Fly Me To The Moon And Back

the problem is really quite simple find the best path to to get from point A to point B but now let's make some assumptions let's say that point a is on Earth the Earth is rotating it's also wobbling on its axis which means that point a is actually moving like this as it travels through space and its orbit around the [Music] sun now let's assume that point B is on the [Music] Moon the Moon is also rotating the Moon is also wobbling on its axis which means that point B is describing a motion like this as it travels through space in its orbit around the [Music] sun besides this the Moon is moving around the earth so point a and point B do not stay the same same distance apart also the Earth and the moon each have a different strength gravity field this means that the direction and intensity of gravitational pull will change constantly along our selected path because of the movements the sun does not always illuminate points A and B we would like to leave a when it's lit and arrive at B when it's lit the problem Remains the Same find the best path from point A to point B but of course this is a great [Music] oversimplification [Music] [Music] soon man will travel to the Moon an astronaut will emerge from the four-legged insect-like spacecraft called LM [Music] he will climb down from it and become the first human being to set foot on the moon then will begin a period of lunar [Music] exploration others will follow missions will become longer and more complex [Music] other missions will have gone before to develop hardware and procedures the problems involved in accomplishing these missions are many some are obvious some are not just as the hardware must be designed to do the job so must the mission be designed the considerations include objectives what do you want to do requirements and constraints constraints include Hardware performance the ability of the tracking and Communications Network the ability of the astronauts in order to accomplish the objectives the spacecraft and crew must be at the right place at the right time this means the planning of a nominal Mission trajectory but realistically Contin gencies may arise which could not be handled by the nominal plan alternate trajectories must be designed to handle these possibilities the design of nominal and contingency missions is the job of the mission planning and Analysis division m p a d the accomplishment of this task is governed by the inexorable laws of mathematics [Music] this is Bob nnel he is responsible for the compilation of realtime computer requirements for the lunar Mission without computer facilities the lunar Mission would be impossible it would take a team of competent mathematicians years to compute by hand just one of the thousands of trajectories that MPA must compute and evaluate with the computer facilities but while computers can give you specific answers it's not possible to educate a computer to make decisions for conducting operations a man must be in the loop to decide when the computer answer is good enough and when to use it but where does it begin Mission planning for instance how do you go about planning for a lunar Mission at least least we're satisfying the letter of the requirement okay have you talked with the program office that uh are they willing to accept that Pete Frank is the chief of the mission analysis Branch he is working on various aspects of the Apollo missions that's the best we can do with what we have meeting all the other Mission constraints when you first conceive a mission you must think of objectives versus constraints for the lunar Mission the biggest constraint is the amount of fuel can carry with unlimited fuel you can choose just about any trajectory you want but with only a certain amount of fuel that can be carried you must come up with a realistic way to go the simplest concept is a direct trajectory a gigantic spacecraft is launched toward the moon as it approaches the Moon it turns around fires its Rockets to slow down and the entire spacecraft lands on the moon then everything lifts off and comes back to Earth this is simple but expensive in terms of fuel but there are two other ways involving rendevu in Earth orbit or rendevu in lunar orbit the one finally settled on was the lunar orbit rendevu you launch a spacecraft into Earth orbit then inject it toward the Moon as you approach the moon you slow down and go into a lunar orbit then you detach a smaller spacecraft and land it on the lunar surface when your lunar exploration is finished you launch back into lunar orbit and rendevu with the orbiting ship this method is well within our technological capabilities and can fulfill basic mission objectives but while mpad does not determine the objectives of missions it must provide information to those who do plans for modifying the radar sites for support of the lunar orbiter are being made I wonder if you have any comments you'd like to make about uh which sites would be best to modify first Jim mcperson is one of the men who provides this information he's working on the tracking Network for Apollo goes yeah there's some reasons for wanting to modify canaran early though for Telemetry support uh is there a good combination that involves canaran yes there is a combination that's not quite as good as the Atlantic stations and that's uh canaran canbera and Guan listen I think we can get some preference expressed about uh what stations we want modified first and they'll be accepted suppose we write up a memo on this to the director's office and uh see if we can uh get something rolling I'll get on it right away real good the location of the tracking stations must be considered when planning Mission tests or experiments that require ground Communications Telemetry or radar tracking can mission objectives be supported by the tracking Network another big area of concern is the placement of recovery forces where is the spacecraft going to come down where do you put your recovery forces this is directly dependent upon trajectory design and contingencies besides nominal recovery areas a recovery capability must be available in case of a change in Mission plans or an abort it has been estimated that 90% of mission planning has been in the contingency area what to do if something goes wrong okay so the Moon is down south then at 28° and let's say that we've launched on an asouth of approximately 72° okay then that put the Earth and cap Kennedy about so yeah so then the inclination now to the Earth Moon plane is is not too great given a basic method lunar orbit rendevu given basic Design Concepts for launch vehicle and spacecraft the next step is to work out the best trajectory to get to the moon Hal Beck head of the lunar trajectory section is working on this problem thing on some missions let's let's take the moon at a at a z degree declination for the first lunar Mission a free return trajectory is planned that is without midcourse Corrections the spacecraft will leave Earth go around the moon and return to a safe reentry corridor however the free return trajectory restricts you to a narrow landing area in a band around the equator a non-free return trajectory involving different transit times will allow Landings in a much greater range of latitudes these will be used for later Advanced missions there's a number of trajectories each of which has advantages and disadvantages once you've chosen the one you want you fit the rest of the mission to it we have it's a two bur problem and at the end of the first burn you have to constrain the Pary of your lips this is a practical constraint it's just to keep it a certain altitude above the a so this is some new Theory you've had to develop uh you might you might mention that this is the U Jim Doby is chief of the mathematical physics branch of mpad one of his jobs is to develop mathematical programs for Mission planning programs that give Optimum trajectories for maximum results so this is a mathematical Innovation to take care of a practical Mission planning problem yes although the Pary constraint he's talking about has been developed for some time but we've had to develop the accuracy of the second variation program I see to handle this this per constraint is an intermediate constraint as as an example right M right I got you uh the equation already have on the board is the a basic equation and calculations and if you uh if you take first variation of it and set it to zero this is a necessary condition for a uh extremal and it's a basis of deriving all our uh conditions that we meet uh Jerry is adding this uh problem for us and I'd like for her to get up and discuss uh space flight is a unique business unique mathematical methods must be worked out to handle it and old techniques are developed for new applications these techniques can solve extremely difficult problems in a very short time a six-hour problem for instance can be solved in 20 minutes new applications appear every day other methods are tailor made to fit individual needs for example predicting accurately where the spacecraft is how fast it's going where it's going to be what can the tracking Network do and how accurate will the answers computed from tracking data B and this must be done long before the mission has flown burn bur there is a residual uncertainty in all measurements this uncertainty must be Stripped Away mathematically and the best estimate figured out then the measure of confidence in these estimates must be determined once the formulation and logic is underway the computers come in on the XIs that one was about 30,000 right there, yeah about 30,000 gets out quite a bit from one of these computers is the hybrid consisting of digital and analog computers tied together to act as a single unit cases we're doing the last two here and we thought we'd show the effect here with with wind and with without it this computer is used for abort studies dispersion analyses designing displays for flight controllers a versatile computer requiring versatile people to operate it and program for it put it in the wind yeah let see how the effect of the wind is the lunar rotations are going to take the our moving the site right right Mission design affects everyone working on a mission so if we want to pass over the site one Orbit later the CSM is going to have to pass to the south of the site the design of the hardware must be taken into consideration Jim Taylor's main concern is the assessment of Landing areas on the moon the orbit plane on the site you want to go if we make a plane change at 90° from the site 2° maximum what's the Delta V uh 180 ft per second that's um what as Mission planning gets farther down the line data are given to the Builders of the systems and the systems are always changing for instance the lunar module early plans for the lunar rendevu called for the LM to be active with a fairly inert Command Module however the LM is getting heavier and more fuel critical therefore since the Command Module has plenty of fuel it will go to meet the lamb you know one of the things on the lunar mission is that there is no logic for the time the burn initiates so but on if you follow the logic of all the other missions what we build in is rediction or like it was occurring on 278 there is a built-in prediction of the elapse time to the burn based on some calibration if you know the burn Art's going to be so long operational planning the way to do things is now entering the picture Morris Jenkins is responsible for the compilation of program requirements for the Apollo onboard computers time should uh start when it should occur well if you know where your Pary is and you you're intending to circularize at the same altitude as your par you should be able to ignite on them since the onboard computer will be used by the lunar astronauts to solve essential navigation problems the program must be framed to fit their needs as closely as possible the astronaut should have a pretty good idea of what the answers will be before the computer spits them out from this operational planning comes the reference trajectory this is one of many documents assembled by mpad because of the innumerable factors involved in Mission planning it is important that math aids bring these documents out on time and in usable form Ed Lineberry chief of the rendevu anal is branch is largely responsible for the work leading to our first space Rendevous a technique vital to the success of the lunar Mission did Ken talk to you about the corrections we want to make on this particular yes sir all we'll have to do is go back and change the scale and just make it velocity in feet per second and I think other than that it it looks real good do you think you can have it completed by 3:30 yes sir I believe so okay the compilation of documents containing Mission information is critical this information must be available to the people who need it when they need it if Mission schedules are to be met that's a ground track of course we fixed it that way so we get coverage from all the uh design of a specific Mission begins about one year before launch often a flight will change a few months before launch because of changes in mission objectives rules or Hardware capabilities planning must be fle ible to handle this after the uh first SPS burn and where's the where's the update after the first SPS burn we got we pitch down in order to keep communication Carl hus chief of the flight analysis Branch produces detailed trajectories for specific missions until we get around until that attitude corresponds to the inertial attitude of the second burn what we do is of course go through the launch phase and then uh we stay on the booster for 10 seconds after cut off after the booster cut off at just to allow for tail off and for Marshall to get their data then we RCs for 11 seconds to go through the separation sequence designing for a specific flight means working with actual details of the systems rather than with somebody's estimate how much does the spacecraft weigh how much thrust is available from the main propulsion system when do you thrust how long What attitude must you have and planning for the nominal mission is just part of the [Music] responsibility the main part is contingency planning and operational procedures that go along with emergency and what if situations 90% of specific mission planning is on the emergency or abort problem and 10% on the nominal Mission this means a lot of the work is never used and the hope is that it never will be while you try to think of everything many things don't come up until the simulations start 2 or 3 months before launch the astronauts fly rehearsal missions from the mission simulator flight controllers are at their consoles just as they will be for the real Mission and flight controllers ERS can be pretty fish in coming up with things you haven't thought about they need answers and others need answers recovery forces tracking stations range [Music] safety before you can launch you have to know where the spent launch vehicle is going to land to be sure it doesn't end up in downtown Miami once the mission is ready to go the launch vehicle on the pad the crew in place much of the work of mpad is done but not all the astronauts in the spacecraft need to transmit and receive information they do this through the tracking Stations of the man space Flight Network to the Mission Control Center in Houston when a flight controller in the mission operations control room calls for information he needs it immediately whether it's on the big display board a data TV channel or an indicator light if an astronaut is going into orbit around the moon in 5 minutes and the information he needs doesn't reach him for 6 minutes it's not going to do him much good this real time information comes to the flight controller from the realtime computer complex located on the first floor of the mission control center M no you can put your Sand Key down go sea computer Su I see clock running rights the operation of this complex during a mission is a vital function of mpad here data obtained from Mission analysis are stored for a G rendevu Mission the efforts of over 200 programmers for a year and a half are required the real time program consists of about 650,000 separate instructions for the lunar Mission this will be at least doubled one of the men supervising this complex during a mission is Jim Walker okay I'm with man mlc Dynamics plot tape mounted is a plot tape mounted Dynamics computer sup he can read it go ahead I don't think we want to go through the pl data tape this time you got your targeting com righta this computer suit computer suit uh we have a GMO of 16398 all right I see that information is related to astronauts recovery forces launch Personnel experimenters everyone concerned with the flight phase of the mission computers tell flight controllers what can be done but first men must tell the computers and this is just part of the job why don't we go ahead with9 Stony stand by for a 10-c count to engine ignition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 [Music] ignition left off the clock is we got a in a staff support room adjacent to the mission operations Control Room Mission analysis experts constantly analyze data and advise flight controllers they stand ready to handle any occurrence during a mission that's a hydraulic switch over 1642 42 33 plenty of time to correct retro did you call me retro this we got something fast understand to give Mission planners another set of tools during a mission the auxiliary control room serves as a supplement to the realtime computers these are highspeed computers that can handle any number of problems the man responsible for the management development and Manning of this complex is Clay Hicks ACR trajectory go ahead would you run the heat processor for a 200 by 218 orbit R and also can you give me a time estimate uh on that request R you'll take approximately 15 20 minutes uh okay rush it up and I'll be standing by right sometimes things come up for a mission not foreseen in real time something has always happened during every Mission ever flown that's never been thought possible type orbit it's a little bit these things flow into the auxiliary computer room where you can improvise in real time could you get this case and get it real quick for [Music] us trajectory ACR Larry's going even after the mission is down the work of mpad goes on the mission is studied in detail during postflight analysis Don inserto is head of the postflight trajectory analysis section he works with all the other sections of mpad to find the actual Mission trajectory and compare it with the nominal where they don't match the reason must be found they locate errors for instance from postflight analysis it was learned that the Hawaii tracking station was located several hundred ft from where it was originally thought to be we don't really know you know how to start I got the impr all right but nobody's talking about changing anything are they at this point not that I'm aware of well then not as far as we're concerned well I got this phone call John it's a complex job involving computers and the work of thousands of people anybody else re as far as we're concerned everything's still the same not being able to hit the entry quarter never came into the picture as far as I know but telling Chris crap that kind of stuff is like blowing the whole world up you don't do it so you're not miss in trouble there as far as your guidance and your dispersion of SPS you're not Inseparable apparently you've only got a 0.15 carer because you're trying to meet some heating requir no the 05 degree is is that the answer you get from your dispersions no might also mention now 0 five was or that was their accuracy they wanted originally five that was the old what what are the dispersions give you as chief of the mission planning and Analysis division John Mayor is well aware of the complexity okay well what what are the dispersions now what's the answer you get I bet it's I bet it's [Music] five the first lunar Mission will be the beginning later missions will stay for longer periods on the moon and continue its exploration but getting to the Moon is like getting to first base from there we'll go on to open up the solar system and start in the direction of exploring the planets this is the long range goal it's a learning process as more knowledge is gained more confidence is gained more versatile Hardware can be built simpler ways of doing things will be found the flight Crews will do more and more as usual 90% of the job of mpad will be trying to figure out what can go wrong and what to do do about [Music] it and without computers it couldn't be done these complex Arrangements of glass metal insulators and electronics conceived and built by man to Aid him on his quest for knowledge man cannot match the speed of computers computers cannot match the creativity of man for with all the awesome speed of computers the mind of man Remains the activating [Music] Factor e