So one outa seven is “rare”?
I’ll leave the smarmy assed comments to the readers imagination.
Not to mention the Apollo 13 Gyvering wasn’t some lame assed realign the deflector shields STNG stuff.
Despite how it was portrayed in the Ron Howard directed film, the procedures for the use of thr LM as a “lifeboat” wasn’t jury-rigged by Ken Mattingly and a lone engineer, or even a few guys around a table frantically taping stuff together, but had been long worked out in prior simulations. The lithium hydroxide adapter which allowed the LM to use the canisters made to fit the CM had been worked out during an Apollo VIII sim. The use of the LM descent engine as a backup propulsion system had been previously proposed, and hundreds of Grumman engineers and technicians returned to work unbidden to support the rescue effort instead of the one fat, sweatting bureaucrat worried about saving his job shown in the film. In fact, one of the persuasive arguments for the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous and using a separate lander was the redundant life support and propulsion capability it offered in just the sort of situation the was experienced during Apollo XIII. And still, with all that being said, Lovell, Haise, and Swigert were especially lucky that the failure occured when it did, after Aquarius was docked and before entering Lunar orbit and descending. Also, they were two and a half days into the mission and almost to the Moon, which minimized the amount of time that they were dependant upon the LM.
Relying on “MacGyvering” a solution to a failure that could kill a crew in minutes is just not a reliable plan for anything, much less space exploration. Hence why NASA spent hundreds of person-years planning for all kinds of contengencies for failures.
Stranger
No, it was Gemini/Apollo astronauts. I think they might have spent two or three days with the Embera Indians of the Darien jungle region of Panama – something like that. Apollo 11’s Michael Collins mentions this, and includes a photo, in his book Carrying the Fire.
Hardly a valid cite, but Howard in The Big Bang Theory undergoes similarly rigorous training before he’s spent into space.
I responded to that by asking about “Russian” spaceflght to half cover my ass in case I was being whooshed, which I sensed in (mistakenly) reading as a joke an Apollo “misplaced splash landing” over a jungle.
I’m still not clear–it was for only a scenario of an off-coast mislanding? But now that I think of it, could it/the Apollo astronauts survive a land landing? Water is more incompressible than a lot of land areas.
The Apollo capsule could land on solid ground if necessary, albeit it would be a fairly hard landing with a significant potential for injury, as it had no retrorocket or energy absorption system. I believe terminal velocity just prior to impact was around 25 mph, so it would be approximately like being in a car crash into a wall at that speed (but facing backward). Water landings were selected for the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs not because they were low risk or less complex (not true in either case) but because the United States doesn’t have large tracts of unoccupied flat land to provide a suitable landing site. As it turned out, the Gemini and Apollo capsule landings were quite precise and could have been directed toward a large salt flat like Edwards or Bonneville, but an overshoot could still be problematic, and the US had large naval fleets in both the Atlantic and Pacific to support recovery operations. The Soviets descended onto land for the opposite reasons; they have plenty of open space (and little concerns about the liability for crushing some Kazakhstani peasant’s hovel) and don’t have an extensive naval force suitable for recover operations.
Basic land survival training–which is still part of NASA Astronaut Candidate Training–is really more about providing confidence in dealing with uncomfortable situations and team building than an actual need to use those skills in a practical context. There is no likely case that astronauts, even if their spacecraft were to be badly off course, would have to survive without recovery or at least support more than overnight. During Apollo, recovery operations were performed by US Air Force Pararescue jumpers (“PJs”), the same guys who perform search and recover operations for downed pilots and soldiers trapped behind enemy lines.
Stranger
Thanks.
But back to the physics (and I remember the brilliant bouncy inflatables of the Mars lander): 25 mph into seawater differs from 25 mph into a solid wall–how much?
Not sure what your question is getting to.
We know that 45 astronauts landed in the water in the CM. This isn’t counting the Mercury and Gemini. And to my knowledge none of them were injured.
Would you rather do that, or drive into a concrete wall at 20-25 MPH? We know you can walk away from one of these!
Basically correct, but thejungle training was held at Fort Sherman (site of the Jungle Operations Training Center) and Albrook Air Force Base in the Panama Canal Zone rather than in the Darien.
He would have made it just fine with a few calculations. I suspect the module could have been programed from NASA without any input from Collins in a pinch. When the first manned spaceshots happened the astronauts complained that everything was automated for them and they didn’t actually do anything so they changed the design to allow the astronauts to participate in the experience.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train;18989003The Soviets descended onto land for the opposite reasons; they have plenty of open space (and little concerns about the liability for crushing some Kazakhstani peasant’s hovel) and don’t have an extensive naval force suitable for recover operations.
[/QUOTE]
Here is a (not very good)translation of the rentry of the Soyuz TMA-11 reentry where they landed in some Kazakh farm field. They caused crops to catch fire and IIRC per Chris Hadfield, they did pay compensation.
If you watched the Navigation episode of the great series Moon Machinesthey ultimately decided that the Apollo spacecraft (except for the LM’s descent and ascent from the lunar surface) would normally all be calculated & controlled from the ground. Although the spacecraft had amazingly complex and accurate INS (inertial navigation systems) they were relegated to backup status in case communication to the ground controllers was completely lost.
Thanks. Cool photos in your link.
The Jungle Operation Training Center was still open in the 1990s. I have a cool t-shirt with this logo. They had a small menagerie with jungle animals for training purposes.
I had a bird research project on Fort Sherman when it was still open. One morning one of my field assistants caught a Jarhead in a mist net we had set out for birds. She heard cursing and went over and found a Marine wrapped up in a net and trying to cut his way out with a machete.
We slapped a band on his leg and released him unharmed. 
I doubt a body recovery mission would have been possible. The LEM was a tight fit for two living astronauts, I doubt it would be possible for two plus a corpse to fit in the LEM plus the difficulty of lifting them up (might be easier to strip the spacesuit off a corpse I suppose. I think two corpses would be out of the question, unless you let one living astronaut do the landing, the hauling, the lifting, and so on. Not gonna happen. So maybe two missions to recover two bodies at a tremendous cost and risk. I can’t see that as practical.
You need an adjective or two in there. Maybe a “green-marpat jarhead”? Or a “foul-warbled jarhead”?
Speaking of navigation and equipment failures, one of the good TV retrospectives (possibly From the Earth to the Moon, but I forget exactly) talked about Gordon Cooper’s technical difficulties at the end of his Faith 7 mission, the last Mercury flight.
Basically, the capsule had a power failure shortly before re-entry. As carbon dioxide built up, with temperatures rising to over 100 degrees F, and with no computer, Cooper had to estimate an angle, orient the spacecraft manually, and time his burn using his wristwatch. Although not a massively complex calculation, it was a critically important one:
Unlike the Wikipedia article I cited, the program emphasized that Cooper splashed down closer to his target point than any other Mercury astronaut.
I submit that that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Right Stuff.
Not sure what your reply is getting at (:)), or if it is in conflict with the post I responded to, which implies, I believe, the safer qualities of sea landings, as to impact. Unless I got the antecedent of his sentence wrong, in which case he is not differentiating the impact of the water and land landings; but then the implication of his other comments about Apollo and water landing don’t follow.
Frumious Jarhead
This scenario is commonly discussed, as in this thread and others on various forums: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=734245&highlight=apollo
It is often spurred by the draft speech “In Event of Moon Disaster” written in 1969 by Nixon aid William Safire, possibly at the direction of Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman: What If the Moon Landing Had Failed? | HISTORY
It might have been influenced by the Martin Caiden book “Marooned”, originally written in 1964 but revised in 1968 to fit Apollo. In that novel Apollo astronauts were stranded in earth orbit while their oxygen slowly ran out. It was also a 1969 movie, released in November – after the July moon mission.
The speech was a political aide’s speculative view of a scenario. It was not vetted by NASA or checked for technical feasibility. It clearly implies a “stranded alive on the lunar surface” situation.
In fact there was probably relatively little chance of this specific case happening. It was a risky mission and they could have died en route, as nearly happened in Apollo 13. They could have crashed into the moon, as nearly happened on Apollo 10. If they tried to land without landing radar (which temporarily failed on Apollo 14) they could have crashed into the moon and died or exceeded the descent rate for a successful staged abort, then crashed in the ascent stage and died. They could have been marooned in lunar orbit if the SPS engine had a complete gimbal motor failure (one gimbal motor became unstable on Apollo 16). They could have died on the moon due to a space suit failure. They could have died during lunar liftoff if all the pyros didn’t sever the ascent stage. However the chance of being alive on the moon, able to communicate yet unable to take off was probably quite low – if nothing else because the other failure modes were proportionately higher.
The Lunar Module ascent stage was designed with extreme simplicity, even at a significant performance cost. The propulsion system had no pumps or igniters. There were no fuel cells like failed on Apollo 13 – only batteries. Unlike the Service Module it used only pressurized gaseous oxygen, not cryogenic oxygen (which blew up on Apollo 13). The propulsion plumbing used double redundant valves. It had double redundant computers and could probably reach orbit without any computer whatsoever – that was a practiced contingency. The reaction control thrusters had a separate non-computerized analog electrical path, and separate contingency activation solenoids. The engine had no complex regenerative cooling, thereby greatly simplifying plumbing. The engine was not gimbaled like on the Service Module, just bolted in a fixed position.
Nominally the LM was supposed to land with a maximum tilt angle of +/- 12 degrees from local vertical. However under extreme conditions it could probably have lifted off if one leg became caught on a crater rim during landing and the entire vehicle was tilted sideways 70 degrees. This was studied in the 1966 paper “Apollo Lunar Module Landing Strategy” by Donald C. Cheatham.
So the Apollo lunar missions were risky but the chance of the “stranded alive on the moon and can’t take off” scenario mentioned in the William Safire draft speech was probably relatively low.