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Post by kallewirsch on Jul 27, 2010 4:10:35 GMT -4
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Post by banjomd on Jul 27, 2010 19:34:52 GMT -4
I speculate that air/gas was trapped under the coating and expanded in vacuum; but, then again, I'm just guessing!  |
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Post by ka9q on Jul 28, 2010 14:43:59 GMT -4
I've looked at that picture too. My initial inclination was to see if it could be some sort of reflection or optical illusion, but the bell has a dark, nonreflective surface.
I put a lot of weight on the cosmonauts' report. Eyes that were actually there are a lot more reliable than a single photograph taken at a single instant. I do wish they'd said something at the time, because there was no way of knowing if it would have affected the operation of the SPS.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Jul 28, 2010 17:39:34 GMT -4
I do wish they'd said something at the time, because there was no way of knowing if it would have affected the operation of the SPS. I wonder why they didn't say anything about it? Maybe they thought the docking would be aborted if the Apollo spacecraft was considered unsafe? (Edit: Oops, never mind that, they didn't see it until after the docking.) Or maybe they figured that since there was nothing anyone could do about it anyway telling the astronauts would only scare them. |
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Jul 28, 2010 17:45:21 GMT -4
Does anybody know if the engine had been fired yet at the time of that photograph? Obviously the SPS was used for the deorbit burn, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about ASTP to know what other burns might have been made prior to the photo being taken.
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Post by scooter on Jul 28, 2010 18:39:04 GMT -4
Well, there's an interesting question. I'm not sure what the Saturn 1Bs launch inclination was, but if it was like the ISS inclination (Russia launching from Bakinor), then maybe there was an SPS burn needed in somewhere before the rendezvous. Edit: from the mission report..."The SPS is scheduled to perform five of the six major burns to achieve rendezvous of the CSM/DM with the Salyut in a 300km orbit." So the SPS was used prior to the link up... ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19750067869_1975067869.pdf (look on page 1-19) |
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raven
Jupiter
That ain't Earth, kiddies.
Posts: 509
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Post by raven on Jul 28, 2010 20:48:11 GMT -4
I have a question, why were the Skylab and Apollo Soyuz Test Project command modules white, instead of the aluminzied Mylar coating seen on the other Apollo missions?
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Post by Czero 101 on Jul 28, 2010 21:22:01 GMT -4
I have a question, why were the Skylab and Apollo Soyuz Test Project command modules white, instead of the aluminzied Mylar coating seen on the other Apollo missions? They weren't white, and indeed did have the same mylar coating. This can be seen in the following image:  The CM in the OP's image looks white because it is seen from "below" and is reflecting clouds and the surface of the Earth. Cz |
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Post by scooter on Jul 28, 2010 21:34:04 GMT -4
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Post by echnaton on Jul 28, 2010 21:41:41 GMT -4
Does anybody know if the engine had been fired yet at the time of that photograph? Obviously the SPS was used for the deorbit burn, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about ASTP to know what other burns might have been made prior to the photo being taken. No specific knowledge, but it seems likely that it had been burned. After the extraction of the docking module from the S-IVB, the CSM would have needed to change its orbit to get away from the second stage to reach the final orbit for docking. The SPS engine would have made that burn. |
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Post by scooter on Jul 28, 2010 22:00:35 GMT -4
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Post by gwiz on Jul 29, 2010 5:04:43 GMT -4
Does anybody know if the engine had been fired yet at the time of that photograph? Obviously the SPS was used for the deorbit burn, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about ASTP to know what other burns might have been made prior to the photo being taken. No specific knowledge, but it seems likely that it had been burned. After the extraction of the docking module from the S-IVB, the CSM would have needed to change its orbit to get away from the second stage to reach the final orbit for docking. The SPS engine would have made that burn. I can confirm that the SPS was definitely used for several burns, mostly short, during the rendezvous. |
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Post by ka9q on Jul 29, 2010 21:47:55 GMT -4
If the SPS had failed, wouldn't they have enough delta-V in the SM RCS to deorbit?
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