Author Topic: GE Project Prospector  (Read 19891 times)

Offline simonbp

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GE Project Prospector
« on: 03/30/2012 02:54 am »
Lunar rover plus sample return circa 1961, presented a beautiful document:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19690069113

Online Blackstar

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #1 on: 03/30/2012 01:11 pm »
Interesting stuff.

One interesting thought experiment is to posit what would have happened with lunar exploration if Kennedy had not picked the lunar landing goal. JPL was certainly interested in a vigorous robotic program. They probably would not have gotten everything they wanted, but they possibly would have gotten more robotic missions than they ultimately did. A lot of the robotic lunar program was reoriented to support Apollo.

Put another way, would NASA have pursued lunar rovers and sample return if Apollo had never gone to the Moon?

Offline dbaker

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #2 on: 03/30/2012 02:32 pm »
Ah, the nostalgia! One of my favorite programs - a briefly lit flame 1959-early 1961 snuffed out by the JFK Apollo decision...

Nestles right in between the use of Surveyor for 3 lunar orbit and 4 lunar surface missions, with 15 Prospector shots on Saturn C-2 by the end of 1970 and Apollo lunar landings sometime after that. First Prospector was to have flown on the last of seven C-2 development flights, 2-3 per year thereafter.

NASA touted Prosepctor as a tech-precursor (shared with Surveyor) for essential systems required for Apollo (pre-Kennedy Apollo, that is) in the 1970s. Sold it as such, even down to same launcher, same electrical production (fuel cells), same mode analysis. GE was asked to think of Prospector as an unmanned precursor to manned Apollo expeditions and to test all aspects including surface mobility with wheeled vehicles and Earth-return of samples.

Attached is a page from a briefing to industry in Jan 1961 just before the chop showing the mass envelope for each.

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #3 on: 03/30/2012 06:35 pm »
Ah, the nostalgia! One of my favorite programs - a briefly lit flame 1959-early 1961 snuffed out by the JFK Apollo decision...

Nestles right in between the use of Surveyor for 3 lunar orbit and 4 lunar surface missions, with 15 Prospector shots on Saturn C-2 by the end of 1970 and Apollo lunar landings sometime after that. First Prospector was to have flown on the last of seven C-2 development flights, 2-3 per year thereafter.

I've been thinking of writing an article for Spaceflight on the subject of the Surveyor missions that never happened. I've got a lot of stuff on Surveyor A21, Surveyor Block 2, and Surveyor 2 (all ca 1964). But what was the Surveyor orbiter supposed to be? Where do I find info on that?
« Last Edit: 03/30/2012 07:55 pm by Blackstar »

Offline DarthVader

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #4 on: 03/30/2012 07:24 pm »
Oh wow, that document sure has some very nice illustrations!

Offline simonbp

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #5 on: 03/30/2012 09:36 pm »
But what was the Surveyor orbiter supposed to be? Where do I find info on that?

Lunar Orbiter. After the series of Ranger failures, it was taken away from JPL (so they could focus on getting Ranger and Surveyor lander to work) and given to NASA Ames. Lunar Orbiter project histories (if they exist) might be a good start to look.

And yeah, the Saturn C-2 was planned to be a real workhorse. The manned lunar flyby Apollo missions all baselined the C-2 as the launch vehicle (starting in around 1970). And if they had gone with a depot-based EOR style for the landing, it's possible that C-2 would have been used as the primary launch for that too (as it was in von Braun's Project Horizon plan).
« Last Edit: 03/30/2012 09:43 pm by simonbp »

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #6 on: 03/30/2012 09:53 pm »
But what was the Surveyor orbiter supposed to be? Where do I find info on that?

Lunar Orbiter. After the series of Ranger failures, it was taken away from JPL (so they could focus on getting Ranger and Surveyor lander to work) and given to NASA Ames. Lunar Orbiter project histories (if they exist) might be a good start to look.

I don't think that's right. I don't think that Lunar Orbiter is an extension of Surveyor. I think that it started as a new program, with the specific goal of gathering high resolution imagery in support of Apollo. Surveyor orbiter would have been a science spacecraft, not primarily imagery. I'll look in Cargill Hall's book.
« Last Edit: 03/30/2012 11:06 pm by Blackstar »

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #7 on: 03/31/2012 02:30 am »
I converted the images to jpegs and cropped them a bit, because they're just too pretty to ignore.

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #8 on: 03/31/2012 02:31 am »
Ditto.

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #9 on: 03/31/2012 02:31 am »
And finally.

Offline simonbp

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #10 on: 03/31/2012 03:27 am »
I don't think that's right. I don't think that Lunar Orbiter is an extension of Surveyor. I think that it started as a new program, with the specific goal of gathering high resolution imagery in support of Apollo. Surveyor orbiter would have been a science spacecraft, not primarily imagery. I'll look in Cargill Hall's book.

From David Harland's Exploring the Moon (p. 7):

Quote
...NASA canceled JPL's mapper and instead ordered the Langley Research Center to develop a lightweight orbiter to ride Atlas-Agena.

Which does make it sound like a separate program scaled for Atlas-Centaur. In that case, the JPL library might be your best bet, though there's a lot they haven't digitized yet...

Offline GClark

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #11 on: 03/31/2012 07:15 am »
I don't think that's right. I don't think that Lunar Orbiter is an extension of Surveyor. I think that it started as a new program, with the specific goal of gathering high resolution imagery in support of Apollo. Surveyor orbiter would have been a science spacecraft, not primarily imagery. I'll look in Cargill Hall's book.

From David Harland's Exploring the Moon (p. 7):

Quote
...NASA canceled JPL's mapper and instead ordered the Langley Research Center to develop a lightweight orbiter to ride Atlas-Agena.

Which does make it sound like a separate program scaled for Atlas-Centaur. In that case, the JPL library might be your best bet, though there's a lot they haven't digitized yet...

ISTR seeing a picture of the Surveyor orbiter somewhere.  It was essentially a Surveyor without legs and more instruments, a la how Lavochkin turned the Lunokhod into an orbiter.

Pedantry alert:  The lightweight orbiter studies were always sized for Agena.  Surveyor was tied to Centaur.

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #12 on: 03/31/2012 01:10 pm »
Pedantry alert:  The lightweight orbiter studies were always sized for Agena.  Surveyor was tied to Centaur.

I'm still too lazy to take a look at Cargill Hall's Lunar Orbiter book (I'll do that later today), but I'm pretty sure that you're right. There were a lot of problems with Centaur in the early days, and so they wanted to get new payloads off of that and onto something cheaper and proven. Lunar Orbiter really did start as a new program, if I remember correctly. In fact, I seem to remember that it was started almost as a reaction to Surveyor, because the Surveyor orbiter was going to be too big, expensive, and science-oriented, and they wanted something that was focused on the imagery mission supporting Apollo landing sites.

Offline GClark

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #13 on: 04/01/2012 01:55 am »
I also seem to remember (Nicks' book?) that there were quite a few people at NASA that weren't too impressed with JPL, particularly after the problems with Ranger.  There seems to have been a feeling that the lab was over-promising/under-delivering and perhaps being just a bit too optimistic.  Combine that with the Centaur development problems and...

IIRC, contracting Surveyor out to Hughes was part of that as well.

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #14 on: 04/01/2012 02:40 am »
I also seem to remember (Nicks' book?) that there were quite a few people at NASA that weren't too impressed with JPL, particularly after the problems with Ranger.  There seems to have been a feeling that the lab was over-promising/under-delivering and perhaps being just a bit too optimistic.  Combine that with the Centaur development problems and...

That's true. This is recounted in several books. They ended up firing the program manager for Ranger (I've met him--in the later 1960s he worked for the CIA developing ground stations for intercepting Soviet telemetry) and there was an incident where (if I remember correctly) the NASA administrator met with the president of CalTech and asked for a management shakeup. These days JPL has become much more powerful, and NASA doesn't have much influence when JPL projects run way over budget. They just have to take it.

Offline simonbp

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #15 on: 04/01/2012 03:34 am »
These days JPL has become much more powerful, and NASA doesn't have much influence when JPL projects run way over budget. They just have to take it.

Or just avoid giving JPL too much control to begin with for low-cost missions, such as Phoenix.

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #16 on: 04/01/2012 04:15 am »
These days JPL has become much more powerful, and NASA doesn't have much influence when JPL projects run way over budget. They just have to take it.

Or just avoid giving JPL too much control to begin with for low-cost missions, such as Phoenix.

There's a more complex situation these days. First, there is competition, primarily from APL, but also Goddard. In the 1970s there was a policy decision to give all planetary missions to JPL, but Goldin reversed that in the 1990s. Second, there's competition for the small and medium-class missions. Only the flagship missions are automatically sent to JPL. But that has created a weird dynamic, as JPL tries to keep its cost-capped missions under control, but has no incentive to keep flagship missions under control. I don't know if this is true, but flagship missions could be where JPL stuffs a lot of their overhead costs. Now, with no flagship missions, JPL could be in real trouble. That's not a good thing. JPL is a national asset.

Offline plutogno

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #17 on: 04/01/2012 10:33 am »
there was a good historical paper on Prospector in the JBIS in 1995:
D.L. Burnham "Mobile Explorers and Beasts of Burden: A History of NASA's Prospector and Lunar Logistic Vehicle Projects", vol 48, pp 213-228

Offline Bob Shaw

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #18 on: 04/01/2012 11:15 am »
I've never seen these Prospector designs before - only the circular version w ith the fore and aft outriggers. As for the images here, can anyone say 'Lunakhod'?

Offline dbaker

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #19 on: 04/01/2012 02:35 pm »
A couple of pennies-worth from notes assembled at JPL far too many years ago to recall:

NASA started Surveyor in May 1960 for separate unmanned lander and orbiter vehicles, both to use Atlas-Centaur. JPL was given responsibility by NASA Office of Space Sciences (OSS) and told to adopt Ranger philosophy of a common bus for multiple objectives.
  On March 23 1961, the OSS Lunar Sciences steering Subcommittee recommended an orbiter to have <10m res capability, total limb area and far side at ~1km res, recce photos at ~100m res and stereo pairs where hi-res was planned. OSS examined a Centaur payload of 950-1100kg.
  On December 5, 1961 Charles Sonnett, chief of Lunar & Planetary Programs at HQ requested a status update on Surveyor Orbiter (as it was now officially called). JPL reported it had integrated previous work including: a 1958 study for a Jupiter-launched close-up photography mission to the Moon; development of a unique camera system for Pioneer IV; 1959 study for Vega-launched lunar probe with dual vidicon camera for lo- and hi-res images; 1960 orbiter experiments rundown. JPL concluded that it would be impossible to adapt the Ranger photographic system and that a nationwide hunt was on for a camera system that had the long-life requirements of the orbiter mission.
  On June 15 1962 NASA Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF) sent OSS a list of requirements for lunar unmanned probes for surface data. It was agreed that Ranger would not meet Apollo needs, moving Ranger further from Surveyor and beginning a trail of tech-changes and requirements that significantly compromised Surveyor development due to the added cost and time.
  JPL was directed to pull out the stops on adapting Ranger for the Surveyor Orbiter role but JPL said that was not possible but requested that Hughes (building Surveyor Lander) come up with a modified 360kg Orbiter on an Atlas-Agena. Hughes showed that only 27kg would be available for the TV payload and that this would be too small for the job, proposing instead an Agena with a Surveyor Kick Stage raising total weight to 540kg including a 57kg payload.
  OSS declined to adopt this and redirected JPL back to a Centaur launched Surveyor Orbiter. By the end of July 1962 OSS came up with a plan but these fell short of Apollo requirements which called for data on slopes of <7deg with <1m surface protruberances. The first version of the Surveyor Orbiter would be able to shoot stereo-pairs with 9m res and monscopic photos of 1m res, covering an area of 100deg longitude by +/-40deg latitude on the Earth-visible face.
  On July 20 1962 Surveyor Orbiter Guidelines indicated the technical availability of such systems would be marginal for Apollo but that there should be a) five flights; b) 800kg spacecraft on Atlas-Centaur; c) Orbiter to incorporate maximum commonality with Lander; d) JPL to develop an Orbiter project plan; and e) there would be $29.5m in FY63 and $29m in FY64 for both Surveyor Lander and Orbiter.
  At this time Ranger difficulties acted as a brake on Surveyor Orbiter planning while MSFC was having serious development problems with Centaur, for which it then had responsibility but very much second in priority to the Saturn series, which already at this date had moved the first Surveyor Lander flight out to late 1964.
  By September 1962 the OSS had serious planning underway for a lightweight Surveyor Orbiter to go an Atlas-Agena but still difficulties with getting a long-life photographic system that met Apollo needs was paramount. On September 21 OSS Director of Lunar & Planetary programs Oran Nicks asked Navy Capt Lee Scherer to form a working group to look at a cut-down lunar recce mission built around Ranger and Able 5 spacecraft for flights from 1964.
  On September 12, STL spacecraft program chief A K Thiel sent Nicks a summary of a proposed lunar photographic spin-stabilized satellite launched on an Agena D carrying a 254cm focal-length spin-scan camera similar to the one developed by Mertion Davies at RAND in 1958, which did away with a TV payload and went straight to a film system. Thiel claimed his compoany could build the satellite within 22 months. RCA also submitted a proposal for a super-lightweight spacecraft.
  On October 23 1962 Joe Shea at OMSF tightened requirements for early data to feed Apollo planning, urging a priority on the Surveyor Lander rather than the Orbiter. OMSF 'interfered' into OSS and JPL planning to such an extent that it said these groups should not commit to an Orbiter if that would compromise Ranger and Surveyor Lander, so urgent was surface data for LM design and engineering.
  On Shea's recommendation, Homer Newell (OSS Director) established the OSS/OMSF working group to blend OSS/JPL planning to OMSF's will for dynamic data about surface conditions (bearing strength, etc). On October 25 the Working Group dismissed the super-lightweight RCA proposal and on November 16 defined the requirement as identification of 45m objects over the entire visible surface, 4.5m objects over areas of prime interest, and 1.2m objects in landing areas. the STL proposal with a mass of 320kg was prefered, operating from a 1,600km polar orbit with a surface res of 18m, or at 40km altitude a res of 0.5m (accepting the technical challenge of image motion compensation, high-speed film and high shutter speed).
  The RCA approach was to use a 3-axis 200kg stabilized design from a Ranger-type bus and vidicon TV system but with 130m res in wide-area coverage and 30m in limited coverage. At $20m it was considered expensive and had too little return for the money; OSS even looked at how much it would cost to use high altitude balloons to shoot images of the Moon from the edge of Earth's atmosphere with very powerful telescopic cameras!
  Scherer's group settled on the STL design although when actually flown the five Boeing Lunar Orbiter's owed more to that design than those of the RCA concept. The Surveyor orbiter really died when Lewis took Centaur from MSFC and the payload capability dropped from 1,100kg to 950kg, although it would eventually rise back up). This and the tough problems faced by Ranger at JPL plus the added pressure from the Apollo people gave energy to the drive to cancel Surveyor Orbiter and go to an Atlas-Agena class concept.
  Nevertheless, with a self-imposed mission, JPL Lunar Programs Director Cliff Cummings pursued further studies of a Surveyor Orbiter. This brought him into conflict with Nicks, who pointed to the futility of more studies. Overwhelmed with other work, on January 2, 1963, Nicks asked Langley Director Floyd Thompson if he would be willing to take on an orbiter project and he agreed. By March 1963 Thompson had his teams work up a credible plan from clean sheets of paper.
  There is a whole lot of history between this agreement and the formal decision on August 30 1963 for Langley to press ahead with the Lunar Orbiter project we all know made it to the Moon. but this adds a bit of flow between the dual Surveyor Lander and Surveyor Orbiter - which does nothing to explain Prospector! That program had an earlier prescience to the story between these two Surveyor types and should have served as an example that JPL was simply taking on too much, too soon and too quickly.
  In the end it was Langley that came to the rescue. And they were glad about that because they had spawned the new Manned Spacecraft Center and all it implied for the fight between manned and unmanned space programs.
  Just a few notes from several volumes that will eventually become a book!

Online Blackstar

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #20 on: 04/01/2012 05:08 pm »
there was a good historical paper on Prospector in the JBIS in 1995:
D.L. Burnham "Mobile Explorers and Beasts of Burden: A History of NASA's Prospector and Lunar Logistic Vehicle Projects", vol 48, pp 213-228

Paolo was kind enough to provide me a copy of that article. Not a lot of good illustrations, but here is one of them.

I have not read through the paper, but it also discusses logistics in support of Apollo. I suspect that it only contains a small part of that story, because there were a number of proposals floating around on that subject. I co-wrote an article with Glen Swanson a few years ago about some of Grumman's proposed LEM modifications to support extended duration Apollo missions.

Offline simonbp

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #21 on: 04/01/2012 06:31 pm »
A couple of pennies-worth from notes assembled at JPL far too many years ago to recall:

Many thanks, that really clears it up!

The ABMA/MSFC surface vehicles grew out of Project Horizon, though I'm not sure if they were the direct impetus for Prospector:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19730064135

Offline plutogno

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #22 on: 04/02/2012 04:50 pm »
this drawing was in a 1960 or 1961 NASA space science brochure

Offline dbaker

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #23 on: 04/02/2012 05:23 pm »
So much crossfeed going on at that time. JPL was striving to make a bigger footprint in the Florida sand and ABMA was sucking ideas up from everyplace to stand tall as it got absorbed into NASA between Oct '59 and Jul '60. Very little forethought on ideas and their implications. Turf protection and a fight for the front row on the grid. Highly turbulent times.

Remember, the only real budget emphasis given by JFK when he became President was for the Saturn rocket; he wasn't interested in Apollo at first. Then from mid-1961 it let rip when he proclaimed the Moon goal and sank so many potentially fabulous unmanned projects. Nothing planned for the Moon that wasn't supporting Apollo was either absorbed, adapted or ditched. The ditched ones never came back.

But some of us post-A17 wanted to continue Moon exploration with unmanned projects such as those canceled for Apollo, to stitch the gap between manned flights to the Moon ending in '72 and restarting, whenever that was to be. All those rovers, all those orbiters and sample return plans...

The only trouble was none of us had strong enough position, loud enough voice or leveraged clout to get that message heard! Except I do recall Carl Sagan listening very hard and mentioning this approach on the Hill.

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #24 on: 04/02/2012 06:42 pm »
The only trouble was none of us had strong enough position, loud enough voice or leveraged clout to get that message heard! Except I do recall Carl Sagan listening very hard and mentioning this approach on the Hill.

I'll show my bias, since I work for the NRC, but I wonder to what extent the scientists got involved at that time. Did they ever address the question of "lunar science in the post-Apollo era"?

Of course, the Voyager Mars program had already collapsed, and I imagine that planetary science in general was a mess, so trying to single out plans for the next steps in lunar science got overwhelmed by some other, bigger issues. Certainly the fact that Apollo had returned so much created the overall impression that they didn't need another shot for awhile. But in a rational world, it would have made sense for somebody to specifically address the issue of what science questions Apollo did not answer and how to go about answering them.

Offline dbaker

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #25 on: 04/03/2012 11:26 am »
If you weren't a Shuttle-junkie, the decade after Apollo was a mess as the NASA budget kept on dropping.

The Nixon-Ford-Carter years (69-80) were lean and mean. Space science funding was on a roller-coaster in this period but 'lunar and planetary' suffered the worst, crashing from $320m in the year of the last Moon missions to $153m by '78. In that same period Shuttle funding soared from $100m to $1.4bn and everyone suffered, L&P the most.

A lot of disheartened people left and never came back. Right at the start of this period ('69) NASA tried to launch the Grand Tour anticipating two s/c in '77 and two in '79 (but that got canceled in '72 under a 'no new starts' policy from Congress) and in '70 OMB chopped the space station leaving STS to thrash around for a broader role. Only in '73 did NASA get the two-shot Voyager outer planets mission set up for launch in '77. As for Mars, Voyager had been canceled back in '67 and in '69 the Viking mission planned for '73 nearly got canceled but was saved at the last minute and pushed back to '75 when NASA ran out of money.

And the Moon in all of this - what's that...?

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #26 on: 04/03/2012 06:22 pm »
And the Moon in all of this - what's that...?

I've proposed a paper for a planetary science history conference this fall (paper not accepted yet) that addresses prioritization for planetary science during the history of NASA. In other words, how did the NRC develop planetary science priorities for NASA and how did the agency implement them (or not implement them)? Topics that I'm going to cover include the relatively recent history of the decadal surveys, but also the early years of the Space Science Board and how they pushed the issue of scientist-astronauts on NASA (which didn't really want them for Apollo). I have not done the research, but my impression is that your offhand summary is correct--it didn't matter if the scientists still had ideas about how to explore the Moon after Apollo, because nobody was listening.
« Last Edit: 04/03/2012 06:26 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Jester

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #27 on: 05/07/2013 09:52 am »
« Last Edit: 05/07/2013 09:52 am by Jester »

Online Blackstar

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #28 on: 03/20/2015 08:49 pm »
So I've been thinking about writing an article about unbuilt Surveyor proposals and this got me to thinking about Prospector, which got me to searching this site...

And it starts off with an NTRS link from 2012. That was just before The Great Implosion when NTRS just took everything off line. And when they put stuff back online, they didn't bother with the old urls, so all the hyperlinks were now useless. (Think about the implications of that a little bit.)

With some digging (essentially I took the numbers in the NTRS file name and plugged them into the search function on my PC) I found that I still have the document.

So, ta da! Here it is.

Now I just need to find that 1995 JBIS article mentioned in this thread...

Offline Antilope7724

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #29 on: 03/20/2015 11:22 pm »
Here is an illustration of the Surveyor Orbiter (from 1963) that was mentioned up-tread.

The picture comes from page 79 (pdf pg 88) of the NTRS document:

"NASA - Industry Program Plans Conference, Washington, D.C. February 11-12, 1963".

Here is the NTRS link to the document.
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19630005481.pdf

« Last Edit: 03/20/2015 11:25 pm by Antilope7724 »

Online Blackstar

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #30 on: 03/21/2015 01:19 am »
Interesting. The text indicates that it was a current design under study. Obviously it was canceled. I would have to go digging, but I vaguely remember that the cost and timeline for Surveyor Orbiter was too much and so NASA called for a simpler and more straightforward orbiter that would not have instruments only an imager for high quality imagery in support of Apollo.

Of course, the gold is all in the details--for instance, what exactly made Surveyor Orbiter so expensive and time-consuming? My guess is that the camera was not big enough and could not be bigger considering the other planned instruments. So NASA called for a design that put all the emphasis on the camera system.




Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #31 on: 03/21/2015 03:09 am »
Interesting. The text indicates that it was a current design under study. Obviously it was canceled. I would have to go digging, but I vaguely remember that the cost and timeline for Surveyor Orbiter was too much and so NASA called for a simpler and more straightforward orbiter that would not have instruments only an imager for high quality imagery in support of Apollo.

Of course, the gold is all in the details--for instance, what exactly made Surveyor Orbiter so expensive and time-consuming? My guess is that the camera was not big enough and could not be bigger considering the other planned instruments. So NASA called for a design that put all the emphasis on the camera system.

I think you're right about it being all about the camera system.  The above design for a Surveyor Orbiter had a TV camera system, while Lunar Orbiter employed a film system with onboard photographic development and electronic (though not digital) read-out.  Apollo planners at the time were requiring high-resolution imagery of the proposed Apollo landing sites ASAP, and IIRC the output of the television system would not have been good enough.

Also, ISTR something about Lunar Orbiter being at a considerable advantage in that it was capable of being launched to the Moon on an Atlas-Agena, while Surveyor Orbiter (like the Surveyor Lander) required an Atlas-Centaur.  I don't recall if that more to do with Agena availability or Centaur reliability at the time of the mission planning, though.
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #32 on: 03/21/2015 01:08 pm »
Splitting up my response because it's easier that way.

Also, ISTR something about Lunar Orbiter being at a considerable advantage in that it was capable of being launched to the Moon on an Atlas-Agena, while Surveyor Orbiter (like the Surveyor Lander) required an Atlas-Centaur.  I don't recall if that more to do with Agena availability or Centaur reliability at the time of the mission planning, though.

Yeah, that was indeed a consideration. I think that in the early 1960s a lot of programs were baselining the Centaur as their launch vehicle, so it was getting over-subscribed, and at the same time it was running into development problems. So there was a desire to move some of the payloads to other vehicles like Atlas-Agena.

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #33 on: 03/21/2015 01:11 pm »
I think you're right about it being all about the camera system.  The above design for a Surveyor Orbiter had a TV camera system, while Lunar Orbiter employed a film system with onboard photographic development and electronic (though not digital) read-out.  Apollo planners at the time were requiring high-resolution imagery of the proposed Apollo landing sites ASAP, and IIRC the output of the television system would not have been good enough.


It would be interesting to understand how the engineering requirements for Apollo translated into design requirements for Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor. For instance, what exactly did they need from a camera in terms of resolution, precision, and amount of territory covered? And why did they think they needed that?

As I understand it, one of the problems with TV systems is that even if the resolution is okay their precision is poor--the distance between any two evenly-space spots on the image will not necessarily be the same. So it gets harder to rely upon that if you're feeding it into a set of calculations.

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #34 on: 03/21/2015 01:12 pm »

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #35 on: 03/22/2015 07:59 pm »
I think you're right about it being all about the camera system.  The above design for a Surveyor Orbiter had a TV camera system, while Lunar Orbiter employed a film system with onboard photographic development and electronic (though not digital) read-out.  Apollo planners at the time were requiring high-resolution imagery of the proposed Apollo landing sites ASAP, and IIRC the output of the television system would not have been good enough.


It would be interesting to understand how the engineering requirements for Apollo translated into design requirements for Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor. For instance, what exactly did they need from a camera in terms of resolution, precision, and amount of territory covered? And why did they think they needed that?

As I understand it, one of the problems with TV systems is that even if the resolution is okay their precision is poor--the distance between any two evenly-space spots on the image will not necessarily be the same. So it gets harder to rely upon that if you're feeding it into a set of calculations.

Exactly -- the spatial resolution, I believe it's called, was poor in the television imaging systems of the time, even if pixel resolution could be made to be good.  And while I don't have the official Apollo imaging requirements at hand, I do know that good stereo coverage of each potential landing site was required.  And not just within the landing ellipse -- they wanted good stereo imaging for the terrain overflown during the final stages of the descent trajectory, as well.

This was at least partly so they could model the terrain for the benefit of the guidance computer -- if (as was the case for Site 2, Tranquility Base) there was a general slope of the terrain resulting in a significant difference in mean surface elevation from landing radar lock-on to landing, it helped for the guidance computer to know that.  Site 2 had a general westward-trending downward slope of about four degrees throughout the final miles of the descent trajectory, and the guidance computer used a rough correction subroutine that took this into account.

I'm pretty certain that the TV imaging systems of the time just weren't capable of providing stereo strips good enough to provide the terrain information required by Apollo planners.  And since microgravity film development and electronic read-out had already been developed for reconnaissance satellites and the technology was available, that's what they ended up using.
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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #36 on: 03/23/2015 12:15 am »
Exactly -- the spatial resolution, I believe it's called, was poor in the television imaging systems of the time, even if pixel resolution could be made to be good.  And while I don't have the official Apollo imaging requirements at hand, I do know that good stereo coverage of each potential landing site was required.  And not just within the landing ellipse -- they wanted good stereo imaging for the terrain overflown during the final stages of the descent trajectory, as well.

This was at least partly so they could model the terrain for the benefit of the guidance computer -- if (as was the case for Site 2, Tranquility Base) there was a general slope of the terrain resulting in a significant difference in mean surface elevation from landing radar lock-on to landing, it helped for the guidance computer to know that.  Site 2 had a general westward-trending downward slope of about four degrees throughout the final miles of the descent trajectory, and the guidance computer used a rough correction subroutine that took this into account.

I'm pretty certain that the TV imaging systems of the time just weren't capable of providing stereo strips good enough to provide the terrain information required by Apollo planners.  And since microgravity film development and electronic read-out had already been developed for reconnaissance satellites and the technology was available, that's what they ended up using.

Yeah, what you said.

The UPWARD documents address this a bit and I have to look at them again. There's something in there about the resolution requirements and their connection to the size of the LM landing pads. I cannot remember the specifics, however. And slope requirements were important for several reasons, including the fact that they needed a slope below a certain amount so that the LM would not tip over.


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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #37 on: 03/27/2015 07:57 pm »
Surveyor.

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #38 on: 03/29/2015 06:33 pm »

Offline Antilope7724

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #39 on: 03/29/2015 10:37 pm »
Accession Number : AD0273811

Title :   Design of a Power System for a Lunar Mobile Surface Vehicle

Corporate Author : GENERAL ELECTRIC CO SANTA BARBARA CA

Personal Author(s) : Brody, R.H.

Full Text : http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=AD0273811

Report Date : 02 OCT 1961

Pagination or Media Count : 81

Abstract : Available power generators are examined to determine which are applicable to a lunar roving vehicle. Two classes of vehicles are of interest: a 300 lb. Surveyor type vehicle; a 3000 lb. Prospector type vehicle. It is concluded that a solar cell-battery combination is best and a design is presented for each vehicle, specifying important power system parameters.

Descriptors :   *LUNAR SURFACE VEHICLES, ELECTROCHEMISTRY, SURFACE PROPERTIES, SOLAR CELLS, SILICON, MOBILE, ELECTRIC POWER PRODUCTION, MOON, THERMIONIC EMISSION, THERMOELECTRICITY, PRIMARY BATTERIES

Subject Categories : ASTRONAUTICS
      SNAP(SYSTEMS FOR NUCLEAR AUXILLIARY POWER), TECH

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/273811.pdf
« Last Edit: 03/29/2015 10:38 pm by Antilope7724 »

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #40 on: 03/29/2015 11:23 pm »

Offline Proponent

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Re: GE Project Prospector
« Reply #41 on: 04/29/2023 04:00 pm »
Surveyor.

Here is another Surveyor II document from Hughes.

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