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Old July 28th 19, 08:57 AM posted to sci.space.history
Brian Lawrence
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Posts: 34
Default Question abt Lunar landing simulators

On 26/07/2019 02:07, wrote:

Did the LLTVs have images of the lunar surface projected onto their 'windows'?


https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/LLRV_Monograph.pdf

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-026-DFRC.html

Did some other lunar landing simulator have moving lunar surface images displayed on the windows to simulate motion across the lunar surface in response to the pilot's control actions?


https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/nasas-moon-simulator/
https://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/historic/Lunar_Excursion_Module_Simulator

"The Lunar Module Simulators in Houston and Cape Kennedy were produced
by the Link Group of Singer General Precision Systems, under contract to
Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, with visual display units
provided by Farrand Optical Company."

Originally three LMS were planned, but the third was cancelled.


https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/07/08/apollos-lunar-module-simulator/
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/07/05/reminiscences-of-apollo/

Background: In 1962-64 I was a computer programmer at NASA's Langley Research Center. One of my projects was a program to generate data to feed to an automated carving tool (which I never saw) which was to track back and forth across a slab of paraffin to shape a model of a section of the lunar surface. I understood that the LM mock-up pilot's control actions would control the motion of cameras moving across the moon model and send those images to the 'windows' of the simulator to simulate the view as the 'LM' approached the surface.

Does anyone know if such a simulator was actually built and utilized? If so, was the model lunar surface preserved? stored? displayed? photographed?

We had contour maps of the lunar surface. The input to my program was generated by sampling points along contours. That data essentially had fixed z-coordinate values (elevation) and randomly changing x-y coordinates. My output was regularly incrementing x-y coordinates with approximated z values.