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Aviation History
1969
1969 - 0050.PDF
from the service tower to avoid collision, and continued to rise, slowly at first, into the dark Florida sky. trailing behind it a 1.000ft flame. At T + 2min 6sec the centre F-l engine was cut off to prevent the acceleration level from exceeding 4g. Separation of the first. S-1C, stage at an altitude of 50 miles, a downrange distance of 54 miles and a speed of 6,068 m.p.h., occurred at T + 2min 3lsec and was clearly visible from the ground, together with ignition of the five J-2 engines in the second. S-II stage. This stage boosted the vehicle to 17,427 m.p.h. at a height of 108 miles some 108 miles downrange, injecting the spacecraft with its S-1VB stage into a 114-118-mile orbit at T+llmin 32sec—a near-perfect parking orbit. The S-II burn lasted for 6min 7sec. Two Earth orbits were completed while the complete space craft was checked out. and at I619BST Houston gave the advice "Apollo 8. you are go for TLI" (trans-lunar injection). The S-IVB stage was fired at 1642BST for 5min. This opera tion, still in darkness, was seen by thousands of people in Hawaii. Generating a speed of 24,227 m.p.h. before cut-off, the burn was. in the words of the Manned Spacecraft Centre at Houston, "exactly nominal." The third stage fell away at T+3hr 9min I4sec. "We're sep [separated] and looking good" observed Anders. "Staging was smooth and the ride now is even smoother" commented Borman laconically, travelling faster than man had ever done before. The spacecraft, now consisting of its definitive elements—the conical command module containing the crew and attached to the cylindrical service module—was manoeuvred so as to afford a view of the spent S-IVB stage, following at a distance of 500ft-l,000ft and spewing unused fuel into space. To increase the separation Borman fired the attitude-control rockets at I836BST for a brief period, thus providing a velocity difference. Apollo 8 was at that time some 17,000 miles from the Earth. Tracking and communications for this final stage of the flight was handled by the 85ft dish at Fresnedillas. Spain, which picked up the spacecraft shortly after 1700BST. At 0051BST on Sunday Borman fired the 20,5001 b-thrust engine of the service propulsion system for the first time in the first of four possible orbit corrections, increasing the speed of the spacecraft by 17 m.p.h. The possibilities of failure of this same engine to operate in Moon orbit had been the cause of much speculation in the popular Press. The burn was deliberately postponed 2hr to enable a large enough error to accumulate to justify a reasonably long combustion time. A second burn, scheduled for mid-day Sunday, was cancelled as the trajectory error was considered by both Houston and the crew to be not worth worrying about. This cancellation gave Lovell and Anders an extra 90min sleep—they had been awake for nearly 24hr. One of the rules is that no flight manoeuvres are made unless all crew members are awake. Borman, who had been unable to sleep on Saturday night, took a sleeping pill—the first American astronaut to do so while in orbit—and was subsequently able to sleep for 5hr. About I2hr after insertion into lunar orbit all three astronauts experienced nausea and stomach pains and were prescribed suitable pills by the crew's medical officer, Charles Berry. Borman in particular suffered accutely from diarrhoea. Not withstanding this the crew gave the first of a series of planned television broadcasts at 2105BST on Sunday, by which time the distance from Earth had increased to 138.000 miles, while the speed had dropped to 3.623 m.p.h. All trans missions were made using the 4.51b portable RCA camera, held against the side of the spacecraft and pointing through a window. The first transmissions showed the Earth, and were (by comparison with later results) rather disappointing. The image appeared white and blurred out. While this transmission was in progress attention was drawn to the obscuring of the windows, with what appeared to be streaks of white rain impinging upon the transparencies. At one time in the flight three of the five windows were affected. Fogging of windows on the outside has been a problem since the Gemini days and. since a clear view is vital to secure navigation fixes, something will clearly need to be done before the next Apollo flight. If the pictures were not of outstanding quality the trans mission and reproduction of voice was superb. S-band com munication was used on Apollo for the first time, the four 31 in steerable aerials swinging out from the service module. Successful injection into lunar orbit On Monday evening another TV transmission was made showing the Moon from a distance of 100 miles. This time video reception was excellent, quite the finest ever experienced from any spacecraft. The camera was either initially attached to the command module, or held against the structure to avoid vibration. Consequently acquisition was achieved by adjusting the orientation of the spacecraft using the attitude- control system. TV transmissions were received in America and relayed to Europe via ATS-3, an applications technology satellite. The effect of different filters on the TV camera was evaluated by Mission Control, which was able to give a running commentary on the results. We learned that a cluster of craters had been named Borman, Lovell and Anders—a fitting tribute to the first men to view the Moon from such close quarters. Two other craters, also known previously by catalogue numbers, were designated Houston and Collins, the latter after the astronaut who had resigned owing to spine trouble. By Tuesday the health of the crew had considerably improved and no longer gave cause for concern. Apollo 8 began to pick up speed (which had dropped to under 3,000 m.p.h. under the continuing attraction of the Earth) as it began to approach the Moon. On Tuesday the spacecraft began to swing around the Moon while the world waited to see whether the critical injection into lunar orbit would be attempted. Houston was evidently satisfied with the condition of the spacecraft and at 1059BST the service engine was fired for just over 4 min, 78 miles from the Moon, to decrease the speed by 2.991 ft/sec and place the
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