Apollo name giving

OM 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 :-)

Nope. Little Joe was named for the crap game term for a throw of a double
deuce on the dice.

The nickname was given by Faget in 1958. He was inspired by the four Pollux
rocket motors that formed the core of the booster and the manner in which they
were fired two at a time - a pair of twos. This inspired him to call the
booster 'Little Joe.'

Honest.

--
Dave Michelson

On Tue, 18 May 2004 06:41:38 GMT, Dave Michelson
wrote:

OM 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 :-)

Nope. Little Joe was named for the crap game term for a throw of a double
deuce on the dice.

....Ah. Dice games weren't my specialty, as my forte was cards. I've
never heard of this one.

The nickname was given by Faget in 1958. He was inspired by the four Pollux
rocket motors that formed the core of the booster and the manner in which they
were fired two at a time - a pair of twos. This inspired him to call the
booster 'Little Joe.'

....Hmm. So should the S-IV stage been the Boxcar? :-)

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 20:28:14 -0700, Dale wrote:

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

....And there's an interesting story behind that one. Originally, it
was supposed to be Hoss who got married to this gal, and NBC had hyped
it as the season premier months before the 13th season was actually
over. NBC was reportedly going to use it as part of a major push to
get "Bonanza" back in the public eye and give it one or two more
positive seasons before retiring it. However, Dan Blocker died from a
clot in one of his lungs that ruptured and medical efforts were unable
to do anything for him(*). So, the show was rewritten so that Little
Joe was the one who got married and then lost his bride to some
murdering outlaws.

....The sad part about this was that Blocker's death really signed the
death warrant for the show. Even though this particular season premier
was the 4th ranked show for the week, the ratings took a nosedive the
week after from which it never recovered. Most of the drop was due to
fans just not being able to accept "Bonanza" without Hoss - it would
have been like "Star Trek" without Spock, or "The Man From Uncle"
without either Napoleon or Ilya - while some of it had to do with the
fact that this wedding was hyped up as a big deal, only to have the
bride murdered. Quite a few critics were very negative about that
twist move, and NBC got quite a few calls about it.

....As the ratings continued to drop, NBC first stopped putting
"Bonanza" promos in heavy rotation, moved the show from Sunday - where
it had been for most of its run - to Tuesday nights up against "Maude"
and the first season of "Temperatures Rising", both of which wound up
stealing away the younger and more liberal segments of the "Bonanza"
audience who'd grown up with the show and now felt that it was their
"parents' show" and not theirs. Finally, NBC cancelled its option for
a full season of 30 episodes, and cancelled after only 16 eps were in
the can.

(*) There's quite a few stories about how Blocker's death could have
been prevented. Seems that he wasn't in the best of health in the last
few episodes, and if you compare his physical appearance in those last
episodes to ones from the previous season, it's obvious that something
was wrong with him as there was a noticeable weight loss. Apparently
the cast and crew had suggested that he have himself checked up on,
but he wouldn't hear of it. Getting the show produced on time was
something he felt strongly about, and wasn't going to be the cause of
shooting delays.

....During the autopsy, it was found that he'd suffered failure of one
kidney, and that the other was obviously overtaxed trying to keep up
with things. It's generally believed that had the lung clot not killed
Blocker, the kidney problems would have possibly nailed him not too
long afterwards.

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:


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


Now I'm getting images of this bulky spaceplane called "Black Hoss". :-)

Pat

Dave Michelson wrote:


The nickname was given by Faget in 1958. He was inspired by the four
Pollux
rocket motors that formed the core of the booster and the manner in
which they
were fired two at a time - a pair of twos. This inspired him to call the
booster 'Little Joe.'


....and they say the Mercury program wasn't a gamble.... :-D

Pat

In article ,
Doug... wrote:
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...

Nope, you're confusing Big Joe and MA-1. Big Joe was a reasonably full
success, although the Atlas had some problems which resulted in the
reentry trajectory not being quite as intended. MA-1 was the first
attempt to fly a full Mercury capsule on an Atlas, and it had the
structural failure in the adapter.

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.

Since the problem wasn't well understood -- not enough telemetry data to
pin it down -- they reinforced the adapter (almost certainly where the
real problem was) *and* the Atlas as well.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

On Tue, 18 May 2004 10:58:29 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:

OM wrote:

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

Now I'm getting images of this bulky spaceplane called "Black Hoss". :-)

....Oh, I'll give you one even more scarier: what if Dan Blocker hadn't
worked himself to death, and somehow after "Bonanza" is cancelled
after 15 seasons with honor, Both Blocker and Michael Landon join
Lorne Greene in the cast of "Battlestar Ponderosa". While I can see
Landon possibly being Starbuck, the concept of Hoss trying to fit in
the cockpit of a Viper boggles the imagination.

....On the other hand, having Dan Blocker on that show would have
automatically eliminated one of the show's shortcomings thanks to the
censors. There's no way in hell that the ABC censors would have been
allowed to invoke the "Cylons will never rape/maim/pillage/burn/tear a
Colonial in two with their bare hands and/or swords" rule, as it would
have prevented the body contact necessary for Blocker to have ripped
the Cylons apart with *his* bear (sic) hands.

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 , says...
In article ,
Doug... wrote:
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...

Nope, you're confusing Big Joe and MA-1. Big Joe was a reasonably full
success, although the Atlas had some problems which resulted in the
reentry trajectory not being quite as intended. MA-1 was the first
attempt to fly a full Mercury capsule on an Atlas, and it had the
structural failure in the adapter.

That was MA-1? Gee, I was *sure* that was Big Joe. Well, it's been a
while since I read my Mercury hostories.

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.

Since the problem wasn't well understood -- not enough telemetry data to
pin it down -- they reinforced the adapter (almost certainly where the
real problem was) *and* the Atlas as well.

At least none of the Mercuries had to use their LES...

Doug

On Sat, 15 May 2004 20:44:26 +0000, Henry Spencer wrote:

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.)

Which was somewhat of a break with previous practice, the official names
of the Mercury flights were all Mx-n where x was the launch vehicle type
and n was the sequence number of the launcher type. Well sort-of, the
number changed after a successful use of the number, was mated to a
launcher of that type, e.g MR-1 and MR-1A used different Redstones, but
if I can beleive my sources, the same spacecraft, after refurbishment.
The spacecraft and booster numbering appears unrelated. For example MA-6
used S/C 13 and Atlas 109-D

For Gemini the missions were all numbered consecutively and the booster
and spacecraft numbers tracked with the mision. So the first manned flight
was Gemini 3, using s/c 3 flown on launcher GLV-3 or sometimes referred to
as GT-3.

On Sat, 15 May 2004 20:37:54 +0000, Henry Spencer wrote:

Apollo upper management eventually decreed that the code for
the mission would use AS. This *slowly* spread through Huntsville too --
the Saturn V Flight Manual for Apollo 10 still uses SA when referring to
the booster, while the Flight Evaluation Report for Apollo 15's booster
mostly uses AS.

Well, eventually was April 1966 when the Apollo Program director decreed
the Apollo Saturn (AS) designation for Apollo missions on either Saturn
IBs or Saturn Vs:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...04/ch19-2.html

This was about 10 months before the first flight of a non-boiler plate
Apollo on a Saturn, or the first flight of an Apollo on a Saturn IB.

So the AS-201 designation was official well before the flight.