50 years ago: Apollo 10 takes an unplanned spin above the lunar surface – and sh!t gets sweary As you sup your evening pint or enjoy some lunchtime refreshment, depending on your timezone, cast your mind back 50 years to when Apollo 10 did the "everything" part of "everything but land" and nearly ended NASA's lunar ambitions for good. Apollo 10 (pic: NASA) It's 50 years to the day since Apollo 10 blasted off: America's …
That must have been one if the most historic sphincter clenching moments in human history, imagine being so close to a hard unscheduled landing, a quarter of a million miles from any help in the unlikely event you survived it.
It is incredible what was achieved with the available technology and much of that success was down to the quality and courage of the mej involved.
Well, that was part of the selection process! I recall one anecdote (possibly from the book "The Right Stuff") where they were testing one candidate (possibly John Glen) and he was strapped into the multi-axis spinning chair, carrying out tasks with smoke and flashing bright lights going on, when they dropped a ton of scrap metal onto a big metal plate right behind him. Apparently the only evidence that he'd even noticed was a single big jump on the heart monitor, then back to normal. Some later evidence that "the right stuff" didn't always work well when forming a larger crew but no doubt that at the start of the space programme, "calm under pressure" where "pressure = imminent death" was an absolute necessity...
If you ever get the chance go and take a look at a Gemini capsule. Lovell & Borman spent almost 14 days cooped up in one of those, utterly beyond belief. At least they had the coolest space suits probably ever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_space_suit#/media/File:Lovell_pre-launch_gemini_7.jpg
Mercury capsules were also small but they were designed for flights lasting hours rather than days.
The ever-ambitious NASA suggested the crew go ahead and land if all went well
I never knew that a landing had been a possibility on this mission. Sounds like a somewhat casual and cavalier approach by NASA - assuming you haven't had any problems, do you fancy popping down to the lunar surface and making possibly the most celebrated act of the century?
I always thought that this was some controller's idea of being clever. NASA had a very thoroughly thought-out plan for getting to the moon, based on the idea of a set of incremental stages, each of which would test one part of the incredibly complex mission at a time. So Apollo 9 was tasked with simply going to the moon and coming back, Apollo 10 would actually perform everything but actually arrive at the surface, while Apollo 11 would actually touch down. Because of this the Lunar Lander carried by Apollo 10 was not capable of landing and taking off - it didn't have some essential equipment fitted (this was still being integrated back on Earth) and by no means had enough fuel to reach lunar orbit from the surface.
Edit: Ninja'd by Aladdin Sane
Balls of steel? Definitely!
Isolation? not necessarily: (obligatory)XKCD
Due to the distances involved by the moon orbit, that person was nominated in the What If...? xkcd book as the human that was furthest away from any other human in history.
(Probably, unless somebody got lost on a boat somewhere around Tasmania before Australia was inhabited)
I expect it looks a bit charred. As a 13 year old living in Suva Fiji I got up just before dawn to watch the rentry of Apollo 10 with my father. It looked like a steadily moving fireball coming out of the west. Every now and again bits of what I assume was the ablative heat shield would separate giving it a long blazing tail. It would have taken at least two or three minutes to pass overhead before disappearing in the east. I think they were touching down near Samoa to the east of us. A very vivid memory, hard to imagine being inside that.
I didn't know it was in Science Museum. I will go and have a look when I am next in London.
They were as low as 47,000 feet from the Moon, and they were "2 seconds" from crashing into the Moon.
Is anyone aware of any explanation for the combination of these two factoids?
I don't recall seeing anything about them actually reaching a height above the Moon of, say, only 2,000 feet. I don't believe that they were descending at 23,500 feet per second (in addition to their forward velocity). So perhaps the 2 seconds was from a 'point of no return', or somrthing like that, where the impact would be much later. So it's unclear to me.
Thank you.
With all the respect that is due (which is ALL the respect there is of course), unless we're talking about a "soft" push-button here I'm a bit puzzled about how this could have happened - either a flip switch or a turn switch have pretty distinct actions for their different states, and attempting to set them into a position they were already in would feel immediately wrong even without looking. I guess I have some googling to do...
either a flip switch or a turn switch have pretty distinct actions for their different states, and attempting to set them into a position they were already in would feel immediately wrong even without looking
The PGNCS to AGS guidance control switch was a simple toggle switch that you can see here (top left control panel, uppermost toggle switch on the RHS, a little above the 'ABORT STAGE' button, labelled 'GUID CONT':-
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/LM11-co47.jpg
From the article, Cernan said that they hardly looked at the switches when they were busy. Presumably Stafford made the assumption that it was in the PGNCS position when going through his checklist, and simply toggled it without looking, inadvertently switching back to PGNCS mode.
So looks like I have something in common with real astronauts!
The Lunar Module Pilot exclaimed "SON OF A BITCH" over the open microphone as the spacecraft corkscrewed over the surface.
I do that in Space Engineers, often followed by a mental note to add gyros (or more gyros) if I or my craft survive the experience.
As for toggles, this is why I like RealSwitches(tm). So presumably a checklist could be to check switch is toggled up/down/left/right, and fingers can feel that a whole lot easier than if it's a fake button on a touch screen.
But I guess that episode also demonstrated why it's a good idea to have people that can fly/not panic and survive, rather than placing their trust in software written by a coder who doesn't have skin in the game. Or just dead by bug.
'attempting to set them into a position they were already in would feel immediately wrong even without looking'
There's a mental process called cognitive dissonance where you carry out an automatic action without realising it's the wrong one. It's possible all they were thinking was toggle that switch, and did, without registering which way up it was. I've read an account by a helicopter pilot who dropped an under-slung load rather than turn on the landing light, which must have been a bit of a surprise to all involved! In that case there were two switches on opposite sides of the control.
I didn't know that Charlie Brown was in the London Science museum. Must go over and see it
I remember seeing it when I was a very small person, so must only have recently arrived there. Must ask my Dad if our trip had been planned because it was a new exhibit.
I had some time to kill in London last year and popped back to the Science Museum for a look around....the space gallery was far and away the best bit...worth it for Charlie Brown and Black Arrow / Prospero.
The Flight exhibit on the top floor is pretty good (but less interesting for small people).
There's some one-of-a-kind exhibits in there, including Frank Wittle's first jet engine, and the Schneider Trophy, as in, the actual Schneider Trophy trophy itself, next to the S.6B that won it. There's the first Hawker P1127 (the prototype that lead to the Harrier) and Alcock and Brown's Vickers Vimy (first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight).
Basically, the more of a plane geek you are, the more fun you'll find it.
It's awesome. I cried. We were there to see Tim Peake's Soyuz but for me Apollo 10 was the highlight. It's been to the frickin moon and it's literally within touching distance. Being a 1970 kid Apollo was experienced secondhand for me and so has mythical and iconic status. Would be a bit like seeing the remains of Jimi's guitar he torched at Monterey.
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>The ever-ambitious NASA suggested the crew go ahead and land if all went well<
That contradicts another version of events that I heard years ago (might even have been in the book 'First Man'?), which was that NASA deliberately put insufficient fuel into the craft because they were worried that the astronauts might be a little 'gung-ho' & decide to go down in history as the first men on the moon
I wonder which version is true? Giving them the option to try if they felt confident enough doesn't really sound like NASA...
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