Re: On July 20.1969.....
From: Henry Spencer (henry_at_spsystems.net)
Date: 07/20/04
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Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 20:11:58 GMT
In article <40fd40fd$0$199$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader03.plus.net>,
Ian Stirling <root@mauve.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>30 seconds of fuel.
>> Not a whole lot of people pay attention to that line. He had
>> less than 30 seconds to find just the right spot to set down
>> on. That's what I call cutting it close.
>
>30 seconds to either land, or abort, not land or crash.
30 seconds is actually quite a long time in such a situation.
And in fact, he had longer than that, because all the maneuvering was
making the fuel slosh, uncovering the low-fuel sensors early.
Moreover, an abort would have involved accelerating upward to gain some
altitude for the staging, so there *was* some fuel left at the point where
a decision was called for. Now officially, if you reached that point and
weren't actually on the ground yet, you were supposed to abort --
otherwise you lost your escape route -- but in practice, most of the
Apollo CDRs would probably have said "don't bother me, I'm busy landing"
and carried on to touchdown.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert | henry@spsystems.net
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