[SOT] Movies

James Nicoll wrote:
I noticed while cleaning that I had a copy of _The Right Stuff_
which I had never seen.

Pocket Review: should have picked a focus, guys. It wasn't
_bad_, as such, but it wandered.

I followed it up with _Apollo 13_, which I have seen loads of times.

Now, because I am obsessive, I want to see more films based on
the various space programs. Any that people here would recommend?

An interesting old one, if you can manage to get hold of it, is called
"Countdown", released in 1968. It's entirely fictional, but is based on
a genuine hypothetical plan at the time to land on the Moon using a
Gemini mated with a LM descent stage.

-Mark Martin

On 10 Jan 2005 07:11:58 -0800, wrote:

An interesting old one, if you can manage to get hold of it, is called
"Countdown", released in 1968.

One plus to this one is that it shows what I think are actual hardware
and NASA facilities.

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On 10 Jan 2005 07:11:58 -0800, wrote:

but is based on
a genuine hypothetical plan at the time to land on the Moon using a
Gemini mated with a LM descent stage.

That's what is in the movie, but wasn't the actual possible plan to do
a figure 8 with a Gemini around the moon, launched with a Titan III?

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....Jeez, Jud - haven't you figured out you're chatting with a troll?

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 21:34:00 -0500, Jud McCranie
wrote:

That's what is in the movie, but wasn't the actual possible plan to do
a figure 8 with a Gemini around the moon, launched with a Titan III?

....IIRC, the plan called for two Titan II launches - one with a
Gemini, one with an uprated Centaur with an ADTA on the end. The
Gemini would dock with the Centaur, and Pete Conrad and whoever got
lucky enough to tag along would get shot backwards into a Circumlunar
trajectory.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

OM wrote:

...IIRC, the plan called for two Titan II launches - one with a
Gemini, one with an uprated Centaur with an ADTA on the end. The
Gemini would dock with the Centaur, and Pete Conrad and whoever got
lucky enough to tag along would get shot backwards into a Circumlunar
trajectory.


There were some variants on the plan, I think they use both Titan II and
Titan III, as well as Saturn I
This one uses two Titan III transtages:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/lunemini.htm
The one at the bottom of these three is interesting- a Gemini on a
Centaur, and a minimalist LEM on a Agena:
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/g/geml640.gif

Pat

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 21:48:35 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

The one at the bottom of these three is interesting- a Gemini on a
Centaur, and a minimalist LEM on a Agena:
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/g/geml640.gif

....The middle one - the Gemin-Centaur - is the one that Pete Conrad
was proposing, as it had a) more power and b) could be assembled in
the shortest time with tested parts - Centaur and ADTA. The ironic
thing is that if either the middle or bottom options had been excised,
Volkswagon could have still used it for a certain ad campaign :-) :-)

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

In article ,
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote:
That's what is in the movie, but wasn't the actual possible plan to do
a figure 8 with a Gemini around the moon, launched with a Titan III?

...IIRC, the plan called for two Titan II launches - one with a
Gemini, one with an uprated Centaur with an ADTA on the end...

There were a number of such plans, using a variety of upper stages and
launchers. The one included as an appendix in Apogee's Gemini 12 book,
for example, uses a Titan IIIC to launch a modified Transtage, plus the
usual Titan II to launch a slightly modified Gemini.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

Jud McCranie wrote:

That's what is in the movie, but wasn't the actual possible plan to do
a figure 8 with a Gemini around the moon, launched with a Titan III?

That was one plan, but there also was a Gemini based lander..but not the
way the movie shows it, with a Gemini sitting on a LM descent stage:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/gemcraft.htm
The crashed Soviet lander in the movie is based on the upper stage of a
Vostok rocket, BTW.

pat

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 21:32:03 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

That was one plan, but there also was a Gemini based lander..

That would have been exciting.

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Jud McCranie wrote:




That was one plan, but there also was a Gemini based lander..



That would have been exciting.


McDonnell was trying to figure some way to get involved with the Apollo
program using Gemini-based spacecraft; NASA told them to forget it.
The really outlandish one is the Gemini capsule-carrying Mars lander,
though; this was something General Electric came up with:
http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/gemini/wg_02.html
http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/gemini/wg_01.jpg
And no, I don't know how it's supposed to control itself after entry to
the Martian atmosphere, given that it has no reaction control system or
aerodynamic control surfaces. :-)

Pat