Talk:AS-202

No such thing as Apollo 3

No citation has ever been given for the allegation that AS-203 was "sometimes informally called Apollo 2" or that AS-202 was "sometimes informally called Apollo 3". I think we are contributing to the perpetuation of an urban myth, and also jeapordizing the credibility of Wikipedia. I just Googled "Apollo 2", which turned up us, some confusion with SA-2, and a lot of confused kids with school assignments on Yahoo Answers, plus some who thought they knew the answers based on us. But one referenced the only official NASA statement I could find, a history.nasa.gov page, "Manned Apollo Missions" [1].

It says that the first two unmanned CSM flights, AS-201 and AS-202, had been unoffically called Apollo 1 and Apollo 2 (this must have been at the time they were launched, before the ill-fated first manned flight (AS-204) became Apollo 1.) It makes no sense to call AS-203 "Apollo - anything" because it carried no Apollo spacecraft at all (as the NASA page points out); its payload was the S-IVB stage for the purpose of verifying the design assumptions being made for the Saturn V third stage. There is also a quite explicit statement: "no missions or flights were ever designated Apollo 2 and 3".

I will wait about a week to see if anyone can provide an authoritative source for this, before removing this here and in AS-203. There is also a dubious, unsourced paragraph in Apollo 1 that should be removed. Wikilinks should only be to the real AS-202 and AS-203 names, and the redirects should be blanked, if not deleted. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:57, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Update: I've since changed Apollo 2 and Apollo 3 from redirects to disambiguation pages. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:57, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I've also found a more in-depth source. Following is ranscluded from User talk:Rillian:

Numbering of Apollo missions

The most authoritative sources, NASA history, document how the policy was established for renaming the early missions. The Apollo Spacecraft: a Chronology, Vol. IV part 1<[2] gives the process George Mueller gave to number all the missions, honoring the Apollo 1 widows' wish while minimizing contradiction and confusion. George Low sent him two alternate suggestions, both of which he rejected. Using Apollo 2 and Apollo 3 appears to be based on one of these, but you're even getting that reversed.

"In a letter to George E. Mueller, OMSF, on March 30, MSC Deputy Director George M. Low offered two suggestions, in keeping with the intent of the NASA instruction yet keeping the designation Apollo 1 for spacecraft 012. NASA Hq. had approved that designation before the January 27 fire claimed the lives of Astronauts Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chaffee; and their widows requested that the designation be retained. The suggestions were:

[The first one was rejected out of hand; considering AS-201, 202 and 203 to be extensions of the Saturn I flights and resuming the numbering of what was Apollo 4 as Apollo 2, etc.]

2. Designate the next flight Apollo 4, as indicated by Headquarters, but apply the scheme somewhat differently for missions already flown. Specifically, put the Apollo 1 designation on spacecraft 012 and then, for historic purposes, designate 201 as mission 1-a, 202 as mission 2 and 203 as mission 3."

So note that AS-202 would have been Apollo 2, not 3, and vice-versa. The fact that 202 wasn't ready in time, and thus was launched after 203, just adds more confusion. (Also, it wouldn't make much sense to call AS-203 Apollo anything, since it didn't carry a spacecraft. But that's admittedly OR.) But moot, anyway; Mueller's final ruling:

"A memorandum to the NASA space flight Centers, North American Aviation, and certain Headquarters personnel from the NASA Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs on April 3 stated that the Project Designation Committee had approved the Office of Manned Space Flight's recommendations and that Mueller had begun implementation of the designations.

On April 24, OMSF further instructed the Centers that AS-204 would be officially recorded as Apollo 1, "first manned Apollo Saturn flight - failed on ground test." AS-201, AS-202, and AS-203 would not be renumbered in the "Apollo" series [emphasis added], and the next mission would be Apollo 4."

Even a New York Times reporter (John Noble Wilford who is normally a reliable 1960s-70s space source, can occasionally get it wrong. In We Reach the Moon he refers in a footnote to the first three flights being renumbered Apollo 1, 2, and 3 (with no mention of how that contradicts the widows' wishes) and generally indexes the fire as AS 204, though he does mention the astronauts named it Apollo 1.

Plus, does universe.com really qualify as a reliable source? Its privacy policy says it is exclusively the work of one Frasier Cain, but it seems to be another wiki (the "Apollo 3" article is by a Jerry Coffey.) I can't find any source citations (wait a minute; here we are: "There is a great article on the Apollo 3 mission here." That would be a circular reference.) I've seen some editors express skepticism about Encyclopedia Astronautica, but that looks more scholarly than this site appears to be; at least Mark Wade provides references.

I have done some Google searching for references to "Apollo 2" or "Apollo 3", and haven't found anything reliable. I've found mirrors of Wikipedia, or people who cite Wikipedia, or fan- or student-level sites. I even found a complete absurdity: a "picture of Apollo 2" which was a Saturn V on its pad! (Explain that?)

I don't think Wikipedia should contribute to spreading more misinformation than it already has. If we want to mention the alternative Apollo 1A/2/3 plan, fine, but I don't think we should identify any particular mission as 2 or 3, since that never officially happened. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Non-existent mission insignia

The Apollo insignia applies to the program as a whole. It isn't appropriate to use a program insignia in place for missions that don't have one (usually unmanned). JustinTime55 (talk) 17:11, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Recovered memory modules

I'm not sure if this has or will become notable enough to merit mention, but an interesting development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WquhaobDqLU 76.10.128.192 (talk) 11:57, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

and More information: Thanks!!

http://www.gadget.co.za/the-hacker-the-scrapheap-and-the-first-apollo-computer/#comment-1751

"The hacker, the scrapheap, and the first Apollo computer August 31st, 2016 A Tshwane computer engineer has tracked down one of the great treasures of the computer age – the first space flight guidance computer. ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK tells the story." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.200.43.96 (talk) 07:58, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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Technical details =

This rocket stage was a cluster made out of 8 Redstone + 1 central Jupiter. it used 8 engines: https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/make-rockets/9781457186370/ch18.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.177.32.154 (talk) 14:40, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Power LA for a minute

This doesn't compute mathematically. In 1966, the LA population was about 2.5 million. A reasonable assumption of constant power consumption of 1 kW/person (i.e., LA needing about 2.5 GW of electricity at the time) yields 150,000 MJ of electrical energy in 1 minute. At 260 MJ/m^2 reentry heating mentioned in the text, and ignoring the pesky details of converting thermal energy into electricity (i.e., assuming 100% conversion efficiency, which may be approachable at such high temperatures) yields the thermal shield area of some 576 m^2, clearly too big by an order of magnitude at least. Maybe I was off by that LA estimate, so let's say the consumption was 1/4 of what I stated, i.e., 250 W/person at the time, that would still give us the shield area that is way too big. From what I found, the capsule diameter was 3.9 m, so that's roughly 12 m^2 of area for the shield, maybe a little more as it maybe covers a little of the sides, but it's a far cry from at least a hundred, maybe several hundred m^2 that we need. Unless the 260 MJ/m^2 includes not just the thermal shield on the bottom, but also the sides of the spacecraft (in that case the total area may be a bit below 150 m^2), but that wouldn't make sense, the sides would melt under that load. 156.68.16.15 (talk) 23:41, 2 August 2024 (UTC)