Apollo Splashdown Locations

I've noticed that all of the Apollo splashdown locations were located
between +/- 30 degrees in latitude, which happens to correspond to the
moon's orbital inclination for the Apollo era.

Is there some aspect of orbital mechanics that limits direct reentry landing
locations to values between the orbital inclination, or were the Apollo
spalshdown locations chosen for other reasons?

TIA

+/- 30 degrees in latitude, which happens to correspond to the
moon's orbital inclination for the Apollo era.

Has Luna's orbit changed since then???


Is there some aspect of orbital mechanics that limits direct reentry landing
locations to values between the orbital inclination, or were the Apollo
spalshdown locations chosen for other reasons?

Aiui, to reach a higher latitude than the orbital inclination requires fuel
burn, which there was no reason for. There may have been other reasons.

"Greg Tiberi" writes:

What would have happened if the capsule had landed on an island instead of
the water?

Gilligan and the Professor would make a radio from 2 coconuts....

--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

What would have happened if the capsule had landed on an island instead of
the water?

What would have happened if the capsule had landed on an island instead of
the water?

it was designed for emergenmcy landing on ground. the bottom of the capsule
would of crushed.

rough but survivable ride
..
..
End the dangerous wasteful shuttle now before it kills any more astronauts....

On 2004-10-24, Greg Tiberi wrote:
What would have happened if the capsule had landed on an island instead of
the water?

Apollo capsules were designed to take a ground landing - it certainly
wouldn't have been comfortable, but it was in the design specs.

(Remember that they were launching from the coast; a pad abort could
well mean the capsule came down on land, dependent on the wind levels,
so it had to be designed for)

--
-Andrew Gray

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 00:39:53 +0000 (UTC), David Lesher
wrote:

"Greg Tiberi" writes:

What would have happened if the capsule had landed on an island instead of
the water?

Gilligan and the Professor would make a radio from 2 coconuts....

....Nah, one of the crew would have found this bottle, and from that
moment on the fate of anyone against NASA would have been rather bleek
at best :-)

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 ,
A_l_a_n__B_i_n_d_e_m_a_n_n wrote:
Is there some aspect of orbital mechanics that limits direct reentry landing
locations to values between the orbital inclination...

Generally speaking, yes: those are the locations that the orbit (and
thus, any other orbit in the same plane) passes directly over. Landing
elsewhere would require a plane change at some point, which is generally
costly and pointless.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

In article ,
G EddieA95 wrote:
+/- 30 degrees in latitude, which happens to correspond to the
moon's orbital inclination for the Apollo era.

Has Luna's orbit changed since then???

The Moon's orbit, including its inclination, actually *does* change over
time... within limits. The Moon's motion is extremely complex and can't
be modeled for any great length of time as a classical two-body system.
Earth's non-spherical shape and the Sun both get into the act.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

Andrew Gray wrote:

(Remember that they were launching from the coast; a pad abort could
well mean the capsule came down on land, dependent on the wind levels,
so it had to be designed for)


On the other hand, weren't the canards and side-thrust rocket on the
escape tower aligned to take the capsule out to sea if they did abort on
the pad?

Pat