Author Topic: Planning Apollo 11  (Read 14333 times)

Offline Jedothek

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Planning Apollo 11
« on: 03/04/2019 04:40 pm »
Did the planning for Apollo 1 1 involve consideration of general relativity, or, given the precision required, was Newtonian mechanics sufficient?


Offline Proponent

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Re: Planning Apollo 11
« Reply #1 on: 03/05/2019 02:29 am »
I'm sure it was all Newtonian.

Offline AS-503

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Re: Planning Apollo 11
« Reply #2 on: 03/05/2019 02:54 am »
The 60 mile high lunar orbit of Apollo 11 and subsequent LM landing were both influenced by the moon's lumpy gravity (mascons). NASA figured this out and was able to get a precision landing on the next Apollo flight. Apollo 12 landed spot-on next to the targeted Surveyor as planned!

So, on the newtonian side of things, the science of the lunar landing was still evolving during Apollo 11s planning phase.

Offline Citabria

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Re: Planning Apollo 11
« Reply #3 on: 03/12/2019 03:18 pm »
At Apollo speeds, relativistic effects in space and time amount to less than one part per billion, much less than the navigational accuracy, so they could be ignored. Course correction maneuvers were made to correct all navigation errors, including those tiny effects.

Offline whitelancer64

Re: Planning Apollo 11
« Reply #4 on: 03/12/2019 04:50 pm »
I don't know if it was designed with Einstein's work in mind, but at least one part of the Apollo missions - the laser rangefinding experiments - have had a big impact on our understanding of it.

Modern high-precision atomic clocks and lasers have allowed for extremely narrow error bars on various parts of Relativity, in particular the Strong and Weak equivalence principle, and the Gravitational constant.
"One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to." - Elon Musk
"There are lies, damned lies, and launch schedules." - Larry J

Tags: physics 
 

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