Rene-NASA-Mooned-America

Gotchas ! / Chap. 17 p. 150
exposure they all should have died in space. These men are as radiation resistent as cockroaches.
Gotcha NASA!
GOTCHA # 8
I saved this for last because it is the greatest "Gotcha" of them all. Please recall that I have
sarcastically referred to the Apollo 13 explosion, and the other near disasters that NASA kept
reporting in the chapter titled "No Business Like Showbiz". I have finally pinned the NASA Monarch
butterfly to the board.
In the spring of 1970 our country was preoccupied with "policing" South Vietnam. Each night on
TV the body count of the enemy was reported. This was presumably our scorecard the way we could
determine whether we were winning. By the time our rear guard was being helicoptered from the roof
of our embassy in Saigon the total body count had risen to include the entire population of both North
and South Vietnam. Some of us thought we had been lied to about the numbers. Later we would find
out that the count also included bodies from the CIA's secret war in Laos and Cambodia. How can
there be a secret war without complete collusion of the news media
There was also much domestic strife, including rioting on our college campuses. Poverty was
proliferating as fast as the demonstrations. Even patriotic Americans were beginning to look at Moonwalkers
and ask, "Who cares" The ongoing space opry called the Apollo missions needed to be
spiced up, say, with high drama, danger and suspense. So, enter the Apollo 13 mission with Dick
Lovell, as mission commander; Jack Swigert as orbital housekeeper, and Fred Haise, who was going
along just to gambol on the Moon with Lovell.
At this time I want to interject the sequences of a normal Apollo mission to and from the Moon.
1. Lift off followed by the ejection of the escape tower.
2. The booster's 1st stage shuts down, detaches, and the 2nd stage fires.
3. The 2nd stage shuts down, detaches, and the 3rd stage fires.
4. The 3rd stage shuts down when the craft is in Earth orbit.
5. The 3rd stage fires again to accelerate the craft toward the Moon.
6. The combined command module and the service vehicle, as a unit, detache from the
third stage which holds the LEM in its top section.
7. The combined module then turns around and links nose to nose with the LEM.
8. The large engine in the service vehicle makes up to three, mid-course corrections.
9. The service engine fires again to slow the craft down to allow it to enter and maintain a
lunar orbit.
10. The LEM detaches and uses its lower engine to land on the Moon.
11. The LEM's upper stage detaches, and carries the men back to the command capsule,
leaving the lower stage on the Moon.
12. The upper stage is detached and abandoned in lunar orbit, and the service engine fires
the linked craft toward Earth.
13. The service engine makes mid-course corrections, and then it too is detached from the
command capsule just before re-entry.
NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene