[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.

[dvandorn]

One other little item about Apollo 14.

The delay resulting from the redesigns in the oxygen tanks and the addition of an extra oxygen tank plus an extra *big* battery to the service module meant the development of the SIM bay (flown on the J-mission CSMs) caught up with Apollo 14. They could have added a SIM bay to the Apollo 14 CSM, and seriously considered it when they began to re-work its SM.

But Al Shepard vetoed the idea -- he didn't want any added complexities in what amounted to a return-to-flight mission. And, honestly, I also think Shepard didn't want anything taking the spotlight off of him and the lunar surface activities. He pushed to have the TEI burn moved up a few revs so that, as soon as they were back onboard the CSM and had cast off the LM ascent stage, it was Time To Go. The "star" portion of the flight, his landing and moonwalks, would be over, and he didn't want to tarry in lunar orbit an hour longer than absolutely necessary. The SIM bay activities would have begged for an extra day or two in lunar orbit to make proper use of the cameras and instruments, and Al was having none of that.

-the other Doug