Recent Posts

71

General Discussion / Re: Is the moon sphere of influence included in the velocity stats?

« Last post by bfeist on November 26, 2023, 01:23:27 pm »

Sorry for the super long delay. Somehow I missed your message.
The numbers are always Earth referenced in the dashboard. The TEI burn doesn't contain the velocity changes because they weren't being announced by the PAO--the Apollo in Real Time team didn't have any mission telemetry streams to work with as that data was all discarded after the mission.

72

General Discussion / Re: Accurate edition of Apollo 11 (2019) movie?

« Last post by bfeist on November 26, 2023, 12:15:34 pm »

Depends what you want to define as "inaccuracy". I mean, the entire film's ambient sound was designed because all of the original historical footage was silent. I suppose technically, that's "inaccurate". You could go from there to the film's use of footage that wasn't shot during the Apollo 11 mission, then continue all the way up to listing mistakes in the film (there are a few).

I can honestly say that the film contains no inaccuracies that misinform the public. This is an important line that the whole team took very seriously.

Actually, just last week Bill Barry, NASA Chief Historian (ret) just accepted the Trask Award from the Society for History in the Federal Government. In his speech he talks about the importance of not misinforming the public when making historical films. He also had some kinds words for Apollo in Real Time.
https://youtu.be/ZtCs-RV_Lek?si=5ONNWdwqrNdCQAvN&t=2243

73

General Discussion / Re: Accurate edition of Apollo 11 (2019) movie?

« Last post by Naraht on November 26, 2023, 05:25:17 am »

I'm not aware of anything like this, I'm afraid.

Why don't you do some research and pull a guide together, if it's a topic that interests you?

74

General Discussion / Re: Other Apollo Missions

« Last post by Kasper on November 25, 2023, 04:18:11 pm »

As noted in an earlier post, there was a delay - likely as a result of COVID-19 and budget constraints - and it looks like the end date of the project was pushed back to August 2024 according to NSF's award page.

Does that mean that Apollo 16 will be out in August 2024? If not, what is your best estimate when?
I cant wait 😁

75

General Discussion / Re: Challenger STS-51L Flight Director loop

« Last post by SatelliteLily on November 25, 2023, 02:25:29 pm »

Thank you.  This brings back some memories and is very educational.

Virginia

76

General Discussion / Re: Accurate edition of Apollo 11 (2019) movie?

« Last post by SpaceDonkey on November 25, 2023, 12:10:47 am »

Hello,

It is nice to interact again online. I was just rewatching the movie with some family friends (so awesome) and was reminded of this post. I didn't have notifications turned on.

I was wondering if there is an exhaustive list of the inaccuracies for my own education. Wikipedia only lists one, but after wondering about how the stage ignition footage was obtained I learned it was from a different mission for example.

Thanks!

77

General Discussion / Challenger STS-51L Flight Director loop

« Last post by Naraht on November 22, 2023, 07:42:21 am »

Apologies that this is slightly off-topic, but I thought people might be interested to listen to an extended version of the flight director loop during and after the Challenger disaster. This apparently isn't new but I hadn't heard the full recording before, which goes up until the controllers are released from their duties.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJNvXCAiRE4

In particular, those of you who are acquainted with Jay Greene as an Apollo-era FIDO may be interested to hear him here as a Flight Director, during one of NASA's darkest hours. (His last mission. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he chose not to return to Mission Control after this.)

Having heard him frequently joking around when calling checkpoints during the Apollo program, I find it almost unbearably poignant to hear him here reminding the GC that they need a checkpoint. Not to mention his words at the end telling controllers not to speak with anyone about what happened.

78

Apollo 13 Moments of Interest / Re: 033:56:11 Recovery team bartering. Beer vs. Pineapples

« Last post by bfeist on November 21, 2023, 04:29:16 pm »

I found this particular gem because it's just one minute past a much more important historical artifact: confirmation that the IRIG-B time signal encoded on the MOCR tapes is lock-step with the clocks used by the human controllers and support crew. Just a minute before this barter there is an exchange between Houston Recover and Pacific Recovery where Houston clearly counts down the GMT and GET clocks so that Pacific Recovery can adjust their ship clocks to match.

In the attached annotated spectrogram, the speaker speaks the phrase "eight, nine, MARK, 50 seconds". Below each utterance are the time code markers output by the IRIG-B decoder software that we wrote for Apollo In Real Time. The "MARK" phrase lines up perfectly with the GET timestamp "33:53:50" / GMT timestamp "1970-04-14T05:06:50".

https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=033:53:36&ch=33

I love this so much. For those of you unaware, @ke6jjj is the person who wrote the algorithm that we used to restore the mission control audio back to mission time.

79

Apollo 13 Moments of Interest / Re: 033:56:11 Recovery team bartering. Beer vs. Pineapples

« Last post by MadDogBV on November 21, 2023, 08:23:41 am »

https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=033:56:11&ch=33

Recovery Houston (id unknown) offers Recovery Pacific (id unknown, but likely on a ship in the Pacific) a trade of a six pack of "Cold Pearl" for two pineapples on return. Haggling ensues.

To further emphasize the human quality of what these ironclad-willed flight controllers do on a daily basis, you want to know what EECOM John Aaron was doing at the exact same time that RECOVERY was making a trade for pineapples?

Looking for a trash can.

Link: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=033:57:52&ch=17

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Apollo 13 Moments of Interest / Re: 033:56:11 Recovery team bartering. Beer vs. Pineapples

« Last post by MadDogBV on November 21, 2023, 08:19:26 am »

I found this particular gem because it's just one minute past a much more important historical artifact: confirmation that the IRIG-B time signal encoded on the MOCR tapes is lock-step with the clocks used by the human controllers and support crew. Just a minute before this barter there is an exchange between Houston Recover and Pacific Recovery where Houston clearly counts down the GMT and GET clocks so that Pacific Recovery can adjust their ship clocks to match.

In the attached annotated spectrogram, the speaker speaks the phrase "eight, nine, MARK, 50 seconds". Below each utterance are the time code markers output by the IRIG-B decoder software that we wrote for Apollo In Real Time. The "MARK" phrase lines up perfectly with the GET timestamp "33:53:50" / GMT timestamp "1970-04-14T05:06:50".

https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=033:53:36&ch=33

This is an absolute gem of a find. Thanks for locating this. It really truly drives home how history was made 53 years ago, and how we sometimes take for granted that what we're listening to is just the digital facsimile of the media of that era.