Apollo name giving

In article ,
Wpai wrote:
And -in other words- my very first question as topic starter was: What was
(let us say in 1966) the original plan of NASA in giving names to an Apollo
mission. I mean, they had expierienced Mercury and Gemini, there must habe
been a MASTERPLAN where to use the name 'Apollo x' for a mission the first
time.

Well, no, actually. That was exactly the problem: there *was* no master
plan for this. None. Nobody in authority had thought about it.

Even during the lead-in to AS-204, the crew and the spacecraft people were
calling it Apollo 1 while the booster people were calling it Apollo 4, and
neither designation had any official blessing from NASA HQ. AS-204 was
its only official name.

In the end, the booster people de-facto won. After the fire aborted plans
to fly the original AS-204, the next Apollo actually *flown* was Apollo 4,
and later numbering followed from there. (No, this numbering was never
officially retroactively extended to the earlier unmanned tests, because
that would have conflicted with the dead crew's choice of "Apollo 1" for
their mission. The three pre-fire tests remain just AS-201, AS-203, and
AS-202.)
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

"Henry Spencer"
Well, no, actually. That was exactly the problem: there *was* no master
plan for this. None. Nobody in authority had thought about it.

Even during the lead-in to AS-204, the crew and the spacecraft people were
calling it Apollo 1 while the booster people were calling it Apollo 4, and
neither designation had any official blessing from NASA HQ. AS-204 was
its only official name.

In the end, the booster people de-facto won. After the fire aborted plans
to fly the original AS-204, the next Apollo actually *flown* was Apollo 4,
and later numbering followed from there. (No, this numbering was never
officially retroactively extended to the earlier unmanned tests, because
that would have conflicted with the dead crew's choice of "Apollo 1" for
their mission. The three pre-fire tests remain just AS-201, AS-203, and
AS-202.)
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |


Ok, thanks. I now understand what the problem was, there was no logical
solution possible after the fire
The name Apollo 1 was gone. Well, if they had asked me, my choice would be
to name the flight of Shirra, Eisele and Cunningham Apollo 2. And all the
unmanned flights AS-yxx.

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Wpai wrote:
And -in other words- my very first question as topic starter was: What
was
(let us say in 1966) the original plan of NASA in giving names to an
Apollo
mission. I mean, they had expierienced Mercury and Gemini, there must
habe
been a MASTERPLAN where to use the name 'Apollo x' for a mission the
first
time.

Well, no, actually. That was exactly the problem: there *was* no master
plan for this. None. Nobody in authority had thought about it.

Each of our manned programs seems to have used a different numbering
sequence.
Mercury flights were given MR (Mercury Redstone) or MA (Mercury Atlas)
numbers, with both the boosters and capsules having their own numbering as
well. MR ran sequentially from MR1 through 4, with MR-3 and MR-4 being
manned, and MA ran from MA-1 through MA-9, with MA-6 through MA-9 being
manned flights. As given at The Field Guide to American Spacecraft
(http://aesp.nasa.okstate.edu/fieldgu...ury/index.html) the
capsules were roughly assigned to flights in the order they were built,
however some were skipped (for whatever reason), and MA-7 used Mercury #18
while MA-8 used Mercury #16. There appear to be 20 Mercury flight articles.
(Anyone know why the numbering has 12 B and 15 B as opposed to just 12 and
15?) Note that capsule #3 was launched on a Little Joe for a launch escape
system test. (There were also several boilerplates used in other Little Joe
tests.)

Gemini was numbered more simply, probably because all Gemini's were launched
on the same booster. On the other hand, I can't make sense of the serial
numbers for the spacecraft. The Gemini missions are numbered 1 through 3
(with #3 having a name), and then IV through XII. (Well, technically VI-A
and IX-A as opposed to VI and IX. The renumbering occured due to late
changes in the planned mission.)

Apollo became more confusing because, like Mercury, there were two boosters
involved, but unlike Mercury there were also two spacecraft (CSM and LM),
either of which could be flown independently for an unmanned flight. In
addition, there were two different blocks of the CSM, and most of the
unmanned tests were with block I (and to confuse things further, one was
flown on a Little Joe II for a test of the launch escape system.)
Furthermore, a number of boilerplates were flown on Saturn I test flights.
It appears that NASA started off with numbering akin to Mercury, but using
the more arcaic booster numbering, and then switched to numbers (varying
between arabic and Latin) under the circumstances that Henry pointed out.

The Shuttle, of course, has a numbering system devised by a committee of
cabalists...

In article ,
om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy... _facility.org says...
On Mon, 17 May 2004 13:27:39 -0400, "Ami Silberman"
wrote:

Note that capsule #3 was launched on a Little Joe for a launch escape
system test.

...Here's an interesting one: Mark Wade's site references the Big Joe
follow-on test booster, but doesn't have a separate link or pictures
of it. What *was* Big Joe compared to Little Joe?

Big Joe was an Atlas test using a boilerplate Mercury spacecraft (and so
was not designated as a Mercury-Atlas flight). It was, IIRC, the first
attempt to launch an Atlas with the Mercury adapter fairing. The
boilerplate did not have an LES attached. The booster exploded early in
flight, mangling the boilerplate. One of the Mercury astros was flying
chase in a jet fighter, and was seen to fly *into* the fireball by
viewers on the ground. One person on the ground said to himself, "Well,
now we have six astronauts." Fortunately, it was a visual trick -- from
the point of view of the ground observer, the jet flew *behind* the
fireball.

It was the Big Joe failure that first identified the structural weakness
in the Atlas caused by the attachment of the Mercury adapter. This was
the cause of the addition of the "bellyband" structural reinforcer to
the Atlas, which (IIRC) wasn't really needed.

Doug

In article ,
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote:
...Here's an interesting one: Mark Wade's site references the Big Joe
follow-on test booster, but doesn't have a separate link or pictures
of it. What *was* Big Joe compared to Little Joe?

"Big Joe" was a suborbital test flight on an Atlas, the first full-scale
flight test of Mercury's ablative heatshield.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

On Mon, 17 May 2004 13:27:39 -0400, "Ami Silberman"
wrote:

Note that capsule #3 was launched on a Little Joe for a launch escape
system test.

....Here's an interesting one: Mark Wade's site references the Big Joe
follow-on test booster, but doesn't have a separate link or pictures
of it. What *was* Big Joe compared to Little Joe?

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:

...Here's an interesting one: Mark Wade's site references the Big Joe
follow-on test booster, but doesn't have a separate link or pictures
of it. What *was* Big Joe compared to Little Joe?

And, for bonus points, why was Little Joe given that name rather than being
named after some Greco-Roman deity such as Mercury's mother, Maiesta?

:-)

--
Dave Michelson

On Mon, 17 May 2004 19:50:53 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

In article ,
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote:
...Here's an interesting one: Mark Wade's site references the Big Joe
follow-on test booster, but doesn't have a separate link or pictures
of it. What *was* Big Joe compared to Little Joe?

"Big Joe" was a suborbital test flight on an Atlas, the first full-scale
flight test of Mercury's ablative heatshield.

....Which begs the question that's always had me wondering: was Little
Joe named for a certain Cartwright?

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

On Mon, 17 May 2004 23:58:52 GMT, Dave Michelson
wrote:

And, for bonus points, why was Little Joe given that name rather than being
named after some Greco-Roman deity such as Mercury's mother, Maiesta?

....I got a theory about that one, but I'm waiting for Henry to tell me
I watched too much TV as a kid :-)

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

On Mon, 17 May 2004 19:38:44 -0600, OM
om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote:

"Big Joe" was a suborbital test flight on an Atlas, the first full-scale
flight test of Mercury's ablative heatshield.

...Which begs the question that's always had me wondering: was Little
Joe named for a certain Cartwright?

Which in turn begs the question- was he given that name because of
his stature, or was it more anatomically specific in origin?

According to http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4402/ch1.htm
SP-4402 Origins of NASA Names -

"LITTLE JOE. A relatively simple and inexpensive launch vehicle, Little Joe
was designed specifically to test the Mercury spacecraft abort system in a
series of suborbital flights. Based on a cluster of four solid-propellant
rocket motors, as conceived by Langley Research Center's Maxime A. Faget and
[16] Paul E. Purser, the booster acquired its name in 1958 as Faget's nickname
for the project gradually was adopted. The configuration used in the tests
added four Recruit rockets, but the original concept was for four Pollux
rocket motors fired two at a time-a pair of twos. "Since their first
cross-section drawings showed four holes up, they called the project 'Little
Joe,' from the crap game throw of a double deuce on the dice.... The
appearance on engineering drawings of the four large stabilizing fins
protruding from its airframe also helped to perpetuate the name Little Joe had
acquired." 1 Little Joe II was similar in design and was used to check out the
Apollo spacecraft abort system."

And here I thought it might have been posthumously named after Stalin, like
the Milwaukee Road's electric locomotives

Dale

At least Little Joe showed some interest in women, being the only Cartwright
boy to get married, or even have a girlfriend...