by neufer » Wed Oct 20, 2021 1:46 pm
https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/blog/snoopy-charlie-brown-and-apollo-10 wrote:
Snoopy, Charlie Brown and Apollo 10
Published on May 16, 2019 by Alaina
<<On May 18, 1969, Apollo 10 astronauts Thomas Stafford, Gene Cernan and John Young launched from (what was then) Cape Kennedy’s Launch Pad 39B. Apollo 10 was a complete “dress rehearsal” Moon landing, without actually making contact with the lunar surface. It was an important mission as Apollo 11 would not be ready to land on the Moon as planned without Apollo 10’s run-through.
NASA began collaborating with Charles Schulz in the 1960s. As a popular household character, Snoopy became the mascot for NASA’s spaceflight safety initiative. Schulz created comic strips of Snoopy on the Moon, helping to inspire excitement about America’s space program. These beloved characters became the mascots of Apollo 10.
The command module was named Charlie Brown and the lunar module was named Snoopy. Because the lunar module was set to skim over the surface of the Moon, it was named Snoopy because it was going to “snoop” around Apollo 11’s future landing site. Therefore, it was also fitting that the command module be named Charlie Brown, Snoopy’s companion. When the lunar module rendezvoused with the command module after surveying the Moon’s surface, astronaut Thomas Stafford said, "Snoopy and Charlie Brown are hugging each other."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_10 wrote:
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
<<Apollo 10 (May 18 – 26, 1969) was a human spaceflight, the fourth crewed mission in the United States Apollo program, and the second (after Apollo 8) to orbit the Moon. It was the F mission: a "dress rehearsal" for the first Moon landing, testing all the components and procedures just short of actually landing. While astronaut John Young remained in the Command Module (Charlie Brown) orbiting the Moon, astronauts Thomas Stafford and Gene Cernan flew the Apollo Lunar Module (Snoopy) to a descent orbit within 15.6 km of the lunar surface, the point where powered descent for landing would begin. After orbiting the Moon 31 times, Apollo 10 returned safely to Earth, and its success enabled the first actual landing (Apollo 11) two months later.
Apollo 10 set the record for the highest speed attained by a crewed vehicle: 11.08 km/s on May 26, 1969, during the return from the Moon. The Apollo 10 crew are the humans who have traveled the farthest away from their (Houston) homes, at a distance of 408,950 kilometers. While most Apollo missions orbited the Moon at the same 111 kilometers from the lunar surface, the distance between the Earth and Moon varies by about 43,000 kilometers, between perigee and apogee, throughout each lunar month, and the Earth's rotation makes the distance to Houston vary by at most another 11,000 kilometers each day. The Apollo 10 crew reached the farthest point in their orbit around the far side of the Moon at about the same time Earth's rotation put Houston nearly a full Earth diameter farther away.
This dress rehearsal for a Moon landing brought the Apollo Lunar Module to 15.6 km from the lunar surface, at the point where powered descent would begin on the actual landing. Practicing this approach orbit would refine knowledge of the lunar gravitational field needed to calibrate the powered descent guidance system to within 1 nautical mile needed for a landing. Earth-based observations, uncrewed spacecraft, and Apollo 8 had respectively allowed calibration to within 200 nautical miles, 20 nautical miles (37 km), and 5 nautical miles. Except for this final stretch, the mission was designed to duplicate how a landing would have gone, both in space and for ground control, putting NASA's flight controllers and extensive tracking and control network through a rehearsal.
The ascent stage was loaded with the amount of fuel and oxidizer it would have had remaining if it had lifted off from the surface and reached the altitude at which the Apollo 10 ascent stage fired; this was only about half the total amount required for lift off and rendezvous with the CSM. The mission-loaded LM weighed 13,941 kg, compared to 15,095 kg for the Apollo 11 LM which made the first landing. Craig Nelson wrote in his book Rocket Men that NASA took special precaution to ensure Stafford and Cernan would not attempt to make the first landing. Nelson quoted Cernan as saying "A lot of people thought about the kind of people we were: 'Don't give those guys an opportunity to land, 'cause they might!' So the ascent module, the part we lifted off the lunar surface with, was short-fueled. The fuel tanks weren't full. So had we literally tried to land on the Moon, we couldn't have gotten off.">>
[quote=https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/blog/snoopy-charlie-brown-and-apollo-10]
[c][color=#0000FF][size=150]Snoopy, Charlie Brown and Apollo 10[/size][/color]
Published on May 16, 2019 by Alaina[/c]
<<On May 18, 1969, Apollo 10 astronauts Thomas Stafford, Gene Cernan and John Young launched from (what was then) Cape Kennedy’s Launch Pad 39B. Apollo 10 was a complete “dress rehearsal” Moon landing, without actually making contact with the lunar surface. It was an important mission as Apollo 11 would not be ready to land on the Moon as planned without Apollo 10’s run-through.
NASA began collaborating with Charles Schulz in the 1960s. As a popular household character, Snoopy became the mascot for NASA’s spaceflight safety initiative. Schulz created comic strips of Snoopy on the Moon, helping to inspire excitement about America’s space program. These beloved characters became the mascots of Apollo 10.
[b][color=#0000FF]The command module was named Charlie Brown and the lunar module was named Snoopy[/color]. Because the lunar module was set to skim over the surface of the Moon, it was named Snoopy because it was going to “snoop” around Apollo 11’s future landing site. Therefore, it was also fitting that the command module be named Charlie Brown, Snoopy’s companion. When the lunar module rendezvoused with the command module after surveying the Moon’s surface, astronaut Thomas Stafford said, "[i][color=#0000FF]Snoopy and Charlie Brown are hugging each other.[/color][/i]"[/b][/quote][quote=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_10]
[float=left][img3="Command module: Charlie Brown (not Snoopy???)"]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Apollo_CSM_lunar_orbit.jpg[/img3][img3="Lunar module: Snoopy (not Charlie Brown???)...Good Grief!!!"]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Apollo16LM.jpg[/img3][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Cryq9TAKg[/youtube][/float]<<Apollo 10 (May 18 – 26, 1969) was a human spaceflight, the fourth crewed mission in the United States Apollo program, and the second (after Apollo 8) to orbit the Moon. It was the F mission: a "dress rehearsal" for the first Moon landing, testing all the components and procedures just short of actually landing. While astronaut John Young remained in the Command Module (Charlie Brown) orbiting the Moon, astronauts Thomas Stafford and Gene Cernan flew the Apollo Lunar Module (Snoopy) to a descent orbit within 15.6 km of the lunar surface, the point where powered descent for landing would begin. After orbiting the Moon 31 times, Apollo 10 returned safely to Earth, and its success enabled the first actual landing (Apollo 11) two months later.
Apollo 10 set the record for the highest speed attained by a crewed vehicle: 11.08 km/s on May 26, 1969, during the return from the Moon. The Apollo 10 crew are the humans who have traveled the farthest away from their (Houston) homes, at a distance of 408,950 kilometers. While most Apollo missions orbited the Moon at the same 111 kilometers from the lunar surface, the distance between the Earth and Moon varies by about 43,000 kilometers, between perigee and apogee, throughout each lunar month, and the Earth's rotation makes the distance to Houston vary by at most another 11,000 kilometers each day. The Apollo 10 crew reached the farthest point in their orbit around the far side of the Moon at about the same time Earth's rotation put Houston nearly a full Earth diameter farther away.
This dress rehearsal for a Moon landing brought the Apollo Lunar Module to 15.6 km from the lunar surface, at the point where powered descent would begin on the actual landing. Practicing this approach orbit would refine knowledge of the lunar gravitational field needed to calibrate the powered descent guidance system to within 1 nautical mile needed for a landing. Earth-based observations, uncrewed spacecraft, and Apollo 8 had respectively allowed calibration to within 200 nautical miles, 20 nautical miles (37 km), and 5 nautical miles. Except for this final stretch, the mission was designed to duplicate how a landing would have gone, both in space and for ground control, putting NASA's flight controllers and extensive tracking and control network through a rehearsal.
[b]The ascent stage was loaded with the amount of fuel and oxidizer it would have had remaining if it had lifted off from the surface and reached the altitude at which the Apollo 10 ascent stage fired; [u]this was only about half the total amount required for lift off and rendezvous with the CSM[/u]. The mission-loaded LM weighed 13,941 kg, compared to 15,095 kg for the Apollo 11 LM which made the first landing. Craig Nelson wrote in his book Rocket Men that NASA took special precaution to ensure Stafford and Cernan would not attempt to make the first landing. Nelson quoted Cernan as saying "[i][color=#0000FF]A lot of people thought about the kind of people we were: 'Don't give those guys an opportunity to land, 'cause they might!' So the ascent module, the part we lifted off the lunar surface with, was short-fueled. The fuel tanks weren't full. So had we literally tried to land on the Moon, we couldn't have gotten off.[/color][/i]"[/b]>>[/quote]