[Chaos-l] Apollo 15 astronaut at Morehead

[Allen Davis]

I wish I could have gotten up there to see it.  Sounds really fascinating.

 

I truly credit the Apollo program for making me a lifelong "astronomy and
science geek" and I know it was great.  allen

 

From: chaos-l-bounces at rtpnet.org [mailto:chaos-l-bounces at rtpnet.org] On
Behalf Of MIKE AND BOBI GALLAGHER
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2011 9:05 PM
To: Jayme Hanzak
Cc: CHAOS
Subject: [Chaos-l] Apollo 15 astronaut at Morehead

 

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.

 

 

Jayme Hanzak
CHAOS President

CHAOS 
P.O. Box 3001
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-0842
http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos/


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