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WI: Lunar Gemini
As long as we're going to bitch about the trolling and flaming, somebody here may as well try and drag it back on topic. So, aaaa-aaanyway: Let's say they managed to get some LG missions into the budget: a Centaur flyby mission, an LEO test of the "Langley Lightest" lander, and a landing or two. Who do you think gets these flights, and why? I'm guessing that, given the talk about Slayton wanting to see one of the O7 on the Moon, Grissom will get the nod to command/fly the lander on the first LG landing flight, but what about Conrad? Iirc, he was a real agitator for these missions, and actually flew the Agena-boosted "high flight", but having flown this one, would he still get to command an LG landing mission? Here's some SWAGs; keep in mind I've left out "in-between" flights to try and guess a possible rotation: Agena "high-flight": Conrad/Gordon, as it happened (a couple of LEO lander tests later) Centaur-boosted lunar flyby w/LM descent test: White/Beano; White flies the lander (a couple of lunar flyby transstage tests and a manned lunar orbit/ lander descent test later) Centaur-boosted first landing mission: Grissom/Conrad; Grissom lands/EVA ....after which Grissom dies in the AS-204 plugs-out accident, as it happened, but not necessarily at the time it originally did. So, Pete gets his lunar Gemini flight, Gus is first on the surface as Deke had hoped, then the First Man On The Moon dies in AS-204. Skip all the usual debate about whether or not it kills the program*; what does everybody here think the _cultural_ impact would've been, both inside and outside the program? (I'm imagining Russia at the time of Gagarin's death, here). *I like to think that Apollo development would've continued apace, but perhaps with the initial lunar landing goal achieved, they could've concentrated more on the extended lunar stay/AAP end of things (and perhaps Dick Gordon would've gotten his CDR shot, and Musgrave wouldn't have had to wait for-freekin-ever to fly). -- "All over, people changing their roles, along with their overcoats; if Adolf Hitler flew in today, they'd send a limousine anyway!" --the clash. __________________________________________________ _________________ Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org Mike Flugennock's Mikey'zine, dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org |
#2
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WI: Lunar Gemini
In article ,
om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy... _facility.org says... On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 05:58:05 GMT, Doug... wrote: Beano is another story -- had Gemini X had to fly with its backup crew, Deke was confident that Al would have done a fine job in the left seat. And Bean wasn't just shunted down into some possible dead-end crew slot in AAP, he was given a great deal of responsibility in getting that program to a flyable status. So it seems that Deke had more faith in Al Bean than he did in Ed White. ...And that may be the actual truth behind Bean's AAP assignment. He may have been qualified to be LMP or CMP, or even CDR if you get down to it, but his skills for getting AAP may have actually been *better*. Because Bean did make the A12 prime crew after Williams augered, he tends to get overlooked for his work on AAP and what eventually became Skylab. A lot is owed to his work in the fact that Skylab got off the ground. And Al was rewarded with command of the first really long-duration Skylab flight. I've always felt that Conrad's decision to jump into the Skylab crew rotation was at least in part based on his talks with Bean and his sense that Skylab was where the leading edge of the manned space program was heading. He had done his moon landing, had a great time, but it was time to start expanding the envelope again, and Al convinced him that Skylab was the place to go. I have always been impressed with Al Bean. One of the finest men to ever wear astronaut wings. -- It's not the pace of life I mind; | Doug Van Dorn it's the sudden stop at the end... | |
#3
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WI: Lunar Gemini
On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 05:58:05 GMT, Doug... wrote:
Beano is another story -- had Gemini X had to fly with its backup crew, Deke was confident that Al would have done a fine job in the left seat. And Bean wasn't just shunted down into some possible dead-end crew slot in AAP, he was given a great deal of responsibility in getting that program to a flyable status. So it seems that Deke had more faith in Al Bean than he did in Ed White. ....And that may be the actual truth behind Bean's AAP assignment. He may have been qualified to be LMP or CMP, or even CDR if you get down to it, but his skills for getting AAP may have actually been *better*. Because Bean did make the A12 prime crew after Williams augered, he tends to get overlooked for his work on AAP and what eventually became Skylab. A lot is owed to his work in the fact that Skylab got off the ground. 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 |
#4
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WI: Lunar Gemini
"Jorge R. Frank" wrote in message ...
Budget-wise, I don't see any chance of LG happening unless Apollo was also cancelled; therefore, Grissom wouldn't have died at all since there wouldn't have been an Apollo "plugs-out" test for him to die in. Other than that, I think most of your other choices are plausible, given the state of the rotation at the time. When I get ever get done with my Gemini Sim for Orbiter I am planning to do lunar gemini and other alternate Gemini. In the future history I sketched out for the scenarios I had Apollo 1 fire occur during a vacuum test with no crew. The resulting investigation uncovered the shortcoming of the Block I capsule. During the resulting delay. Soyuz I was launched and recovered successfully. Unbeknownest to the US and NASA Komorov nearly died as the Soyuz was clearly defective. The Soviets now had a similar delay while they reworked the Soyuz capsule. But the seemly successful Soyuz flight put NASA into a panic and quickly put together a circum-lunar flight program of four Gemini Flights in the fall of 67 and the spring of 68. A was a unmanned test of a uprated Gemini capsule re-entering at lunar velocity. B was a high orbit checkout of the Centaur but with a normal re-entry. C was a high orbit checkout of the Centaur however the capsule was boosted to lunar re-entry speeds. D was the circum lunar flight. Finally continuing on I had the Apollo 4 flight destroying (by the pogo problems that happened on 6) itself resulted in serious delays in the Saturn program. NASA choose to go with a with a Gemini Landing program followed by later landings with Apollo. Rob Conley http://www.orbitersim.com http://www.alltel.net/~estar/orbiter.html |
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WI: Lunar Gemini
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Heresy alert! [was WI: Lunar Gemini]
On 21 Jul 2003 20:01:54 -0700, (John
Charles) wrote: I've read "Deke" and all the other astronaut biographies, but I still don't know what Bean did that was so good, to make AAP/Skylab flyable, ....And, as I said, that's one of the things that's not all that widely documented, but if you infer from Deke's assignment, Bean apparently was the best qualified for running AAP. If Michael Cassutt's out there and hasn't been run off by the trolls and Maxsons, I'd love to have his input on this. 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 |
#7
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Heresy alert! [was WI: Lunar Gemini]
John Charles said:
But--Slayton's recollections aside--does anyone really believe that any of the astronauts played an absolutely indispensible role in making Skylab--or Apollo, or Gemini, or Mercury--flyable? Seriously, I am asking for evidence of any astronaut's contribution that was superior to lots and lots of non-astronauts, other than the word of another astronaut. That's an awfully difficult question to answer. In my own profession, I've learned that sometimes the best thing to do is ask a difficult question and let someone else deal with the implications. This avoids the need to say "you are wrong", and it lets the other guy say "that's interesting ... you know, if you take that idea and combine it with my idea ... then you think about....". A single carefully chosen question can guide someone into thinking deeper about a problem, and devising a new solution, without the ego-issues of saying "you are wrong, I'm right". Mike Collins hints that he did this as a test pilot in Carrying The Fire. Wally's "I'm cooler than you, let's light this candle" might be an example of this. There is a classic example of this in From the Earth to the Moon where Armstrong is in the LM simulator and just says almost nothing during a simulated landing. The descent rate it too high and the simulated LM crashes. By saying nothing, Armstrong manges to get Mission Control to think about what they are doing and resolve some incorrect attitudes. Wasn't there an Assimov story that dealt with the least possible change to create a desired effect? There is an almost occidental philosophy in saying almost nothing to generate the desired effect. If we assume the astronauts were bright, they could have done this in a way that hid their contributions. -- Kevin Willoughby lid We'd spend the remaining time trying to fix the engine. -- Neil Armstron |
#8
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Heresy alert! [was WI: Lunar Gemini]
Kevin Willoughby wrote in message ...
Wally's "I'm cooler than you, let's light this candle" might be an example of this. I believe that was Al Shepard in 1961. Anyway, if I interpret the answers received so far, then it appears to me that some of us really do believe that the astronauts made it all happen, and the non-astronauts (administrators, program managers, bean-counters, engineers, technicians, what-have-you) just sort of marked time until an astronaut appeared on the scene. Honestly, not the answer I was hoping for. John Charles Houston, Texas |
#10
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Heresy alert! [was WI: Lunar Gemini]
I think a lot of this has to do with the astronaut being the practical
voice. How many times have you heard the phrase "engineers don't use what they design." I hate to do another FTETTM reference, but in "1968" there's a great scene where Borman is in the design room at Downey talking about redesigning the hatch. The new hatch is put on and Borman sees what they're doing and says "wait a minute ..." He then grabs a chair and sits in the CM skeleton like he's seated and then shows the engineers why their design isn't going to work PRACTICALLY. I think this is the kind of input the astronauts gave. They saw where the engineers were going and then said "okay, let's look at this from the astronaut's" perspective ... |
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