On Jun/19/2020 at 15:18, David Spain wrote :
On 6/17/2020 9:03 PM, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/c...0190031985.pdf
I ended up skimming it after awhile, but a LOT of details.

My only regret is I wish they had more details on some of the Apollo
LM derivatives such as the LM Truck and other ideas for post-Apollo.

I just finished binge watching the 1998 HBO Series "From the Earth To
The Moon" and besides being amused over seeing a very young Tom Hanks, I
enjoyed most of it. Not that impressed with the story angle taken for
the episode about Apollo 13, focusing on the media rather than the
mission itself. But hey, Hanks had done the movie already (1995). The
rest were good. I esp. enjoyed the episode dealing with Apollo 15.

In any case in the episode devoted to the Lunar Module (LM, aka Lunar
Excursion Module - LEM) goes through in some detail all the design
decisions made that evolved the Apollo lander. It was very interesting
to watch. As always I'm sure there are better books out there too.

I like how it was shed, shed, shed. From circular base for the Decent
Module to the adapted octagonal design, from the removal of the seats
which changed the view ports (or vice versa), removal of the forward
docking adapter, meaning the LM crew could no longer directly observe or
mate for docking with the Command Module (CM). To the thinning of the
walls of the LM to make it as light as possible.

Then to have the rover available in later missions. Etc. I had forgotten
that when the TV camera moved from stationary to the rover, it took
longer to get video from the moon, but man when it came in, it was
awesome! We had a relatively new color TV and it was just incredible to
see those live pictures on the moon! I know most people had tuned out
but as a kid I was a space nut. I just couldn't believe at the time
people were not watch this! At least CBS was carrying most of it, the
other networks not so much! Remember, no NASA TV in those days! Got to
watch Apollo 17 taking off from the moon as well! An incredible act of
remote camera operation given the delays involved. The series made that
clear enough!

Wow, you actually saw the moon missions live. You must be an old man.
Ugh, well... I remember during the Apollo XI mission, we were moving, a
2500 km trip. My dad was, as you say, a space nut. So we were always
searching for some place with a TV to see the next Apollo news special.
At the time, many hotels had a TV in their rooms but not all. So that
was a must when searching for a hotel room. My mother insisted that she
wanted a hotel without cockroaches, but for my dad the important point
was that it needed to have a TV. Of course if the next Apollo news
special was at 17h00, we would start to search for a hotel at about
13h00, just in case it would be hard to find a hotel with TVs in that
part of the country. And the next morning we couldn't leave the hotel
before seeing the next news update. A 2500 km road trip is long, a 2500
km road trip with a space nut during Apollo XI takes longer than the
Apollo mission. The second half of the trip went much faster.


Alain Fournier