Rene-NASA-Mooned-America

Every Shot — A Hole In One / Chap. 8 p. 71
By what magic could this happen In fact, the next day Houston still couldn't figure out
exactly where the Eagle had landed. "For $64,000, we are still trying to work out the location
of your landing site, Tranquillity Base. We think it is located on LAM-2 chart at Juliet 0.5
and 7.8 ... we are wondering if Neil or Buzz had observed any additional landmarks ... which
would confirm or disprove this." Collins continues, "No wonder I couldn't find the LM;
nobody seems to know where the bugger came down!" 22
Then General S. Phillips, the man who originally made the incriminating notes on North
American Aviation, and who was now head of NASA, issued an edict. He demanded pinpoint
landings from then on despite lunar Mascons (abrupt gravity changes). One of NASA's
navigation experts, Emil Schiesser, then proposed to track the spacecraft's orbit by the
doppler effects created by their radio transmissions as the spacecraft moved. They had all the
Apollo 11 transmissions on tape. He said he could use the minute frequency shifts to
calculate the orbit.
"With this predicted pattern of frequencies in front of us, we can watch what
the actual frequencies are, and calculate the difference. Then we can use the difference
between the predicted and the actual frequencies to decide how far off target we are. It
was Tindall reflected, "astounding " — simple and obvious after you heard it, as
elegant solutions seem always to be.
No matter what the source of navigational errors —mascons, venting of the
spacecraft, changes in trajectory from firing of the R.C.S. thrusters, or an imprecise
burn—Schiesser had given them a way to determine precisely how much they needed
to change the planned course of a descending LEM." 23
This method presupposes that the radio used in tracking has absolute frequency control
down to the millionth of a cycle. Even if they had this astonishingly accurate instrument,
NASA still had no more than range without bearing. Still Schiesser was regarded as a
genius for thinking this up. I was surprised at first that NASA didn't promote him for a
Nobel Prize, but then I learned that NASA was using this rather obvious method before
1963. 24
To further disparage this crowning jewel, self-placed in NASA's navigational crown by
NASA's other experts in the summer of '69, consider one more tidbit. The SATNAV system,
which depended upon doppler changes, had been fully deployed in 1964. 25
With the later missions, Richard Lewis quotes Houston watching the LEM land during
the Apollo 12 landing. "CAPCOM: Intrepid, Houston. You're looking good at 8. [Eight
miles uprange from the landing site.]" 26 In fact, they looked so good that the LEM was
intentionally aimed at the Surveyor 3 lunar probe. Indeed, it parked within 100 meters of the
crater rim that held the old Surveyor. Here's their version of that tale:
"At midnight Houston time, November 18, four days after Yankee Clipper's
encounter with lightning, Emil Schiesser stood behind two Martin contractor personnel
at their consoles in a corner of the first floor of the Control Center, near the computers.
As the LEM Intrepid appeared at the edge of the moon, the screens began to fill with the
tracking data they had been waiting for. The three of them began filling out their cheat
sheets, more formally known as Procedure Sheets—they looked something like tax
forms—copying the numbers from the screen. Then as Conrad and Bean streaked across
the face of the moon under powered descent, the three of them began figuring
NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene