apollos that never were' is David Shayler's book, "Apollo: The Lost and Forgotten Missions." He reminds us that the Apollo 204 (aka Apollo 1) mission was not the same as Apollo 7, and that Apollo 14 was not a duplicate of what had been intended for Apollo 13. We learn about plans for manned moon bases in the 1970's and a manned Mars landing by 1985.

There were some interesting ideas that came out of the Apollo Applications Program - lunar observatories, Venus flyby, etc. One sometimes gets the impression that some of these appear to be contractors just trying to find ways for their hardware to be used in all kinds of fanciful ways beyond what it was intended for. Very interesting ideas, had unlimited funding been available!

The one program that went forward was Skylab. The Apollo Telescope Mount was originally supposed to be an adapted lunar module with its descent stage replaced by a telescope. It was initially envisioned to be launched separately and docked to Skylab.

[dvandorn]

A great place to start for people interested in the 'Apollos that never were' is David Shayler's book, "Apollo: The Lost and Forgotten Missions." He reminds us that the Apollo 204 (aka Apollo 1) mission was not the same as Apollo 7, and that Apollo 14 was not a duplicate of what had been intended for Apollo 13.

Too right -- for one thing, Apollo 1 was officially an open-ended mission, with a maximum length of two weeks but without a pre-defined date/time for splashdown. Its optics and navigation systems were somewhat different from the Block II design, as well, so there were to be fewer onboard navigation tests.

As for Apollo 13 v. 14, the ALSEPs were rather different; the experiment selections had been made well before the landing sites were chosen, and Apollo 14's ALSEP differed rather a lot from 13's. For instance, 13's ALSEP included a Heat Flow Experiment, complete with lunar drill, while 14's included the Active Seismic Experiment, complete with shotgun-shell-charged thumper and remote-launched grenades. The EVA plans were rather different, too -- 13's designated landing point was as much as 100 meters farther west than 14's, closer to Doublet Crater, with an ALSEP site expected to be on the west rather than east side of Doublet. If for any reason Lovell were to land long, past Doublet, a full work-up had been done for an EVA-2 visit not to Cone Crater to the east but to Star Crater to the west. And, of course, the 13 crew didn't have the MET, the tool-carrying wheeled cart, so in their Cone Crater traverse plan they figured on stopping at Outpost Crater and dropping all the equipment except what they would need on the rim above. They were going to pick up the dropped tools and such on their way back.

The one program that went forward was Skylab. The Apollo Telescope Mount was originally supposed to be an adapted lunar module with its descent stage replaced by a telescope. It was initially envisioned to be launched separately and docked to Skylab.

That was part of the planning for the wet workshop concept. A Saturn IB could only loft a wet workshop (with interior fittings covered over by some miracle covering that would protect it from the cryogenic rocket fuels). The ATM (which is actually based around an octagonal frame the size and shape of a LM descent stage) would be launched by a separate Saturn IB, and a third IB flight would carry a crew up on a CSM. The crew would rendezvous with the ATM, grab it and then bring it to the workshop, where it would be installed before the CSM could dock with the workshop (as the ATM would have been attached to the CSM via the docking mechanism).

The *very* first ATM concept was actually something thought up for the later-canceled Apollo I-missions. Those would have been lunar orbital with no landings, orbiting the Moon in polar orbits for up to two weeks. The LM would be replaced with a LM-based module in which the ascent stage would remain somewhat intact but the descent stage would be gutted of its propulsion systems and filled with cameras and remote sensing equipment. The cameras were telescopic in nature, and as soon as someone realized this could also be used in Earth orbit for astronomical or solar studies, the whole thing was dubbed the Apollo Telescope Mount. And for a while, two-week earth-orbital flights of Apollo CSMs with ATMs, sans workshop, were considered as part of the Apollo Applications Program.

-the other Doug