Author Topic: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS  (Read 87101 times)

Online Blackstar

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http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1734/1

Black Apollo
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, November 29, 2010

During the height of the race to the Moon, NASA and the top secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) planned a series of Apollo missions to carry a large reconnaissance satellite to lunar orbit where astronauts would photograph the lunar surface and map out landing sites for later manned landings. But these were not mere plans—NASA actually started construction of four spacecraft, each 1.5 meters (5 feet) (1.5 meters) in diameter and 5.5 meters (18 feet) long. They were based upon the then operational KH-7 GAMBIT high-resolution reconnaissance satellite. But in the end the spacecraft proved unnecessary and the project was canceled in spring 1967.
« Last Edit: 11/02/2020 07:57 pm by gongora »

Online edkyle99

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The camera system might have been classified, but the Apollo missions themselves could not have been "secret". 

 - Ed Kyle

Offline brihath

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It is apparent from the article that this was a back up plan in case the Lunar Orbiter flights did not return enough data.  Perhaps NASA's experience with Ranger and Surveyor failures caused them to look for a Lunar Orbiter backup.  Fortunately, all the Lunar Orbiter missions returned good data and the backup plan was unnecessary.

What I wonder is why didn't they just consider building more Lunar Orbiters?  An Atlas Agena was a lot less expensive than an Apollo-Saturn V, without risking a crew.


Online Blackstar

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What I wonder is why didn't they just consider building more Lunar Orbiters?  An Atlas Agena was a lot less expensive than an Apollo-Saturn V, without risking a crew.

It was a backup not for launch failure of a Lunar Orbiter.  It was a backup in case the Lunar Orbiter photography was insufficient to determine the precise terrain features of the landing sites.  Flying another Lunar Orbiter with lousy photographs would not have changed anything.

Offline Archibald

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Talk about a discovery ! this is outstanding.

NASA and NRO nearly flew a KH-7 into lunar orbit, attached to a manned Apollo, to image the Moon at a very high resolution. How about that ?

Even a NASAspaceflight.com  newbie worried at the Moon hoax could never have had such idea.

 (why don't we fly a KH-11 to lunar orbit to image the Apollo landing sites and shut the Moon hoaxers mouths
God, I just imagine Jim answer to that  ;D )

Any idea of how this "lunar KH-7" would have compared to LRO, resolution-wise ?
Any chance to image Apollo landers long before LRO, shutting Bill *crackpot* Kaysing mouth ?
« Last Edit: 11/29/2010 04:22 pm by Archibald »
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Online Blackstar

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Any idea of how this "lunar KH-7" would have compared to LRO, resolution-wise ?

I did not have time to do the math.  Plus, I'm lousy at math.

But it was a 77-inch focal length camera at 30 nautical miles altitude.  Somebody can calculate that.

My guess is better than 1-foot resolution.  Probably close to diffraction limited (in other words, near the absolute best that the optics could produce).

Offline kevin-rf

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Wouldn't it also have been a backup to Lunar Orbiter in case the developing film in space and beaming it back to earth part didn't work? I seem to recall USAF having some problems with that hat trick...

I just keep thinking MOL stripped down and on steroids ;)
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Online Blackstar

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Wouldn't it also have been a backup to Lunar Orbiter in case the developing film in space and beaming it back to earth part didn't work? I seem to recall USAF having some problems with that hat trick...

That part worked.  There were two problems: resolution (too low), and number of pictures that could be transmitted in a day.  The latter was not an issue for Lunar Orbiter, because they did not require a lot of photographs of a lot of areas.  The former might have been an issue--they might have been concerned about the quality of the imagery that LO could return, and what data could be extracted from it.  I do not know the criteria for certifying that a potential landing site was safe.  It is one thing to say "it must not have a slope of greater than 5 degrees."  It is another thing to say "we KNOW that it does not have a slope greater than 5 degrees because of the following technical factors."

Offline yinzer

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Any idea of how this "lunar KH-7" would have compared to LRO, resolution-wise ?

I did not have time to do the math.  Plus, I'm lousy at math.

But it was a 77-inch focal length camera at 30 nautical miles altitude.  Somebody can calculate that.

My guess is better than 1-foot resolution.  Probably close to diffraction limited (in other words, near the absolute best that the optics could produce).

Resolution should scale directly with altitude, so just take the normal KH-7 altitude, divide by 30 miles, and then divide the normal KH-7 resolution by that ratio.

A quick google search shows claims of KH-7 resolution starting at 4 feet and going down to 2 feet, with perigees around 100 miles.  So... from 30 miles you'd expect resolutions from 8 to 16 inches, maybe a bit better because of no atmospheric effect?
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Offline mmeijeri

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Wouldn't mascons have made very low orbits useless? Not that they knew about those at the time.
Pro-tip: you don't have to be a jerk if someone doesn't agree with your theories

Online Blackstar

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Wouldn't mascons have made very low orbits useless? Not that they knew about those at the time.

I think that down to 50 km is stable over short periods of time with station keeping/reboost.  But in this case it is possible that they were considering elliptical, not circular orbits.

Offline Jorge

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Wouldn't mascons have made very low orbits useless? Not that they knew about those at the time.

Indeed, it was primarily through Lunar Orbiter data that the mascons were discovered in the first place.
JRF

Offline kevin-rf

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Wouldn't mascons screwed with an elliptical orbit even more so? Just sounds all the more harry.
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Offline Jorge

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Wouldn't mascons screwed with an elliptical orbit even more so?

No. Gravity is an inverse-square field, and elliptical orbits spend much less of their time close to the mascons. That said, there could still have been unwelcome surprises due to the mascons being poorly mapped at the time (assuming Lunar Orbiter would still have gone ahead prior to this program).
JRF

Offline gwiz

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Any chance to image Apollo landers long before LRO, shutting Bill *crackpot* Kaysing mouth ?
Lander images were made by the SIMBAY cameras on the final three Apollo missions.

The hoax idiots wouldn't have been silenced because, at base, they ignore any evidence that contradicts their opinions.

Online Blackstar

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Have been gathering information on this.  It turns out that the existence of the program was not classified, but the hardware was, and the hardware was never declassified.

Here is an artist impression of the Lunar Mapping and Survey System being docked to an Apollo Applications Program space station in Earth orbit.

I am working with an artist to develop a schematic showing the lunar configuration and the internal configuration.

Offline mrbliss

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So the modified KH-7 would have remained attached to the CSM for the entire lunar portion of the mission?  I would expect the modules would have needed to separate in order for the camera to be operated properly.  Then the modules would need to rendezvous (or at least re-dock) afterward, to retrieve the exposed film.

Maybe the planning never got to that level of detail...

Offline Jim

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So the modified KH-7 would have remained attached to the CSM for the entire lunar portion of the mission?  I would expect the modules would have needed to separate in order for the camera to be operated properly.  Then the modules would need to rendezvous (or at least re-dock) afterward, to retrieve the exposed film.

Maybe the planning never got to that level of detail...

No, the cameras did not receive images from the ends of the cylinder.  Remember the KH-7 had an Agena at one end and an SRV at the other.  The camera receive images from the side of the vehicle just like Corona.  Hence the picture that Blackstar posted has the M&SS attached to the "side" port of the AAP docking adapter in the same plane as the solar arrays vs the nadir port.

If the diagram were to be of a LM&SS, then one could infer that the end attaching to the MDA was the Agena end and the end attached to the CSM was the SRV end.  This would allow for the crew to access the exposed film for return to earth via a hatch in the docking tunnel. 

In the AAP mode, the ends could remain the same, and the film is retrieve by EVA or the CSM visits the M&SS after undocking from the MDA for return to earth.   Or the ends could be swapped and the crew accesses the film via the MDA.

These are just my thoughts, I did not read any documentations that makes these statements.
« Last Edit: 12/01/2010 02:54 pm by Jim »

Offline Archibald

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We recently had a thread over the decision to fly AS-503 (the third   Saturn V) manned (April 1968).
Then, at a famous meeting early August 1968, decision was taken to fly Apollo 8 to the Moon without Lunar Module. It was replaced by a ballast, the LTA.
Maybe some day we'll find a document (classified or not) discussing the possible use of LMSS on Apollo 8 as an alternative to the LTA.
Maybe !
Thought ? could one out of four LMSS been completed circa 1968 and flown on Apollo 8 ? (speculative, but couldn't resist).
« Last Edit: 12/01/2010 04:19 pm by Archibald »
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Online Blackstar

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So the modified KH-7 would have remained attached to the CSM for the entire lunar portion of the mission? 

Yes.

I would expect the modules would have needed to separate in order for the camera to be operated properly.  Then the modules would need to rendezvous (or at least re-dock) afterward, to retrieve the exposed film.

Maybe the planning never got to that level of detail...

I think that the article (I'd have to check) says that it was unclear if the LM&SS would have stayed attached to the CSM the entire time in lunar orbit.  However, my assumption is that it would have stayed attached.  This seems to make more sense.  Although having humans in the CSM connected to the LM&SS might have increased the vibration issue, I doubt that it would have been a problem in operation.  The reason is that the camera would have only operated for short periods of time, so the pilot says "I am going to start the camera, nobody move an inch!"  He runs the camera for 20 seconds, then stops it.  There's a lot of mass in those two spacecraft, so with three astronauts strapped to their seats, they're not going to affect the camera.  It would be a different thing if they were floating around the capsule while the camera was running.

If you look at the illustration I posted above, the camera would have looked down, out of the bottom side of that tube, presumably near the front of the tube, where it connected to the CSM.

Like I mentioned, I'm working with an artist on this, and you'll see his illustrations on Monday and all will be clear.  He's got a really nice illustration in the works.

Offline Jester

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your illustrations will probably be much better, however in the mean time....
« Last Edit: 12/01/2010 06:48 pm by Jester »

Online Blackstar

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your illustrations will probably be much better, however in the mean time....

That second one is NOT LM&SS.  It's a different AAP mission.

The first one shows the LM&SS with a truss structure around it.  I don't know what the truss structure is for.  Maybe it provides collision protection?  Mounting points for additional instruments?  EVA handholds?

Offline Jim

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your illustrations will probably be much better, however in the mean time....

That second one is NOT LM&SS.  It's a different AAP mission.

The first one shows the LM&SS with a truss structure around it.  I don't know what the truss structure is for.  Maybe it provides collision protection?  Mounting points for additional instruments?  EVA handholds?

The truss is hold the LM&SS in the SLA like the lunar module.  You can see the corners which are like the "knees" of the lunar module which support it in the SLA

Online Blackstar

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The truss is hold the LM&SS in the SLA like the lunar module.  You can see the corners which are like the "knees" of the lunar module which support it in the SLA

Yeah, but it wouldn't really be necessary after the LMSS was removed from the SLA.

Offline Jim

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The truss is hold the LM&SS in the SLA like the lunar module.  You can see the corners which are like the "knees" of the lunar module which support it in the SLA

Yeah, but it wouldn't really be necessary after the LMSS was removed from the SLA.

That was among the trades, where to make the disconnects

Online Blackstar

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The truss is hold the LM&SS in the SLA like the lunar module.  You can see the corners which are like the "knees" of the lunar module which support it in the SLA

Yeah, but it wouldn't really be necessary after the LMSS was removed from the SLA.

That was among the trades, where to make the disconnects

Yeah.  Without having the engineering knowledge, I can imagine the problems.  At the most basic level, you would not want to carry that mass with you to the Moon if you did not have to.  So for the lunar mission, the bias would be to not carry the truss. 

For the Apollo Applications Program mission in Earth orbit, however, that's not really relevant (although it would add mass to the overall spacecraft, therefore making it a little harder to maneuver the CSM with the truss and the LM&SS camera system attached).  It would also obscure the view of the CSM pilot (as noted in one of the documents).

But without the truss, how would you mount it inside the Saturn Launch Adapter?  I think an obvious method would be to use a truss that was secured to the SLA, with the LM&SS camera system mounted on rails inside, so that it could slide out.  But that would partly depend upon how precisely a pilot could back the CSM away from the SLA--you want to pull that long tube out of the support structure, but you don't want to bend anything and break it.

Online Blackstar

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Gonna have a little bit more on this on TSR on Monday, including some nice illustrations.  Check there.

Offline Jester

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Some bits and pieces

flight international archive.
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1967/1967%20-%200426.html
« Last Edit: 12/06/2010 01:52 pm by Jester »

Online Blackstar

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That's great.  Thank you.  The MSS tube has a notch on the side.  I don't know what that is.  One possibility is that it is a retractable sunshield.

« Last Edit: 12/06/2010 02:11 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Jester

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Also, there are some ref. in the skylab history

history.msfc.nasa.gov/skylab/docs/chronology.pdf

page 15 of that PDF has some artist drawings, however that PDF has horrible image quality.

As this is from Marshall around 1966/1967 maybe some images from that time can help digging.
 
« Last Edit: 12/06/2010 02:12 pm by Jester »

Online Blackstar

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A follow-up article is now up:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1737/1

Apollo: Secrets and Whispers
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, December 6, 2010

"During the 1960s, the existence of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which managed America’s spy satellite programs, was highly secret. It is difficult to understand why this was so, but the ability to use powerful satellites to peer down into the Soviet Union, count strategic weapons systems, and determine what the Soviets were doing was highly valuable and therefore prized. Although the Soviet government and the American public knew that the United States was launching satellites into orbit to conduct espionage, US government officials felt that even admitting that these activities were being conducted would attract more attention to them, and possibly encourage the Soviets to start shooting at them in peacetime (everybody expected them to shoot at American satellites in wartime). This intense secrecy is the main reason why the revelation that the NRO made then-current, highly-capable reconnaissance satellite technology available to NASA for the Apollo program is so surprising."

Cutaway illustration by Giuseppe de Chiara:


Offline Lars_J

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So I assume the film rolls would have been retrieved by the astronauts through the docking hatch?

EDIT: never mind, the article explains it.
« Last Edit: 12/07/2010 12:38 am by Lars_J »

Offline Jester

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Still digging,

Came up with part of a test plan for LM&SS from martin marietta
http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19680015082

Checkout plan for KSC
http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19680015104
« Last Edit: 12/07/2010 03:28 pm by Jester »

Online Blackstar

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Well, if that chart (I have to look closer at the source) indicates that they tested the LM&SS docking collars for vibration, shock, physical fit, function, and thermal vacuum, then it confirms that hardware was actually constructed.

Now the interesting hardware is the camera system itself, since that was the highly classified technology.  My guess is that the way the program worked was that they had a plan to declassify the existence of that technology only if the use of LM&SS was formally approved.  As I noted in the first article, by the time of this document (April 1967) NASA was already doing a review, and by June 1967 the NRO and NASA had decided to cancel the program.

The existence of a number of Apollo Applications Program documents showing the LM&SS system (often just called the Mapping Survey System, or MSS) indicates that NASA may have been shifting their emphasis.  Once Lunar Orbiter was flying and returning pictures, people at NASA may have realized that they did not need this powerful camera for lunar purposes, and they could fly it in orbit.  Given the fact that it would have produced pictures that were incredibly good, I cannot see how NRO ever would have approved that.  The original resolution limits set for Landsat in the early 1970s were something like 100 feet.  Nobody wanted NASA to take pictures any better than that.  The MSS would have taken pictures on the order of four feet!

Offline simonbp

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Well, Landsat was a digital-downlink spacecraft and so could image lots of stuff, thus the worry. With MMS, they could only image a few things, and so it was easier to control. Also, the Earth orbital version could have been modified to give a lower-resolution, wider field-of-view image that would be both less "threatening" to NRO and more useful for survey purposes....

Offline Archibald

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So the consensus NASA and NRO aparently reached was something like *no way you ever use that camera in Earth orbit, but we don't care about the Moon*

Now let's suppose NASA flew the varied LMSS on Apollo missions and thus that we had a map of the Moon at the jaw-dropping resolution of a foot.
Surveyors should be clearly visible on such a map (good for PR).

Now the question is: would such detailed map of the Moon have changed anything after 1970 ? I mean, could it have an incidence strong enough so that Apollo ever continue ? (through the Townes report, and on)

I mean, for example, the case of Tycho. That was rejected varied times because the landscape was too rocky; even a mix of Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor 7 panoramas was not enough to plot a safe landing there.
Now had Tycho playground been mapped at a resolution of a feet... See what I mean ?

No, really, this LMSS thing is quite an exciting discovery.
« Last Edit: 12/07/2010 04:04 pm by Archibald »
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Offline Art LeBrun

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Perhaps Tycho might have been considered if lava ponds were imaged.......
1958 launch vehicle highlights: Vanguard TV-4 and Atlas 12B

Offline Jester

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Well, if that chart (I have to look closer at the source) indicates that they tested the LM&SS docking collars for vibration, shock, physical fit, function, and thermal vacuum, then it confirms that hardware was actually constructed.


It sure looks this way, those documents are part of the Apollo Application Program (AAP) Payload Integration - General Test Plan, made up of 4 volumes.
I just found the GSE tools used for testing the LM&SS, in Volume 1
http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19680015081

P.S.
in this document LM&SS stands for Lunar Mapping and Synoptic Survey System
« Last Edit: 12/07/2010 05:08 pm by Jester »

Online Blackstar

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It sure looks this way, those documents are part of the Apollo Application Program (AAP) Payload Integration - General Test Plan, made up of 4 volumes.
I just found the GSE tools used for testing the LM&SS, in Volume 1
http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19680015081

The info contains another important piece of data: Martin-Marietta built the docking collar for the LM&SS.

The Quest article is a little confusing.  It never mentions General Electric or Kodak, although they were responsible for the OCV and the camera, respectively.  Why doesn't it mention them?  Because their association with the KH-7 remains classified.  It does mention Lockheed as winning the contract for modifying the film takeup, which would have been modified to remove the recovery vehicle and put it in a container (a cassette is the term that is usually used for film containers of this type) so that an astronaut could grab it.  The mapping camera was probably built by Fairchild, but is also not mentioned in the article.

Question: was Martin-Marietta responsible for the Apollo docking collar?

Offline Jester

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According to Preliminary mission profile for Apollo Applications Mission AAP-1/AAP-2, Revision 1 from August 1967 (so right after the change not to include LM&SS)
http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19740072775

It states under 1.2.1:

The Preliminary Data Specification (Reference 3) defines the total
and component weights of the AAP-1 and AAP-2 vehicles (Table 1). The
Lunar Mapping and Surveying System and its associated experiments have
been deleted from the AAP-l/2 mission, reducing the total weight by 4000pounds.
« Last Edit: 12/07/2010 05:33 pm by Jester »

Online Blackstar

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So the consensus NASA and NRO aparently reached was something like *no way you ever use that camera in Earth orbit, but we don't care about the Moon*

No, I think that overstates it.  I think that NASA wanted this:

"If we need LM&SS for the Moon, we want to test it in Earth orbit first."

Because they never needed LM&SS, they never had to get NRO approval, and so we don't know that anybody made a firm decision.

However, the article implies that NASA did ask for NRO approval (this is really a DoD-level decision, probably with CIA concurrence, not NRO per se) for permission to fly an Earth-only mission, and that got vetoed.

As I noted in my follow-up article, an interesting question is why MSS never showed up on Skylab.  After all, it was actively discussed for the Apollo Applications Program, and hardware was at least partially constructed by summer 1967.  So by the time Skylab was completed in 1973, they could have had an MSS ready to fly on it.

I strongly suspect that the decision within DoD was that once it was clear this hardware was unnecessary for the Moon landing, they wanted it put back in its box.

Offline Jester

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More Martin Marietta stuff:

Apollo applications program. Payload integration Program report, second contract period.
http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19680014117

Images:

First, nice outline of the LM&SS "sigar" shape on the cover.

second, the portable display and control for the LM&SS experiments

third, docking options for docking the LM&SS to the CMS or MDA


Text which points to actual hardware (at least mockup)

Page 78 of the PDF:In all three candidates, an LM&SSsemifunctional mockup (SFM) was used.[/b]
« Last Edit: 12/07/2010 06:08 pm by Jester »

Offline Jim

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Question: was Martin-Marietta responsible for the Apollo docking collar?

It was responsible for the Multiple Docking Adapter and overall payload integration

Offline Jim

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The Quest article is a little confusing.  It never mentions General Electric or Kodak, although they were responsible for the OCV and the camera, respectively. 

Isn't there something still missing?  What really is the make up of the OCV?  Was it just a spacecraft bus?  Who made and integrated the structure that contained the camera, mirrors, avionics, SRV, etc that remained after the OCV was eliminated. 

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Isn't there something still missing?  What really is the make up of the OCV?  Was it just a spacecraft bus?  Who made and integrated the structure that contained the camera, mirrors, avionics, SRV, etc that remained after the OCV was eliminated. 

I don't think the OCV was eliminated.  The stabilization system was probably deleted as unnecessary, but the OCV would have still provided comm (in this case to the Apollo, but it might have had its own telemetry system), power, and possibly camera controls.

It is possible that the OCV was eliminated entirely, however.

And there remains the question of the integration contract.  GE had that for the KH-7 and lost it for the KH-8.  Who had it for LM&SS?

One possibility is that GE lost out entirely and Lockheed ended up providing the power, controls, integration, etc. for the LM&SS. 

Right now we just don't know.  That stuff remains classified.  My suspicion is that assuming that KH-7 is declassified, it may take awhile for the LM&SS stuff to get declassified as well.
« Last Edit: 12/07/2010 10:35 pm by Blackstar »

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If the OCV was eliminated, or shortened (because of no stabilization system), it would explain the location of the sunshade on the side of the cylinder.  Giuseppe de Chiara, who did the illustrations that I used, made a best estimation on the location of various things based upon my information and the limited dimensions that we had.

But he calculates that the opening for the camera was a little closer to the one end of the vehicle, whereas the few illustrations posted here show the sunshade more near the middle of the tube.

If you assume a shorter OCV on the opposite end from the film platen (where the film was exposed), then the sunshade could move a little farther away from the docking end, more near the middle.

But we're still guessing.

Offline Jester

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If the OCV was eliminated, or shortened (because of no stabilization system), it would explain the location of the sunshade on the side of the cylinder.  Giuseppe de Chiara, who did the illustrations that I used, made a best estimation on the location of various things based upon my information and the limited dimensions that we had.

But he calculates that the opening for the camera was a little closer to the one end of the vehicle, whereas the few illustrations posted here show the sunshade more near the middle of the tube.

If you assume a shorter OCV on the opposite end from the film platen (where the film was exposed), then the sunshade could move a little farther away from the docking end, more near the middle.

But we're still guessing.

More info here:
Methods for docking the LM&SS payload module to the multiple docking adapter                      
http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19790072712

This also talks about the EVA, talks about the batteries for the Payload module.

Also talks about the thrus, and stabilization issue for the PM when attached to the CSM, mentions a cold gas attitude control system like the Gemini Augmented Target Docking Adapter.

Also an aft docking collar is discussed.
 

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Also talks about the thrus, and stabilization issue for the PM when attached to the CSM, mentions a cold gas attitude control system like the Gemini Augmented Target Docking Adapter.

Great info.  Thank you.

The KH-7 General Electric-built OCV had a cold gas system that was described as a "bang bang" system because of the sound it made (on the ground, of course, because in space, no one can hear you bang).

Offline Jim

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mentions a cold gas attitude control system like the Gemini Augmented Target Docking Adapter.


Not to go off topic but the ATDA was biprop, it used the reentry control system from the Gemini capsule.

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Any idea of how this "lunar KH-7" would have compared to LRO, resolution-wise ?

I did not have time to do the math.  Plus, I'm lousy at math.

But it was a 77-inch focal length camera at 30 nautical miles altitude.  Somebody can calculate that.

My guess is better than 1-foot resolution.  Probably close to diffraction limited (in other words, near the absolute best that the optics could produce).

Actually, it was basketball sized resolution, so about a foot.
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The Quest article is a little confusing.  It never mentions General Electric or Kodak, although they were responsible for the OCV and the camera, respectively. 

Isn't there something still missing?  What really is the make up of the OCV?  Was it just a spacecraft bus?  Who made and integrated the structure that contained the camera, mirrors, avionics, SRV, etc that remained after the OCV was eliminated. 

Itek did a lot of that work.
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The Quest article is a little confusing.  It never mentions General Electric or Kodak, although they were responsible for the OCV and the camera, respectively. 

Isn't there something still missing?  What really is the make up of the OCV?  Was it just a spacecraft bus?  Who made and integrated the structure that contained the camera, mirrors, avionics, SRV, etc that remained after the OCV was eliminated. 

Itek did a lot of that work.

Source?

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Itek did a lot of that work.

This is Gambit, and not MOL or Corona.

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Still digging around here,

according to Skylab: America's space station
http://books.google.com/books?id=X4WaYqQDVKwC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=%22nasa+lm%26ss%22&source=bl&ots=Rnodd8Qk1s&sig=LqIha4CFkHBHArkNh3Pa88GR5y8&hl=nl&ei=oO0ATf3eO8Wv8QO9jribCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

In early May 1967 (after the Apollo 1 fire) AAP-1 and AAP-2 missions were changed to launch NET begin 1969 and LM&SS was removed.
This new plan (and i'm trying to find this plan...) effectively removed the Earth-orbit test of the LM&SS from the OWS phase of APP.

The hardware (LM&SS) was re manifested on May 8th as AAP-1A for a solo CSM/Saturn 1B launch unconnected to the OWS missions and planned for a 15th of September 1968 launch.

AAP-1A would be launched by a Saturn 1B into a 81 x 120 NM orbit at 34 degrees
Upon extraction the orbit would be raised to 141 NM.
LM&SS tests where planned to take minimum 5 days and open-ended to 14 days.


it mentioned a 60 day study done by Martin Marietta between 5th of July and 5 September 1967 and additional studies done between 6th of September 1967 and 30th November 1967 to recommend system/mission reqs.  and config of the carrier

Carrier: an aluminum truncated cone, 84 inches in diameter at the experiment mounting end and 110 inches total length

read part of the piece below
« Last Edit: 12/09/2010 02:18 pm by Jester »

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Well, that's just confusing.  The problem is that this truncated cone is not consistent with the previous illustrations showing a tube with the camera looking out one side.  And the KH-7 camera wouldn't really work like that.

The text says that this would carry "twenty-three experiments" in that cone structure.  But how the heck do you pack all that stuff along with a really big camera?  It is just very confusing.

Offline Proponent

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Could it be that AAP-1A would have carried components of the KH-7 camera but not the full deal?  Perhaps this would have been adequate to demonstrate the feasibility of using the LMSS in lunar orbit?

EDIT:  Using a less-capable camera on AAP-1A would have had the auxiliary benefit of allowing the resulting images to be released publicly without revealing the capability of the KH-7 camera.
« Last Edit: 12/09/2010 02:40 pm by Proponent »

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Okay, now this image is from earlier in the thread and shows the AAP-1a mission.  This appears to be a more detailed version of what is posted above.  If you look closely, this doesn't carry the big LM&SS camera.  It carries a whole bunch of other things, but no giant camera.

One possibility (and I really need to take the time to dig through the documents and make sense of all of this--so forgive me for thinking on the fly here) is that after they downscoped the AAP, they initially discussed flying only an Apollo and LM&SS in Earth orbit, and then dropped the LM&SS a month or so later (after DoD told them they couldn't fly it only in Earth orbit).  And then AAP really became an Earth resources mission, without that really powerful camera.  And of course it never flew.

I'll have to go look at Jim Davis' article in Quest about the policies concerning ground resolution for NASA satellites.  (Yeah, I know that this is going to put everybody to sleep.)  What Jim did was collect a bunch of documents about how NASA and the intelligence community struggled to decide what NASA would be allowed to do with Earth photography.  The intelligence community (CIA and DoD officials) did not want NASA taking pictures that were too good, because this would give people an idea of what American spy satellites were capable of doing.  They set the resolution limits really low.  When Landsat started flying, the best it could do was around 100 foot resolution.  But the NRO was using satellites like the KH-8 to take pictures with resolution 100 times better than that (do the very easy math...).  Considering how conservative they were with Landsat's capabilities, you can imagine that the spooks were terrified of letting NASA start operating a powerful camera like the KH-7-derived LM&SS in Earth orbit.

My primary interest in this remains the lunar missions, because that raises all kinds of interesting "secret Apollo" issues, but clearly NASA was hoping to use this camera system in Earth orbit after it was clear that it was unnecessary for the Moon landing.

Offline kevin-rf

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Okay, dumb question...

There where backup Earth orbit missions in case a lunar mission failed to leave earth orbit. What would they have done with in this case?
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Okay, dumb question...

There where backup Earth orbit missions in case a lunar mission failed to leave earth orbit. What would they have done with in this case?

Backup mission planning was in the last few months before launch; this concept never got that far.
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Okay, dumb question...

There where backup Earth orbit missions in case a lunar mission failed to leave earth orbit. What would they have done with in this case?

Actually, that kind of issue was discussed later in the program.  See, for instance, here:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1380/1


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Ok, more digging:

I found the 60 days study for AAP-1A done by Martin Marietta here:
http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19680015103

I'm about halfway through but I don't find any mention (yet) of a "big camera" or LM&SS in general, just some assorted earth obs. experiments.
Those do include all types of camera's but i'm not camera buff to see if they have any relation to a Gambit type deal, unless a Fairchild F-639A camera counts ??

Although this document goes into much techincal detail I don't think during this 60 day study the LM&SS was part of it (at least not the Gambit cam.)
Does explain the sigar shaped ECM (experiments carrier Module)

Some pictures below
« Last Edit: 12/10/2010 11:43 am by Jester »

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Yeah, I think that the LM&SS evolved off of AAP by this time.

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Yeah, I think that the LM&SS evolved off of AAP by this time.

Ok next document:

Preliminary mission profile for Apollo applications mission AAP-1/AAP-2
http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19740074541

This document is from march 1967, so before the official cancelation of LM&SS.
On page 17 of the PDF it describes the AAP-1 Spacecraft as (partly) a Mapping and Survey System, the MSS contains a PM (payload module) which is a cylindrical structure which houses a modified Lunar Mapping and Survey System.

Can we go so far to say that at least according to this document already in march 1967 they have modified the LM&SS into M&SS and probably "deleting" the gambit. ?
« Last Edit: 12/10/2010 12:05 pm by Jester »

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I'll have to take a look at all this new stuff soon.  Been busy with work.  But my suspicion is that you had the high-level discussions over whether or not NASA would be allowed to fly LM&SS now that it was no longer necessary for the lunar landings, but you also had people at a lower level continuing to plan for AAP missions.  So there might have been a lag time where the people doing the negotiating expected that it would all be canceled, but the people at a lower level still thought it might go through.

AAP is just such a weird thing to wrap one's head around.  It was way too big an ambiguous before it got scaled down again and again.  That's typical of a lot of NASA stuff where it takes years before the worker bees understand that they need to focus very narrowly.

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I'll have to take a look at all this new stuff soon.  Been busy with work.  But my suspicion is that you had the high-level discussions over whether or not NASA would be allowed to fly LM&SS now that it was no longer necessary for the lunar landings, but you also had people at a lower level continuing to plan for AAP missions.  So there might have been a lag time where the people doing the negotiating expected that it would all be canceled, but the people at a lower level still thought it might go through.

AAP is just such a weird thing to wrap one's head around.  It was way too big an ambiguous before it got scaled down again and again.  That's typical of a lot of NASA stuff where it takes years before the worker bees understand that they need to focus very narrowly.

That's why i'm trying to narrow down as much as possible the search time-frame to see if some tidbits about the lunar gambit came through the "cracks"...

Also wondering if some of the hardware survived....
 

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Also wondering if some of the hardware survived....


I have my doubts.  The hardware would have been stored by the contractor for awhile, paid for by NASA.  But eventually NASA would have tired of paying storage and maybe they offered the equipment to NRO.  NRO would not have wanted it.  My guess is that it was destroyed.

I'm actually not encouraged about NRO keeping historical hardware.  They reportedly have a KH-9 and either a KH-7 or 8 in storage (I'm positive about the 9, but think it is an engineering test article).  However, around 1970 or so, they apparently still had one of their first QUILL radar satellites in storage, but as of 2000, it was gone, and the guy at NRO looking for it had no idea what had happened to it.  I would bet that like a lot of other equipment, it got destroyed.  In the 1960s, they used to fly a C-47 out over the Pacific every few months and throw classified equipment into the ocean.  There's no reason to believe that they have kept stuff in warehouses for decades.

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Giuseppe updated the illustrations to include the sunshade.

We are still not positive about the configuration.  Some of the illustrations in the documents posted earlier show the sunshade more towards the middle of the cylinder.  Why is this?  One possibility is that the OCV was actually shorter, and there was a little more cylinder on the other side, moving the sunshade toward the middle.

Another possibility is that the KH-7 camera actually used folded optics.  Instead of simply bouncing the image twice (off the reflecting mirror and then the primary mirror and then through the reflecting mirror onto the film), they bounced it off a reflecting mirror, onto the primary mirror, onto a smaller secondary mirror, and then through the primary mirror and onto the film.  In the latter configuration, the reflecting mirror is solid and the primary mirror has a hole in it.

Someone posting on the TSR site says that with the folded optics, you can increase the focal length and hence the power of the camera a lot, with a minimal increase in weight.  But what it also can do is decrease the overall _length_ of the camera.  We know (from a document that I found) that the focal length of the KH-7 was 77 inches.  Now with the first design, you essentially have a camera that is 77 inches long.  But with folded optics, you can reduce the size of the camera, getting 77-inch focal length in less than 77 inches.  What you could then do is make the actual camera smaller and put it in a shorter section of the cylinder that you see. 

So... maybe folded optics is the explanation for why the sunshade is in the center of the cylinder.  But that means that there would be more stuff on either side of the camera, filling up that cylinder.  What extra stuff?  Maybe more mechanism for the film.

My official position on this is neutrality.  Either version is okay with me until we get better info.
« Last Edit: 12/11/2010 01:36 am by Blackstar »

Offline Art LeBrun

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Similar to a Cassegrain design. The secondary is really an amplifier that could do 5X the original focal length. Of course you get more diffraction effects from it's large obstruction but that probably was worth gain in scale. Great subject BTW.
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Ok, a request,

Does anybody have a better version of the following book:

Skylab - Illustrated Chronology 1962 -1973
http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/skylab/docs/chronology.pdf

On Page 15 of the above PDF of the book it has the only picture (artist drawing) of the LM&SS coming from NASA.

However the quality is crap and I was wondering if somebody had a better copy and/or knows the source of that image (probably marshall / OWS Presentation)

I've attached two versions of the image, the first is from the PDF above, the second is from a PDF I have myself.

I don't want to discount the wonderful work done by Giuseppe (whom I might have worked with on ATV, but that's another story)

Just trying to get more details.

Thanks
« Last Edit: 12/14/2010 02:33 pm by Jester »

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I think I have the book at home and will check when I get back from travel.

Meanwhile, I went through one of the documents posted earlier, the one on the different docking methods for connecting the LM&SS to the AAP space station.  It is pretty much consistent with the illustrations that Giuseppe made.

It confirms that the LM&SS had one docking port for connection to the Apollo CSM and that they would possibly have to attach another one at the other end in order to dock the LM&SS to the station.  But this also presented a dilemma.  The problem was that the film takeup cannisters were located near the first docking port.  When they connect the LM&SS to the station, they would want that port connected to the station so that the astronauts inside the station could easily reach the film.  This meant that they would have to launch on a Saturn IB, separate the CSM, rotate 90 degrees, dock with the LM&SS and pull it out of the Saturn IB.  After backing away, they would have to disconnect from the LM&SS, move around to the other end, and re-dock with the LM&SS.  They would then maneuver to dock the other end of the LM&SS with the station.  It would plug into the station, so to speak.

This additional docking port would also possibly require the relocation of the batteries inside the LM&SS.  That is also consistent with the configuration in Giuseppe's illustrations, based upon my speculation about the KH-7 design.

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Quote
When they connect the LM&SS to the station, they would want that port connected to the station so that the astronauts inside the station could easily reach the film.

Perhaps - just my own little opinion - they could retrieve the film via an EVA ? As far as I remember that what was done for the Apollo Telescope Mount...
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Quote
When they connect the LM&SS to the station, they would want that port connected to the station so that the astronauts inside the station could easily reach the film.

Perhaps - just my own little opinion - they could retrieve the film via an EVA ? As far as I remember that what was done for the Apollo Telescope Mount...

yes, that was one of the options discussed in a previous document I posted

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However the quality is crap and I was wondering if somebody had a better copy and/or knows the source of that image (probably marshall / OWS Presentation)

Here you go.  Sorry that it is a massive pdf file, but I don't have a way of converting this to jpeg on this computer.


Offline Robotbeat

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However the quality is crap and I was wondering if somebody had a better copy and/or knows the source of that image (probably marshall / OWS Presentation)

Here you go.  Sorry that it is a massive pdf file, but I don't have a way of converting this to jpeg on this computer.


Here ya go!
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Interesting.....


Thanks !

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Man, this thing is huge ! No surprise they could never fold that into the SIM bay. No surprise it moved the LM out of the lunar mission.  ::)
« Last Edit: 12/20/2010 04:59 pm by Archibald »
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It's a big telescope.  Primary mirror is 44 inches in diameter.

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thank you. This discovery prompted myself to read again the long series of NRO-related articles you made ofr the Space Review since 2006.

The level of secret around the NRO was indeed quite crazy at times. I had some fun browsing Google newspaper with the entry "National Reconnaissance Office".

Nothing apears before January 22, 1971 and the NY Times article.
Tiny mentions from time to times, until this

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Df0jAAAAIBAJ&sjid=0WYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7413,5736122&dq=national-reconnaissance-office&hl=en

I particularly liked this part of the article

Quote
As one official intelligence said "Hell, even its initials were supposed to be classified"
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thank you. This discovery prompted myself to read again the long series of NRO-related articles you made ofr the Space Review since 2006.

I've written a lot more for Spaceflight magazine.  Much of the TSR stuff is reprinted from Spaceflight.  You might go look at their site and order back issues.

Also, get a copy of Richelson's book The Wizards of Langley.  And if you can find it, get his America's Secret Eyes in Space.  You can also go to the National Security Archive website and find his several document collections and summaries.  I tend to focus more on spacecraft, people and technology, and he focuses a little more on people and organizational issues.

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I particularly liked this part of the article

Quote
As one official intelligence said "Hell, even its initials were supposed to be classified"

There's a great story told by a former senior DoD official who recounted how he mentioned the acronym in the Pentagon hallway once in the 1970s and then immediately wondered if he should turn himself in for revealing classified information.

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Blank letter head paper was pre stamped "Secret"

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Blank letter head paper was pre stamped "Secret"

I recall reading in Ben Rich's SkunkWorks bio that both he and Kelly Johnson used their leverage to try and not have so much material labeled "Secret". Their thought was that a "secret" drawing attracted too much attention from spies. Better to have conventional shop drawings, where little attention would be paid to a run-of-the-mill assembly.

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Blank letter head paper was pre stamped "Secret"

on this end of the pond it still is......


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Wouldn't it also have been a backup to Lunar Orbiter in case the developing film in space and beaming it back to earth part didn't work? I seem to recall USAF having some problems with that hat trick...

That part worked.  There were two problems: resolution (too low), and number of pictures that could be transmitted in a day.  The latter was not an issue for Lunar Orbiter, because they did not require a lot of photographs of a lot of areas.  The former might have been an issue--they might have been concerned about the quality of the imagery that LO could return, and what data could be extracted from it.  I do not know the criteria for certifying that a potential landing site was safe.  It is one thing to say "it must not have a slope of greater than 5 degrees."  It is another thing to say "we KNOW that it does not have a slope greater than 5 degrees because of the following technical factors."

"SAMOS to the Moon" gives some details why it worked better in Lunar Orbiter than in the original SAMOS (addition of film storage capability and longer down-link windows). There are also some details on the bidding process (Eastman Kodak using Boeing as a "front" to propose a modified E-1 camera) and a few remarks on the relationship between NASA and NRO:
http://nro.gov/foia/SAMOS%20to%20the%20Moon.pdf

Offline kevin-rf

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Okay, now my head is really screwed up. Lunar Orbiter used the SAMOS "camera" but not the SAMOS lenses? So it was an adaptation of the SAMOS system, but not the SAMOS system?

Okay, who hid the coffee?
If you're happy and you know it,
It's your med's!

Online Blackstar

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Okay, now my head is really screwed up. Lunar Orbiter used the SAMOS "camera" but not the SAMOS lenses? So it was an adaptation of the SAMOS system, but not the SAMOS system?

I forget the specifics, but why is this confusing?  If you have an SLR you can put different lenses on the front of the camera, right?

But I actually think it was the same technology, but not the same camera.  They had a different film supply, transport mechanism, and film path.  Also different lenses. 

Offline hoku

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On 16 Dec 2010 NRO released the 2008 issue of the "Review and Redaction Guide": http://nro.gov/foia/NRO_RRG_redacted.PDF

One of the main additions (compared to the 2006 issue http://www.fas.org/irp/nro/declass.pdf) is a section on "NRO-NASA Relationship" (black redaction bars are marked by the word REDACTED):

9.3  NRO—NASA Relationship

The NRO has supported NASA space flight programs with advanced technology and imaging sensors developed in the National Reconnaissance Program (NRP) since 1962. During the Cold War years, the NRO and the NSAM (National Security Action Memorandum) 156 Committee imposed limits on the resolution that NASA's imaging sensors could achieve at the earth's surface. The first formal agreement between the two agencies, pertaining to NASA's Lunar Program, was signed in August 1963 and provided for NRO support of the Lunar Orbiter REDACTED
American leaders originally sought to avoid any revelation that connected NASA with the intelligence community, given the international repercussions such a revelation might have among foreign nations that hosted NASA activities on their soil. The NRO has provided technical assistance, guidance, and/or instruments to the space agency for its Lunar Program, REDACTED   
This "dual-use" of NRP technology over the years has resulted in substantial savings to the government. Some aspects of this assistance have been publicly released; other aspects remain classified as described below.


This is followed by a heavily redacted list of facts to redact, and finally the releasable facts (see my next post).


Offline hoku

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(cont' of my previous post)

Release

a) Lunar Orbiter Project details, except for NRO contract cover/security and image processing controls identified above under redact.

b) Fact of and limited details about the 28 August 1963 "DOD/CIA-NASA Agreement on NASA Reconnaissance Programs." Discussion of contractor cover REDACTED

c) Fact of and details about a DOD-NASA committee established in 1966 to review, coordinate and monitor NASA activities that involved the NRP, known as the Survey Applications Coordinating Committee (SACC). The SACC reported to the DOD-NASA Manned Space Flight Policy Committee (MSFPC, composed of three seniors from DDR&E, NASA, and NRO). MSFPC functions were expanded to include responsibility for approving the recommendations of the SACC.

d) Fact that the SACC and NSAM 156 Committee reviewed and approved Apollo earth orbit Contingency Mission Plans for missions 13-17, and that the 18-inch focal length Hycon camera in Apollo 13 and 14 Service Modules could be used to image the earth, and that the Itek 24-inch focal length panoramic camera in the Apollo 15-17 Service Modules likewise could image the earth.

e) Fact that approval of the 303 and 40 Committees (Presidential principals) was sometimes sought for these decisions made by the SACC, MSFPC, and NSAM 156 committees.

f) Fact that the SACC/MSFPC and NSAM 156 Committee in 1966 imposed a resolution at the earth's surface of 20
meters (from any altitude), eventually reduced in stages to 5 meters, on all NASA image-forming sensors. Fact that these imaging restrictions did not apply to NASA astronomical experiments, which involved non-earth- looking efforts.

g) Fact that the preceding committees in 1973 authorized an Earth Terrain Camera for flight on NASA's SKYLAB that had a resolution at the earth's surface between 10 and 20 meters, which exceeded the 20-meter constraint imposed in 1966. Fact that a joint agency group organized by the intelligence community conducted a post-launch screening of imagery taken by this camera before the photography was publicly released.

h) Fact that NASA and the NRO established a joint "NASA/NRO Payload Accommodations Working Group" in the mid-1970s to examine engineering technical problems and costs of transitioning NRO payloads from expendable launch vehicles to the Space Shuttle. And fact that NASA and the NRO also established a joint "Program Review Board" at this time to coordinate their respective programs and ensure that these programs utilized common techniques and services when appropriate.

i) Records referred from NARA or the USAF involving REDACTED
the NASA-Air Force agreement on MOL, and early studies (1964-65) that proposed reconnaissance equipment, are releasable REDACTED

Offline Jester

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uhm... interesting.

Point c needs more digging,

the SACC was a subgroup of the Manned Space Flight Policy Committee, (MSFPC)

Discussions about LM&SS probably where going on in both groups.
Given the fact that the SACC was appointed as a subgroup on september 12 1966, pretty close to the cancellation time-frame of LM&SS

source:
http://history.nasa.gov/HHR-32/ch8.htm



EDIT:
These two groups mentioned in a declassified NRO document proposed on camera's flying on Apollo 6
http://www.private-files.com/documents/declassified/nro_apollo_6/nro_apollo_6.pdf
« Last Edit: 01/07/2011 09:48 pm by Jester »

Offline Jester

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also maybe worth reading:
http://www.nro.gov/foia/CAL-Records/Cabinet1/DrawerD/1%20D%200031.pdf

Page 3, sub e:

CIA can procure, test and deliver to NASA in 1970 several KH-4B payload systems.....as indicated in the ref. report, a cover story similar to the one used for the REDACTED cameras on the NASA lunar reconnaissance program
« Last Edit: 01/07/2011 10:12 pm by Jester »

Offline Graham2001

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(cont' of my previous post)


d) Fact that the SACC and NSAM 156 Committee reviewed and approved Apollo earth orbit Contingency Mission Plans for missions 13-17, and that the 18-inch focal length Hycon camera in Apollo 13 and 14 Service Modules could be used to image the earth, and that the Itek 24-inch focal length panoramic camera in the Apollo 15-17 Service Modules likewise could image the earth.


That's a real find, I didn't know that NASA had planned SIM bay cameras for Apollo's 13 & 14 before. There is a document from 1967 discussing the fitting of instrumentation for Apollo CSMs for use during the proposed Dual Apollo missions where an unmanned 'shelter' would be transported to the Moon.

Potential use of the CSM for lunar orbital mission work

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19790072340_1979072340.pdf

Amongst the documents referenced to in the link report is one that is sadly not available online:

"Lunar Orbital Experiments with the Apollo Mapping and Survey System", by W. L. Piotrowski and B. E. Sabels (January 1967)
« Last Edit: 01/08/2011 08:21 am by Graham2001 »

Online Blackstar

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uhm... interesting.

Point c needs more digging,

the SACC was a subgroup of the Manned Space Flight Policy Committee, (MSFPC)

Discussions about LM&SS probably where going on in both groups.
Given the fact that the SACC was appointed as a subgroup on september 12 1966, pretty close to the cancellation time-frame of LM&SS

source:
http://history.nasa.gov/HHR-32/ch8.htm



EDIT:
These two groups mentioned in a declassified NRO document proposed on camera's flying on Apollo 6
http://www.private-files.com/documents/declassified/nro_apollo_6/nro_apollo_6.pdf


Some of that stuff has been mentioned in 1-2 articles by Jim David in Quest.  Those articles are about establishing imaging limits for NASA.

I think I mentioned the Apollo 6 camera issue in a Space Review article I wrote several years ago.
« Last Edit: 01/09/2011 10:45 pm by Blackstar »

Online Blackstar

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The declass guide essentially lists what can be declassified, but none of the things in that list are particularly new.  I've been digging through the CREST collection at Archives II for a decade now and a lot of those things have shown up in CREST documents.  Me and Jim Davis have written on a number of those subjects (Jim once told me that he goes out every time there is a new document release and searches for all the material with "NASA" in the text.)

I'll comment on a couple of them:

h) Fact that NASA and the NRO established a joint "NASA/NRO Payload Accommodations Working Group" in the mid-1970s to examine engineering technical problems and costs of transitioning NRO payloads from expendable launch vehicles to the Space Shuttle. And fact that NASA and the NRO also established a joint "Program Review Board" at this time to coordinate their respective programs and ensure that these programs utilized common techniques and services when appropriate.

The fact that they did this is not surprising.  I'm not sure if they have previously declared that they actually did it.  As I've written on TSR before, the NRO leadership clearly had opinions about the shuttle, and the NRO must have generated a lot of documents about it during the 1970s.  A lot of these should have been general policy documents, without any details about payloads that remain classified.  It's really rather annoying (not to mention dumb) that the NRO won't release this information.  The shuttle decision was the most important space policy decision of the last 40 years.  (I could rewrite that sentence, or you could simply reread it to get my point.)  Now that the shuttle era is coming to a close, it would be great if historians could gain access to this aspect of the shuttle's creation and early years.

My articles are here:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1542/1

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/748/1


i) Records referred from NARA or the USAF involving REDACTED
the NASA-Air Force agreement on MOL, and early studies (1964-65) that proposed reconnaissance equipment, are releasable REDACTED


I bet that the second redaction says something like "Records referring to the actual reconnaissance equipment developed for MOL, related details, and NRO involvement in MOL, are not releasable."

We have long had documents about MOL that refer to its potential for reconnaissance.  I even have a wonderful and highly detailed list of the experimental payloads planned for MOL that refers to the actual reconnaissance camera (this was declassified a long time ago, probably by mistake).  I am hoping that if NRO declassifies the KH-7, 8 and 9, they'll finally get to the MOL and its KH-10 camera.  After all, the thing never flew.

There has been a quiet movement in the past few years of the NRO,  getting much closer to the declassification of the 7, 8 and 9 than they have before, and I'm hoping that this mention in their declassification guide signals that they might be considering the same for the MOL.  But I don't hold my breath on any of this.
« Last Edit: 01/09/2011 10:46 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Proponent

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d) Fact that the SACC and NSAM 156 Committee reviewed and approved Apollo earth orbit Contingency Mission Plans for missions 13-17, and that the 18-inch focal length Hycon camera in Apollo 13 and 14 Service Modules could be used to image the earth, and that the Itek 24-inch focal length panoramic camera in the Apollo 15-17 Service Modules likewise could image the earth.

Like Graham2001, I had been unaware of cameras in the SMs of Apollos 13 and 14.  Did these actually fly?  Since there was no EVA to recover film, it would seem they must have been video cameras rather than film cameras.  If so, how could their resolution have been high enough to be useful, given the technology of the day and the weight and power constraints?  Would there have been a video tape recorder in the CM?  It all seems unlikely....

Offline Jester

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d) Fact that the SACC and NSAM 156 Committee reviewed and approved Apollo earth orbit Contingency Mission Plans for missions 13-17, and that the 18-inch focal length Hycon camera in Apollo 13 and 14 Service Modules could be used to image the earth, and that the Itek 24-inch focal length panoramic camera in the Apollo 15-17 Service Modules likewise could image the earth.

Like Graham2001, I had been unaware of cameras in the SMs of Apollos 13 and 14.  Did these actually fly?  Since there was no EVA to recover film, it would seem they must have been video cameras rather than film cameras.  If so, how could their resolution have been high enough to be useful, given the technology of the day and the weight and power constraints?  Would there have been a video tape recorder in the CM?  It all seems unlikely....

Read more on the planning of this in apollo_contingency_orbits_1.pdf and apollo_contingency_orbits_2.pdf

and the proposal for Apollo 17 to overfly Russian / China and other area's with photo resolution upto 10 meters
apollo_earth_orbit_contingency_photography 


And the NASA JSC press-release about the ITEK camera planned to be used on Apollo 16,17,18 (24inch optical bar, pano cams in the SM)
NASA-ITEK.pdf
« Last Edit: 01/10/2011 04:10 pm by Jester »

Online Blackstar

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I've covered the contingency missions before:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1380/1

In fact, this is one of those examples where I forgot that I wrote about the same subject years earlier:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1010/1

Offline hoku

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<snip>

Like Graham2001, I had been unaware of cameras in the SMs of Apollos 13 and 14.  Did these actually fly?  Since there was no EVA to recover film, it would seem they must have been video cameras rather than film cameras.  If so, how could their resolution have been high enough to be useful, given the technology of the day and the weight and power constraints?  Would there have been a video tape recorder in the CM?  It all seems unlikely....

On Apollo 13 and 14 the Hycon camera flew in the CM.

NASA on Apollo 14 Detailed Objectives:
"6.      Command and service module orbital science photography. Partially achieved. The lunar topographic camera malfunctioned, and the Hasselblad 70 mm camera with the 500 mm lens was substituted. The photography was excellent, but the resolution was considerably lower than possible with the lunar topographic camera."
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_14b_Objectives.htm

LPI Apollo 14 Mission Photography:
"Hycon Lunar Topographic Camera. This electrically operated camera, which was carried aboard the CM, was a modified KA-7A Aerial Reconnaissance Camera, which, when used, was mounted in the crew access hatch window."
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_14/photography/#fourcamera

Apparently they also found some "creative" use for the Hycon camera equipment on Apollo 13 (see caption to AS13-62-9004):
http://www.history.nasa.gov/alsj/a13/images13.html

Offline Proponent

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On Apollo 13 and 14 the Hycon camera flew in the CM.

That makes more sense.  Thanks.

Next question:  were any plans produced for contingency missions in lunar orbit?

Online Blackstar

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On Apollo 13 and 14 the Hycon camera flew in the CM.

That makes more sense.  Thanks.

Next question:  were any plans produced for contingency missions in lunar orbit?

I'm sure there were.  But they would not have required the intelligence community to approve them.

Offline Proponent

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I had forgotten this old post which covers lunar-orbit contingency missions.  As Blackstar's above post implies, this is off-topic for the thread, so I'll follow up with further questions elsewhere.

Online Blackstar

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I wasn't implying it was off-topic, only that the previous posts referred to the coordination required with the intelligence community for Earth orbit contingency missions.  The movie Apollo 13 implies that NASA made stuff up as they went along, but they actually planned for alternative scenarios if things did not work.

Offline hoku

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Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #101 on: 08/26/2014 08:31 pm »
Search didn't come up with a previous thread dedicated to LMSS, hence the new topic:

"Project UPWARD

In August 2014, the NRO released declassified Project UPWARD records from their archives. Project UPWARD was a joint project that began in 1964, when the NRO and NASA signed an agreement to transfer optical technology from the NRO to NASA. UPWARD was initiated as a low orbit, high resolution contingency program, should NASA’s primary effort to certify lunar landing sites fail. The primary NASA lunar landing certification effort consisted of a high orbit camera program called Lunar Orbiter and a landing vehicle program called Surveyor. Since NASA’s programs were successful in certifying four lunar landing sites, there were no further requirements for UPWARD. In 1967, NRO and NASA jointly decided to cancel the project."

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/UPWARD.html

Looks interesting, and includes a quite detailed EKC study "Preliminary Engineering Description of the Survey Camera for the Apollo Mapping and Survey System".

Online Blackstar

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #102 on: 08/27/2014 04:56 pm »
I've covered Project UPWARD in several articles over the years:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2100/1

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1734/1

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1737/1

Giuseppe and I have been working on updating his illustration of the UPWARD/LM&SS system. The illustrations in the tech document just released will help (although we seem to have gotten it pretty accurate from what I can see). I have a number of NASA documents on LM&SS, and it shows up in a lot of Apollo Applications Program documents. NASA was obviously keen to fly this camera somewhere, even if it wasn't going to be around the Moon. And that made people in the intelligence community nervous.

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Offline Archibald

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #104 on: 09/18/2014 08:21 am »
Previous thread
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=23429.0

I had asked that question at the time
Quote
We recently had a thread over the decision to fly AS-503 (the third   Saturn V) manned (April 1968).
Then, at a famous meeting early August 1968, decision was taken to fly Apollo 8 to the Moon without Lunar Module. It was replaced by a ballast, the LTA.
Maybe some day we'll find a document (classified or not) discussing the possible use of LMSS on Apollo 8 as an alternative to the LTA.
Maybe !
Thought ? could one out of four LMSS been completed circa 1968 and flown on Apollo 8 ? (speculative, but couldn't resist).


And now to my delight Phil Horzempa has the following

Quote
If NASA had finished construction of Upward Flight Unit #1, would NASA have sent it to the Moon with Apollo 8?
« Last Edit: 02/08/2015 03:14 pm by Archibald »
Han shot first and Gwynne Shotwell !

Offline Archibald

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #105 on: 09/18/2014 08:35 am »
There are tons of interesting points in this article
- first, that at the beginning the LMSS was to go in the SIM bay, not in the place of the lunar module on the CSM "nose"
- this part is incredible, too
Quote
Upward could be flown as close as eight kilometers (five miles) above the Moon in such a forensic mission. It is possible that the resolution at that altitude could be as sharp as 15 centimeters (6 inches).

- that one
Quote
The LMSS module would probably have been left behind in lunar orbit after the Apollo crew retrieved its film load. This may have inspired NASA to consider the capability of independent flight. A simple version would have allowed Upward to hibernate in lunar orbit between missions. This was to have been tested in the Earth orbit AAP mission.

A more complex approach would have included an LMSS capable of continuing a lunar mapping mission after the Apollo crew had reloaded its film. In its engineering proposal, Kodak had described how the LMSS could be equipped with the Bimat system that it had developed for Lunar Orbiter. Such an onboard processing and readout capacity would have allowed the astronauts to gauge the status of the KH-7 camera. After the crew had departed, this would have enabled Upward to continue an unmanned survey mission. Some years later, a similar system was considered by the NRO for real-time Earth reconnaissance. This Film Read Out Gambit (FROG) was cancelled when the NRO decided to pursue electronic read-out in its KH-11 satellite.

So the LMSS could have flown alone after Apollo departed ?

Quote
Would NASA have published any photos of the Upward module taken during a mission to the Moon?

The bottom line of the whole story might be: ok for lunar missions, NO for Earth resource surveys - NASA can't become a civilian NRO !!!


Han shot first and Gwynne Shotwell !

Offline Archibald

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #106 on: 09/18/2014 08:39 am »
What I never understood clearly is that NRO tried two times film readout technology - the first atempt that become NASA lunar orbiter (Samos), the second was FROG, and both failed ? film readut just didn't worked in Earth orbit...
 
« Last Edit: 09/18/2014 08:41 am by Archibald »
Han shot first and Gwynne Shotwell !

Online Blackstar

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #107 on: 09/18/2014 12:19 pm »
What I never understood clearly is that NRO tried two times film readout technology - the first atempt that become NASA lunar orbiter (Samos), the second was FROG, and both failed ? film readut just didn't worked in Earth orbit...
 

There were other occasional experiments besides those two programs. But the Samos one was the only one that flew.

FROG apparently got fairly well advanced in the design stage, which is something that I don't think the GAMBIT document declassification really shows. They were serious about going forward with it, but started to view it as an interim system until the KH-11 came along. There are some fascinating documents where a senator on one of the intelligence committees took them to task for this, telling them that they were wasting money on a system that would only operate for a few years before it would be replaced by something much better. He was right.

Offline Star One

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Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #108 on: 09/18/2014 12:23 pm »
http://thespacereview.com/article/2596/1

Oh I put this in the existing KH-7 thread when it appeared didn't see that there was an existing specialist thread.
« Last Edit: 09/18/2014 12:24 pm by Star One »

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #109 on: 09/18/2014 03:19 pm »
I sketched out the light path in the camera system. I'm a little unsure of the final part where the image is reflected into the "Exposure Unit" at top. There may be sketches of that, but I have to look for them.

Note that this is NOT a cutaway image. It shows the camera without the cover on, but the camera system has a tube that encloses the primary mirror at right. Primary mirror was 48 inches in diameter, and overall focal length should have been 77 inches (I'm going from memory here--somebody can correct me if I'm wrong).

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #110 on: 09/18/2014 03:23 pm »
Some more images from the article.

Note that the early concept was to put the camera inside the Service Module. I have a hard time seeing how that ever would have worked, which may be why it was not pursued.

There were other concepts for carrying it on the LM, also rejected. And there was an idea to actually mount it BELOW the LM, under the engine bell, horizontally. I don't know how this would have worked at all--how would an astronaut have retrieved the film?


Offline simonbp

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #111 on: 09/19/2014 04:44 am »
I love document 22 on the NRO page, where they basically say using MOL/DORIAN for astronomical observations would mean that astronomers would quickly figure out and report the optical capabilities of the imaging system:

Quote
In view of these factors, I have substantial reservations as to the prudence of any attempt to accomplish scientific astronomy with MOL.

Offline truth is life

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #112 on: 09/19/2014 12:06 pm »
Some more images from the article.

Note that the early concept was to put the camera inside the Service Module. I have a hard time seeing how that ever would have worked, which may be why it was not pursued.
I would have thought that it would work the same way as the SIM bay cameras on the actual J-class missions? Or am I missing something important?

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #113 on: 09/19/2014 01:40 pm »
Some more images from the article.

Note that the early concept was to put the camera inside the Service Module. I have a hard time seeing how that ever would have worked, which may be why it was not pursued.
I would have thought that it would work the same way as the SIM bay cameras on the actual J-class missions? Or am I missing something important?

Yeah, it's a little big... BIGGER.

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #114 on: 09/19/2014 01:43 pm »
I love document 22 on the NRO page, where they basically say using MOL/DORIAN for astronomical observations would mean that astronomers would quickly figure out and report the optical capabilities of the imaging system:

Quote
In view of these factors, I have substantial reservations as to the prudence of any attempt to accomplish scientific astronomy with MOL.

Yeah, that was interesting. There's a bit more in the history document too. It appears as if the discussions about MOL for astronomy had at least three components:

-using the baseline MOL to take a few astronomy pictures (jut roll it and point it toward Mars)
-using a baseline MOL for a dedicated astronomy mission
-doing some kind of adaptation of MOL for dedicated astronomy

There is actually a rather substantial MOL file in NASA's archives that demonstrates that the contractor was pitching the idea of an advanced MOL for NASA research. Of course there were security problems with doing that, but also practical ones. At a time when NASA was trying to develop the Apollo Applications Program, they probably did not want somebody else coming in and pitching different hardware. It just complicated the argument.

Offline Archibald

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #115 on: 02/08/2015 03:17 pm »
The great irony is that MOL mirrors actually did some astronomy in the end - not aboard a space, civilian MOL but rather on the ground, on the MMT telescope !
http://thespacereview.com/article/1371/1

The MOL mirrors were 1.8 m in diameter. Had one be used on a space telescope, 1.8 m was a diameter that was twice considered during the history of Hubble. First, as one of the downsized telescopes when the 3 m intrument proved too expensive (the other was 2.4 m)
There was also very early on a pathfinder mission that was to fly with a 1.8 m mirror...
« Last Edit: 02/08/2015 04:10 pm by Archibald »
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Offline Archibald

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #116 on: 09/10/2015 01:50 pm »
Apollo 8 carried LTA-B as a ballast.
Here's George Low rationale for using LTA-B (from Apollo: a chronology)


Apollo 8 and LTA-B

On August 9, in another meeting at MSC at 8:30 p.m., Low met with Kenneth S. Kleinknecht, George Abbey, and C. H. Bolender of MSC, and Dale Myers, North American Rockwell. Bolender left immediately for Bethpage, N.Y., to find a substitute for the LM; and Myers left for Downey, Calif., to get the CM going.

On the following day, August 10, there were still no obvious insurmountable problems that might block the plan. Kleinknecht was studying the differences between spacecraft 103 and 106, where the high-gain antenna might be a problem. It seemed possible to use LM-2 to support the flight, but Joseph Kotanchik, MSC, suggested flying a simple crossbeam instead of a LM in the event the pogo oscillation problem remained and pointed out that even if pogo was solved the LM would not be needed. Low called Richard and Hage, who agreed with Kotanchik but still wanted mass representation to avoid possible dynamic problems. Low then called William Bergen, of North American, who was not too receptive to the plan.

On August 12 Kraft informed Low that December 20 was the day if they wanted to launch in daylight. With everyone agreeing to a daylight launch, the launch was planned for December 1 with a "built-in hold" until the 20th, which would have the effect of giving assurance of meeting the schedule. LTA (LM test article)-B was considered as a substitute; it had been through a dynamic test vehicle program, and all except Kotanchik agreed this would be a good substitute. Grumman suggested LTA-4 but Low decided on LTA-B.

August 26
ASPO Manager George M. Low asked Joseph N. Kotanchik, head of the Structures and Mechanics Division, to verify that all spacecraft load analyses and safety factors were compatible with the recently agreed-on payload weight of 39,780 kilograms for the AS-503 mission. Low passed along the concern voiced by Lee B. James, Saturn V Program Manager at MSFC, that the problem of an S-IC engine failure in the Saturn launch vehicle might be more severe for the 503 mission than for a heavier payload. Had adequate stress analysis been done on the high-gain antenna attachments and its support inside the adapter? When would pogo dynamic analysis of the actual 503 payload be completed? And finally, what was the situation regarding loads on LTA-B, the LM test article to be substituted in place of an actual lunar lander aboard the flight? Memo, Low to Kotanchik,"AS-503 Loads," Aug. 26, 1968.

August 27
George M. Low, ASPO Manager, set forth the rationale for using LTA-B (as opposed to some other LM test article or even a full-blown LM) as payload ballast on the AS-503 mission. That decision had been a joint one by Headquarters, MSFC, and MSC.
Perhaps the chief reason for the decision was Marshall's position that the Saturn V's control system was extremely sensitive to payload weight. Numerous tests had been made for payloads of around 38,555 kilograms but none for those in the 29,435- to 31,750-kilogram range. MSFC had therefore asked that the minimum payload for AS-503 be set at 38,555 kilograms. Because LTA-B brought the total payload weight to 39,780 kilograms, that vehicle had been selected for the Apollo 8 mission. All dynamic analyses in connection with the pogo problem had to be verified, but MSFC engineers were not concerned that the established weight would affect pogo performance. Because NASA had been prepared to fly AS-503 with a heavier payload - i.e., originally including LM-3 - Low saw "no reason to be concerned about the decision made to fly the somewhat lighter and more symmetrical LTA-B."
Memo, Low to Joseph N. Kotanchik, MSC, "Use of LTA-B for AS-503," Aug. 27, 1968.

----

That document shows that, had a LMSS went to the Moon with Apollo 8, the decision to use it would have been taken in August 1968.

for the record, status of the LMSS was as follow
Quote
The LMSS was tantalizingly close to flight capability when it was canceled. At that time, two of the planned five flight units were close to completion. In fact, the first unit was to begin vibration/acoustic testing at the Manned Spaceflight Center in Houston on September 15, 1967.

I think the most interesting part deals with AS-503 payload weight.

While a Lunar Module weighed more or less 15 metric tons, the LMSS according to Phil Horzempa had a baseline mass of 2085 kilograms or 2 metric tons.

Might be interesting to atempt some calculations to see whether or not a LMSS would have fitted Saturn V guidance system (and pogo illness)

Does someone known the launch mass of the Apollo 8 CSM ? Should be around 30 metric tons but I need a precise number.
« Last Edit: 09/10/2015 01:56 pm by Archibald »
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Offline Proponent

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #117 on: 09/10/2015 03:29 pm »
For numbers, have a look at Apollo by the Numbers.

Offline Archibald

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Re: Project UPWARD and LMSS - new NRO release
« Reply #118 on: 09/10/2015 05:27 pm »
thank you for the tip. Never heard of this book before, what an impressive job. Must have caused the authors many headaches and sleepness nights.  :o
So, according to these two pages...
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-13_Launch_Vehicle-Spacecraft_Key_Facts.htm
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-12_Launch_Vehicle-Spacecraft_Key_Facts.htm

Apollo 8 CM: 12,392 pounds
Apollo 8 SM: 51,258 pounds
Total: 63650 pounds = 28897 kg

Quote
LTA-B brought the total payload weight to 39,780 kilograms.

LTA-B mass = 39780 - 28897 = 10883 kg

Quote
Numerous tests had been made for payloads of around 38,555 kilograms but none for those in the 29,435- to 31,750-kilogram range.

And Apollo 8 CSM mass was only 28897 kg

MSFC had therefore asked that the minimum payload for AS-503 be set at 38,555 kilograms. Because LTA-B brought the total payload weight to 39,780 kilograms, that vehicle had been selected for the Apollo 8 mission.

And now, Apollo 8 CSM with LMSS mass

Quote
a baseline mass of 2,085 kilograms

28897 + 2085 = 30982 kg

in the end, back to this
Quote
Numerous tests had been made for payloads of around 38,555 kilograms but none for those in the 29,435- to 31,750-kilogram range.

So, at the end of the day - could it be concluded that Apollo 8 CSM + LMSS would have been too "light" for Saturn V overall mass balance ?
« Last Edit: 09/10/2015 05:41 pm by Archibald »
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You'll be seeing some more on this subject in the near future (not all by me).

Looking at this old thread, I realize that we have had several threads about UPWARD and LMSS (LM&SS) here. Dunno if there's any way to have them consolidated. There's a lot of good reference material and links in these separate threads.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42703.msg1824064#msg1824064

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35495.msg1247853#msg1247853

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26821.220

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48227.msg1962210#msg1962210
« Last Edit: 08/26/2020 11:43 pm by Blackstar »

Offline libra

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You'll be seeing some more on this subject in the near future (not all by me).


(Grabs popcorn )

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Okay. So I just got the issue and can say that it's available. Phil Horzempa has a very big article on UPWARD/LMSS in here.
« Last Edit: 08/25/2020 06:39 pm by Blackstar »

Offline leovinus

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Okay. So I just got the issue and can say that it's available. Phil Horzempa has a very big article on UPWARD/LMSS in here.

The same Horzempa who has been doing FOIA requests for years? His name shows up in documents at  https://governmentattic.org where you can see the raw data with search queries about Apollo SAMOS UPWARD etc. In any case, sounds like he pulled it all the together and am looking forward to reading the story!

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From Horzempa's article on UPWARD, here are some photos of the GAMBIT-1 camera without the outer cylindrical spacecraft shell. At one point, it was proposed to mount this camera inside the SIM bay of an Apollo Service Module.

Offline libra

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Somewhat absurdely it is next to impossible to find dimensions of the SIM bay anywhere. I finally found this (attached)
50 inch "deep" and 146 inch long.

How does that compares with the KH-7 camera system dimensions ? Probably not well, since they moved the thing to a module docked in place of the LM...


Offline JoeFromRIUSA

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Well, this is great Soon we'll have the opportunity to discuss possible crews for these "secret" Apollo missions.

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Well, this is great Soon we'll have the opportunity to discuss possible crews for these "secret" Apollo missions.

Already done:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3751/1


Offline JoeFromRIUSA

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Well, this is great Soon we'll have the opportunity to discuss possible crews for these "secret" Apollo missions.

Already done:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3751/1

MEH

Offline JoeFromRIUSA

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Sorry wrong: According to the  Judica-Cordiglia brothers, Boris was Bonnie's back up on Biosatellite 3

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Well, this is great Soon we'll have the opportunity to discuss possible crews for these "secret" Apollo missions.


Offline Proponent

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Somewhat absurdely it is next to impossible to find dimensions of the SIM bay anywhere. I finally found this (attached)
50 inch "deep" and 146 inch long.

The attached diagram provides some dimensions.  It's taken from Senate hearings on "National Space Goals for the Post-Apollo Period" in August 1965 (see PDF page 60).

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Cooper See and Bean

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I've started reading Horzempa's new article (I've had it for a week, but if you knew how much reading material I have to get to, you would understand that I'm insane).

One interesting aspect about UPWARD/LMSS that if I knew, then I've forgotten, is that UPWARD was a backup to Lunar Orbiter in two ways:

-resolution/camera capability
-human-operated

This latter one is the part that I forgot. As Horzempa notes, when the program was started, robotic systems had a very high failure rate. NASA ordered five Lunar Orbiters but figured only one would work (surprise! All five worked.). So part of the appeal of UPWARD/LMSS was that humans would run it, so presumably it would have a higher success rate.

I have some problems with that argument, however. How exactly would the humans ensure that it worked? Assuming that it was mounted in the Apollo SIM-bay, or that it was mounted in a cylinder stuck to the front of the Apollo Command Module, if it broke, it's not like the astronauts could climb out there and fix it. It's an enclosed optical system, not designed for servicing, and some parts of it could not be opened once they were sealed because that would expose the film. Now the problem they seemed to worry about wasn't so much the camera as the spacecraft that took it to the Moon and pointed it, and the Apollo astronauts could control that and point the system themselves. But it was still an argument (i.e. "man is better than a robot in space") that had a pretty short window before it was no longer really valid.


Offline libra

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They used the same argument to try and save MOL, at some point. "If something break, the crew can fix it. Target of opportunities, too."

But there is more than these two.

In the early 60's when they made a lot of piloted Venus / Mars flyby studies, they also tried to apply that same argument, to planetary probes ! 
The flyby ship was to be loaded with probes to be released during the closest approach. In the case of Mars-Voyager, they had both approaches.
- a robotic Mars lander travelling alone, Viking style
- the same robotic lander, caretaken by astronauts onboard a flyby ship and dropped when close from the planet.

In August 1967 the whole thing was shot down by Congress. After some crippling failures, fact is that JPL become pretty gifted to build extremely reliable robots that didn't needed a human flyby ship around them to survive the trip.

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They used the same argument to try and save MOL, at some point. "If something break, the crew can fix it. Target of opportunities, too."


Yes, the article mentions MOL. And I've written a number of articles about the "why manned?" aspect of MOL too. I think in the UPWARD case, that argument disappeared really quickly as satellite reliability improved substantially in a short time. The first Lunar Orbiter mission was successful in August 1966, followed by another success in November. So if they were worried about only one out of five working, by November they had two successes and it probably seemed pretty unlikely that the others would all fail.

In MOL, the argument for humans kept shifting in the 1965-1967 period. It started out that they were going to be necessary to calibrate (and focus) the camera. But it soon morphed into an argument that the humans would pick the best targets. Of course, once MOL had an unmanned option, they were essentially going to work hard on reliability and flexibility anyway, further chipping away at the argument that they needed astronauts aboard.

As for UPWARD/LMSS, that still leaves the argument that it might be needed because Lunar Orbiter might work, but the photos would not be good enough. But I think even that argument probably faded rapidly once they were looking at images from the second mission.

That's also when NASA became more interested in flying UPWARD/LMSS in Earth orbit, which made the NRO nervous, because it would be a civilian and unclassified version of their reconnaissance satellite.

Offline libra

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Quote
As for UPWARD/LMSS, that still leaves the argument that it might be needed because Lunar Orbiter might work, but the photos would not be good enough. But I think even that argument probably faded rapidly once they were looking at images from the second mission.

Lunar Orbiter best ground resolution was 1 m or slightly better. The massively powerful UPWARD would have been 0.3 m or even less (3 ft vs 1 ft, approximatively - for your imperial units maniacs).

Was the improvement in ground resolution justified ? that's the question...
Lunar Orbiters rode Atlas-Agena, UPWARD would take an entire Apollo stack, minus a Lunar Module.  Cost-wise, Lunar Orbiter wins head-on.

In passing, something is troubling my little self... the Apollo 11 landing "incident".

Supposedly, the place where the computer drove the LM to land, had been cleared of boulders and craters. Yet we all know that only Armstrong (and Aldrin, too) steel nerves prevented a crash and they had to land 5 miles away.
Was that a case of Lunar Orbiter imagery not high-res enough ?
« Last Edit: 08/31/2020 11:27 am by libra »

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Lunar Orbiter best ground resolution was 1 m or slightly better. The massively powerful UPWARD would have been 0.3 m or even less (3 ft vs 1 ft, approximatively - for your imperial units maniacs).

Although NRO released a lot of documents on the subject, it's not clear exactly what argument was made when, but my memory is that the issue was not so much resolution as it was the ability to provide data on the ground slope. They needed a slope that was low enough so that the LM would not tip over. Apparently Lunar Orbiter data was ambiguous at first, but they later solved this issue to their satisfaction.

Caveat: I have not finished the Horzempa article yet, and he might have a clearer answer on this.

Offline Jorge

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In passing, something is troubling my little self... the Apollo 11 landing "incident".

Supposedly, the place where the computer drove the LM to land, had been cleared of boulders and craters. Yet we all know that only Armstrong (and Aldrin, too) steel nerves prevented a crash and they had to land 5 miles away.
Was that a case of Lunar Orbiter imagery not high-res enough ?

No. Due to navigation errors the LM trajectory was *already* over 4 miles long at the start of P64 when the LM pitched down to provide Armstrong a view of the landing site through the LPD. So the LM wasn't targeting the original landing site "cleared" by Lunar Orbiter imagery, but a spot over 4 miles downrange.

Offline libra

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Many thanks Jorge ! Clear and factual, as usual.

Offline the_other_Doug

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In passing, something is troubling my little self... the Apollo 11 landing "incident".

Supposedly, the place where the computer drove the LM to land, had been cleared of boulders and craters. Yet we all know that only Armstrong (and Aldrin, too) steel nerves prevented a crash and they had to land 5 miles away.
Was that a case of Lunar Orbiter imagery not high-res enough ?

No. Due to navigation errors the LM trajectory was *already* over 4 miles long at the start of P64 when the LM pitched down to provide Armstrong a view of the landing site through the LPD. So the LM wasn't targeting the original landing site "cleared" by Lunar Orbiter imagery, but a spot over 4 miles downrange.

Also good to note that Tom Stafford's eyewitness report on Apollo Landing Site 2 stated that the center of the landing ellipse was very flat and clear, but that, if a LM approaching this site overshot, the number of sharp craters and boulders on the west end of the landing ellipse was larger and thus that territory would require more care finding a spot free of big rocks and fresh craters.

Which is exactly what happened.  There was/is no place on even the smoothest areas of the Moon that you can put a landing ellipse of the size used during Apollo and not include some unsuitable ground.  Just not possible.
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

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In the mid-1960s, as NASA and NRO began cooperating on several projects (Lunar Orbiter, then UPWARD/LMSS; later issues involved PERCHERON and MOL), it became clear that they needed a formal mechanism for discussing these issues. So they created the Survey Applications Coordinating Committee (SACC). Above that was the Manned Spaceflight Policy Committee. These organizations made sure that everybody was on the same page and also handled issues like astronauts taking photographs of Earth from space (which made NRO nervous).

These documents were released three years ago, but they are hard to find on the NRO's website. So I'm including them here. I'm sure that these are only a fraction of the SACC minutes that were produced during this time, but they are all that has been released. James David's book "Spies and Shuttles" also mentions the SACC and the MSPC.

Offline libra

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A quick comparison of Project UPWARD module and the ASTP docking module.

- they had the same diameter of 5 ft (1.5 m)

- they had very similar weights (4000 pounds and 4400 pounds)

- their length by contrast were differents
> https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1734/1 gives 18 ft long for UPWARD.
> https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/astp-dm.htm states 10 ft (3 meters)

Thanks to that excellent website (space.skyrocket.de) I put them side-by-side.





As far as shape, diameter and mass go, they were not that different.

--------------

I had never realized that the LM&SS module (compared to the KH-8 it derived from) docked to the Apollo the opposite way of the usual Agena.

On the KH-8 was a return capsule at one end, and the Agena at the other. UPWARD's Apollo docked in place of the return capsule.
Which makes sense: on the KH-8, the film was dumped in the return vehicle. In the case of UPWARD, the film was (kind of) dumped on the astronaut capsule - more exactly, they had to retrieve it.

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I'm not sure about the big boxy thing on the side of the UPWARD cylinder. KH-8 GAMBIT-3 did not have one, and the spacecraft was derived from that. I don't know why it would be there. Also, it doesn't show up in other drawings (although it does appear in at least one or two of them). But we don't have any illustrations of the final equipment configuration.

Go up thread to find other illustrations.
« Last Edit: 11/01/2020 07:12 pm by Blackstar »

Offline libra

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Some mentions of the "lunar mapping and survey system" in tech papers from the late 60's.

It is a basic search using Google scholar. I will check some of these papers.

https://scholar.google.fr/scholar?hl=fr&as_sdt=1,5&as_vis=1&q=%22lunar+mapping+and+survey+system%22

Attached, one document > https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/85246165.pdf

Now look at page 37 and 38 of the pdf. There are illustrations of ATM and LM&SS racks... and they look quite similar.

No idea if it is a simple coincidence or not.

But I'm reminded of this https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2596/1

Quote
An interesting sideline to this story was the squabble over who would build the Upward rack.

The competition was between Lockheed and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. The NRO believed that the fastest and cheapest course of action was for Lockheed to build the structure. This seemed logical as Upward would be using equipment from a highly classified program and Lockheed’s personnel already had “Top Secret” clearances. If NASA insisted that Marshall personnel be used, then additional time and money would be needed to “clear” that new group. In the end, the work went to Marshall.

There may have been a bit more to this story. In a parallel sequence of events, the Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) project also underwent an overhaul in early 1966. Like Upward, its solar telescope payload was no longer to be housed in Bay 1 of the Apollo Service Module, but was to be moved to a separate module, a modified Lunar Module. In July 1966, Marshall also won the contract to build the ATM.


The LM&SS rack was nothing sensitive and not classified by any mean. Because it was just, well, a rack.

If Marshall won both contracts, as per above quote, makes some sense the two racks ended looking similar in the document I linked...

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I created this thread and I really hate the subject heading I wrote for it. But I wanted to avoid putting UPWARD in the title because I wanted to reach people who did not know what UPWARD was.

That said, there are several old threads on here that discuss UPWARD. There's some good information in some of them, so we should probably link them all here if they are not already linked. I'm glad that Phil Horzempa wrote that long article, because I think UPWARD is such an interesting project. One of the things that makes it interesting is that it was semi-public, and yet over the decades no historians tried pulling on those threads to see what was there. In particular, Phillip Klass, the well-known Aviation Week writer, did a book in the early 1970s on satellite reconnaissance, but appears to have completely missed the LM&SS program. If he had noticed it, I think he might have wondered what kind of "survey system" was going to be put in such a big cylinder.


Offline Comga

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Some mentions of the "lunar mapping and survey system" in tech papers from the late 60's.

It is a basic search using Google scholar. I will check some of these papers.
https://scholar.google.fr/scholar?hl=fr&as_sdt=1,5&as_vis=1&q=%22lunar+mapping+and+survey+system%22

Attached, one document > https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/85246165.pdf
Now look at page 37 and 38 of the pdf. There are illustrations of ATM and LM&SS racks... and they look quite similar.
No idea if it is a simple coincidence or not.
But I'm reminded of this https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2596/1
Quote

An interesting sideline to this story was the squabble over who would build the Upward rack.

The competition was between Lockheed and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. The NRO believed that the fastest and cheapest course of action was for Lockheed to build the structure. This seemed logical as Upward would be using equipment from a highly classified program and Lockheed’s personnel already had “Top Secret” clearances. If NASA insisted that Marshall personnel be used, then additional time and money would be needed to “clear” that new group. In the end, the work went to Marshall.

There may have been a bit more to this story. In a parallel sequence of events, the Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) project also underwent an overhaul in early 1966. Like Upward, its solar telescope payload was no longer to be housed in Bay 1 of the Apollo Service Module, but was to be moved to a separate module, a modified Lunar Module. In July 1966, Marshall also won the contract to build the ATM.

The LM&SS rack was nothing sensitive and not classified by any mean. Because it was, just, well, a rack.

If Marshall won both contracts, as per above quote, makes some sense the two racks ended looking similar in the document I linked...

This has echoes to another adaptation of classified reconnaissance technology for civilian NASA work: the Hubble Space Telescope.
From what I recall hearing (first hand), NASA insisted on doing the build outside of the classified environment in which the 2.4 m "spy satellite" systems were being built.  The loss of experience and the replication of hardware had a direct path to the metrology error that resulted in the primary mirror having the spherical aberration figure error and the failure to detect it before launch.   
What kind of wastrels would dump a perfectly good booster in the ocean after just one use?

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This has echoes to another adaptation of classified reconnaissance technology for civilian NASA work: the Hubble Space Telescope.
From what I recall hearing (first hand), NASA insisted on doing the build outside of the classified environment in which the 2.4 m "spy satellite" systems were being built.  The loss of experience and the replication of hardware had a direct path to the metrology error that resulted in the primary mirror having the spherical aberration figure error and the failure to detect it before launch.   

I'm not sure that there's a clear cause-effect there. Perkin-Elmer, which made the Hubble mirror (Kodak made the backup mirror) regularly made mirrors for the HEXAGON satellite, a classified program. P-E had other classified government work. They had not built as big and fine a mirror as the Hubble one. But they certainly had knowledgeable people working on it. They just screwed up.

Of course, we still don't have the full story on the connection between Kodak's work on the KH-11 mirrors and then leading to the Hubble mirror. That's classified. But P-E had been working in the classified realm since the 1960s.

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #147 on: 11/03/2020 01:56 pm »
But I'll add that the whole issue of how classification impacted NASA programs, particularly Hubble, is an interesting, but thorny one. Maybe someday we'll have enough stuff declassified to draw some conclusions. But I suspect that the official documents will not tell the whole story, and that to really get to the bottom of it, you'd have to interview various people involved. And a lot of them are gone.

Just to mention one question: NASA's early concepts for what became Hubble featured a 3-meter diameter mirror. But apparently, NASA officials were told that they should go with 2.4 meters because there already existed infrastructure to make those mirrors--meaning the infrastructure for the KH-11 mirrors. But that infrastructure was at Kodak. And then NASA hires Perkin-Elmer to make the mirror? P-E then has to build the equipment, and they make the mirror, and then they screw it up. So, just to separate some of these questions:

-what was the role of classification in that original decision to go with 2.4 instead of 3 meters?

-did P-E's lack of experience with bigger mirrors play a role in their screwing it up?

-Kodak made a backup mirror. Did they have unique knowledge, something that only they would know?

It has been a long time since I read about the development of the P-E mirror and how it got screwed up, but my memory is that it was a pretty basic mistake. It was the kind of thing that P-E should have known about, not something magic or unique to larger diameter mirrors. I remember that one of the tests very clearly showed the problem, but it was ignored. So P-E's problem was more fundamental.

I know this is an UPWARD thread, but the issue of how classification impacted NASA use of hardware is an overriding theme for UPWARD, PERCHERON, MOL and Hubble.

Offline libra

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #148 on: 11/03/2020 05:05 pm »
Well there is still the "official" story that NASA went from 3 m to 2.4 m because Congress in 1975 - Senator Bolland, from memory - zeroed the budget. They only got the budget back when they shrunk the telescope.
What role did the NRO played in that, no idea.

Offline John Santos

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #149 on: 11/03/2020 06:41 pm »
Do we know what happened to the Kodak mirror?  Was it ever completed?

I have made small telescope mirrors; spherical aberration is a common problem you test for and correct in the final stages of polishing, so if the Kodak mirror also had the problem, it would almost certainly be due to following the same incorrect procedure that P-E had.  But the error would only be there, detected or not, if Kodak had completed (or almost completed) polishing.

Creating a telescope mirror from a blank, flat or concave piece of glass is a multistage process.  First, rough grinding, using coarse abrasives about equivalent of 80-grit sandpaper, is used to create the shape of the mirror, either spherical (for small, long focal length mirrors) or parabolic (for most short focal length mirrors), or sometimes other figures for specialized optical designs.  The deviation from spherical is performed either in the final stage of rough grinding, over the course of find grinding, or during polishing, depending on the degree of difference from a sphere to the desired shape.  The difference is generally measured in microns or nanometers. 

Grinding is accomplished by placing a slurry of abrasive and water between the eventual mirror and a second glass disk, called the "tool" and moving the mirror back and forth across the tool.   For small mirrors (up to several feet) the tool is a cheaper, thinner piece of glass, usually plate glass. (A more modern and much cheaper tool can be made from a disk of plaster of Paris with small porcelain bathroom tiles epoxied to it.)  With the tool is on the bottom and the mirror blank is on the top, gravity and pressure cause the grinding motion to round off the tool and produce a spherical hollow in the mirror blank.

For large mirrors to heavy to be handled by a single person, or for mass production, a smaller, motorized tool is common, but the methods are similar.

Following rough grinding, the mirror is progressively ground with finer abrasives, down to 5 microns.  This is like using finer and finer grades of sandpaper on wood.  Abrasive grit is measured the same way, the number of particles per inch, or, for smaller grits, in microns.  The goal in fine grinding is to remove the pits and scratches produced by the courser grits, which are generally of the same order of size as the abrasive particles and to slightly refine the shape of the surface.  Once the shape is right, you alternate mirror-on-top and tool-on-top to keep the shape as you progress through the smaller grits.

After the final course of grinding, the mirror is polished.  I used the most common method at the time, a pitch mold cast against the mirror blank, with a mixture of water and either jeweler's rouge (iron oxide) or cerium oxide as the abrasive.  Polishing removes the final residue of pits from the 5-micron abrasive and smooths the surface to the necessary optical requirements, 1/4 to 1/8th of the wavelength of the light the telescope is intended to observe.  For normal home-made telescopes, this is 100 to 200 nanometers, which any diligent person can achieve!   For Hubble, which operates well into the UV, it is probably more like 10-20 nanometers.  At the same time, the final shape, usually a paraboloid, is made.  The difference between a sphere and a paraboloid, is of the same order of magnitude, depending on the f-ratio of the mirror.

It is also possible to build, from simple parts, a device capable of measuring the shape of the mirror to the necessary precision.  (I built one out of a tomato paste can, a night light, a razor blade, a couple of blocks of wood and a 1/4"x20 bolt!)

It is in this final polishing of the mirror that the mistaken figuring of the Hubble mirror would have occurred.

I think P-E assembled their test instrument incorrectly.  Did P-E design and build the test instrument, or did they acquire it from an outside vendor, Kodak for example?)

A really good web site about telescope building, particullary about mirror grinding is https://stellafane.org/tm/atm/index.html

P.S I worked on the ATM, particularly on the Harvard College Observatory ultraviolet spectroheliometer.    I was blissfully unaware of any secrecy involved, except the time a box of tapes "fell off" a delivery truck and someone attempted to sell them in a bar in New Orleans, and the FBI came to investigate.  There was really nothing secret about the data on them (unless rival solar physicists wanted to get an advanced look at the data), and they were duplicates, not originals, and were easily replaced.  They didn't even question me, a known left-wing radical antiwar demonstrator.  One of my tasks was to catalog the tapes when we received them so the scientists could search for particular places and times of solar events.  All on 80-column punchcards and handwritten notebooks.  In addition to the 7-track tapes, we also had a file of microfiche with the images converted to multiple gray levels.  Unlike most of the ATM instruments, which recorded their data on film retrieved by the crew during EVAs, our instrument used digital photomultiplier tubes to record multichannel (multiple wavelengths) and transmit it to the ground, so we got our data continuously through the course of the missions and even when there was no crew on board.

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #150 on: 11/03/2020 07:36 pm »
Do we know what happened to the Kodak mirror?  Was it ever completed?


Yes it was. It was, I think, donated to the Smithsonian, which had it on display for awhile. And I think it now resides in a non-Smithsonian museum. I also believe that it was tested and did not have spherical aberration.

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #151 on: 11/03/2020 07:40 pm »
P.S I worked on the ATM, particularly on the Harvard College Observatory ultraviolet spectroheliometer. 

You may be aware, but the Smithsonian over the years collected a number of the backup ATM instruments and a few years ago finally put them on display along with the armature and mount from the backup Skylab. They are at the Udvar-Hazy Museum near Dulles airport. I think they managed to collect something like 5 out of 9 of the instruments, which had been returned to their PIs when no longer needed for the backup Skylab.

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #152 on: 11/03/2020 09:07 pm »
Well there is still the "official" story that NASA went from 3 m to 2.4 m because Congress in 1975 - Senator Bolland, from memory - zeroed the budget. They only got the budget back when they shrunk the telescope.
What role did the NRO played in that, no idea.


But that could still be true. It could be that the 3-meter mirror was too expensive. But then somebody pointed out (in a classified meeting) that 2.4-meter diameter mirrors were already being produced, so that would be a cheaper option. It does not have to be an an either/or explanation, it could be both.

Offline zubenelgenubi

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #153 on: 11/03/2020 11:37 pm »
Do we know what happened to the Kodak mirror?  Was it ever completed?
Yes it was. It was, I think, donated to the Smithsonian, which had it on display for awhile. And I think it now resides in a non-Smithsonian museum. I also believe that it was tested and did not have spherical aberration.
Re: Kodak back-up primary mirror for Hubble Space Telescope https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/hubble-space-telescope-backup-mirror/nasm_A20010288000
The National Air and Space Museum in downtown DC is still closed because of the COVID situation.  No word as to when it will open.
Yes, I believe it's still on display in the "Explore the Universe" gallery, 1st floor, east side of the building.
(I qualify my statement because of the ongoing building renovation.  That was being done in sections before March 2020, and the work continues.  There has been a LOT of artifact packing and moving since the project started.)
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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #154 on: 11/04/2020 11:51 am »
in downtown DC is still closed because of the COVID situation.  No word as to when it will open.
Yes, I believe it's still on display in the "Explore the Universe" gallery, 1st floor, east side of the building.
(I qualify my statement because of the ongoing building renovation.  That was being done in sections before March 2020, and the work continues.  There has been a LOT of artifact packing and moving since the project started.)

Two things--they started the renovations with the west side of the building, so if it was on display in the east side, it should still be there.

That said, I seem to remember that it was loaned out elsewhere a long time ago. But I could be wrong. As you note, the website says it is in that gallery.
« Last Edit: 11/04/2020 11:52 am by Blackstar »

Offline jg

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #155 on: 11/04/2020 02:32 pm »
Here is a bit of what I remember from that era. Just after college I went to work at Smithsonian astrophysical observatory.

The optical lab for Hubble was in a Perkin Elmer building that the keyhole satellites were built in. The optical lab was at the far end of the building from the entrance. Unless you had a clearance, the problem was that you couldn't even walk down the hall to get to the optical lab where the Hubble mirror was being made. This discouraged ongoing checking of the fabrication of that mirror, as very few astronomers had security clearances, much less ones that would allow you to enter the building.

I happen to interview with Perkin Elmer just after college and have a memory of how that building is arranged, as they had a conference room outside of the security boundary. That's where I was interviewed. I don't believe that briefcases and the like were allowed beyond that point. I was told at some point that there was a very long hallway to the far end of the building where the Hubble optical shop was. If you were escorted down that hall, lights flashed and it was as though you were a leper with someone yelling " unclean " as you went. I am just as happy that I did not take that job and ended up at SAO.

The only astronomer I know of with the kind of security clearance who could have entered that building on a regular basis would have been Dr. James G. Baker, but I believe that Hubble came along after he had relinquished his security clearance. Dr Baker is quite famous in the optical world, and for example the first U2 camera was fabricated by him personally in the basement of his house in Winchester Massachusetts. He and Edwin Land were in the meeting with Eisenhower that decided on the construction of the U2.

The LSST design for example is an invention of Dr Baker's.

More on Dr Baker and the role he played in national reconnaissance can be seen in the document I have linked below courtesy of the wayback machine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130228074602if_/http://www.afspc.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100405-071.pdf

I was fortunate enough to work for Jim Baker the summer before I started MIT, and kept up with him after that at SAO, which is co-located with Harvard College Observatory.
While Jim Baker was very careful about what he said, I've tried to piece together a bit of his career since then.

That Kodak was also able to make a mirror suitable for Hubble came as a surprise to astronomers.

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #156 on: 11/04/2020 03:31 pm »
Here is a bit of what I remember from that era. Just after college I went to work at Smithsonian astrophysical observatory.

The optical lab for Hubble was in a Perkin Elmer building that the keyhole satellites were built in. The optical lab was at the far end of the building from the entrance. Unless you had a clearance, the problem was that you couldn't even walk down the hall to get to the optical lab where the Hubble mirror was being made. This discouraged ongoing checking of the fabrication of that mirror, as very few astronomers had security clearances, much less ones that would allow you to enter the building.

That's an interesting observation--maybe the fact that the testing was in an area that was difficult to reach could have affected how well the testing was done.

I happen to interview with Perkin Elmer just after college and have a memory of how that building is arranged, as they had a conference room outside of the security boundary. That's where I was interviewed. I don't believe that briefcases and the like were allowed beyond that point. I was told at some point that there was a very long hallway to the far end of the building where the Hubble optical shop was. If you were escorted down that hall, lights flashed and it was as though you were a leper with someone yelling " unclean " as you went. I am just as happy that I did not take that job and ended up at SAO.


Two stories similar to that:

I had a friend who once told me about how he was working for a computer company in Silicon Valley. This was probably in the later 1970s. One day he got called to fix the computer for a client. I think he said that it was a small computer used for engineering support. If I remember correctly, he thought that the client was Lockheed. When he got there, he was blindfolded and escorted into a big room. He was escorted into an area that was surrounded by curtains and there was the computer and a chair. They took off the blindfold and told him to fix the computer. There was somebody in the curtained room with him and probably somebody on the outside. His impression was that he was in a big satellite clean room and there was a satellite in there, which he could not see because of the curtains. When he finished fixing the computer, they blindfolded him again and escorted him out. (As an aside, he worked on several jobs in the defense industry, but later became a researcher for Tom Clancy on a number of his non-fiction books.)

The second story is my own: around 2012 or so I was working on a project for US Space Command and the colonel I was working with took me into his office area. When he did, they turned on flashing lights to indicate that an uncleared person was there. There were a couple of guys working at computers and while I was in the room, they had to stop their work and turn off their monitors. The colonel just wanted to shoot the breeze with me. I felt rather embarrassed that I was preventing these guys from working, but the colonel treated it as no big deal. I mean, he was in charge, so technically he was the one preventing these guys from working.




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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #157 on: 11/04/2020 03:59 pm »
The only astronomer I know of with the kind of security clearance who could have entered that building on a regular basis would have been Dr. James G. Baker, but I believe that Hubble came along after he had relinquished his security clearance. Dr Baker is quite famous in the optical world, and for example the first U2 camera was fabricated by him personally in the basement of his house in Winchester Massachusetts. He and Edwin Land were in the meeting with Eisenhower that decided on the construction of the U2.

The LSST design for example is an invention of Dr Baker's.

More on Dr Baker and the role he played in national reconnaissance can be seen in the document I have linked below courtesy of the wayback machine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130228074602if_/http://www.afspc.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100405-071.pdf

I was fortunate enough to work for Jim Baker the summer before I started MIT, and kept up with him after that at SAO, which is co-located with Harvard College Observatory.
While Jim Baker was very careful about what he said, I've tried to piece together a bit of his career since then.

That Kodak was also able to make a mirror suitable for Hubble came as a surprise to astronomers.

Baker was very important in the 1950s and early 1960s. He was well-known for the Baker-Nunn camera system that was used to track spacecraft in orbit. Baker-Nunns were deployed to a number of areas to provide space surveillance. As the document also mentions, he designed the lenses for several reconnaissance cameras. And he was influential in an advisory role, telling government officials about reconnaissance systems.

The linked document mentions his serving on "the Land Panel," which I think was later 1960s into the 1970s. But he might have left that panel by the 1970s. A number of these optics experts were very influential in the 1950s and 1960s on advising which systems to develop and why.
« Last Edit: 11/04/2020 04:17 pm by Blackstar »

Offline jg

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #158 on: 11/04/2020 04:35 pm »
Jim Baker designed and fabricated the first set of optics for the U2 camera and it wouldn't be surprising to me if that isn't also true for the a12 and SR-71 camera.

He designed the Samos camera optics, though in my investigations it sounds like the lunar orbiter system while, while based on Samos, probably used a COTS lens rather than Jim Baker's design.  I suspect that that was to downrate the resolution, as lunar orbiter resolution is lower than the resolution that one of his designs would have done and we did not want the Russians to know just how good the cameras in Earth orbit were. You can presume that anything that Jim Baker designed will work at the diffraction limit, except for things like the Polaroid SX70 lens, which he was very proud of. It was just good enough for the Polaroid film, and was made of plastic and was very cheap.

The lunar orbiter recovery project found that the quality of the imagery they were able to recover from the tapes was considerably higher than the imagery that NASA used for Apollo landing planning. But that resolution was still much lower than optics of that size and could produce and the Samos electronics could return to Earth. For Apollo, they needed about 1 m resolution when lit obliquely, which would show dangerous boulders. I do not know what optics the Apollo cameras used.

Or they may just have needed to substitute a different lens just to save weight. It would be interesting to find out what the answer is.

I have suspected, but have no information, that Jim Baker played a central role in the 1960s to tell people that they should ask the appropriate questions in the right directions about what was available in different parts of the government. He was a key person in a key position crossing multiple communities during the 1960s.

I remember that I was told that for Hubble there was an effort to try to keep the problem from becoming a political s*** show while they worked with Congress to get funding for the Hubble repair.

That the Hubble mirror could not be properly monitored for mistakes, and as we now know it was a very trivial mistake that someone else might have caught, was probably due to the security constraints of that building.

One suspects something could and should have been worked out so that NASA and others could properly monitor its figuring. I was also told that it turned out that the Kodak mirror made us a backup was actually a higher quality mirror than the Hubble mirror was made by Perkin Elmer. Would that they had flown that mirror instead, and that would have prevented the whole mess. But Perkin Elmer was the prime contractor and their mirror met the specs except for the mistake...

Jim Baker was very careful about what he said. He did tell me about the U2 camera fabrication in his basement firsthand as I remember. And there were some other fun stories he told me. If you are interested, I can recount some of them to you.

I think that he stopped doing most of his classified consulting somewhere in the vicinity of 1970 having gotten tired of government bureaucracy that had grown, and then consulted primarily for astronomers and for Polaroid corporation. I wish Jim had lived long enough to know that the LSST was going to use his optical design, but unfortunately he died in 2005, and the funding started a few years after that. That will be I think his enduring legacy and a fitting monument for one of the best and nicest persons I've ever had the privilege of knowing.

Without Jim Baker, Kelly Johnson would not have gotten to build his amazing airplanes, and we might not be alive today. Proving the negative, that there was no missile gap with the Russians, was key to cooling the Cold war, which as we know almost became a very hot war in that era.

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #159 on: 11/04/2020 06:28 pm »
Two things--they started the renovations with the west side of the building...
Yes, the renovation has proceeded west to east through the first and second floors (where the exhibit galleries are).

(A similar, but not identical, progression applies to the office space on the third floor and the building plant spaces in the parking garage basement.)

(And sorry, there is no "zero-g" room in the basement, nor is there a swimming pool on the "fourth floor.")

When the renovation reached the west side "slice" containing the planetarium, we closed to the public.
Our last day of performances was a Sunday.  On Monday, I received my severance notice from Smithsonian Enterprises.
« Last Edit: 11/04/2020 06:35 pm by zubenelgenubi »
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Offline Michel Van

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #160 on: 11/04/2020 07:39 pm »
for Secret Project Forum thread about MOL
i extracted some Picture of NRO pdf also some of Apollo stuff they look into.

Mostly adaptation of Apollo X and AES hardware, but also modified Apollo CSM 

Source NRO PDF nr°63
Study of Utilizing Apollo for the MOL Mission Volume II
prepared by the Applied Mechanics Division for Commander Space System Divison Air-force System command
11 Jaunary 1965

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/MOL/

Offline Comga

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #161 on: 11/04/2020 08:03 pm »
Here is a bit of what I remember from that era. Just after college I went to work at Smithsonian astrophysical observatory.

The optical lab for Hubble was in a Perkin Elmer building that the keyhole satellites were built in. The optical lab was at the far end of the building from the entrance. Unless you had a clearance, the problem was that you couldn't even walk down the hall to get to the optical lab where the Hubble mirror was being made. This discouraged ongoing checking of the fabrication of that mirror, as very few astronomers had security clearances, much less ones that would allow you to enter the building.

That's an interesting observation--maybe the fact that the testing was in an area that was difficult to reach could have affected how well the testing was done.
<snip>
My emphasis
This is exactly what my colleague, who was at Perkin Elmer at the time, told me.
NASA did not wish to get adequate clearances for their people on-site so they had very limited access.

I met the NASA person who had been in charge at PE.
He was participating a design review.
At the time I suggested intentionally adding spherical aberration to an optical system I was designing for NASA and SAO. The way I phrased it was not well received by said person, or my lead engineer. :-[


PS. The post about Dr James Baker is one I want to like multiple times.
« Last Edit: 11/04/2020 09:48 pm by Comga »
What kind of wastrels would dump a perfectly good booster in the ocean after just one use?

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #162 on: 11/04/2020 08:28 pm »
PS. The post about Dr James Baker is one I want to like multiple times.

Over the years, there have been several books about the senior science advisors to the government during the 1950s and into the 1960s. Baker may be covered in a chapter of one of them. I'd also add that I don't think that the scientific advisors to the intelligence community during the 1950s/1960s have gotten the book that they deserve, but that's because of classification.

The important ones (off the top of my head):

James Killian (MIT president)--Eisenhower's science advisor
George Kistiakowsky (Harvard professor)--Eisenhower's science advisor
Din Land (Polaroid inventor)--pushed for the KH-11
Edward Pucell (Harvard Physicist)--led a key 1963 reconnaissance advisory panel (https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/GAMHEX/HEXAGON/46.PDF?ver=2018-04-27-132448-303 )
James Baker (optics expert)

There's another guy whose name escapes me at the moment. Last name begins (I think) with a G. He served on a lot of advisory panels and was incredibly smart.

UPDATE  I figured it out: Richard Garwin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garwin

Garwin was on the President's Scientific Advisory Committee throughout the 1960s. I think somebody told me many years ago that Garwin was one of the people who demonstrated that MOL would have problems. He might have written a report that cast doubt on the program.


Baker was recognized in 2000 as a "Pioneer of National Reconnaissance":

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/history/csnr/leaders/Pioneers_of_Natl_Reconnaissance_1960-2000.pdf


« Last Edit: 11/04/2020 09:22 pm by Blackstar »

Offline jg

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #163 on: 11/04/2020 08:47 pm »
That looks like a good list to me...

I can put you in touch with Brenda Baker, Jim's daughter, if you like. She had the  unenviable job of sorting through all of Jim's papers, optical glass, and everything else after Jim died. At one point I spent the day helping Brenda, and it was neat to have in my hand printed documentation that exactly confirmed one of the stories that Jim had told me.

Jim's optical designs were all on the loft of a barn on big stacks of fanfold paper. Of course, without knowing which was which you'd have no idea which design mattered at all given that Jim had a diverse set of interests. He had the most amazing machine shop in a large barn in New Hampshire. He got about halfway through building his own conventional 40-in telescope there: this was before the days of lightweight mirrors and one his sons graduated it turned out to be too big a project. This included a milling machine so large that you could stand on its bed and a lathe from a shipyard that could machine really giant pieces. Jim was able to do everything from atoms to discovering that the moon was created by a collision with the Earth early in its history, to optical design, to being the first person to design optics by computer via ray tracing, to hacking the top of government. He was about the most self-effacing and wonderful person I've ever met.

I would love to buy such a book. Those people shaped the world in a tremendous way and prevented disaster.

Offline libra

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #164 on: 12/17/2021 10:30 am »
I'm looking for a key NASA-NRO relationship person with the name of Myron W. Krueger.

His name (like Lew Allen and Aden Meinel) seems to be narrowly linked to the NRO - NASA complex relationship in the 60's.

He was a member of the SACC

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB509/

Quote
Document 28: "DoD-NASA Coordination of the Earth Resources Survey Program," September 1966. Top Secret/BYEMAN.

Source: NASA MDR Request

This agreement, signed by the director of defense research & engineering and NASA's deputy administrator, established procedures for the review of all NASA space-based remote sensing activities to eliminate any threats to the National Reconnaissance Program.

It created the new working-level NASA-DoD Survey Applications Coordinating Committee, which was to report to the existing NASA-DoD Manned Space Flight Policy Committee.

But it can't be that Myron W. Krueger - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myron_W._Krueger
- born 1942 is way too young for the 1963 Lunar Orbiter agreement between NRO and NASA.

I tracked his name down on the NRO website...

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Krueger+site%3AWWW.nro.gov

And at NASA via google books ("Inter-agency affairs" and "DOD" - smells like NRO)

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Myron%22%22W.+krueger%22%22NASA%22&hl=fr&biw=1024&bih=643&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F1960%2Ccd_max%3A12%2F31%2F1970&tbm=bks


Offline JoeFromRIUSA

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #165 on: 12/17/2021 03:26 pm »
for Secret Project Forum thread about MOL
i extracted some Picture of NRO pdf also some of Apollo stuff they look into.

Mostly adaptation of Apollo X and AES hardware, but also modified Apollo CSM 

Source NRO PDF nr°63
Study of Utilizing Apollo for the MOL Mission Volume II
prepared by the Applied Mechanics Division for Commander Space System Divison Air-force System command
It's very frustration not to be able to find Part 1 of this study.

Offline libra

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #166 on: 05/24/2022 03:40 pm »
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4390/1

I've just seen this. Phil Horzempa makes an interesting parallel between that LM hypothetical camera and the U-2 camera(s).

Of course the said U-2 camera ended on Apollo. As PanCam on the J-class Apollos, inside the SIM bay... a very similar camera also flew on SR-71s and on that mysterious semi-stealth Ryan AQM-91 COMPASS ARROW drone that was to spy the chinese at Lop Nor and back but ended cancelled in 1971 by Nixon and Kissinger visits to China.

A LM with a U-2 camera inside is a pretty cool idea.

Online Blackstar

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #167 on: 05/24/2022 04:19 pm »
Of course the said U-2 camera ended on Apollo. As PanCam on the J-class Apollos, inside the SIM bay... a very similar camera also flew on SR-71s and on that mysterious semi-stealth Ryan AQM-91 COMPASS ARROW drone that was to spy the chinese at Lop Nor and back but ended cancelled in 1971 by Nixon and Kissinger visits to China.


I have something on that in the works. But it won't be very revelatory. The pancam was originally built for COMPASS ARROW, but delays in that program meant that it flew on the U-2 first. then it was adapted for Apollo.

Offline libra

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #168 on: 05/25/2022 03:14 am »
Of course the said U-2 camera ended on Apollo. As PanCam on the J-class Apollos, inside the SIM bay... a very similar camera also flew on SR-71s and on that mysterious semi-stealth Ryan AQM-91 COMPASS ARROW drone that was to spy the chinese at Lop Nor and back but ended cancelled in 1971 by Nixon and Kissinger visits to China.


I have something on that in the works. But it won't be very revelatory. The pancam was originally built for COMPASS ARROW, but delays in that program meant that it flew on the U-2 first. then it was adapted for Apollo.

Now that's interesting. So it happened in that order ? Unlike the D-21 TAGBOARD, COMPASS ARROW never got a chance to prove itself over China: it just came too late, 1971 rather than 1969. Everything had been build and readied for flight when the program was canned, mothballed, and finally scrapped after some years. NASA was vaguely interested by such drones and their J97 engines able to fly above 80 000 ft - but the stuff was too sensitive and money was lacking. Yet the General Electric J97 didn't went to waste.

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #169 on: 05/25/2022 11:01 am »
Now that's interesting. So it happened in that order ?

Yeah, and that's pretty much the only bit of interesting information I have on that subject.

Offline libra

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #170 on: 05/25/2022 12:00 pm »
Now that's interesting. So it happened in that order ?

Yeah, and that's pretty much the only bit of interesting information I have on that subject.

TBH little has been published over the Ryan AQM-91. Which is a pity, imagine: a semi-stealth flying machine a decade before the F-117... and a spy drone with that.
I checked the NRO declassified docs many time and even them have next to nothing about it.

Online Blackstar

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #171 on: 05/26/2022 02:21 am »
TBH little has been published over the Ryan AQM-91. Which is a pity, imagine: a semi-stealth flying machine a decade before the F-117... and a spy drone with that.
I checked the NRO declassified docs many time and even them have next to nothing about it.

Working on an article with a co-author. It's about the Apollo 15 EVA to retrieve the film. One of the astronauts later said that they never should have done that. The part I'm writing about is what was on the film, what those cameras were, and why that was important.

I have found a bunch of short articles on the PanCam, which I should attach to this thread. What I don't have is any good history of what the PanCam was before it ended up on Apollo. How it was designed and why. I don't know of any history articles on that camera. I consulted with some aviation historians and what I learned was that the PanCam was originally named the IRIS camera and was developed for COMPASS ARROW. Apparently, the reason was that there was no way to know when the drone would be over its target, so they needed a camera that could cover a lot of territory and capture the target when it eventually flew over it (in other words, account for the navigation inaccuracy by taking a lot more area photos). However, the program kept getting delayed, but the camera was developed, and then the CIA incorporated the camera into their existing aircraft. I don't have specific dates on any of that.

If you look at the camera that flew on the spy planes and then look at the one that flew on Apollo, you can see some differences, particularly in how the film spools were mounted. It is too bad that nobody wrote about how they made that. (There was an article on the Apollo PanCam in an optics journal, but I cannot locate it with ease.)

I've mentioned this before, but I saw the Apollo 18 panoramic camera in storage at the Smithsonian, and it was a beautiful artifact. It was pristine. Never taken out of its box for more than a few days after it was finished. I wish the Smithsonian would put it on display. Considering that they also have a mapping camera, they could assemble a nice display of Apollo instruments.
« Last Edit: 05/26/2022 02:22 am by Blackstar »

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #172 on: 05/26/2022 02:51 am »
My files on the Apollo PanCam. Like I mentioned, I think there is an article about the camera that appeared in the Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, but I cannot find that. And I don't remember that really being a history, just a description of the camera.

The version used in the SR-71 was (I think) the KA-80A Panoramic Camera. I think that the version used in the U-2 was the IRIS camera. I don't know the differences between them.

This might be a useful source:

Livingston, R.G., Berndsen, C.E., Ondrejka, R., Spriggs, R.M., Kosofsky, L.J., Van Steenburgh, D., Norton, C., Brown, D., 1980. Aerial Cameras. In Manual of Photogrammetry, 4th Edition, C.C. Slama, C. Theurer, and S.W. Henriksen, Editors. American Society of Photogrammetry, Falls Church, VA, pp. 187–278.


Offline litton4

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #173 on: 05/26/2022 10:46 am »
TBH little has been published over the Ryan AQM-91. Which is a pity, imagine: a semi-stealth flying machine a decade before the F-117... and a spy drone with that.
I checked the NRO declassified docs many time and even them have next to nothing about it.
.... It's about the Apollo 15 EVA to retrieve the film. One of the astronauts later said that they never should have done that.....

Why should they "never have done that"? Safety?
Dave Condliffe

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #174 on: 05/26/2022 04:45 pm »
TBH little has been published over the Ryan AQM-91. Which is a pity, imagine: a semi-stealth flying machine a decade before the F-117... and a spy drone with that.
I checked the NRO declassified docs many time and even them have next to nothing about it.
.... It's about the Apollo 15 EVA to retrieve the film. One of the astronauts later said that they never should have done that.....

Why should they "never have done that"? Safety?

There were some medical issues during the flight. That has been documented elsewhere. The joint article will recount those issues, but also explain what was being retrieved.

To be honest, I would love to do a detailed history of the PanCam camera. But that would require some substantial research that I am unenthusiastic about doing.
« Last Edit: 05/26/2022 04:48 pm by Blackstar »

Offline libra

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #175 on: 05/26/2022 05:12 pm »
Didn't one of the crew had cardiac trouble that later killed him ?

Offline MarsMethanogen

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #176 on: 05/27/2022 05:11 pm »
Jim Irwin. Apollo 15. 

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #177 on: 06/11/2022 01:03 am »
TBH little has been published over the Ryan AQM-91. Which is a pity, imagine: a semi-stealth flying machine a decade before the F-117... and a spy drone with that.
I checked the NRO declassified docs many time and even them have next to nothing about it.

Working on an article with a co-author. It's about the Apollo 15 EVA to retrieve the film. One of the astronauts later said that they never should have done that. The part I'm writing about is what was on the film, what those cameras were, and why that was important.

What was the objection?
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Jim

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Re: Secret Apollo Missions and Hardware UPWARD and LMSS
« Reply #178 on: 06/11/2022 03:05 am »

What was the objection?

One had a heart attack during the mission

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