I can’t be bothered to figure out how to embed this video. It shows NASA engineers using the Apollo umbilical as a model to inform their design of the Orion umbilical.
Since Orion is reusable, I wonder if they’ll depart from the guillotine style of the Apollo umbilical. I’d expect that to be more reliable, and it should be trivial to put replaceable connectors just inboard of the cut point so that the cables/pipes can be replaced easily.
Nice to get a look inside.
NASA have been testing ideas for Lunar Rovers. You’ll remember what a success the Rovers for Apollos 15-17 were. These were ideal for exploration as the astronauts could stop and get off when they pleased to collect samples as the need arose. It was neatly packed into one of the quadrants of the descent stage of the LM, and was easily deployed.
It’s good to see radical new ideas being considered and this Small Pressurised, sorry, Pressurized Rover (SPR) seems to improve on the original idea in several ways:
There’s still only room for two (four at a pinch), but the range is proposed to be a massive 240km.
It’s not clear how this will get to the Moon, nor can I see how the large docking hatch can be used to dock with an ascent stage much further from the ground, but I very much like what I see.
Clearly nasty accidents can happen even in Earth testing. The astronaut on the left here has lost the legs of his suit, or perhaps he just managed to inside-out them on the way back into the Rover?
While I’m at it embedding videos, what about this one? We’ve all seen this launch sequence so many times, but this is a case of seeing not being enough for believing. It’s hard to imagine the forces (more than 33 000 000 N) lifting this 3000 tonne machine into the air.
I’ve previously written about James Hanson’s biography of Neil Armstrong, First Man. I recently found this CBS 60 Minutes profile of Armstrong broadcast to mark the publication of the book. It’s nicely done, and Armstrong speaks more than I’ve heard, well, ever.
In addition, if you like the Onion and it’s like, you’ll like the other video posted here!
NASA have contracted for new spacesuits to be used on Orion missions. They look like hard shell suits, mainly, and the innovation here seems to be in a modular approach which will allow a capsule/EVA suit to be modified for Moonwalking.
Have a look at NASA’s page and New Scientist’s page. See what you think.
I’ve just found this blog and this one, written by a lady who seems to have worked on the F1 rocket engine in the 60’s. I’d love to learn more from her about her experiences and the technology.
And of course I’d love to hear from other Apollo engineers. What a time it must have been. Or was it just a job?
Time I posted some video of my favourite astronaut experiment. This is such a simple demonstration, and Dave Scott carries it off well. He actually carried two feathers with him as he wasn’t sure how the static building up as he moved around would allow him to drop the first one. He didn’t need it, of course, but no-one knows what happened to the second feather. Do they?
I thought it would be interesting to publish a list of some of the Apollo books and stuff I’ve collected over the years. I can recommend just about anything on this list, but top 5? Here’s a first stab, but I might change my mind:
I’ll have a look at DVDs in the same way sometime perhaps, but what’s missing from my collection that is a must read?
Title |
Author |
| A Man on the Moon | Andrew Chaikin |
| Apollo | Al Bean |
| Apollo: the Race to the Moon |
Charles Murray & Catherine Bly Cox |
| Apollo 11:1 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 11:2 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 12 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 13 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 15:1 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 16:1 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo 17:1 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Apollo Orbiting Moon, Heads Back Today | (newspaper original edition) |
| Astronomy Now: Man on the Moon 30th Anniversary | (magazine) |
| Carrying the Fire | Michael Collins |
| Facsimile: Guardian 21/07/69 | Front Page |
| First Man | James R Hansen |
| Friendship 7 | Ed. Robert Godwin |
| Full Moon | Michael Light |
| History of the 20th Century: Man in Space: A New age of discovery | (magazine) |
| Life: To the Moon and back | (magazine) |
| Lost Moon: the perilous voyage of Apollo 13 | Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger |
| Moon Map | Philip’s |
| Moondust | Andrew Smith |
| NASA LM Chart Series: 1: 1 000 000 | NASA |
| On Mars | Patrick Moore |
| On the Moon | Patrick Moore |
| Project Apollo | Charles Coombs |
| Project Constellation | Tim McElyea |
| Rocketman | Nancy Conrad & Howard A Klausner |
| Saturn V News Reference | NASA (printed from website) |
| Spaceflight Jan 1968 |
British Interplanetary Society magazine |
| The Last Man on the Moon | Eugene Cernan & Don Davis |
| The Man Who Ran the Moon | Piers Bizony |
| Virtual Apollo | Scott P Sullivan |
| Virtual LM | Scott P Sullivan |
It seems to me that the Altair and Orion spacecraft, in their journey from Earth to Moon will need the same thermal control as the Apollo spacecraft did. This was achieved by a ‘barbeque roll’ of the spacecraft, perpendicular to the direction of the Sun meaning that no part of the structure got too hot or too cold.
Now, Altair/Orion (let’s just call it Orion shall we?) will have the same problem, and I presume a similar solution. However, with the winglike solar panels on Orion will it be simple? I suppose it might be possible to drive the panels so that they were always facing the Sun, but with current design concepts it looks awkward, with some kind of universal joint being necessary.
Perhaps the heat management of Orion will be different so that the passive thermal roll is unnecessary, or the solar panel orientation is easier to control than I suppose (and I’m no engineer). I do know that a single axis rotation such as that achieved by the Apollo crews was very difficult to manage, but guess it would be simpler with modern avionics.
