Tracking Apollo to the Moon

441 Pages·2001·49.72 MB·English

by  Hamish Lindsay (auth.)

Tracking Apollo to the Moon
Springer-Verlag London Ltd.

Hamish Lindsay
rack·
g
Apo lo o he
Moon
With 250 Figures
including 106 Colour Plates
Springer
Hamish Lindsay
High Court of Australia, Parkes Place, Canberra, ACT 2600,
Australia
Endpapers: 111 km above the crater Schubert B in Smyth's Sea, the Apollo 16 Lunar Module
Orion slips across the tortured surface of the Moon to rendezvous with the Command Module
Casper for the trip back to Earth.
Frontispiece: From 8 km away, the slopes of South Massif dwarf the lonely Apollo 17 Lunar
Module Challenger sitting in the valley of Taurus-Littrow.
ISBN 978-1-4471-1064-4 ISBN 978-1-4471-0255-7 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-1-4471-0255-7
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Lindsay, Hamish
Tracking Apollo to the moon
1. Apollo 11 (Spacecraft) 2. Project Apollo (U.S.) 3. Space flight to the moon
I. Title
629.4'54'0973
ISBN 1852332123
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Lindsay, Hamish.
Tracking Apollo to the moon I Hamish Lindsay.
p.cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-85233-212-3 (alk. paper)
1. Project Apollo (U.S) - History. I. Title.
TL789.8.U6 A5467 2001
629.45' 4'0973-dc21 00-058348
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as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988, this publication may only be
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outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
© Springer-Verlag London 2001
Originally published by Springer-Verlag London Limited in 2001
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001
The information contained in this book has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable.
The author disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the inform
ation, and shall have no liability for errors, omissions, or inadequacies in the information
contained herein, nor for the interpretations thereof.
The use of registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the
absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant laws and regula
tions and therefore free for general use.
The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the
information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any
errors or omissions that may be made. Observing the Sun, along with a few other aspects of
astronomy, can be dangerous. Neither the publisher nor the author accept any legal responsibil
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mation or recommendation contained in this book.
Typeset by EXPO Holdings, Malaysia
58/3830-543210 Printed on acid-free paper SPIN 10742612
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my wife and our three children, grandchildren,
and the upcoming generations so they can share in the exciting moments
of mankind's greatest technological feat of leaving the Planet Earth for the
first time and landing on our nearest neighbour, the Moon.
It is also dedicated to all those people whose contribution, however small,
led to the incredible success of this feat. It is to remind us of the important
part played by the support people on the ground - the Mission Control
Center at Houston, Texas, the Kennedy Launch Center at Cape Canaveral,
the Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland, the Tracking Stations around
the world, the Recovery Forces, and the many smaller centers and contract
ors whose people worked alongside the astronauts to keep the missions
going to the end and bring them safely back home.

•
The Last Fron 1er
The wise man looks into space and does not regard the small as too little, nor
the great as too big, for he knows there is no limit to dimensions.
Lao Tse, Ancient Chinese Philosopher
I do not for a moment believe that the spiritual weU-being of our nation
depends primarily on a space programme. I am sure that we could, as a nation,
attain great piritual reassurance from rebuilding our cities or distributing our
farm products better. But I also believe that there are moments in history when
challenges occur of such a compelling nature that to miss them is to miss the
meaning of an epoch.Space is such a challenge.
Congressional Testimony by ]ames A. Michener
Until Apollo 11 there was always a new frontier somewhere to beckon the
inquisitive, exploring, often plundering human. We have now explored our
planet from pole to pole, from the bottom of the seas to the highest moun
tains. Over the ages many have looked beyond the skies to the stars and have
had the dream of travelling to other worlds, and walking on another planet.
Countless stories have been written on aliens and the inhabitants of the other
planets and fictional encounters with them. In the foreseeable future, the gen
erations that follow us after Apollo 11 will never know the unique thrill of
arriving in a new place, finding new people, new flora and fauna, new miner
als, a new land. They will never experience the wonder, excitement and fear of
the unknown that a new land, a new frontier can bring. We already know what
Mars and Venus have to offer from our mapping orbiter and sampling lander
spacecraft. We have crossed the last frontier in our solar system, in fact the
vanguard of our spacecraft are already entering the intragalactic void.
If there is one thing the Apollo missions and the planetary explorers have
shown us, it is there is nowhere else for us to go and live normally in our solar
system.
It was not a dream that finally put a man on the moon, it was two pow
erful forces that came together at the one time - politics to provide the
reason, drive, and finance, and science and engineering to provide the
technology and vehicles. It had, however, taken visionaries from many
Tracking Apollo to the Moon
times and many lands to develop the paving stones that built the track to
the Moon. This is the story of putting those pavers down, and the part that
the tracking stations played in the final scenes that led to man walking on
the moon, and perhaps in time to come, to travel into the vast, incompre
hensible reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy. One day Mankinds very survival
may well depend on interstellar travel.
Hamish Lindsay
Canberra
Acknowledgements
"Tell it just like it was;' is the theme of this book, and this philosophy has been followed, first
hand accounts used wherever possible.
First of all I would like to thank all the many participants from around the world who helped
to complete the story. Their names appear throughout the text, many interrupting very busy
lives to add their bit. In particular the astronauts, who took some tracking down, but were very
helpful in answering my questions, and have added that atmosphere to help "tell it like it was."
I would like to ackowledge the help of the following:
Lex Howard, Marshal of the High Court of Australia, who sparked the idea off over a game of
table tennis, and supported the project from the beginning; Margaret Persinger at the Kennedy
Space Center and Michael Gentry from the Johnson Space Center, Houston, who, with Becky
Friday and Gloria Sanchez, provided most of the amazing images I requested from the ten million
odd images held by NASA; G. Ted Ankrum and Dr Miriam Baltuck, NASA Senior Scientific
Representatives in Australia; Michael Dinn, past Station Director, and staff of the Tidbinbilla
Tracking Station, Canberra; Kerrie Doherty of the Power House Museum in Sydney; David Taylor
of West Australian Newspapers, Perth; Dr Douglas Milne and John Masterton of the CSIRO for the
Parkes input; Eileen Hawley, Public Relations Officer of the Medical team at the Johnson Space
Center; Frank Winter, Curator of Rocketry at the Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institute,
Washington; Linda Henry for her work in locating the items from American Society of
Experimental Test Pilots, Lancaster, California; William Wood Jr late of the Bendix Field
Engineering Company, for the Goldstone Tracking Station memories and photographs, and check
ing the manuscript; Joan Westbrook for the use of her scrapbook on the Mercury Project; Ed von
Renouard, television technician at Honeysuckle Creek who was instrumental in arranging
publication of the book. H.L.
Picture Credits
All photographs are by NASA except the following:
Author: Figures l.l, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.14, 4.2, 4.23, 4.24, 4.25, 4.27, 4.28, 4.29, 4.40, 4.42,
5.6, 6.14, 6.24, 6.29, 6.30, 6.43, 6.49, 7.17, A.2
Novosti: Figures 1.2, 2.10, 2.11, 2.12, 2.13, 2.34, 3.7
Deutsches Museum: Figure 1.4
Edwards Air Force Base, California: Figure 1.5
Spaceflight: Figure 2.11
Discovery: Figure 2.17
Lunar and Planetary Institute: Figure A.1
West Australian Newspapers: Figures 2.26, 2.28, 2.31, 2.32, 2.34
William Wood, Goldstone: Figures 4.18, 4.19, 4.20, 4.21, 4.22, 5.4
Australian News & Information Bureau: Figures 4.26, 4.30
John Masterson of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research
Organisation (CSIRO): Figures 4.51, 4.52, 4.53
Ed von Renouard, Honeysuckle Creek: Figures 5.7, 6.32
Peter Cohn, Honeysuckle Creek: Figure 6.23
Cartoons by Paul Rigby, courtesy of West Australian Newspapers