[Chaos-l] Apollo 15 astronaut at Morehead

[MIKE AND BOBI GALLAGHER]

Hi -

Anybody else get to hear Al Worden's presentation last night? Those of us
of vintage years may remember the summer 1971 flight of Apollo 15. As with
the other lunar landings, 3 people went to orbit the moon; 2 landed and
explored, while the remaining fellow orbited the moon. Worden was the
orbiter. Don Wilhelms ("To a Rocky Moon") was very happy with the Apollo 15
team's dedication to science and geology. "Worden was an enthusiastic and
staunch observer from orbit, and he affected the site of a future landing
when he commented on the small, dark cones and patches on the massifs of
the Taurus Mountains on the eastern side of Mare Serenitatis." (p. 263)

A couple of the presentation highlights for me were:
... explanation of the challenge of looking navigating to and fro the moon,
 through an opening with a 10 degree field of view. The astronauts were
trained at Morehead to be able to find the 37 brightest stars as guides.
... using a sextant through the window to measure angles seems nearly
 impossible, but it worked fine.
... Col. Worden's description of how dark it was when in moon blocked off
both the sun and the glow of the Earth. Serious dark side of the moon!
Worden said that the stars were just crazy bright and he could see so m any
of them. Maybe down to mag 7? He could see the moon's surface under star
glow.

Hope I am capturing his points OK. Worden was pretty emphatic about keeping
the manned space program going in the U.S. of A. Oh yeah, he didn't mince
his words about anything :) FUN !!

On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 10:46 PM, Jayme Hanzak <jhanzak at unctv.org> wrote:

> I forgot to mention the time of the meeting. We will be meeting at 6:30
> tomorrow, November 10th.
>
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> Jayme Hanzak
> CHAOS President
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> http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos/
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