Author Topic: Spaceflight Book Thread  (Read 201215 times)

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #360 on: 03/01/2015 08:46 pm »
No equivalent for Surveyor. NASA commissioned histories of Ranger and Lunar Orbiter, but somewhat bizarrely not for Surveyor. I don't know how good the records are on Surveyor. By now if NASA was going to do something, they would be better off going for a history of Surveyor and then looking at post-Apollo lunar efforts (which were thwarted).


Offline Star One

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #361 on: 03/01/2015 10:11 pm »
No equivalent for Surveyor. NASA commissioned histories of Ranger and Lunar Orbiter, but somewhat bizarrely not for Surveyor. I don't know how good the records are on Surveyor. By now if NASA was going to do something, they would be better off going for a history of Surveyor and then looking at post-Apollo lunar efforts (which were thwarted).

How odd that Surveyor got missed out but thanks for the heads up on that. The Lunar Orbiter one is relatively inexpensive as an e-book so that looks worth an investment.
« Last Edit: 03/01/2015 10:18 pm by Star One »

Online mikes

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #362 on: 03/01/2015 10:45 pm »
There's an Apogee book on Surveyor

http://www.cgpublishing.com/Books/Surveyor.html

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #363 on: 03/02/2015 12:25 am »
There's an Apogee book on Surveyor

http://www.cgpublishing.com/Books/Surveyor.html

I have that. It's the reports from the missions, not a history of the program. The program history is interesting. Surveyor started out as a much more complicated science mission. I think it included both orbiter and lander. It got scaled down to primarily support Apollo by testing the lunar surface. There were later proposals for long-lived Surveyors and even a Surveyor rover, but these never got funded. There was some work done on the rover.

Still, I'd recommend the Surveyor book if you're interested in the subject.

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #364 on: 03/02/2015 12:33 am »
There's an Apogee book on Surveyor

http://www.cgpublishing.com/Books/Surveyor.html

I have that. It's the reports from the missions, not a history of the program. The program history is interesting. Surveyor started out as a much more complicated science mission. I think it included both orbiter and lander. It got scaled down to primarily support Apollo by testing the lunar surface. There were later proposals for long-lived Surveyors and even a Surveyor rover, but these never got funded. There was some work done on the rover.

Still, I'd recommend the Surveyor book if you're interested in the subject.

The version of the Surveyor rover I've seen written up was in fact proposed as an additional attempt to support Apollo.

It had little tread units instead of footpads, with electric motors swiveling the tread units for steering, and of course running the little tank-style treads for propulsion.  The thing was designed to move a few cm a second, very slow and deliberate.  It wasn't designed to make long traverses.

The mission design I saw was for the Surveyor rover to traverse back and forth, in lawnmower-like strips, through the primary Apollo landing site, measuring slopes and locating every crater and rock in the area within millimeters.  This was supposed to give the first Apollo landings detailed information about the site for landing and EVA training purposes.

I believe this particular Surveyor rover concept was canned when someone in ASPO realized that the people proposing it suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder...   ;D
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline Phillip Clark

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #365 on: 03/02/2015 01:48 am »
There were never books published in the NASA History series covering either Surveyor or Lunar Orbiter - serious omissions in my mind.
I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane - WJ.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #366 on: 03/02/2015 03:57 pm »
There were never books published in the NASA History series covering either Surveyor or Lunar Orbiter - serious omissions in my mind.

There was a Lunar Orbiter history:

http://www.amazon.com/Destination-Moon-History-Orbiter-Program/dp/1495920291

« Last Edit: 03/02/2015 03:58 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #367 on: 03/02/2015 04:07 pm »
There's an Apogee book on Surveyor

http://www.cgpublishing.com/Books/Surveyor.html

I have that. It's the reports from the missions, not a history of the program. The program history is interesting. Surveyor started out as a much more complicated science mission. I think it included both orbiter and lander. It got scaled down to primarily support Apollo by testing the lunar surface. There were later proposals for long-lived Surveyors and even a Surveyor rover, but these never got funded. There was some work done on the rover.

Still, I'd recommend the Surveyor book if you're interested in the subject.

The version of the Surveyor rover I've seen written up was in fact proposed as an additional attempt to support Apollo.

It had little tread units instead of footpads, with electric motors swiveling the tread units for steering, and of course running the little tank-style treads for propulsion.  The thing was designed to move a few cm a second, very slow and deliberate.  It wasn't designed to make long traverses.

The mission design I saw was for the Surveyor rover to traverse back and forth, in lawnmower-like strips, through the primary Apollo landing site, measuring slopes and locating every crater and rock in the area within millimeters.  This was supposed to give the first Apollo landings detailed information about the site for landing and EVA training purposes.

I believe this particular Surveyor rover concept was canned when someone in ASPO realized that the people proposing it suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder...   ;D

I'm not familiar with that. There was a rover for Surveyor proposed late in the program (I think 1967 or later). I'm too lazy to look up the details right now, but it was not intended to support Apollo but was supposed to rove out from the landing craft. JPL built a prototype unit and did tests in a sandbox. It had a video system. They were primarily interested in the issue of time delay for telerobotic operation. I believe that I've seen some video of these early tests. I also vaguely remember reading that the rover was shown off for a JPL open house and members of the public were allowed to drive it around the sandbox with the time delay turned on so they could see how difficult it was.

That rover later got put into storage at JPL. In the early 1990s when JPL began considering what became the Sojourner rover they pulled the rover out of storage, did some modifications, and performed preliminary tests with it. This is discussed in the various Mars rover books. If I had a little more ambition and time right now, I'd dig through some of my reference materials. I think this is how JPL originally developed the "rocker bogey" suspension system for Sojourner and later rovers--the lunar rover demonstrated that a six-wheeled design would have trouble with certain terrain features, and so it pointed them toward the rocker bogey.

Surveyor really just got steamrolled by Apollo. NASA had no interest in further lunar exploration after Apollo, and so much money had been spent on the Moon program that it was hard for anybody to argue for even very logical science programs for the Moon. NASA's planetary exploration attention turned to Mars.

I've got some of the later Surveyor proposals (I may have posted some of them here). The terminology gets a bit confusing. For instance, I think there was a "Surveyor Block II" proposal and a later "Surveyor II" proposal (and maybe even a "Surveyor III"?) and they were similar, with some differences. What would happen is that a proposal would get rejected and a year or two later somebody would revise it and propose it again with a different name. I've got some files on this stuff, but it would require some digging on my part to go through it and be more specific here.

« Last Edit: 03/02/2015 04:45 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Phillip Clark

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #368 on: 03/02/2015 04:30 pm »
I had never heard of the Lunar Orbiter history before!   I will have to order the paper copy from Amazon and hope it's not one of their piss-poor inhouse third rate reproductions.
I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane - WJ.

Offline Proponent

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #369 on: 03/02/2015 04:38 pm »
I had never heard of the Lunar Orbiter history before!   I will have to order the paper copy from Amazon and hope it's not one of their piss-poor inhouse third rate reproductions.

Please do let us know.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #370 on: 03/02/2015 04:42 pm »
I had never heard of the Lunar Orbiter history before!   I will have to order the paper copy from Amazon and hope it's not one of their piss-poor inhouse third rate reproductions.

Before you do, dig around a bit. NASA actually signed a deal with an academic press to reprint a number of old history books. I do not know if this was included. I forget the press, but they did good reprints of the original books.

It has been awhile since I looked at the Destination Moon book. I do know that some of what they had was incomplete, but that was because the program had ties to spy satellite technology and the author could not really touch on that. Also, recent revelations from NRO indicate that there were other proposals for lunar orbiting spacecraft, including a much updated Lunar Orbiter that would have essentially been a new spacecraft.

The history of early American robotic lunar exploration could probably be updated with some new information.
« Last Edit: 03/02/2015 04:43 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #371 on: 03/02/2015 04:50 pm »
Okay, I checked. It was Dover Publications that NASA signed the deal with and they did NOT republish Destination Moon. They did republish Lunar Impact, the history of Ranger, along with several other titles like Chariots for Apollo.

http://store.doverpublications.com/0486477576.html

Offline Star One

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #372 on: 03/02/2015 04:54 pm »

I had never heard of the Lunar Orbiter history before!   I will have to order the paper copy from Amazon and hope it's not one of their piss-poor inhouse third rate reproductions.

This is the version I've ordered. Appears to be the same thing but with a different cover & a lot cheaper.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0069XZLKG/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?qid=1425318787&sr=8-4&pi=AC_SX110_SY165&keywords=lunar+orbiter

Offline Jim Davis

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #373 on: 03/02/2015 05:03 pm »
There was a rover for Surveyor proposed late in the program (I think 1967 or later).

Did this have anything to do with Prospector which was a lunar rover program dating from the early '60s? Or was it something else entirely?

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #374 on: 03/02/2015 05:15 pm »
There was a rover for Surveyor proposed late in the program (I think 1967 or later).

Did this have anything to do with Prospector which was a lunar rover program dating from the early '60s? Or was it something else entirely?

I'm pretty sure it was entirely different. The term Prospector is confusing because it has been revived a number of times. Going off the top of my head, there was the early 1960s proposal for a Prospector series of spacecraft. Then, after Apollo, there was the Prospector orbiter. That concept floated around for a long time until it finally got approved as a NASA Discovery mission in the later 1990s. It flew. Then, more recently, there was a proposal for a Prospector lander and rover that just got zeroed out in this year's budget.

The Surveyor rover would have used the basic Surveyor spacecraft as a lander. The rover was small, about the size of a lawnmower (not at all like the big Soviet rovers). I don't know how far it was supposed to go from the lander. But there are a few reports around concerning its early development.

Now here is the confusing thing--there was an early proposal for a Surveyor rover, and I think a later one. Attached is a 1964 report on the early rover proposal. I think the later one grew out of this work, and it might have been approved for study around 1965-66.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #375 on: 03/02/2015 10:16 pm »
Okay, I did a little more digging (but not a lot). Here are some illustrations from a 1964 JPL proposal for "Surveyor II." The rover on the left, the smaller one, did get built as a working model. JPL hooked that up to a TV set and ran it around a little sandbox testing out the time delay problem. NASA never approved a follow-on Surveyor/rover program and so the whole thing got shelved. The model was put in storage and pulled out again in the 1990s for testing Mars rover concepts. There are photos of that little rover, and I think there may also be video.

Although I don't know why JPL picked the small rover over the big one my guess is that they decided it would be relatively cheaper and easier to build another Surveyor like the previous ones and simply add a rover than to develop a more ambitious design. Then again, JPL always liked to shoot big, so I wonder why they went small here.

There is a whole story that could be told about NASA lunar exploration during the 1960s and 1970s that never happened. Apollo short-circuited some of the science plans that were being proposed. That's not to say that science did not benefit immensely from Apollo (it did) but the whole process of lunar scientific exploration and inquiry really got warped because of Apollo.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #376 on: 03/03/2015 12:37 pm »
Here is the rover in the Surveyor book mentioned above. Sorry for the poor quality.

Offline plutogno

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #377 on: 03/03/2015 04:43 pm »
IIRC there is a good discussion of the Surveyor rover (and a comparison with rocker-bogie rovers) in "Sojourner" by Andrew Mishkin

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #378 on: 03/03/2015 04:50 pm »
IIRC there is a good discussion of the Surveyor rover (and a comparison with rocker-bogie rovers) in "Sojourner" by Andrew Mishkin

Thanks. I figured that it was covered in one of those books, but I did not go looking.

Years ago I was going to JPL on business and tried to contact the guy who currently has custody of that rover. I wanted to see if I could come take a look at it. Never got a response. I thought it would be kinda neat to look at test hardware that was built in the 1960s that was sitting in a closet somewhere.

Offline Tony Trout

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Re: Spaceflight Book Thread
« Reply #379 on: 02/04/2016 03:19 pm »
....for a space geek like myself?  I've seen bunches of books on Amazon but.....there's so many to choose from!!

Give me some ideas of great reading regarding space or the space shuttles, please?
"The Image Is One Thing & The Human Being Another...It's Very Hard To Live Up To An Image, I'll Put It That Way."  (Elvis Presley During A Press Conference Before The First Of Four Sold Out Performances At New York's Madison Square Garden - June 9 - 11, 1972)

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