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Author Topic: 116:19:06 Lunney spars with trench over final midcourse time  (Read 1993 times)

Offline MadDogBV

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This is a follow-up to this thread posted earlier by Ben Feist. In the original thread, Lunney had an argument with RETRO Chuck Dieterich and FIDO Dave Reed (nominally the lead RETRO and FIDO on this mission) about having the hatch open or closed during LM SEP. Lunney eventually got his way there since the higher-ups had firmly agreed that the tunnel would be pressurized with the hatch closed, as they had done on Apollo 10.

Here, he returns an hour later to discuss moving the midcourse correction to an earlier time, based upon feedback from John Young (backup CDR) over the re-entry procedures being too crowded -- although this is less a discussion and more a circus tamer fending off angry lions. This time, the flight dynamics branch prevails, but only due to the combined feedback of the other astronaut pilots in the MOCR (off the loop) and Lunney's agnosticism on the issue.

Link: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=116:19:06&ch=50

Edit: As a note of interest, they do eventually succeed at de-crowding the re-entry timeline, but primarily as a result of taking advantage of a newly-developing situation. This is because Maroon FLIGHT Milt Windler makes an executive decision at 133:21:53~ to power up the PGNS three hours early as part of a larger effort to warm the crew up. They were able to do this thanks to the wide water and power margins that they had accumulated for themselves as a result of their brutally marginal power profiles. Because of this, they were able to tweak the re-entry procedures (see 135:45:50) around having the PGNS available early.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2023, 08:24:31 am by MadDogBV »