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Post by PhantomWolf on Dec 3, 2006 21:53:36 GMT -4
I came across these two quotes while dealing with my Apollo 12 page. I figure they are excellent demonstrations of the trouble with trying to guess distances from the lunar imagery when the guys actually there found it really hard.
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110:38:50 Bean: Did it really? Just like they say? Look at those boulders out there on the horizon, Pete. Jimmeny! This is a pretty good place. (Look) right over there.
110:39:07 Conrad: Yeah.
[Bean - "The geologists wanted us to get bedrock, if we could. I remember we were supposed to find boulders. And we saw these way out there and we were thinking, 'Boy, we'll go get 'em.' And they turned out to be..."]
[Conrad - (Laughing) "Maybe five miles away!"]
[Bean - "Three miles away or something. We thought they were right over there, didn't we? I thought they were a hundred yards, two hundred yards, maybe. They were shining from that light behind us. They were real white-looking rocks."]
[The boulders in question are probably associated with a 500-meter-diameter crater that is 4.5 kilometers or nearly 3 miles west of them.]
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112:06:59 Conrad: Say, Houston; Intrepid.
112:07:03 Gibson: Intrepid; Houston. Go ahead.
112:07:07 Conrad: We're having a little trouble judging distance. How long is my (LM) shadow?
112:07:13 Gibson: Intrepid, your shadow length on a level surface is 250 feet. (Pause)
112:07:27 Conrad: (Incredulous) You've got to be kidding me! (Long Pause)
112:07:59 Gibson: Intrepid, Houston. We could shorten that a bit to 230. Which way do you think you are?
112:08:07 Conrad: Okay. Well, if my shadow's 230 feet long, we're really misjudging distances.
112:08:16 Gibson: Roger, Pete. Are you short or long?
112:08:21 Conrad: Well, I'd say that my shadow was much shorter than that.
112:08:29 Gibson: Roger. (Pause)
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Post by LunarOrbit on Dec 3, 2006 22:01:46 GMT -4
[Bean - "Three miles away or something. We thought they were right over there, didn't we? I thought they were a hundred yards, two hundred yards, maybe. They were shining from that light behind us. They were real white-looking rocks."] Ah ha! Proof of studio lights!  |
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Post by PhantomWolf on Dec 4, 2006 17:49:46 GMT -4
Interestingly, when an object that they knew well was tossed in, look what happens to the distance estimates.
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115:23:27 Conrad: (Gleeful) Boy, you'll never believe it. Guess what I see sitting on the side of the crater!
115:23:30 Bean: The old Surveyor, right?
115:23:31 Conrad: The old Surveyor. Yes, sir. (Laughing) Does that look neat! It can't be any further than 600 feet from here. How about that?
115:23:43 Gibson: Well planned, Pete.
[Generally, all the astronauts had a difficult time estimating sizes and distances on the Moon. As an example, during the site description at about 112:36, Pete and Al badly underestimated the distance to the large crater on their western horizon. However, in the case of the Surveyor, Pete is dealing with a familiar object. Knowing how big the Surveyor really is, Pete's distance estimate of 600 feet is almost right on. The accompanying photo shows a full-sized Surveyor model, probably sitting on a beach in California. In the site map, the Surveyor is at about N-3,17.8. The grid spacing is 50 meters.]
[Conrad - "You're right. It was a familiar object. We had been around it a lot. And, as I remember, the Surveyor stands about that tall (gesturing)...And, as it turned out, we were, what, 500 feet?"]
[Jones - "535 feet, it says in the mission report. Not bad."]
[Bean - "I'd call it okay."]
[Conrad - "We knew what size it was, because we worked with an exact mock-up - exact, at least, in dimension - maybe three or four times in training. We would practice with it and even cut the appropriate tubing; and then they would replace the tubing and we'd do it over again. I don't think we cut the scoop off, but we practiced with those big bolt cutters. And the big thing was that we had to know what was the right thing to cut because that thing (the actual Surveyor) still had propellant in it and, for all they knew, it was still pressurized and everything. And, again, (as was used in the LM) that was hypergols (fuel components that ignite as soon as they are mixed)."]
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Post by PhantomWolf on Dec 4, 2006 17:53:00 GMT -4
But even knowing the distance of a known object didn't help them entirely to interpert what they were seeing.
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115:23:55 Conrad: Yeah. Just a couple of months (of planning and training) with a lot of people. Let's see. (Reading) "Deploy the LEC and the MESA." That's done. I'm looking at my mobility; c.g. (center-of-gravity) shift. (Moving off camera to the right) I have the decided impression I don't want to move too rapidly, but I can walk quite well. The Surveyor really is sitting on the side of a steep slope, I'll tell you that. Okay. Now I'll work on my contingency sample. (Pause) Got to walk real careful, Al.
[Bean - "But there's one thing we don't say here but we do later. I can remember the first time I looked at it and I thought it was on a slope of about 40 degrees (instead of the actual slope of about 10 degrees). And I remember us talking about it in the cabin, about having to use ropes. How are we going to get down there? How come they screwed up so badly (on the slope estimate)? And I think I was fooled because, on Earth, if something is sunny on one side and very dark on the other, it has to be a tremendous slope. We weren't getting (scattered) light in there like you do on Earth. So when light finally did strike, it was real..."]
[Conrad - "It turned out it was real flat."]
[Bean - "Yeah. But I can remember us talking about ropes and how were we going to get there and what can we do. And there it was, sitting there at 11 degrees like it should be."]
[Conrad - "I guess it was still in the shadow (here at the start of the first EVA). But, by the time we got to the going down into the crater (toward the end of the second EVA), it was no longer in the shadow. Almost 20 hours had gone by."]
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Post by Mr Gorsky on Dec 5, 2006 8:12:52 GMT -4
[Generally, all the astronauts had a difficult time estimating sizes ... That's because they were all men ...  |
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Post by sts60 on Dec 5, 2006 10:15:05 GMT -4
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Post by PhantomWolf on Dec 5, 2006 16:45:10 GMT -4
[Bean, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - "The next thing we did was deploy the solar wind collector. That was pretty straightforward. I moved out a good distance from the LM, unrolled it, deployed it, stuck it in the ground. It went in about, I guess, 10 inches fairly readily and tilted back; it seemed to hold its position fairly well. Then I started trotting back to the LM. I looked back at it. We were caught in the same predicament of not being able to estimate distances. It didn't look like I had gone out 60 feet, so I walked out, picked it up, carried it out another 20 or 30 feet, and stuck it in the ground quite quickly. Then I stood there, looked at it, and said again, 'Well, it looked like 60 feet, but now it doesn't.' So I pulled it out of the ground again, went another 20 feet and stuck it in. I probably got the thing out 200 feet, but we wanted to make sure that we got it far enough away so it wouldn't be affected by any of the LM outgassing or anything like that. The final time I inserted it, I pushed down with all the force I could get and put it in about 12 inches.".]
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