1979: How to LAND ON THE MOON | Project Apollo | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

take a look around the Command Module rather small for three men for nearly 10 days isn't it three couches with the one in the middle usually folded away for extra space you flew the spacecraft you sat here in this control how much power do you want and with this one which way do you want to go ahead of you the control panel which way up are you computer engines fuel tanks and up here the warning lights so here you are in your spacecraft but where is here that's the next major problem navigation most of the time the big tracking stations on Earth would work out how long it took a radio signal to get back to them from the spacecraft and use that information to work out whereabouts in Space the Apollo was but in here if anything goes wrong you're on your own and that's where this comes in you see how a gyro stays the same way up whatever else moves now you put three Gyros spinning and sitting still like that like that and like that and they will sense the spacecraft moving around them until the computer and so will three accelerometers that sense thrust like the way you know your head jerks back when a car accelerates now the computer's got a clock so it knows we're going in this direction we're going this fast in this direction and we've been doing it for X hours or minutes and it can use that to work out where the spacecraft is roughly for the really fine detail you use these things a telescope and a seant you point the spacecraft so that through the seant you see say Miami then you ask the computer to find you a particular star and as it's hunting for the star with the telescope it also tilts a little mirror back on the seant at the same time okay here's the star in the telescope Center it up when you go back to the Sextant the Stars also in the Sexton's tilted mirror and because of the Optics it's superimposed on Miami the angle of the seon's little mirror is the angle between the St and Miami put that angle into the computer so you've got this angle do it again to another star and Miami now there are several places in space where You' get those particular angle relationships but since the computer already knows approximately where you are it knows which of those positions you're not at leaving only the one you are at and that's how you get a fix in space looks easy uh-uh one day on the way home after we had gone around the moon and were sort of relaxed I got a little careless and I started to use the program to start navigating and I accidentally put in the wrong program which actually put me back on the Launchpad I lost all reference of our position in space our attitude uh this was not to be in the plan of the flight uh uh they you know we were we wanted to keep everything going this was the very first flight and naturally we didn't want to lose our reference because we could not make that safe entry back home again and so everybody was quite concerned until I manually looked around the sky and found three stars that I recognized since the computer could not tell me any longer what star was which and I then did a manual uh alignment of the platform and from then on we were back in good shape again the next problem to solve was this how the Luna module coming up from the Moon surface would find a Command Module after a 60 M ascent and go through the complex maneuvers of matching position and speed accurately enough to make this last movement which is speeded up on the film with the kind of precision needed to hit the docking Target dead on tell you what we have captured there we go wa were there this is why that's not at all as easy as it looks suppose you're in the Luna module trailing The Command Module at the same speed in the same orbit to cat him up you fire your engine wrong that puts you into a higher orbit than him and higher orbits are slower orbits perversely you should have done exactly the opposite fired your engine as if to go directly away from him that drops you into a lower orbit and lower orbits are faster so you catch up as you arrive alongside the Command Module you are of course below so docking involves a number of very delicate mini Maneuvers many of which are the opposite of what you think you should do although the Luna module computer will take you all the way up to rendevu or all the way down to the surface of the Moon by itself it will only do that if all the switches are in the right position so that it's being told what it needs to know and as you can see there are a lot of switches to get in the right position you can of course fly the LM yourself if you want to using these two controls then the main displays the computer which way up are you how much fuel have you got left and the one everybody wants to see light up very gently that one the lunar contact light as you come in over 500 ft the job is to find somewhere smooth to set down and land on the commander has 2 minutes to do that before he runs out of fuel so he is looking out of the window as if his life depended on it which it does and the Luna module pilot is telling him all he needs to know from that display there which says you're going forward or sideways at a certain number of feet per second and this display here that says you're going up or down at so many feet per second so he's calling out things like 200 ft forward at 8 down at 5 the name of the game of course is to land on the surface of the Moon going forward or sideways at n and downwards at a very small number looks easy but as we watch the landing of Apollo 11 remember what I said about getting the switches in the right position 50 down at 2 and 1/2 19 forward 3 and A2 down 22 ft 13 forward forward coming down nicely 200 ft 4 and2 52 let's just uh stop the landing there for a minute while I tell you about all the other people who were doing it too the people the crew were calling Houston there were about 70 of them and they were split into four shifts their average age was under 30 and this was their office the mission operations control room here's what everybody did gido the guidance and navigation officer remember him you'll be meeting one Foo every spacecraft maneuver was his responsibility retro bringing him back safely to Earth here the flight surgeon here the capsule Communicator the astronaut in constant contact with the crew and over here two sets of Engineers one set watching all the systems on board the Command Module the other watching all the systems on board the Luna module and everybody watching very carefully up here the hot seat the flight director the the boss now while all you and I heard during the mission was the capsule Communicator talking to the crew in here everybody was talking to everybody else on their own internal Communications Network called the flight director's Loop listen to what the landing was like on that got us locked up there tcom okay it's just real weak FL okay how you looking all your systems go that's a firm FL how about you control we look good guidance you [Music] the flight director in charge whose voice you heard there was Jean crunt we came on board about 8:00 in the morning of July 20th and uh it was sort of like you were all set up for a big game uh I think everyone had the sweaty Palms they were sort of nervous we checked in with the other controllers uh to more or less get the status of the overall spacecraft and it looked like uh everything was going great for us and as soon as a spacecraft came over the first thing that uh we noted was that our Communications were very ratty they were poor they they were dropping in and out and it seemed that it took that initial problem to sort of mobilize the team to more or less the frame of mind hey this is just another training exercise we got problems that's what we're training to work on so let's have at it this is the guidance officer I said you'd meet Steve Bales he was monitoring navigation and therefore any navigational involvement on the part of Apollo's computer unfortunately we had started the limb guidance computer off with a navigational error it was approximately 14 M an hour what that means is the guidance computer thinks that it is going toward the moon 14 M hour slower than it really is the only thing that could save the situation was an update from The Landing radar telling the onboard computer that it was wrong the astronauts could do nothing to help radar flight looks good at that point I started to relax a little bit because the worst problem I thought we could ever have in a landing was a navigation problem just 20 seconds after we had started to correct the state Vector error first program alarm occurred 12 122 alarm flight retro go retro down 6 plus on the 122 alarm that means the computer was too overloaded to do everything it was supposed to Bales had 20 seconds if in that time the computer stopped navigating or there was one more alarm he'd have to cancel the landing immediately we're going that flight we're going that alarm Roger we got you we're going reur we'll be go he's taking in do H now R roger3 did you get the Throttle Down Throttle Down were you scared scared absolutely to death but I was not as scared during the alarms as I was but when we started the landing what we had to do is to make sure that if for any reason we would have an accident during the actual Landing phase that we had the information to tell us why the accident occurred so the communications and in fact the Telemetry were extremely important what you're actually saying is that if people died you had to know why we have to know why that is that is absolutely correct okay we still got Landing radar guidance okay is it converged beautiful has it converged yes okay okay all flight controllers going to go for landing retro guidance control Capcom we're go for landing Eagle Houston you're go for landing over rer 121 alarm 121 alarm same type we're go flight same type we're go one of the major problems caused by the five computer emergencies during descent was that the crew were able to look out and see where they were only in the last few minutes so they weren't exactly happy we were uh certainly aware of some of the problems we knew we had a tight fuel budget we didn't know the computer was going to act up on us as it did the alarms had occurred because a Rendevous radar switch had been left on flooding the computer with an overload of data it didn't even need during the landing a switch was in the place that we told the crew to put it we had not been super smart if we' have been super smart in the two or 3 months before the landing and have thought about this circuit and thought about what the possible implications might be then we we' have caught it forward that's 40 ft down two and a half picking up some dust 30 ft 2 and a half down stra Shadow four forward four forward drifting to the right a little 30 seconds 30 second they had 30 seconds of fuel [Applause] left contact light [Applause] okay engine stop AA at a decent control both Auto decent engine command override off engine arm off 43 is in we've had shut down we copy it down Eagle everybody T1 stand by T1 Tranquility base here the eagle has landed Roger TW Tranquility we copy you on the ground you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue we're breathing again thanks a lot the eagle has landed and I could see it here on my console I saw the altitude go to zero I couldn't believe it we trained I said my God we've made it uh Charlie Duke at the time says you've got a bunch of guys down here about to turn blue well Charlie Duke could see me from his console position and I've always thought he was talking about me but I always thought he said blue because Charlie couldn't say he's turned white as a sheet which is the way I had turned I assure you deck Slayton was flight director of flight operations at the time and deck was sitting right next to me as we were in the final stages The Descent well in fact You' been there during the entire descent and uh and we were feeding information back and forth and they got down I think within a couple hundred feet and within a minute to go and they were still whizzing across the surface and uh uh and we were talking and all this information was coming in and I was trying to filter out and finally deck hit me like that and he said shut up so I uh got quiet and we just watched then and uh then they started on in and uh uh and literally I was holding my breath I can remember I personally was and they touched down within 15 seconds of an abort uh situation or maybe 20 I forgotten exactly but it was close and uh at that point uh where the eagle has landed uh and great we I forgot what I said exactly but we got a bunch of guys about to turn blue we're breathing again and I know I really was and it was so tense at that point but the people up in the viewing room and our training areas you could hear him cheering through the glass walls in the room here and that took a few seconds to sink in and then the thing that we had to do is get back to business again because we had to make sure that we were not only down but we hadn't sprung any leaks on any of our propellants so we had to start a countdown to two possible abort times we had to change the computer modes and everyone was was locked up emotionally I remember I was holding on to the in the last minute or so I was holding on to the handle on this TV here and I I just didn't let go and I had to change Communications loops and I couldn't talk and finally I just got so frustrated with myself that I took and hit my hand on the console and it it shocked me back to life and and for days I was bruised from the wrist all the way to the Elbow [Music]

Channel: BBC Archive

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Keywords: bbc, archive bbc, classic tv, british tv nostalgia, bbc archive, archive, the bbc archive, nostalgia, legendary television, retro tv, vintage, past science, classic tech, tech, outdated science, outdated technology, retro tech, science and technology, vintage technology, apollo 11, apollo space program, apollo command module interior, james burke, gene kranz interview, jim lovell interview, charlie duke astronaut, steve bales nasa, moon landing 1969, bbc science documentary

Id: xUeienIBE_Q

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2024