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Old August 24th 19, 02:51 AM posted to sci.space.history
Greg \(Strider\) Moore
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Default Question abt Lunar landing simulators

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...

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


I don't believe they had any windows. The LLRV itself certainly didn't.

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?

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.


There was a simulator at JSC that did have video monitors that were attached
to a camera that could scan and pan over a model of the lunar surface.
There's an excellent example of this in the "Mare Tranquilitatis" episode of
From the Earth to the Moon. Armstrong allows the camera to "crash" into the
surface in order to make a point.


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.


Check out the above episode. As for if it still exists, no idea. It's
possible (but unlikely) that they used what you created for the episode.


--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
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