wrote:
I just watched Man Moment Machine featuring Apollo 13. In most of the
animations, the LM/CSM was traveling to the side. Is this right?
I always assumed it traveled straight ahead with that big CSM engine
nozzle to the rear.

Well, since you're in zero-g and vacuum, it doesn't really matter which
way your spacecraft is pointed, although most times, iirc, the Apollo
crews preferred traveling with the CSM nose pointed in the direction of
travel, as a matter of style, I guess. Obviously, they were also pointed
in the direction of travel when burning midcourse corrections, although,
of course, they pointed the SM engine "forward" when braking into orbit
around the Moon.

The "flying sideways" you saw is likely a depiction of the spacecraft
using "Passive Thermal Control" or "barbecue mode", in which the
spacecraft is traveling sideways relative to the direction of travel and
to the sun, and rolling at a very slow rate, in order to keep the sunlit
areas from getting too hot, and the shadowed areas from getting too cold.

--

..

"Though I could not caution all, I yet may warn a few:
Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools!"

--grateful dead.
__________________________________________________ ______________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
Mike's Political Cartoons: dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org