automatic Moon landing?

It is often stated that Neil took manual control of the LM to fly past
a bad landing site. But wasn't it planned that the CDR would take
over at some point?

The LM had a full "autoland" but no CDR ever used it; they all went into
the semi-auto landing mode. No-one ever used the full manual landing mode.

On 25/09/2012 11:14, Jan Philips wrote:
It is often stated that Neil took manual control of the LM to fly past
a bad landing site. But wasn't it planned that the CDR would take
over at some point?

On 25/09/2012 02:14, Jan Philips wrote:

It is often stated that Neil took manual control of the LM to fly past
a bad landing site. But wasn't it planned that the CDR would take
over at some point?

The LMGC (Lunar Module Guidance Computer) controlled the Powered Descent
via five main programs (P63, P64, P65, P66 & P68). In theory these could
have guided the LM to a safe touchdown. However, the Luminary software
package could not determine whether the designated landing site was
suitable, therefore the option to take over 'manual' control was built
in. In practice no CDR would ever let the computer fly the landing.

The whole Powered Descent was divided into three phases - the Braking
Phase, which began with PDI and was controlled by P63; the Approach
Phase (P64) which delivered the LM to around 1000 feet at which point
the LM was rotated so that the crew could finally see the landing site
('Pitchover'); and the Landing Phase (P65). P65 was the automatic
landing program and the CDR had the option to take control by requesting
P66. P66 continued to maintain some aspects of the descent, but the CDR
took control of attitude and rate of descent.

P68 was the landing confirmation program which was loaded after
shutdown. I'm not sure about P67 - it appears to have written to control
the LM if the designated landing site had been passed, presumably
leading to an abort.

There are very detailed and highly technical documents about the
Luminary software he

http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Luminary.html

Note: Early versions of Luminary were named Sunburst & Sundance.
MIT was responsible for the development and coding. The primary author
of the P60 programs was Don Eyles.

--

Brian W Lawrence
Wantage
Oxfordshire

In Brian Lawrence writes:

On 25/09/2012 02:14, Jan Philips wrote:

It is often stated that Neil took manual control of the LM to fly past
a bad landing site. But wasn't it planned that the CDR would take
over at some point?

The LMGC (Lunar Module Guidance Computer) controlled the Powered Descent
via five main programs (P63, P64, P65, P66 & P68). In theory these could
have guided the LM to a safe touchdown. However, the Luminary software
package could not determine whether the designated landing site was
suitable, therefore the option to take over 'manual' control was built
in. In practice no CDR would ever let the computer fly the landing.

James Lovell claimed, around the time the movie came out, that
he intended to let the computer fly Aquarius to touchdown, barring some
extraordinary circumstance (such as the discovery of a small rock field
in the last minutes). Granted, he's also the person who could claim
that.

--
http://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/ Joseph Nebus
Current Entry: My Problem With 7 http://wp.me/p1RYhY-ju
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On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 21:14:49 -0400, Jan Philips
wrote:

It is often stated that Neil took manual control of the LM to fly past
a bad landing site. But wasn't it planned that the CDR would take
over at some point?

Thank you for the informative replies.