Rene-NASA-Mooned-America

The LEM's Problems / Chap. 11 p. 92
It wasn't the cold of space that made the ejected water turn into ice, it was the fact that
space is an infinite heat sink. As we have seen, the heat from the electronic equipment is
only a very small portion of the heat that had to be removed. The command ship should also
get warmer every minute it spent in the Sun. How much water would the radiators have
consumed to keep the ship cool during these two week trips in the Sun
Collins asked this question in his first book, "What would the temperature be inside the
spacecraft during the constant sunlight on the way to the Moon With the sunny side baking
and the shady side freezing, what would equilibrium conditions there be inside, where the
11 2I
softies lived
I'd like to address a few words directly to Mike Collins. "Mike, after reading your book
three times I think I've earned the right to be informal. Your book was published after the
Apollo 11 segment of the grand ol space opry was aired. Since you don't seem to remember
how it really was, I would like to be helpful and remind you what it was really like. The
advice is free, and I hope you will accept it in the same generous spirit in which it is given.
After all, Mike, NASA may decide to re-activate your commission for the trip to Mars. Star
Fleet Command did it to the fictional, Captain Kirk, and it could happen to you.
Mike, the inside of that ship will be just as hot as it was during the Apollo missions.
And that was damn hot. I advise that next time you go to the Moon that you drink a lot of
water, take a lot of those funny little salt pills and shower frequently. That way you will
avoid the heat exhaustion you must have suffered the last time out.
Next problem. Let us return to May 1973 when a revamped Saturn V rocket carcass
called Skylab was launched. The huge solar collector panels, designed to deploy from both
sides of Skylab like diametrically opposed dorsal fins, failed during their planned extension.
Eventually the hardy souls on board discovered that the micro-meteorite shield was carried
away during launch, and ripped away one huge panel while it pinned down the second. How
one shield (never described) could attack both sides of a ship still puzzles me.
Skylab's orbit was 250 miles high. Just before the 3 hour mark after the launch, "the
environmental systems officer was swamped with information he never expected to see.
Temperatures were all wrong, fluctuating wildly, but for the most part going in just one
direction - up!" 22
This man, a contemporary of Aldrin, Collins and Armstrong, must have believed that
space was cold; so cold that no plans had been made to use the great Joe Shea's thermal roll.
Remember, just a few short years before how Houston Control had made the go-no-go landing
decisions for each of the LEM's as they descended to the Moon Obviously such a
decision was not left to the astronauts presumably flying the machine. NASA accomplished
this miracle of modern telemetry despite a 2.5 second radio transmission loop caused by the
240,000 miles of distance
Well, they must have fired all those old geniuses and hocked that equipment because this
time, with Skylab at a range of 1,000-miles, nothing worked. Baker writes, "Toward the end
of revolution 4 the Honeysuckle tracking antenna picked up attitude changes which took
Skylab away from solar-inertial mode, causing the four ATM arrays to drift off their lock on
the Sun. By the time Hawaii relayed telemetry from Skylab, the cluster had
NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene