The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: Interest Fades
Public and Congressional support for Program Apollo waned after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. My company handed out layoff notices before Apollo 11 splashed down.
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: Apollo 11
There’s nothing quite like having Walter Cronkite narrate live on national TV how well you did your job on Apollo, especially on the day that Neil Armstrong was coming back from the Moon.
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: Briefing The Crew
I was pretty proud of myself by then. Barely three years out of school and here I was teaching the Apollo astronauts how to pilot their spacecraft, for God’s sake. As I was to discover many times over in my career, smugness invites its own reward. This one arrived while I was briefing an Apollo astronaut for an upcoming mission.
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: Flying The Command Module
I always wanted to pilot a spaceship. During Program Apollo, I actually got to! (sort of).
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: The Command Module Training Simulator
The Apollo astronauts had more than a dozen really cool simulators to train them for a flight to the Moon. I had to learn how to fly one.
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: Engineer’s Toolkit
To explain to a generation born after PlayStation how we simulated Apollo reentries in 1968, using Stone Age implements and dragging our knuckles, I’ll need to go into a little detail.
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: Reentry Simulation Programs
Once I’d written a set of FORTRAN programs (yes,. paper and pencil) to model an array of Apollo reentry profiles, I sat down at a punched card machine and typed them in. This device was basically a desk with a built-in typewriter keyboard
IT’S (NOT) ROCKET SCIENCE: Does Science Fiction Matter?
It sure does to me. It’s the reason I worked on Apollo. When President John F. Kennedy gave his “We choose to go to the Moon” speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas in September of 1962, […]
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: Ground Computers
>With limited computer resources onboard Apollo, the real “heavy lifting” had to be done on the ground, in Houston’s Mission Control Center.
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: Apollo Guidance Computer
The first task I was assigned in October of 1968 was to determine exactly how the onboard autopilot was supposed to operate during reentry, and that meant digging through the inner workings of the Apollo Guidance Computer itself.
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: Entry Corridor
Before I could develop a backup plan for the reentry of the Apollo Command Module, I had to get answers to two questions.
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: High-G Roller Coaster
The Apollo Command Module is shaped like an oversized Hershey’s Kiss and entered Earth’s atmosphere broadside first, giving it all the aerodynamics of a misshapen rock.
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: Hand-Held Calculators (Circa 1968)
The first manned landing on the Moon occurred in 1969. The first hand-held calculator didn’t come on the market until 1972. So we got men to the Moon using pencil and paper and a slide rule. Really!
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: Godforsaken Place
In 1968, NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Clear Lake City, Texas was a hot and humid place, built three years earlier on a thousand acres of undeveloped cow pasture 25 miles southeast of downtown Houston, in the middle of nowhere.
The Apollo Program, A Personal Journal: “We Choose To Go To The Moon”
This post has been removed because its content may be incorporated into a forthcoming book by the author. To find more articles by Jack Clemons, go here. Information about Jack’s new book will be […]
IT’S (NOT) ROCKET SCIENCE: The International Space Station
I was watching the TV commercial featuring the Space Shuttle Endeavor the other night – you know, the one where a truck tows the Shuttle through the streets of Los Angeles to its permanent exhibit […]
IT’S (NOT) ROCKET SCIENCE: Distant Habitable Moons
A recent report in Astrobiology raised the possibility of new places to look for extraterrestrial life: on the moons of distant planets. Astronomers have now discovered evidence of well over 3000 extra-solar planets (that is, […]
IT’S (NOT) ROCKET SCIENCE: Junk Food Junkies
This post has been removed because its content may be incorporated into a forthcoming book by the author. To find more articles by Jack Clemons, go here. Information about Jack’s new book will be forthcoming.
It’s (Not) Rocket Science: John Aaron: “SCE to AUX”
INTRODUCTION This is a blog about rockets and science and rocket scientists. I’ve spent my career in this field, working among the people who make some very, very cool things happen there. I’ll discuss cutting […]
Will Little Note, Nor Long Remember by Jack Clemons
The entropy lines of the time-transporter field bowed outward above the receiving platform, distorting the small room into a grotesque, carnival-mirror reflection of itself. The field lines collapsed, sending miniature dust devils dancing over the […]
TOOL DRESSER’S LAW
by Jack Clemons Wildcatter dropped onto Hawking a month ahead of perihelion. We slammed in after losing a brutal tug of war with the singularity that started when we closed to 60 klicks. I was […]
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