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"From the Earth to The Moon" an Orbiter 2006 AMSO Apollo 11 Full Mission Tutorial
"From the Earth to The Moon" an Orbiter 2006 P1 AMSO 1.17 Apollo 11 Full Mission Tutorial Using IMFD 5.1h
by Adam RodrigueZ (polaris149Tiberius)
Revision 1.03 03-11-2016 at 11:56 AM PST(GMT-8)
FORWARD:
This tutorial will teach you how to use Orbiter 2006 P1 with the AMSO and IMFD add-ons to launch, fly, and
complete what President Kennedy described as "...the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure in which
man has ever embarked". The Apollo 11 Mission is an historic flight as it culminates the knowledge and hard work
of a very large team of scientists, engineers, and even right down to the guy sweeping the floor who were all
honored to be a part of this single endeavour.
If you are new to Orbiter, no need to worry. This tutorial is basic enough that it can show even the newest Orbinaut
how to get to the Moon and back safely. This tutorial endeavours to show you how to fly Apollo 11 from lift-off to
splashdown by the numbers. “By the numbers” means that I will be using conventional Orbiter add-ons
and maneuvers to accomplish the same velocities, altitudes, dVs, Ground Elapsed Times, and other aspects that will
recreate the historic Apollo 11 flight as close to the actual Apollo 11 Timeline. as is possible with AMSO. This is done
in order to give the pilot a realistic experience by changing a few things in the IMFD and a few times and burns
listed in already available Apollo 11 tutorials.
When you have arrived at the Moon and have begun your descent to the surface of the Moon, it will give you a
landing time very close to when the real LM "The Eagle" landed safely on July 20, 1969 at 20:17:41 GMT time. It
will also be a realistic re-creation and completion of the return flight to Earth and provides a safe re-entry and water
landing located very close to the exact location where the crew was recovered in the Pacific Ocean, and at nearly
the same time as when the real Command Module was recovered.
It took some good reading, a lot of testing, and with some help from Jarmo Nikkanen (author of IMFD), and others,
as well as already existing tutorials such as the AMSO tutorials to create this product which you see here now. The
procedures in this tutorial are easy enough to follow that you will feel like Jim Lovell, who said in the movie
Apollo 13, "Going to the moon isn't a miracle,... we just decided to go". Godspeed and happy hunting!!
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
You won’t find any swords or machine guns or Elves or magic eagles (accept the LEM) to ride on in this computer
program. It isn't a game. It’s a simulator of the planets of our solar system. It simulates the correct mass and
atmospheric density of those planets as far as science knows and places you in the cockpit of a vessel which can
take you to the stars. The rockets and ships and models in this simulator have realistic aerodynamic characteristics
that react to those atmospheres and orbital mechanics in a realistic and somewhat predictable way. All you have to
do is know the reasons why things go where they go in this Sim and prediction is inevitable. Your "high score" is
to complete your mission without crashing.
I have personally enjoyed making this tutorial but don’t get the impression that it wasn’t somewhat a laborious
effort. I enjoyed learning from other’s writings and therefore enjoy sharing the little knowledge I have gained. This
tutorial is the product of that line of thinking and the labor of sharing knowledge so pass the info on to others if
you have it. I hope you enjoy it and if you complete the mission of furthering exploration and the body of science
then you may attain the grande title of “Steely Eyed Missile Man”.
-Adam
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Note: This tutorial's text is designed to fit in the dimensions of a letter sized page with 1" margins with carriage returns built into the text that fits the
line above.
CAUTION: This is an "Alpha" release tutorial, many techniques and procedures have yet to be fully tested and there is no
guarantee that you will learn anything, or that said procedures will function as advertised. Learn at your own risk. I cannot
be held legally responsible if you become an Orbinaught or a geek from reading this.
REQUIREMENTS:
This tutorial was created and tested with the Orbiter build and add-ons listed below and installed in the
order shown here which had no conflicts:
MISSION:
In order to understand the goals of this simulator tutorial, I believe it is important to know what NASA's
mission goals were at the time of Apollo 11. Here is a minimal list of NASA's historic mission brief goals that
Apollo 11 mission was required to fulfill:
FLIGHT BRIEFING:
The AMSO Orbiter add-on is not an exact historical replica simulation of the Apollo vessels and their flight
characteristics. But it is one of the very best you will find in the world. For our purposes it has a very good launch Auto
Pilot (AP), which gets you into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), but then you must use some external MFDs to calculate your
TLI and the rest of the flight to the Moon. Once there, there are more APs to help you land on the Moon and
rendezvous back with the CSM to get home. You will need these tools if you want to do anything more than just
orbit the Earth.
Our mission to the Moon and back will include:
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TUTORIAL APOLLO 11 START:
Things you will need to know about:
You will need to open Orbiter and configure it for some settings that you may not normally set so I will have you to
make some small changes to Orbiter that will allow for a more realistic experience.
In the Orbiter Launch pad -PARAMETERS tab make sure you have these settings:
1. Complex flight model -MUST be checked.
2. Damage & failure simulation: -Optional but not recommended for beginners.
3. Limited fuel -MUST be checked.
4. Gravity-gradient torque: -Earth orbit injection autopilot trajectory precision is affected if this option is on. So it is
better to turn it off. Note that if you set it on, the autopilot will still be able to build orbit but not in the most optimum
way.
5. Particle stream: -OPTIONAL but you will miss all the best visual parts if unchecked.
(Note: Vessel shadows, object shadows, specular reflections, particle streams and the reentry flames are all
recommended for viewing AMSO in all it's glory and should not cause your video card any problems as long as
you use a 128Mb or higher video card.)
6. Ambient light level: -In the range 15 to 30.
7. (While your here: I like a star count of about 7000 -14,000 any more than that fries my 286's video card.
Preflight Steps -Open Your Orbiter Simulator and Suit Up for Flight
Step 1. Open your Orbiter Simulator and in the SCENARIO tab double click on the AMSO folder.
Step 2. Double click on the ALL MISSIONS LIFT OFF folder and select this scenario for use with this
tutorial:
"Apollo 11"
Launch Apollo-11 mission from Launch complex 39A. Date 16 July 1969, launch time: 13:32 UT, azimut: 72.058
degrees.
You are 5 minutes 30 seconds before launch time.
At precisely minus 5 minutes, press
"J" action key to retract launch tower arms. Attention, from this point, if you press "J" action key at any time, you
will abort the flight...
(This tutorial begins with this scenario and should be flown using either this scenario in AMSO folder or the first
scenario listed in the AS-506 folder. They are both the same scenario)
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Part 1 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Liftoff and Earth Orbit Insertion (EOI)
This part is simple but for those of you that do not know the AMSO launch process this section is here for you to complete a nominal Auto Piloted (AP) Earth Orbit Insertion (EOI) in to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Earth orbit was achieved around Ground Elapsed Time (GET) 000:11:44.00. Apollo 11 was then cleared for LEO at around GET 000:12:15.00. With this tutorial section you will achieve a very similar orbit to the historical orbit altitudes (alt), inclination (Inc), and cutoff time.
Step 1. PRESS "J" to retract the tower.
Step 2. Wait until UT 13:31:50 to PRESS "K" for Launch Sequence.
This starts the count down to launch and there is no going back after this. If your launch fails for any reason or the AP in the bottom left corner disappears after lift off you may hit the "J" key to abort up until the time the tower jet fires. After that the recovery of your crew may not be guaranteed.
BE ADVISED!! DO NOT press any flight controls during lift-off (ground zero), launch, or Earth Orbit Insertion program. No buttons can be pressed that change your ship's movement when the AP is doing the launch or it will disable the AP without warning.(View from external views and glass cockpit or virtual 3D cockpit are my favorites).
AT: GET 000:00:00.00 Clock is ticking and Apollo 11 is GO for launch. All engines should be GO at ground zero.
(Soon, I will detail the specifics of Apollo 11's EOI launch program's flight altitudes, burn vectors, and pitch,roll, and yaw attitude information as a function of time for doing a manual launch).
Step 3. Sit back and watch your very nominal AMSO Auto Pilot (AP) launch into space which will occur for the next 12 minutes 15 seconds or so.
(Note: You should see an "AP" in the bottom left corner of your screen from AMSO's Autopilot the entire time of your launch up to Single Engine Cut Off or "SECO".)
This launch gets you and your crew into an almost perfectly circular LEO automatically at around a 187.5 X 188.1 km orbit. Your flight azimuth from the roll program starts at 72.058°. More detail from Align Plane MFD will show a final orbital Inclination (Inc) of 9.00* at cutoff and a LAN of 353.44*. Orbit MFD will show that your orbital period is around 5.286k seconds indicated by the letter tango"T". This means that every 01:28:06 (1 hour, 28 minutes, 6 seconds) you should complete 1 orbit around the earth. Handy knowledge if you plan to follow Columbia's TLI at 1.5 orbits like they did in 1969.
Step 4. When the AMSO AP finishes your insertion into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) you will hear the Single Engine Cut Off (SECO). Then you will receive the "go for orbit" radio communication on Channel 1 from Houston.
You should be located to the east of Florida. You will need to pass up Florida 1 more time and then wait until you begin to approach Austrailia also for the second time. At this time you may follow the TLI preperations proceedure below. (At GET 001:52:52.00 or so you pass Moon Plane Cross Range 0.0. This is 1 complete orbit.)
A. Using GET for TLI Preperations
Step 5. IF not already set, set your Left Multi Function Display (LMFD) to Orbiter's Map Default Program MFD.
You may want to select the target button (TGT) as being "AS-506" to select your own ship as the target vessel. Now you must watch your orbits until you have gone around the Earth at least 1.25 times.
This works out to about GET 002:21:00.00 or so. If you use Time Warp you will need to slow Time Warp down to 1X at this GET in order to go to the next step. If you are about to pass over Austrailia and your GET is around the GET listed above, then you are ready for the next phase: Part 2 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Trans Lunar Insertion (TLI).
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Part 2 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Trans Lunar Insertion (TLI)
GET 002:21:00.00 is about 1.25 orbits from the time you are Go for orbit. You will now begin preperations for a Trans-Lunar Insertion(TLI) Burn. This is going to require the use of the powerful and very accurate IMFD. You should be about to approach the western coast of Austrailia so ready or not your going to the moon.
A. Set up IMFD to be more realistic for 1969
Step 1. Open IMFD in the Left Multifunction Display (LMFD) (pressing select, then “Interplanetary”).
Step 2. Press MNU to access the IMFD’s menu.
Step 3. Press MOD to modify the configuration.
(Here we are going to set the parameters for making IMFD use Apollo-like attitude correction which is more like a "point and shoot" configuration. The next few steps (Step 4 and 5) are optional but mandatory if you wish to continue with this tutorial.
Step 4. Set LambertAP mode to Apollo P30.
(Next step sets IMFD to do a more realistic Apollo-like burn as the real Apollo burns were done. The throttle-down of the main engines were cut offs to a thousandths of a second and this setting makes IMFD cutoff with the same accuracy).
Step 5. Set AB Throttle down to 0.00 using the “Set” button (<) and entering “0”.
(Note: Make sure to enter 0 here and then press the keyboard Enter not the Numpad Enter because if you do you will ignite your thrusters and this would be very bad)
Step 6. When these steps are done press MNU.
B. Select the Moon as the Target Object for Interplanetary Flight
Step 7. Open Course program.
Step 8. Select Target Intercept. Press Set, then TGT.
Step 9. Enter “Moon”
Step 10. In the Right MFD (RMFD), open IMFD("Interplanetary").
Step 11. Press MNU ("-")
Step 12. Share the two IMFDs by pressing “PG” then entering “0” for the ID of the LMFD-IMFD
(You can see the ID of the IMFD in the top right hand corner in the MNU)
C. Set up IMFD Map to Show More Accuracy
Step 13. Select Map.
Step 14. Press "PRJ" to set the projection to self from Equator.
Step 15. Press "MOD" three times to get into the IMFD's Map Program Configuration window.
Step 16. Set the accuracy to 1.00 by pressing "Nxt"
(Note: If you crash to the desktop or Save your scenario and come back to finish, you must set this again).
Step 17. Press "MOD" to see the new configured IMFD Map view.
Step 18. Press "Dsp"
Step 19. Press "PG" then "Plan" and "Soi" and "Int" then "Find"
Step 20. Zoom into planet Earth (press "PG" then "Z+" to zoom in) so that you can see yourself orbiting the Earth.
D. Set up RMFD IMFD -Map to Show The Lunar Intercept Point
Step 21. Press "Sel" to select the "Ref" to "Moon (weak)" in RMFD.
Step 22. Press "Cnt" to open the center dialoge box.
Step 23. Enter "p-moon" to center on the moon's PeriCynthion (PC)
(Note: the RMFD might still show the orbit around earth or a short ejection vector or maybe focus on the moon where it is now. This is ok. Dont worry as soon as you set the target and the correct parameters for the correct interception in the LMFD, you should be able to see the moon where it will be at its PC).
E. Set up the IMFD Navagation Computer to Calculate a Free-Return Lunar Interctption
(Note: if you already did steps 7, 8, and 9 from section B above, then you can skip to Step 26 below).
Step 24. You should have the LMFD, already set to Course Program. If not select it now.
Step 25. If you dont already have the moon selected as the target, select "Tgt" and enter "Moon" in the dialoge box now.
Step 26. Set the LMFD's Operation modes to: "Vel. Frame" by pressing MOD until you see "Operation Modes:" in the top left under the "Target Intercept" Program name. Pressing "MOD" will make it possible to navigate between the 2 main pages. You can then use "Nxt", "Prev", "Set", "(+)", and "(-)" buttons to change the default Operation Modes: from "Offset Disabled" to "Vel. Frame" Do this now.
Step 27. Set the default ammounts for a Free-Return" flight by pressing setting these ammounts: (You will use the "Set" button for entering these ammounts)
Lon: 4.00
Lat : 4.00
Rad: 8.00M
(Note: Make sure you set the Rad to 8M at this point. If you do not you may see some crazy plan going no where near the moon)
F. Begin Course Program Calculations for Trans Lunar Insertion Burn
Step 28. Step to the next page using the "PG" button.
Step 29. Set the GET under "Intercept" to 75:54:28 which gives a TIn of about 265.3K
Step 30. Set the "Realtime" to "Off-Axis"
Step 31. Set the "TEj" to an amount that makes the Entroute "Tot" the lowest it can be.
(Note: Usually IMFD 5.1d Dec 16 2007 will set the TEj well after a time that is economically efficient so you will most likely be setting an earlier time than the default suggested time of ejection. Also, if you minus the TEj enough the "Tot" amount will begin to go back up, go back to the lower amount. My Tot was as low as 4.353K before fine tunning the PeA info for the TLI.
When you set these amounts in the LMFD you should begin to see the RMFD's Map show the moon's PC ("moon-pe") at the center and then you should see the base listed as "Tranquillity")
Step 32. Step up or step down the Rad in the LMFD to make the PeA in the RMFD to show 80.0 km.
From AMSO's "FreeReturn.doc":
In the Earth-Moon system free-return trajectory requires a transfer time higher than 240k. (Typical = 250k-290k) Shorter transfer time would mean that the vessel will approach the moon with higher orbital velocity and in that case it must pass the lunar surface from closer distance in order to get into a proper earth return.
If the transfer time is longer the vessel will have a lower orbital velocity and it must pass the lunar surface from greater distance.
The transfer time to target point in other words Time Of Flight (TOF) = TIn - TEj
Step 33. Step up or down the "Lat" in the LMFD to make the "EqI" in the RMFD as close to 180.00 as possible.
(Note: for Apollo 11 this amount wont go very much higher than 175.00. I was able to get an EqI of 176.47*).
Step 34. Step down to the Rad in the LMFD again to adjust the PeA in RMFD Map back down to 80.0k.
F. Fine tune your Course Program for TLI
For the next few steps it will depend grately what the RMFD Map shows. You may need to do the following steps several times to get the amounts to be correct and the computer will take about 1 second to calculate its amounts after pressing your button so be patient with this next part.
Step 35A. Set the Adjustment amount to x10 by pressing the "Adj" button.
Step 35B. IF the GET in RMFD Map shows a GET HIGHER than 75:54:28 step UP the "Lon" 1 step ONLY (at x10).
Step 35C. IF the GET in RMFD Map shows a GET LOWER than 75:54:28 step DOWN the "Lon" 1 step ONLY (at x10).
Step 35D. Set your Adj amount back down to x1.
Step 35E. Step UP or DOWN your Rad to adjust your PeA in RMFD Map to be 80.0 Km again or as close as you can get to it.
Step 35F. Check your GET in RMFD Map. If it is NOT within a few seconds of GET 75:54:28, then redo Steps 35 A - F until your GET is 75:54:28 (+/- a few seconds) and your PeA is around 80.0 Km (+/- 0.5 Km).
(Note: If you are unable to get close to the correct PeA and GET time, try using an Adj amount of x1 for both parameters. This will allow you to further fine tune them to acceptable amounts. You must get the GET down to +/- 5 seconds within 75:54:28 and your PeA should be around 80.0 km (+/- 0.5 Km) in order to do your TLI burn.)
When the above process is finished, you will have met the same flight parameters for a free-return trajectory as the actual Apollo 11 flight go to the next step.
G. Set your IMFD Auto Pilot to Fire Main Engines for Trans Lunar Ejection (TLI)
Step 36. Step to the next page and press "AB" for the IMFD to conduct an auto-burn at your set ejection time and burn vector.
(Note: because we have set IMFD's throttle down to .01, your Burn Time ("BT") should be exactly enough to get you to the Moon at the right time and altitude above the Moon. You can see this information if you press "BV" for your Burn Vector. The burn will be accurate to a thousandths of a second which is how the Apollo 11 Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) did it in 1969).
Part 3 - Lunar Module Extraction and Jettison of The Saturn V Stage 3.
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"Com'mon Rookie park that thing" "If he cant dock that CSM, we dont have a mission"
Ok your now on the way to the moon. About 1/2 hour after finishing the TLI Apollo 11 detatched from the S-IVB third stage, pitched up, and docked with the LEM still lodged inside the S-IVB third stage. The CM pilot Michael Collins then seperated the LEM from the rocket stage and began the barbecue roll for their coast phase. To do this we will need the help of the included Dock MFD and the Apollo docking mechanism.
STEP 1. You will face the front of the spacecraft towards the sun. This is to ensure that you have plenty of light to see the docking target on the LEM. You can use Attitude MFD to orient your nose toward the sun by pressing MOD twice until the Attitude MFD is in target mode. Press TGT and then enter "Sun" into the data window. Now press "HLD" to hold the ship's attitude toward the Sun. After Attitude MFD finds the sun for you, you can press HLD again to release the hold attitude on the sun. Press "KillRot" and the proceed to STEP2.
STEP 2. You will now press "K" to detach from the S-IVB third stage. You may want to be in external mode to see the awesome AMSO animation of the seperation process. You should hear Bill Paxton say "Houston, we have a good seperation" from the Apollo 13 movie. Wait a few seconds and then proceed to STEP 3.
STEP 3. Switch to glass cockpit mode and then press F8 until you can see the virtual cockpit. (Lots of buttons) Now press CTRL + ALT + Up Button on your directional buttons. (This is not the numpad UP/8 button) You should be able to see the docking mechanism in front of you.
STEP 4. Pitch up by hitting Numpad 2 several times. While you pitch up you can open an external MFD and set it to Dock MFD. Set the target to the S-IVB docking port 1.
STEP 5. When you see the S-IVB third stage with the LEM inside you should null your pitch rate by pressing Numpad 5. Try and get your targetting rectical to slightly to the left and above the LEM's docking collar.
STEP 6. Now roll to where the LEM's targeting mechanism is in your targeting recticle or close to it. Null your roll and then press Numpad "/" to switch to translation thrusters.
STEP 7. Begin to thrust forward by pressing Numpad 6.
STEP 8. Ok now here is when you must use your own piloting skill. use the Dock MFD and your viewer to dock the CSM to the LEM. When done, press "K" to extract the LEM from the S-IVB third stage hull.
Part 4 - Apollo 11 AS-506 TLI Coast.
For your trans lunar coast period, you will want to begin a Passive Thermal Control (PTC), also known as "barbecue" mode roll proceedure of about 0.25 degrees per second. This can been seen using AttitudeMFD.
NASA called this the "barbecue roll". Because the radiators for keeping the emmence electronics which were a miss mesh of 1969 avionics and computer simiconductors along with gimbaling motors and other flight instruments, the two vehicles needed to be cooled off at times and heated up at other times.
The "Barbecue Roll" manuver kept the radiators at a good temprature so as not to overheat or undercool them. As it turns out, the Barbecue Roll also helps keep your vehicles in a stable flight as it spins its way to the moon. You should press CTRL + Numpad 6 (4 times) to achieve this slow roll proceedure. It is not necessary, but again if you want realism and you want to see what the Apollo 11 astronauts saw through thier windows on the way to the moon, you will want to establish this roll program during your coast time to the moon.
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Part 5 Apollo 11 Mid Course Corrections
You will need to set your RMFD back to IMFD Map Program. Zoom out and make sure that SOI is set to on. When you pass the Earth's SOI you will want to check your PeA for the moon. If it has changed from 80km to any other amount, you must follow the steps below to correct your trajectory to the moon. If it is still 80km then you will not need a course correction at this point.
MCC #1 Proceedure
STEP 1. Change your LMFD to IMFD if its not already there.
STEP 2. Select Menu and then Course.
STEP 3. Select Delta Velocity.
STEP 4. Set the reference to Moon.
STEP 5. Set the dV to Zero "0"
STEP 6. Step up or down this ammount from 0.000 to an amount that gives the PeA in the R IMFD Map program an altitude of 80km.
STEP 7. Press AB in the LMFD to burn the correction burn for this MCC #1.
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Part 6 - Loss of Signal (LOS) and Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI)
Historically, the Loss of Signal was a good test for astronauts to determine if they are on schedule and arriving at the correct telemetry. I will show you how to determine when your LOS occurs and how to know if your on schedule or not.
Loss Of Signal Timming Calculation
If you made a mid course correction then this process wont apply. However if you didnt then there is a simple equation that will tell you when you are supposed to loose signal.
To Be continued soon.
Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) Proceedure:
This is a very important proceedure. If the Apollo 11 crew didnt complete the LOI correctly and on time (because they were out of communication with NASA Mission Control -Houston), this could have happened very easily and so it was very important that they did it correctly and on time or they could tumble off into space even though they were on a free-return trajectory. Luckily, you have the IMFD on board and you will be able to do this proceedure without Houston.
After LOS (you can determine this by externally viewing your ship with the Earth behind you and the moon approaching from one side). Once the Earth goes behind the Moon you would have lost the signal to Houston as radio signals travel at the speed of light in a straight line. Because the Moon is in between you and the Earth, you would have lost signal and all radio communications with Mission Control.
STEP 1. After LOS, set up your LMFD to IMFD if its not already set correctly to this MFD.
STEP 2. Select Menu, and then Course.
STEP 3. Select Orbit Insert.
STEP 4. Set the Reference to Moon.
STEP 5. Press AB and wait.
IMFD will now circularize your orbit at the correct time of your PeA of the Moon and will burn the correct ammount of time to put you into a perfect orbit around the moon.
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Part 7 - Tranquillity Base Alighnment
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This process is done by pressing the "K" to access AMSO's Lunar AP.
To be added later
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Part 8 - Lunar Excursion Module Detatch and De-Orbit Burn
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Part 9 - LEM Powered Decent Phase
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Part 10 -Landing Phase
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Part 11 -Houston, The Eagle Has Landed
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Part 12 -Powered Ascent Phase
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Part 13 -Rendezvous with Service Control Module
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Part 14 -Transfer of Crew, Cargo and Detatch the LM Ascent Stage
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Part 15 -Preperations for Loss of Signal and TEI
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Part 16 -TEI from Moon Using IMFD in the DG S
Preface: To make this tutorial, I made a trip to the moon in the default DG S to verify some terms and while following the Apollo 11 Timeline.
I was able to create this small tutorial for people to use IMFD to get home from the moon. I noticed that there was a serious lack of this data on this procedure in the Orbiter community and so I felt the need to fill this vacuum -hence this tutorial was created in very little time.
Preflight Steps
You can re-create the situation I have made here by opening a DG S scenario that comes with Orbiter 2006 P1:
Delta-glider/"DG-S ready for takeoff"
The Scramjet delta-glider (DG-S) is ready for takeoff from runway 33 of the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at Kennedy Space Center.
Take off using main engines and climb to 10km. Then try the air-breathing scramjet engines and test the performance for different speeds and altitudes.
...and then by changing the date in Scenario Editor to July 16 1969 at 13:26:00 UT (T-5min to Launch), then you can save the edited scenario as the start of your flight to the moon. You must then re-open the saved scenario in order to make the Sim time set back to 0. You need this for IMFD to function correctly.
You will launch from Canaveral horizontally and then ascend into an orbit of 178km X 178km. If your using AMSO as this tutorial is supposed to be designed for and I’m using the DG S for this flight, your numbers may be very different.
I used the IMFD tutorial to get to the moon using the Free-return document in the Doc/AMSO folder called: FreeReturn.doc
-AND-
The Offset Procedure document tutorial located in the
C:\...Doc\AMSO\IMFD5_OffsetProcedure.zip and then you can unzip the files inside and read OffsetTuto.html.
You also need to:
* Have the latest version of AMSO, Orbiter, and IMFD and that you know how to do the Free-Return TLI (Trans-Lunar Injection) and Offset procedure and have done so to get to the moon.
* Have made at least 1 course correction burn during transit to the Moon to set your final PeA to 110km
* You have successfully entered an orbit around the moon at an altitude of no greater than 110km.
* Your simulated dock with your orbiter vessel occurs approximately 28 hours after undock. (This comes out to about 30 orbits I think total for the orbiter vehicle assuming that you’re at an altitude of 110km.)
* Your altitude is about 110km when you dock.
* You have jettisoned your simulated Lander about 2 hours after docking.
* Your transfer got you to the moon around GET 75:54:29.
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A. --To make your burn based on my 28-30 hour EVA on the Lunar Surface, see the next section "Section A -Rendezvous Flight Timings -EVA Procedure”
1. To make you’re Trans Earth Injection burn using Base Approach (for non-specific landing footprint/recovery zone)
See Section A1. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Base Approach
2. To make your Trans Earth Injection burn using Planet Approach (for almost exact landing coordinates) see Section A2. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Planet Approach
B. --To make your burn via an earthrise count, sunrise count, or counting total SCM orbits, see section "Section B -Rendezvous Special Flight Timings -Earthrise/Sunrise/Orbits Procedure" (to be posted soon)
Section A -Rendezvous Flight Timings -EVA Procedure
Notes: For a return flight, the Apollo 11 astronauts found themselves wanting to hit a specific target on the earth. This technique is somewhat entailed and we wont be showing you how to do a precision hit on a greater body, But I will tell you that the orbit you leave on is important.
In orbiter the earth and the moon are exactly where they would be at the time of the Apollo 11's Trans Earth Injection (TEI) ignition burn time of GET 135:23:42. If you leave at the right time and make your MCC at the right time, you should come very close to the location you wish to land as long as your doing a lifting entry with a hypersonic trim angle of attack of −27°.
If your GET time doesn’t match mine, all you have to do is prepare for your TEI burn on the IMFDs at about 20 min before you see the earthrise For my flight in the DG S, the second to the last earthrise occurred at GET133:28:29 so I wait until the next sunrise to begin my TEI preparations which occurred at 134:56:00 or so. This is about 11 min before your TEI burn and that should be plenty of time.
A1. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Base Approach
1. Fast forward to GET 135:20:42 -OR- count your orbits and make sure your at orbit #60 to start this tutorial.
When this has been done your ready to rock and roll.
2. Set both Left MFD (LMFD) and Right MFD (RMFD) to Interplanetary MFD (IMFD).
3. Open the menu of both IMFDs and set the RMFD to share with the left.
4. Set the LMFD to Base Approach and the right MFD to Orbit Eject.
5. Set the LMFD source to Moon (VERY IMPORTANT STEP), and the RMFD to Base Approach instead of its default Higher Orbit.
6. Set the Target on the LFMD coordinates to Lon -172.40 (which sets it to 172.40* W), the Lat to 10.60* and the ReA to 6.37*. The rest (Alt 120.0K and Ant 21.00*) are left as the default.
7. Start to increase the Hint in the LMFD at X1 until a burn vector appears on both MFDs.
Now here is the trick. Depending on your window, or when you decide to set this, and various other factors like mass, and thrust ratio, the burn vector may show a very straight line on the RMFD. Look at the oV amount. It may be around 5.818K or above.
If it is then your setting up a more expensive faster flight.
8. If this is so, keep Hinting up or increasing the Hint in the LMFD past this vectoring. Note that your burn solution or vector will disappear in the RMFD after a bit of increasing again -THIS IS NORMAL Don’t panic!!
Anything above 3.000K of oV is too much for the Apollo 11 mission.
9. After you are done passing the larger oV number up, and you have seen your old vector disappear, you will see a second burn vector appear in the LMFD.
When it shows up again you might find a somewhat less expensive flight but it may not be enough so you can even go past that one to see if there is a less expensive flight window here.
(By the second or third window you find you should find a window that shows the oV to be about 1.772K to about 2.200K and not below 1.000K. Again, this depends on vessel, mass, fuel consumption up to now, thrust ratio for the vessel).
10. Zoom in on the earth in the LMFD. You should see that the Earth is at the center of your screen and the TEI result shows your path going through the far right side of the Earth and slightly through the Earth no matter what projection you choose.
This is fine as you may change your dV later to fix your approach to the Earth for passive re-entry later.
(Also, you may see an squiggly line representing the path in the LMFD. This is also ok.)
(...Don’t worry don’t panic; make yourself a homemade carbonation re-breather out of your flight manual and some duct tape if you begin to panic .)
Note: This is completely normal sometimes as your IMFD tries to get the right vectoring for its burn to get you home. You will either see the squiggly line or the good line either way your going home at the oV you chose which is all we want for now.
Your direction is chosen when you open the LMFD and the reference is set to Earth so LMFD knows which heading to take kind of. It needs Orbit insert to do the rest.
11. Now your ready to burn. Click on the AB to start the Auto Burn for the LMFD and you’re off like a prom dress!!!
You’re done and en route to Earth!!! Have a nice flight back to earth you wont know where you will land but your MCC should use Delta Velocity and the IMFD Map program to set an altitude of 36km to 40km in the IMFD Map. The MCC should be done about GET 150:00:00 or so.
A2. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Planet Approach
Special thanks to pete.dakota for this section.
(Note: Do this procedure on your last orbit, so you don't use any time acceleration, except up to the burn time. This will insure greater accuracy.)
1. LMFD set to Planet Approach mode. Reference EARTH Target MOON.
2. RMFD set to Orbit-Eject mode. Set to COURSE and OFF AXIS. Reference MOON.
3. LMFD: Set EqI as low as possible. PeA to 36 to 40km. Under PET MANUAL (NOT TEJ), set GET to the mission specific splashdown time. GET 195:18:35 for Apollo 11.
4. Make GET under TEj in the LMFD the same as the GET in the RMFD.
If you have RMFD shared with LMFD and set to course and off-axis then you'll see it updating correctly. You get your burn-vector and auto-burn from Orbit-Eject NOT Planet Approach. Use the RMFD to auto-burn.
If you look at the IMFD Map after your burn you may be thinking that the planned orbit looks like it is way to big and fast. But this was how it was done in the Apollo missions so go for it!!
If TEj in the RFMD is showing 0.000 then change off-axis to real-time and then back to off-axis again to reset the timer. Then hit auto-burn and wait. You should be looking at about a 195 second burn in Apollo 11.
This means that the coast back to Earth (with the odd correction burn) will have you hitting the atmosphere at the same time as the actual mission did, give or take a few minutes, ensuring that you are going to splashdown in the Pacific.
Part 17 -Trans Earth Flight Coast
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Part 18 -Trans Earth Mid Course Corrections
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Part 19 -Jettison Service Module and Prepair for Re-Entry
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Part 20 -Re-Entry and Earth Landing
The admissible dynamic pressure for the thermal shield configuration is 250 kPa (about -12,5 G) and without is 35 kPa.
For the CM splashdown, the admissible impact survival speed: horizontal speed in both axes +-8 m/s and vertical speed -12 m/s.
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Landing
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_24"]July 24[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame]
16:50:35 UTC
13°19′N 169°9′W
Mission duration
8 d 03 h 18 m 35 s
Thes are a few facts that may not be needed to fly the tutorial but are some fun facts about Apollo 11 that we may look at as I have just finished my 3rd test of 3 different starts from the AS-506 Apollo 11 lift off scenario in the AMSO scenario folder.
All three missions started from scratch and were done according to my fligt plan which places you in the same location on the earth at a similar time to the actual spashdown and gets near the historical location but not quite. I land at Pos:149.11* W, 8.56* N to around 155.16*W, 8.62* N
The third landing was around 151.56* W, 9.12* N as you can see in this picture below made in [ame="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=13.316667,-169.15&spn=0.3,0.3&q=13.316667,-169.15"]Google Maps[/ame]
Here is a hosted image on Image Shack
(Click me Im a link image)
[IMG=http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/2051/googlemap0010vj2om9.th.jpg]
My flight landings compared to the historical location in Google Maps ©2008 Google
13.316667,-169.15 -Apollo 11 Historical vs. AMSO -0010
13.316667,-169.15 -Apollo 11 Historical vs. AMSO -0020
13.316667,-169.15 -Apollo 11 Historical vs. AMSO -0030
As you can see Im way off from the historical landing site but all three of my landings occur in a similar location which allows me to somewhat predict whre the final resting locaiton of the CM will be if my tutorial is followed.
This is all I wanted and now I shall publish all parts of the mission I have done to land at this location at a GET of 193:15:00 or around that time. If all steps in my tutorial are followed then one can reasonably predict a landing in this part of the earth.
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Apendix 1 Mission Parameters
Mission name Apollo 11
Here are the stats on our mission:
(thanks to Wikipedia)
Service Module SM-107
Command Module CM-107
callsign Columbia
mass 30,320 kg
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module"]Lunar Module[/ame] LM-5
callsign Eagle
mass 16,448 kg
Crew size 3
Booster [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V"]Saturn V[/ame] SA-506
Launch date [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_16"]July 16[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 13:32:00 [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC"]UTC[/ame]
Lunar landing
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_20"]July 20[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 20:17:40 UTC
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_Tranquillitatis"]Sea of Tranquility[/ame] 0° 40' 26.69" N 23° 28' 22.69" E
(based on the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronomical_Union"]IAU[/ame] Mean Earth Polar Axis)
Lunar EVA duration 2 h 31 m 40 s
Lunar surface time 21 h 36 m 20 s
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock"]Lunar sample[/ame] mass 21.55 kg (47.5 lb)
Number of lunar orbits 30
Time in lunar orbit 59 h 30 m 25.79 s
Landing [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_24"]July 24[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 16:50:35 UTC
Location:
13°19′N 169°9′W
Apendix 2 Documents Used:
Simple Freereturn tutorial 30.8.2007 by Jarmo Nikkanen,
Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference (SP-4029) by NASA
Apollo 11 Timeline by NASA
Official NASA Flight Plan by NASA
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11"]Wikipedia's Apollo 11 page[/ame] by Wikipedia
AMSO-User-manual by AMSO
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Special thanks to Dr. Martin Schweiger for Orbiter 2006 P1, Alain Capt and ACSoft for AMSO, and Jarmo Nikkanen for IMFD, DanSteph for Orbiter Sound 3.5 pete.dakota for the Planet Approach procedure and Sonicboom.com for the video.
--Please feel free to use, copy, paste or distribute this tutorial free of charge as long as you give me credit for the creation of the document.
Adam RodrigueZ (polaris149Tiberius)
Email:
This tutorial I am completing with some help from Jarmo Nikkanen (IMFD author) and will endeavor to be as close to the original Apollo 11 flight plan (using the Apollo 11 Timeline) as possible for all users whether your new to Orbiter or a vetran user.
For all of you Apollo 11 historians who want to re-create the mission for realism purposes, this can be a good tutorial to get started but sadly it will not be as historical as you may wish due to the limitations of AMSO, BUT its pretty darn close and can serve to be an extreamly visually pleasing mission.
This flight is for use with Orbiter 2006 P1 (build 060929) w/sound 3.5, AMSO v 1.15 to v1.17, and IMFD v5.1h to 5.1m and it will try and meet the all the relavant mission brief goals that the original Apollo 11 mission achieved.
This includes:
1. A launch window that puts the Apollo 11 Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) on the surface when Tranquillity Base is illuminated by sunlight.
2. A Trans Lunar Insertion(TLI) that puts the vehicle in a Free-return trajectory flight path in case something goes wrong during the flight.
3. Done in a time frame that that accounts for fuel and consumable limitations which will only support a 3 man crew for the duration of a nominal flight.
This tutorial will get you to the moon at an almost exact historical time and a landing time close to when [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong"]Neil Alden Armstrong[/ame] and [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin"]Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr[/ame] landed on July 20 1969 and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins. This tutorial will also allow the flight to complete with a safe re-entry and a landing in the Pacific Ocean close to the location where the crew was recovered at nearly the same time.
This tutorial tries to re-create the Apollo 11 mission in a historical way to give the pilot similar views and experiences the actual crew would have experianced during the REAL flight.
As a preperation to the flight I recommend watching this video to see some of the actual Apollo program's greatest moments.
Well worth watching this 08min 22seconds long video
Video Apollo 11 - The Moon shot by Sonicboom.com
Keep checking back to this thread for any further changes that may be made to this tutorial, as it will be updated as I gather information and compile it for posting here. Feel free to print this tutorial for use. You may also re-post this tutorial elsewhere un-edited and as long as you include credit to me and the others who are listed in the special thanks area.
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That said, we are going to have to agree that AMSO was not meant to be an exact historical rendition of the actual Apollo flights. It has its own Auto Pilot (AP), which gets you into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), but then you must use some external MFD to calculate your TLI if you want to do anything but orbit the Earth.
This tutorial will use IMFD for this and I highly recommend it for this and other interplanetary flights. After getting to the moon you can use the AMSO AP again to land, but you will want IMFD again in order to get you and your crew home or you will orbit the moon indefinately.
The Interplanetary Multifunction Display "IMFD":
Possibly the most accurate, most powerful, and most useful MFD I have seen yet is the IMFD by Jarmo Nikkanen and when you realize that it’s a lot harder to complete a historical mission to the Moon in AMSO than you ever guessed, you might end up browsing an Orbiter forum for information as I did.
Some very nice people gave me this information and I in return must pass it along to those of you who want it as well. The catch is, if somone ever wants to know something you know, you must pass it on to them just as I am to you.
Do what you can to help others to know what you have learned and I will be happy. What I can tell you is that if you want to send something to the moon and back again safely in Orbiter, IMFD is the tool you want.
Achievements and Needs:
When you realize that hitting the moon at the right time and location is a lot like hitting a basket ball with a pencil after throwing them both up from either side of a house at similar times and the place the pencil must hit the basketball is less than the width of a slice of notebook paper or your crew dies, you may begin to understand what achievements NASA made and what Orbiter and yourself are capable of doing.
You may want to take a moment and think about what it is you will need to know to begin this journey back in time.
If you need...
If your having trouble with getting to the moon, this tutorial will get you there.
If your having trouble learning about how to use IMFD then this tutorial will show you how.
If your having trouble landing on the Moon, this tutorial will get you on the surface at almost the same time as the real Apollo 11 Lander.
If your having trouble rendezvousing with the CM, this tutorial will get you to within 30m at zero velocity relative to the CM for CM/LM dock.
If your having trouble docking the CM to the LM, this tutorial will have you using the sights in AMSO's virtual cockpit to dock.
If your having trouble with the TEI burn to go home, this tutorial will get you home safely at close to a historical time.
If your having trouble doing any kind of Mid Course Correction(MCC) burns that are optimal for fuel conservation as well as achieving a correct re-enty corridor, this tutorial will teach you about trim and course correction without using an autopilot.
If your slamming into the atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour (Mach 35)and either bouncing off into space or coming in too shallow and burning up in the atmosphere, this tutorial will get you on the ground safe and in a fairly close location to the historical site of recovery.
If your looking for a tutorial that will show you how to pilot the chopper to pickup the crew, sadly you’ve come to the wrong tutorial.
What you can expect:
This tutorial when its finished will include:
A nominal launch to LEO, TLI to the moon, a landing, LM ascent and rendezvous with the orbiting vehicle, jettison of LM and TEI plus a few course corrections to ensure you enter earths atmosphere at the nominal angel of attack (AoA), reentry and a safe landing in the ocean at near the historical location.
I will further advise the reader on the minimal tools needed to achieve this mission and which will be fully documented for use on your trip into the depths of lunar space and back. Any further scientific micro-testing or comparisons to the actual Apollo 11 flight will sadly cause you to pound your head into the screen at 9.8m/s^2 and damage your simulator.
[/LIST]There were no atmospheric enhancers or orbital stability mods installed and I decided for this tutorial that I wouldn’t install any special camera add-ons that allowed me take some awesome pictures of the lunar surface so If you don’t want to see the LEM sitting on the moon from the CM in orbit, then don’t install [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2989"]TelescopeMFD_0.1[/ame] or [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2645"]CameraMFD 0.12 Beta[/ame]
. And if you don’t want to know what stars the Apollo 11 navigator had to use to check his guidance computer's trajectory and telemetry and that it was a correct burn attitude then don’t go get [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3165"]Attitude MFD V3.2[/ame]. In fact, don’t learn physics or Newton’s Third Law of Motion or look at any Leonardo Divinci’s drawings and don’t ever read any Shakespeare. You know what, just go hide in your room and forget you ever saw this simulator cuz you’re not going to like loosing this game. It has no bullets or lasers to shoot and there is no score to gain. Ths simulator is for personal achievment saticfaction. When you realize that your at the moon and you got here with [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton"]Sir Isaac Newton[/ame] in the driver's seat most of the way, you may decide that this game is not a game but a labratory for testing your knowledge of physics and orbital mechanics.
For the rest of you -your EVA suit is waiting for you down the hall on the right in the PRE-LAUNCH WHITE ROOM so get suited up and get for a little jolt fellas.
What you will get that’s NOT Historical:
Enjoy this very long and detailed instruction set for a flight that for me was nominal and historical up to the undock of the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). Various attempts were made to make the CSM end up near the location it would have been at the point of TEI for a historical recovery back on Earth but sadly the flight is un-predictable after this point. You may keep this in mind when you are rendezvousing with the CM because that is when the AMSO rendezvous AP changes the time line. Still, I hope you like what I hope will be one of the BEST ways I have found to fly Apollo 11.
But it was not able to actually BE EXACTLY historical. I can’t stress to you how unimportant it is that you do this flight the way I describe below. Know only that these instructions will help you to piece together a flight of your own however if you follow them correctly, you should end up at home around the same time Apollo 11 did. I will say to you this: May the force be with you -always, and if for some accidental reason you start to pitch past zero degrees during your launch and begin to head back into the Atlantic, you might want to hit the “J “ key. Lets get started shall we?
Things you will need to know about:
Pre-Flight Steps for Orbiter 2006 P1
Here I will have you
make some small changes to Orbiter that will allow for a more realistic experience. You will need to be in Orbiter's Launchpad window and configure it for some settings that you may not normally set. Using the tabs along the top of Orbiter Launchpad select and set the following:
In the PARAMETERS tab, you must have these settings:
1. Complex flight model -checked.
2. Limited fuel -checked.
3. Non spherical gravity sources -checked.
4. Gravity-gradient torque -selected.
(While your here: I like a star count of about 7000 -14,000 any more than that fries my 286's video card. Vessel shadows, object shadows, specular reflections, particle streams and the reentry flames are all good for this viewing in AMSO and should not cause your video card to have a problem as long as you use a 128Mb video card.)
Preflight Steps -Open Your Orbiter Simulator and Suit Up for Flight
Step 1. Open your Orbiter Simulator and in the SCENARIO tab double click on the AMSO folder.
Step 2. Double click on the ALL MISSIONS LIFT OFF folder and select this scenario for use with this tutorial:
"Apollo 11"
Launch Apollo-11 mission from Launch complex 39A. Date 16 July 1969, launch time: 13:32 UT, azimut: 72.058 degrees.
You are 5 minutes 30 seconds before launch time.
At precisely minus 5 minutes, press "J" action key to retract launch tower arms. Attention, from this point, if you press "J" action key at any time, you will abort the flight...
(This tutorial begins with this scenario and should be flown using either this scenario in AMSO folder or the first scenario listed in the AS-506 folder. They are both the same scenario)
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Part 1 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Liftoff and Earth Orbit Insertion (EOI)
This part is simple but for those of you that do not know the AMSO launch process this section is here for you to complete a nominal Auto Piloted (AP) Earth Orbit Insertion (EOI) in to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Earth orbit was achieved around Ground Elapsed Time (GET) 000:11:44.00. Apollo 11 was then cleared for LEO at around GET 000:12:15.00. With this tutorial section you will achieve a very similar orbit to the historical orbit altitudes (alt), inclination (Inc), and cutoff time.
Step 1. PRESS "J" to retract the tower.
Step 2. Wait until UT 13:31:50 to PRESS "K" for Launch Sequence.
This starts the count down to launch and there is no going back after this. If your launch fails for any reason or the AP in the bottom left corner disappears after lift off you may hit the "J" key to abort up until the time the tower jet fires. After that the recovery of your crew may not be guaranteed.
BE ADVISED!! DO NOT press any flight controls during lift-off (ground zero), launch, or Earth Orbit Insertion program. No buttons can be pressed that change your ship's movement when the AP is doing the launch or it will disable the AP without warning.(View from external views and glass cockpit or virtual 3D cockpit are my favorites).
AT: GET 000:00:00.00 Clock is ticking and Apollo 11 is GO for launch. All engines should be GO at ground zero.
(Soon, I will detail the specifics of Apollo 11's EOI launch program's flight altitudes, burn vectors, and pitch,roll, and yaw attitude information as a function of time for doing a manual launch).
Step 3. Sit back and watch your very nominal AMSO Auto Pilot (AP) launch into space which will occur for the next 12 minutes 15 seconds or so.
(Note: You should see an "AP" in the bottom left corner of your screen from AMSO's Autopilot the entire time of your launch up to Single Engine Cut Off or "SECO".)
This launch gets you and your crew into an almost perfectly circular LEO automatically at around a 187.5 X 188.1 km orbit. Your flight azimuth from the roll program starts at 72.058°. More detail from Align Plane MFD will show a final orbital Inclination (Inc) of 9.00* at cutoff and a LAN of 353.44*. Orbit MFD will show that your orbital period is around 5.286k seconds indicated by the letter tango"T". This means that every 01:28:06 (1 hour, 28 minutes, 6 seconds) you should complete 1 orbit around the earth. Handy knowledge if you plan to follow Columbia's TLI at 1.5 orbits like they did in 1969.
Step 4. When the AMSO AP finishes your insertion into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) you will hear the Single Engine Cut Off (SECO). Then you will receive the "go for orbit" radio communication on Channel 1 from Houston.
You should be located to the east of Florida. You will need to pass up Florida 1 more time and then wait until you begin to approach Austrailia also for the second time. At this time you may follow the TLI preperations proceedure below. (At GET 001:52:52.00 or so you pass Moon Plane Cross Range 0.0. This is 1 complete orbit.)
A. Using GET for TLI Preperations
Step 5. IF not already set, set your Left Multi Function Display (LMFD) to Orbiter's Map Default Program MFD.
You may want to select the target button (TGT) as being "AS-506" to select your own ship as the target vessel. Now you must watch your orbits until you have gone around the Earth at least 1.25 times.
This works out to about GET 002:21:00.00 or so. If you use Time Warp you will need to slow Time Warp down to 1X at this GET in order to go to the next step. If you are about to pass over Austrailia and your GET is around the GET listed above, then you are ready for the next phase: Part 2 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Trans Lunar Insertion (TLI).
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Part 2 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Trans Lunar Insertion (TLI)
GET 002:21:00.00 is about 1.25 orbits from the time you are Go for orbit. You will now begin preperations for a Trans-Lunar Insertion(TLI) Burn. This is going to require the use of the powerful and very accurate IMFD. You should be about to approach the western coast of Austrailia so ready or not your going to the moon.
A. Set up IMFD to be more realistic for 1969
Step 1. Open IMFD in the Left Multifunction Display (LMFD) (pressing select, then “Interplanetary”).
Step 2. Press MNU to access the IMFD’s menu.
Step 3. Press MOD to modify the configuration.
(Here we are going to set the parameters for making IMFD use Apollo-like attitude correction which is more like a "point and shoot" configuration. The next few steps (Step 4 and 5) are optional but mandatory if you wish to continue with this tutorial.
Step 4. Set LambertAP mode to Apollo P30.
(Next step sets IMFD to do a more realistic Apollo-like burn as the real Apollo burns were done. The throttle-down of the main engines were cut offs to a thousandths of a second and this setting makes IMFD cutoff with the same accuracy).
Step 5. Set AB Throttle down to 0.00 using the “Set” button (<) and entering “0”.
(Note: Make sure to enter 0 here and then press the keyboard Enter not the Numpad Enter because if you do you will ignite your thrusters and this would be very bad)
Step 6. When these steps are done press MNU.
B. Select the Moon as the Target Object for Interplanetary Flight
Step 7. Open Course program.
Step 8. Select Target Intercept. Press Set, then TGT.
Step 9. Enter “Moon”
Step 10. In the Right MFD (RMFD), open IMFD("Interplanetary").
Step 11. Press MNU ("-")
Step 12. Share the two IMFDs by pressing “PG” then entering “0” for the ID of the LMFD-IMFD
(You can see the ID of the IMFD in the top right hand corner in the MNU)
C. Set up IMFD Map to Show More Accuracy
Step 13. Select Map.
Step 14. Press "PRJ" to set the projection to self from Equator.
Step 15. Press "MOD" three times to get into the IMFD's Map Program Configuration window.
Step 16. Set the accuracy to 1.00 by pressing "Nxt"
(Note: If you crash to the desktop or Save your scenario and come back to finish, you must set this again).
Step 17. Press "MOD" to see the new configured IMFD Map view.
Step 18. Press "Dsp"
Step 19. Press "PG" then "Plan" and "Soi" and "Int" then "Find"
Step 20. Zoom into planet Earth (press "PG" then "Z+" to zoom in) so that you can see yourself orbiting the Earth.
D. Set up RMFD IMFD -Map to Show The Lunar Intercept Point
Step 21. Press "Sel" to select the "Ref" to "Moon (weak)" in RMFD.
Step 22. Press "Cnt" to open the center dialoge box.
Step 23. Enter "p-moon" to center on the moon's PeriCynthion (PC)
(Note: the RMFD might still show the orbit around earth or a short ejection vector or maybe focus on the moon where it is now. This is ok. Dont worry as soon as you set the target and the correct parameters for the correct interception in the LMFD, you should be able to see the moon where it will be at its PC).
E. Set up the IMFD Navagation Computer to Calculate a Free-Return Lunar Interctption
(Note: if you already did steps 7, 8, and 9 from section B above, then you can skip to Step 26 below).
Step 24. You should have the LMFD, already set to Course Program. If not select it now.
Step 25. If you dont already have the moon selected as the target, select "Tgt" and enter "Moon" in the dialoge box now.
Step 26. Set the LMFD's Operation modes to: "Vel. Frame" by navigating between the 2 pages and useing "Nxt", "Prev", "Set", "(+)", and "(-)" buttons.
Step 27. Set the default ammounts for a Free-Return" flight by pressing setting these ammounts: (You will use the "Set" button for entering these ammounts)
Lon: 4.00
Lat : 4.00
Rad: 8.00M
(Note: Make sure you set the Rad to 8M at this point. If you do not you may see some crazy plan going no where near the moon)
F. Begin Course Program Calculations for Trans Lunar Insertion Burn
Step 28. Step to the next page using the "PG" button.
Step 29. Set the GET under "Intercept" to 75:54:28 which gives a TIn of about 265.3K
Step 30. Set the "Realtime" to "Off-Axis"
Step 31. Set the "TEj" to an amount that makes the Entroute "Tot" the lowest it can be.
(Note: Usually IMFD 5.1d Dec 16 2007 will set the TEj well after a time that is economically efficient so you will most likely be setting an earlier time than the default suggested time of ejection. Also, if you minus the TEj enough the "Tot" amount will begin to go back up, go back to the lower amount. My Tot was as low as 4.353K before fine tunning the PeA info for the TLI.
When you set these amounts in the LMFD you should begin to see the RMFD's Map show the moon's PC ("moon-pe") at the center and then you should see the base listed as "Tranquillity")
Step 32. Step up or step down the Rad in the LMFD to make the PeA in the RMFD to show 80.0 km.
From AMSO's "FreeReturn.doc":
In the Earth-Moon system free-return trajectory requires a transfer time higher than 240k. (Typical = 250k-290k) Shorter transfer time would mean that the vessel will approach the moon with higher orbital velocity and in that case it must pass the lunar surface from closer distance in order to get into a proper earth return.
If the transfer time is longer the vessel will have a lower orbital velocity and it must pass the lunar surface from greater distance.
The transfer time to target point in other words Time Of Flight (TOF) = TIn - TEj
Step 33. Step up or down the "Lat" in the LMFD to make the "EqI" in the RMFD as close to 180.00 as possible.
(Note: for Apollo 11 this amount wont go very much higher than 175.00. I was able to get an EqI of 176.47*).
Step 34. Step down to the Rad in the LMFD again to adjust the PeA in RMFD Map back down to 80.0k.
F. Fine tune your Course Program for TLI
For the next few steps it will depend grately what the RMFD Map shows. You may need to do the following steps several times to get the amounts to be correct and the computer will take about 1 second to calculate its amounts after pressing your button so be patient with this next part.
Step 35A. Set the Adjustment amount to x10 by pressing the "Adj" button.
Step 35B. IF the GET in RMFD Map shows a GET HIGHER than 75:54:28 step UP the "Lon" 1 step ONLY (at x10).
Step 35C. IF the GET in RMFD Map shows a GET LOWER than 75:54:28 step DOWN the "Lon" 1 step ONLY (at x10).
Step 35D. Set your Adj amount back down to x1.
Step 35E. Step UP or DOWN your Rad to adjust your PeA in RMFD Map to be 80.0 Km again or as close as you can get to it.
Step 35F. Check your GET in RMFD Map. If it is NOT within a few seconds of GET 75:54:28, then redo Steps 35 A - F until your GET is 75:54:28 (+/- a few seconds) and your PeA is around 80.0 Km (+/- 0.5 Km).
(Note: If you are unable to get close to the correct PeA and GET time, try using an Adj amount of x1 for both parameters. This will allow you to further fine tune them to acceptable amounts. You must get the GET down to +/- 5 seconds within 75:54:28 and your PeA should be around 80.0 km (+/- 0.5 Km) in order to do your TLI burn.)
When the above process is finished, you will have met the same flight parameters for a free-return trajectory as the actual Apollo 11 flight go to the next step.
G. Set your IMFD Auto Pilot to Fire Main Engines for Trans Lunar Ejection (TLI)
Step 36. Step to the next page and press "AB" for the IMFD to conduct an auto-burn at your set ejection time and burn vector.
(Note: because we have set IMFD's throttle down to .01, your Burn Time ("BT") should be exactly enough to get you to the Moon at the right time and altitude above the Moon. You can see this information if you press "BV" for your Burn Vector. The burn will be accurate to a thousandths of a second which is how the Apollo 11 Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) did it in 1969).
Part 3 - Lunar Module Extraction and Jettison of The Saturn V Stage 3.
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"Com'mon Rookie park that thing" "If he cant dock that CSM, we dont have a mission"
Ok your now on the way to the moon. About 1/2 hour after finishing the TLI Apollo 11 detatched from the S-IVB third stage, pitched up, and docked with the LEM still lodged inside the S-IVB third stage. The CM pilot Michael Collins then seperated the LEM from the rocket stage and began the barbecue roll for their coast phase. To do this we will need the help of the included Dock MFD and the Apollo docking mechanism.
STEP 1. You will face the front of the spacecraft towards the sun. This is to ensure that you have plenty of light to see the docking target on the LEM. You can use Attitude MFD to orient your nose toward the sun by pressing MOD twice until the Attitude MFD is in target mode. Press TGT and then enter "Sun" into the data window. Now press "HLD" to hold the ship's attitude toward the Sun. After Attitude MFD finds the sun for you, you can press HLD again to release the hold attitude on the sun. Press "KillRot" and the proceed to STEP2.
STEP 2. You will now press "K" to detach from the S-IVB third stage. You may want to be in external mode to see the awesome AMSO animation of the seperation process. You should hear Bill Paxton say "Houston, we have a good seperation" from the Apollo 13 movie. Wait a few seconds and then proceed to STEP 3.
STEP 3. Switch to glass cockpit mode and then press F8 until you can see the virtual cockpit. (Lots of buttons) Now press CTRL + ALT + Up Button on your directional buttons. (This is not the numpad UP/8 button) You should be able to see the docking mechanism in front of you.
STEP 4. Pitch up by hitting Numpad 2 several times. While you pitch up you can open an external MFD and set it to Dock MFD. Set the target to the S-IVB docking port 1.
STEP 5. When you see the S-IVB third stage with the LEM inside you should null your pitch rate by pressing Numpad 5. Try and get your targetting rectical to slightly to the left and above the LEM's docking collar.
STEP 6. Now roll to where the LEM's targeting mechanism is in your targeting recticle or close to it. Null your roll and then press Numpad "/" to switch to translation thrusters.
STEP 7. Begin to thrust forward by pressing Numpad 6.
STEP 8. Ok now here is when you must use your own piloting skill. use the Dock MFD and your viewer to dock the CSM to the LEM. When done, press "K" to extract the LEM from the S-IVB third stage hull.
Part 4 - Apollo 11 AS-506 TLI Coast.
For your trans lunar coast period, you will want to begin a Passive Thermal Control (PTC), also known as "barbecue" mode roll proceedure of about 0.25 degrees per second. This can been seen using AttitudeMFD.
NASA called this the "barbecue roll". Because the radiators for keeping the emmence electronics which were a miss mesh of 1969 avionics and computer simiconductors along with gimbaling motors and other flight instruments, the two vehicles needed to be cooled off at times and heated up at other times.
The "Barbecue Roll" manuver kept the radiators at a good temprature so as not to overheat or undercool them. As it turns out, the Barbecue Roll also helps keep your vehicles in a stable flight as it spins its way to the moon. You should press CTRL + Numpad 6 (4 times) to achieve this slow roll proceedure. It is not necessary, but again if you want realism and you want to see what the Apollo 11 astronauts saw through thier windows on the way to the moon, you will want to establish this roll program during your coast time to the moon.
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Part 5 Apollo 11 Mid Course Corrections
You will need to set your RMFD back to IMFD Map Program. Zoom out and make sure that SOI is set to on. When you pass the Earth's SOI you will want to check your PeA for the moon. If it has changed from 80km to any other amount, you must follow the steps below to correct your trajectory to the moon. If it is still 80km then you will not need a course correction at this point.
MCC #1 Proceedure
STEP 1. Change your LMFD to IMFD if its not already there.
STEP 2. Select Menu and then Course.
STEP 3. Select Delta Velocity.
STEP 4. Set the reference to Moon.
STEP 5. Set the dV to Zero "0"
STEP 6. Step up or down this ammount from 0.000 to an amount that gives the PeA in the R IMFD Map program an altitude of 80km.
STEP 7. Press AB in the LMFD to burn the correction burn for this MCC #1.
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Part 6 - Loss of Signal (LOS) and Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI)
Historically, the Loss of Signal was a good test for astronauts to determine if they are on schedule and arriving at the correct telemetry. I will show you how to determine when your LOS occurs and how to know if your on schedule or not.
Loss Of Signal Timming Calculation
If you made a mid course correction then this process wont apply. However if you didnt then there is a simple equation that will tell you when you are supposed to loose signal.
To Be continued soon.
Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) Proceedure:
This is a very important proceedure. If the Apollo 11 crew didnt complete the LOI correctly and on time (because they were out of communication with NASA Mission Control -Houston), this could have happened very easily and so it was very important that they did it correctly and on time or they could tumble off into space even though they were on a free-return trajectory. Luckily, you have the IMFD on board and you will be able to do this proceedure without Houston.
After LOS (you can determine this by externally viewing your ship with the Earth behind you and the moon approaching from one side). Once the Earth goes behind the Moon you would have lost the signal to Houston as radio signals travel at the speed of light in a straight line. Because the Moon is in between you and the Earth, you would have lost signal and all radio communications with Mission Control.
STEP 1. After LOS, set up your LMFD to IMFD if its not already set correctly to this MFD.
STEP 2. Select Menu, and then Course.
STEP 3. Select Orbit Insert.
STEP 4. Set the Reference to Moon.
STEP 5. Press AB and wait.
IMFD will now circularize your orbit at the correct time of your PeA of the Moon and will burn the correct ammount of time to put you into a perfect orbit around the moon.
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Part 7 - Tranquillity Base Alighnment
\
This process is done by pressing the "K" to access AMSO's Lunar AP.
To be added later
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Part 8 - Lunar Excursion Module Detatch and De-Orbit Burn
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Part 9 - LEM Powered Decent Phase
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Part 10 -Landing Phase
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Part 11 -Houston, The Eagle Has Landed
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Part 12 -Powered Ascent Phase
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Part 13 -Rendezvous with Service Control Module
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Part 14 -Transfer of Crew, Cargo and Detatch the LM Ascent Stage
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Part 15 -Preperations for Loss of Signal and TEI
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Part 16 -TEI from Moon Using IMFD in the DG S
Preface: To make this tutorial, I made a trip to the moon in the default DG S to verify some terms and while following the Apollo 11 Timeline.
I was able to create this small tutorial for people to use IMFD to get home from the moon. I noticed that there was a serious lack of this data on this procedure in the Orbiter community and so I felt the need to fill this vacuum -hence this tutorial was created in very little time.
Preflight Steps
You can re-create the situation I have made here by opening a DG S scenario that comes with Orbiter 2006 P1:
Delta-glider/"DG-S ready for takeoff"
The Scramjet delta-glider (DG-S) is ready for takeoff from runway 33 of the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at Kennedy Space Center.
Take off using main engines and climb to 10km. Then try the air-breathing scramjet engines and test the performance for different speeds and altitudes.
...and then by changing the date in Scenario Editor to July 16 1969 at 13:26:00 UT (T-5min to Launch), then you can save the edited scenario as the start of your flight to the moon. You must then re-open the saved scenario in order to make the Sim time set back to 0. You need this for IMFD to function correctly.
You will launch from Canaveral horizontally and then ascend into an orbit of 178km X 178km. If your using AMSO as this tutorial is supposed to be designed for and I’m using the DG S for this flight, your numbers may be very different.
I used the IMFD tutorial to get to the moon using the Free-return document in the Doc/AMSO folder called: FreeReturn.doc
-AND-
The Offset Procedure document tutorial located in the
C:\...Doc\AMSO\IMFD5_OffsetProcedure.zip and then you can unzip the files inside and read OffsetTuto.html.
You also need to:
* Have the latest version of AMSO, Orbiter, and IMFD and that you know how to do the Free-Return TLI (Trans-Lunar Injection) and Offset procedure and have done so to get to the moon.
* Have made at least 1 course correction burn during transit to the Moon to set your final PeA to 110km
* You have successfully entered an orbit around the moon at an altitude of no greater than 110km.
* Your simulated dock with your orbiter vessel occurs approximately 28 hours after undock. (This comes out to about 30 orbits I think total for the orbiter vehicle assuming that you’re at an altitude of 110km.)
* Your altitude is about 110km when you dock.
* You have jettisoned your simulated Lander about 2 hours after docking.
* Your transfer got you to the moon around GET 75:54:29.
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A. --To make your burn based on my 28-30 hour EVA on the Lunar Surface, see the next section "Section A -Rendezvous Flight Timings -EVA Procedure”
1. To make you’re Trans Earth Injection burn using Base Approach (for non-specific landing footprint/recovery zone)
See Section A1. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Base Approach
2. To make your Trans Earth Injection burn using Planet Approach (for almost exact landing coordinates) see Section A2. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Planet Approach
B. --To make your burn via an earthrise count, sunrise count, or counting total SCM orbits, see section "Section B -Rendezvous Special Flight Timings -Earthrise/Sunrise/Orbits Procedure" (to be posted soon)
Section A -Rendezvous Flight Timings -EVA Procedure
Notes: For a return flight, the Apollo 11 astronauts found themselves wanting to hit a specific target on the earth. This technique is somewhat entailed and we wont be showing you how to do a precision hit on a greater body, But I will tell you that the orbit you leave on is important.
In orbiter the earth and the moon are exactly where they would be at the time of the Apollo 11's Trans Earth Injection (TEI) ignition burn time of GET 135:23:42. If you leave at the right time and make your MCC at the right time, you should come very close to the location you wish to land as long as your doing a lifting entry with a hypersonic trim angle of attack of −27°.
If your GET time doesn’t match mine, all you have to do is prepare for your TEI burn on the IMFDs at about 20 min before you see the earthrise For my flight in the DG S, the second to the last earthrise occurred at GET133:28:29 so I wait until the next sunrise to begin my TEI preparations which occurred at 134:56:00 or so. This is about 11 min before your TEI burn and that should be plenty of time.
A1. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Base Approach
1. Fast forward to GET 135:20:42 -OR- count your orbits and make sure your at orbit #60 to start this tutorial.
When this has been done your ready to rock and roll.
2. Set both Left MFD (LMFD) and Right MFD (RMFD) to Interplanetary MFD (IMFD).
3. Open the menu of both IMFDs and set the RMFD to share with the left.
4. Set the LMFD to Base Approach and the right MFD to Orbit Eject.
5. Set the LMFD source to Moon (VERY IMPORTANT STEP), and the RMFD to Base Approach instead of its default Higher Orbit.
6. Set the Target on the LFMD coordinates to Lon -172.40 (which sets it to 172.40* W), the Lat to 10.60* and the ReA to 6.37*. The rest (Alt 120.0K and Ant 21.00*) are left as the default.
7. Start to increase the Hint in the LMFD at X1 until a burn vector appears on both MFDs.
Now here is the trick. Depending on your window, or when you decide to set this, and various other factors like mass, and thrust ratio, the burn vector may show a very straight line on the RMFD. Look at the oV amount. It may be around 5.818K or above.
If it is then your setting up a more expensive faster flight.
8. If this is so, keep Hinting up or increasing the Hint in the LMFD past this vectoring. Note that your burn solution or vector will disappear in the RMFD after a bit of increasing again -THIS IS NORMAL Don’t panic!!
Anything above 3.000K of oV is too much for the Apollo 11 mission.
9. After you are done passing the larger oV number up, and you have seen your old vector disappear, you will see a second burn vector appear in the LMFD.
When it shows up again you might find a somewhat less expensive flight but it may not be enough so you can even go past that one to see if there is a less expensive flight window here.
(By the second or third window you find you should find a window that shows the oV to be about 1.772K to about 2.200K and not below 1.000K. Again, this depends on vessel, mass, fuel consumption up to now, thrust ratio for the vessel).
10. Zoom in on the earth in the LMFD. You should see that the Earth is at the center of your screen and the TEI result shows your path going through the far right side of the Earth and slightly through the Earth no matter what projection you choose.
This is fine as you may change your dV later to fix your approach to the Earth for passive re-entry later.
(Also, you may see an squiggly line representing the path in the LMFD. This is also ok.)
(...Don’t worry don’t panic; make yourself a homemade carbonation re-breather out of your flight manual and some duct tape if you begin to panic .)
Note: This is completely normal sometimes as your IMFD tries to get the right vectoring for its burn to get you home. You will either see the squiggly line or the good line either way your going home at the oV you chose which is all we want for now.
Your direction is chosen when you open the LMFD and the reference is set to Earth so LMFD knows which heading to take kind of. It needs Orbit insert to do the rest.
11. Now your ready to burn. Click on the AB to start the Auto Burn for the LMFD and you’re off like a prom dress!!!
You’re done and en route to Earth!!! Have a nice flight back to earth you wont know where you will land but your MCC should use Delta Velocity and the IMFD Map program to set an altitude of 36km to 40km in the IMFD Map. The MCC should be done about GET 150:00:00 or so.
A2. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Planet Approach
Special thanks to pete.dakota for this section.
(Note: Do this procedure on your last orbit, so you don't use any time acceleration, except up to the burn time. This will insure greater accuracy.)
1. LMFD set to Planet Approach mode. Reference EARTH Target MOON.
2. RMFD set to Orbit-Eject mode. Set to COURSE and OFF AXIS. Reference MOON.
3. LMFD: Set EqI as low as possible. PeA to 36 to 40km. Under PET MANUAL (NOT TEJ), set GET to the mission specific splashdown time. GET 195:18:35 for Apollo 11.
4. Make GET under TEj in the LMFD the same as the GET in the RMFD.
If you have RMFD shared with LMFD and set to course and off-axis then you'll see it updating correctly. You get your burn-vector and auto-burn from Orbit-Eject NOT Planet Approach. Use the RMFD to auto-burn.
If you look at the IMFD Map after your burn you may be thinking that the planned orbit looks like it is way to big and fast. But this was how it was done in the Apollo missions so go for it!!
If TEj in the RFMD is showing 0.000 then change off-axis to real-time and then back to off-axis again to reset the timer. Then hit auto-burn and wait. You should be looking at about a 195 second burn in Apollo 11.
This means that the coast back to Earth (with the odd correction burn) will have you hitting the atmosphere at the same time as the actual mission did, give or take a few minutes, ensuring that you are going to splashdown in the Pacific.
Part 17 -Trans Earth Flight Coast
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Part 18 -Trans Earth Mid Course Corrections
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Part 19 -Jettison Service Module and Prepair for Re-Entry
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Part 20 -Re-Entry and Earth Landing
The admissible dynamic pressure for the thermal shield configuration is 250 kPa (about -12,5 G) and without is 35 kPa.
For the CM splashdown, the admissible impact survival speed: horizontal speed in both axes +-8 m/s and vertical speed -12 m/s.
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Landing
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_24"]July 24[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame]
16:50:35 UTC
13°19′N 169°9′W
Mission duration
8 d 03 h 18 m 35 s
Thes are a few facts that may not be needed to fly the tutorial but are some fun facts about Apollo 11 that we may look at as I have just finished my 3rd test of 3 different starts from the AS-506 Apollo 11 lift off scenario in the AMSO scenario folder.
All three missions started from scratch and were done according to my fligt plan which places you in the same location on the earth at a similar time to the actual spashdown and gets near the historical location but not quite. I land at Pos:149.11* W, 8.56* N to around 155.16*W, 8.62* N
The third landing was around 151.56* W, 9.12* N as you can see in this picture below made in [ame="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=13.316667,-169.15&spn=0.3,0.3&q=13.316667,-169.15"]Google Maps[/ame]
Here is a hosted image on Image Shack
(Click me Im a link image)
[IMG=http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/2051/googlemap0010vj2om9.th.jpg]
My flight landings compared to the historical location in Google Maps ©2008 Google
13.316667,-169.15 -Apollo 11 Historical vs. AMSO -0010
13.316667,-169.15 -Apollo 11 Historical vs. AMSO -0020
13.316667,-169.15 -Apollo 11 Historical vs. AMSO -0030
As you can see Im way off from the historical landing site but all three of my landings occur in a similar location which allows me to somewhat predict whre the final resting locaiton of the CM will be if my tutorial is followed.
This is all I wanted and now I shall publish all parts of the mission I have done to land at this location at a GET of 193:15:00 or around that time. If all steps in my tutorial are followed then one can reasonably predict a landing in this part of the earth.
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Apendix 1 Mission Parameters
Mission name Apollo 11
Here are the stats on our mission:
(thanks to Wikipedia)
Service Module SM-107
Command Module CM-107
callsign Columbia
mass 30,320 kg
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module"]Lunar Module[/ame] LM-5
callsign Eagle
mass 16,448 kg
Crew size 3
Booster [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V"]Saturn V[/ame] SA-506
Launch date [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_16"]July 16[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 13:32:00 [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC"]UTC[/ame]
Lunar landing
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_20"]July 20[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 20:17:40 UTC
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_Tranquillitatis"]Sea of Tranquility[/ame] 0° 40' 26.69" N 23° 28' 22.69" E
(based on the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronomical_Union"]IAU[/ame] Mean Earth Polar Axis)
Lunar EVA duration 2 h 31 m 40 s
Lunar surface time 21 h 36 m 20 s
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock"]Lunar sample[/ame] mass 21.55 kg (47.5 lb)
Number of lunar orbits 30
Time in lunar orbit 59 h 30 m 25.79 s
Landing [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_24"]July 24[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 16:50:35 UTC
Location:
13°19′N 169°9′W
Apendix 2 Documents Used:
Simple Freereturn tutorial 30.8.2007 by Jarmo Nikkanen,
Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference (SP-4029) by NASA
Apollo 11 Timeline by NASA
Official NASA Flight Plan by NASA
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11"]Wikipedia's Apollo 11 page[/ame] by Wikipedia
AMSO-User-manual by AMSO
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Special thanks to Dr. Martin Schweiger for Orbiter 2006 P1, Alain Capt and ACSoft for AMSO, and Jarmo Nikkanen for IMFD, DanSteph for Orbiter Sound 3.5 pete.dakota for the Planet Approach procedure and Sonicboom.com for the video.
--Please feel free to use, copy, paste or distribute this tutorial free of charge as long as you give me credit for the creation of the document.
Adam RodrigueZ (polaris149Tiberius)
Email:
First order of business:
Note: This tutorial is free for all to use, read, print, suggestions. You may also link to this forum post elsewhere as long as it is ok with the admins of orbiter-forums.com BUT it must be un-edited and you may not sell it or call any small portion of it your own. You may publish it as a whole as long as you give authored credit to me and the others who are listed in the special thanks area. That said, lets get this show on the road shall we?
This tutorial will use IMFD for this and I highly recommend it for this and other interplanetary flights. After getting to the moon you can use the AMSO AP again to land, but you will want IMFD again in order to get you and your crew home or you will orbit the moon indefinately.
The Interplanetary Multifunction Display "IMFD":
Possibly the most accurate, most powerful, and most useful MFD I have seen yet is the IMFD by Jarmo Nikkanen and when you realize that it’s a lot harder to complete a historical mission to the Moon in AMSO than you ever guessed, you might end up browsing an Orbiter forum for information as I did.
Some very nice people gave me this information and I in return must pass it along to those of you who want it as well. The catch is, if somone ever wants to know something you know, you must pass it on to them just as I am to you.
Do what you can to help others to know what you have learned and I will be happy. What I can tell you is that if you want to send something to the moon and back again safely in Orbiter, IMFD is the tool you want.
Achievements and Needs:
When you realize that hitting the moon at the right time and location is a lot like hitting a basket ball with a pencil after throwing them both up from either side of a house at similar times and the place the pencil must hit the basketball is less than the width of a slice of notebook paper or your crew dies, you may begin to understand what achievements NASA made and what Orbiter and yourself are capable of doing.
You may want to take a moment and think about what it is you will need to know to begin this journey back in time.
If you need...
If your having trouble with getting to the moon, this tutorial will get you there.
If your having trouble learning about how to use IMFD then this tutorial will show you how.
If your having trouble landing on the Moon, this tutorial will get you on the surface at almost the same time as the real Apollo 11 Lander.
If your having trouble rendezvousing with the CM, this tutorial will get you to within 30m at zero velocity relative to the CM for CM/LM dock.
If your having trouble docking the CM to the LM, this tutorial will have you using the sights in AMSO's virtual cockpit to dock.
If your having trouble with the TEI burn to go home, this tutorial will get you home safely at close to a historical time.
If your having trouble doing any kind of Mid Course Correction(MCC) burns that are optimal for fuel conservation as well as achieving a correct re-enty corridor, this tutorial will teach you about trim and course correction without using an autopilot.
If your slamming into the atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour (Mach 35)and either bouncing off into space or coming in too shallow and burning up in the atmosphere, this tutorial will get you on the ground safe and in a fairly close location to the historical site of recovery.
If your looking for a tutorial that will show you how to pilot the chopper to pickup the crew, sadly you’ve come to the wrong tutorial.
BLAH:
What you can expect:
What you will get that’s NOT Historical:
Enjoy this very long and detailed instruction set for a flight that for me was nominal and historical up to the undock of the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). Various attempts were made to make the CSM end up near the location it would have been at the point of TEI for a historical recovery back on Earth but sadly the flight is un-predictable after this point. You may keep this in mind when you are rendezvousing with the CM because that is when the AMSO rendezvous AP changes the time line. Still, I hope you like what I hope will be one of the BEST ways I have found to fly Apollo 11.
But it was not able to actually BE EXACTLY historical. I can’t stress to you how unimportant it is that you do this flight the way I describe below. Know only that these instructions will help you to piece together a flight of your own however if you follow them correctly, you should end up at home around the same time Apollo 11 did. I will say to you this: May the force be with you -always, and if for some accidental reason you start to pitch past zero degrees during your launch and begin to head back into the Atlantic, you might want to hit the “J “ key. Lets get started shall we?
"From the Earth to The Moon" an Orbiter 2006 P1 AMSO 1.17 Apollo 11 Full Mission Tutorial Using IMFD 5.1h
by
Adam RodrigueZ (polaris149Tiberius)
Adam RodrigueZ (polaris149Tiberius)
Under construction!!
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"From the Earth to The Moon" an Orbiter 2006 P1 AMSO 1.17 Apollo 11 Full Mission Tutorial Using IMFD 5.1h
by Adam RodrigueZ (polaris149Tiberius)
Revision 1.03 03-11-2016 at 11:56 AM PST(GMT-8)
FORWARD:
This tutorial will teach you how to use Orbiter 2006 P1 with the AMSO and IMFD add-ons to launch, fly, and
complete what President Kennedy described as "...the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure in which
man has ever embarked". The Apollo 11 Mission is an historic flight as it culminates the knowledge and hard work
of a very large team of scientists, engineers, and even right down to the guy sweeping the floor who were all
honored to be a part of this single endeavour.
If you are new to Orbiter, no need to worry. This tutorial is basic enough that it can show even the newest Orbinaut
how to get to the Moon and back safely. This tutorial endeavours to show you how to fly Apollo 11 from lift-off to
splashdown by the numbers. “By the numbers” means that I will be using conventional Orbiter add-ons
and maneuvers to accomplish the same velocities, altitudes, dVs, Ground Elapsed Times, and other aspects that will
recreate the historic Apollo 11 flight as close to the actual Apollo 11 Timeline. as is possible with AMSO. This is done
in order to give the pilot a realistic experience by changing a few things in the IMFD and a few times and burns
listed in already available Apollo 11 tutorials.
When you have arrived at the Moon and have begun your descent to the surface of the Moon, it will give you a
landing time very close to when the real LM "The Eagle" landed safely on July 20, 1969 at 20:17:41 GMT time. It
will also be a realistic re-creation and completion of the return flight to Earth and provides a safe re-entry and water
landing located very close to the exact location where the crew was recovered in the Pacific Ocean, and at nearly
the same time as when the real Command Module was recovered.
It took some good reading, a lot of testing, and with some help from Jarmo Nikkanen (author of IMFD), and others,
as well as already existing tutorials such as the AMSO tutorials to create this product which you see here now. The
procedures in this tutorial are easy enough to follow that you will feel like Jim Lovell, who said in the movie
Apollo 13, "Going to the moon isn't a miracle,... we just decided to go". Godspeed and happy hunting!!
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
You won’t find any swords or machine guns or Elves or magic eagles (accept the LEM) to ride on in this computer
program. It isn't a game. It’s a simulator of the planets of our solar system. It simulates the correct mass and
atmospheric density of those planets as far as science knows and places you in the cockpit of a vessel which can
take you to the stars. The rockets and ships and models in this simulator have realistic aerodynamic characteristics
that react to those atmospheres and orbital mechanics in a realistic and somewhat predictable way. All you have to
do is know the reasons why things go where they go in this Sim and prediction is inevitable. Your "high score" is
to complete your mission without crashing.
I have personally enjoyed making this tutorial but don’t get the impression that it wasn’t somewhat a laborious
effort. I enjoyed learning from other’s writings and therefore enjoy sharing the little knowledge I have gained. This
tutorial is the product of that line of thinking and the labor of sharing knowledge so pass the info on to others if
you have it. I hope you enjoy it and if you complete the mission of furthering exploration and the body of science
then you may attain the grande title of “Steely Eyed Missile Man”.
-Adam
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Note: This tutorial's text is designed to fit in the dimensions of a letter sized page with 1" margins with carriage returns built into the text that fits the
line above.
CAUTION: This is an "Alpha" release tutorial, many techniques and procedures have yet to be fully tested and there is no
guarantee that you will learn anything, or that said procedures will function as advertised. Learn at your own risk. I cannot
be held legally responsible if you become an Orbinaught or a geek from reading this.
REQUIREMENTS:
This tutorial was created and tested with the Orbiter build and add-ons listed below and installed in the
order shown here which had no conflicts:
- Orbiter Space Flight Simulator 2006 P1 (build 060929)
- with Sound 3.5*
- AMSO v1.15 to v1.17
- IMFD Space Navigation Computer v5.1g to 5.1m
- [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3165"]Attitude MFD V3.2[/ame]by Chris Knestrick's (aka tblaxland)http://www.orbithangar.com/searchauth.php?search=tblaxland
(* Note: Sound 3.5 is now only available in the "All my addons for Orbiter 2006" package.
Sound 4.0 will not work with Orbiter 2006).
MISSION:
In order to understand the goals of this simulator tutorial, I believe it is important to know what NASA's
mission goals were at the time of Apollo 11. Here is a minimal list of NASA's historic mission brief goals that
Apollo 11 mission was required to fulfill:
- A launch window that puts the Apollo 11 Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) on the surface when Tranquility
Base is illuminated by sunlight. - A Trans Lunar Insertion(TLI) that puts the vehicle in a Free-return trajectory flight path in case something
goes wrong during the flight. - Done in a time frame that that accounts for fuel and consumable limitations which will only support a 3
man crew for the duration of a nominal flight.
FLIGHT BRIEFING:
The AMSO Orbiter add-on is not an exact historical replica simulation of the Apollo vessels and their flight
characteristics. But it is one of the very best you will find in the world. For our purposes it has a very good launch Auto
Pilot (AP), which gets you into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), but then you must use some external MFDs to calculate your
TLI and the rest of the flight to the Moon. Once there, there are more APs to help you land on the Moon and
rendezvous back with the CSM to get home. You will need these tools if you want to do anything more than just
orbit the Earth.
Our mission to the Moon and back will include:
- A nominal launch to LEO.
- A Trans Lunar Insertion(TLI) burn.
- A transposition and docking with the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM).
- At least one mid-course correction (MCC)burn.
- A Lunar approach correction burn if needed.
- A Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) Burn.
- A Lunar Orbital Circularization Burn.
- About 80 Lunar orbits that allow Tranquility Base to be lit by sunlight.
- An Orbital Plane adjustment burn if required.
- A Control Service Module (CSM) Lunar orbital Circularization parking orbit is achieved.
- Transfer landing crew to LEM for undocking from the Service Module.
- LEM Undock from the CSM.
- A full rotation around the LM thrust axis for visual inspection of the LEM.
- A Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI burn) over the opposite side of Tranquility for a 60 by 9 nautical mile orbit.
- A LEM de-orbit burn for Powered Decent Phase.
- A LEM Powered Descent Initiation (PDI) and breaking phase.
- An historic lunar landing in the name of peace and all mankind.
- A Moon walk(optional).
- An LM ascent and rendezvous with the Orbiting Service Module (SM).
- A Docking with the SM.
- A Jettison of the Lunar Module.
- A Trans-Earth Insertion(TEI) burn.
- Several possible early to mid course correction burns for optimum corridor re-entry and nominal angel of attack
(AoA). - A Jettison of the Service Module and main engine bell.
- An entry interface preparation and optimum entry angle orientation.
- An entry Interface.
- A Parachute deployment and splashdown.
- An Astronaut Occupant Recovery.
- A possible ticker tape parade through Central Ave. New York, NY.
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TUTORIAL APOLLO 11 START:
Things you will need to know about:
- All Ground Elapsed Times (GETs) will be of the format: GET 000:00:00.00 which from left to right will
read: Hours: Minutes: Seconds, and Hundredths of a second (hhh:mm:ss.hshs). - Speeding up your time scale can cause IMFD to make bad calculations so when doing a burn or making
critical calculations, be sure to be at x 1.00. - Speeding up time while the Orbiter HUD pilot is pointing in Normal (-), Normal (+), Prograde, Retrograde,
or any of the other settings at the bottom of your glass cockpit will cause a tremendous loss of fuel. NEVER
do this if possible. - IMFD has a bit of a problem keeping its AP attitude hold and some calculations when Orbiter is in Virtual
Cockpit Mode or when in external view . Please do all burns in Glass Cockpit mode for accuracy. It is
unknown why this happens. - AMSO’s usage is simple. It involves mainly only three keys:
- "J" key, called "Action" key.
- "K" key, called "Alternate Action" key.
- "M" key, called "Focus Toggle" key.
You will need to open Orbiter and configure it for some settings that you may not normally set so I will have you to
make some small changes to Orbiter that will allow for a more realistic experience.
In the Orbiter Launch pad -PARAMETERS tab make sure you have these settings:
1. Complex flight model -MUST be checked.
2. Damage & failure simulation: -Optional but not recommended for beginners.
3. Limited fuel -MUST be checked.
4. Gravity-gradient torque: -Earth orbit injection autopilot trajectory precision is affected if this option is on. So it is
better to turn it off. Note that if you set it on, the autopilot will still be able to build orbit but not in the most optimum
way.
5. Particle stream: -OPTIONAL but you will miss all the best visual parts if unchecked.
(Note: Vessel shadows, object shadows, specular reflections, particle streams and the reentry flames are all
recommended for viewing AMSO in all it's glory and should not cause your video card any problems as long as
you use a 128Mb or higher video card.)
6. Ambient light level: -In the range 15 to 30.
7. (While your here: I like a star count of about 7000 -14,000 any more than that fries my 286's video card.
Preflight Steps -Open Your Orbiter Simulator and Suit Up for Flight
Step 1. Open your Orbiter Simulator and in the SCENARIO tab double click on the AMSO folder.
Step 2. Double click on the ALL MISSIONS LIFT OFF folder and select this scenario for use with this
tutorial:
"Apollo 11"
Launch Apollo-11 mission from Launch complex 39A. Date 16 July 1969, launch time: 13:32 UT, azimut: 72.058
degrees.
You are 5 minutes 30 seconds before launch time.
At precisely minus 5 minutes, press
"J" action key to retract launch tower arms. Attention, from this point, if you press "J" action key at any time, you
will abort the flight...
(This tutorial begins with this scenario and should be flown using either this scenario in AMSO folder or the first
scenario listed in the AS-506 folder. They are both the same scenario)
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Part 1 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Liftoff and Earth Orbit Insertion (EOI)
This part is simple but for those of you that do not know the AMSO launch process this section is here for you to complete a nominal Auto Piloted (AP) Earth Orbit Insertion (EOI) in to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Earth orbit was achieved around Ground Elapsed Time (GET) 000:11:44.00. Apollo 11 was then cleared for LEO at around GET 000:12:15.00. With this tutorial section you will achieve a very similar orbit to the historical orbit altitudes (alt), inclination (Inc), and cutoff time.
Step 1. PRESS "J" to retract the tower.
Step 2. Wait until UT 13:31:50 to PRESS "K" for Launch Sequence.
This starts the count down to launch and there is no going back after this. If your launch fails for any reason or the AP in the bottom left corner disappears after lift off you may hit the "J" key to abort up until the time the tower jet fires. After that the recovery of your crew may not be guaranteed.
BE ADVISED!! DO NOT press any flight controls during lift-off (ground zero), launch, or Earth Orbit Insertion program. No buttons can be pressed that change your ship's movement when the AP is doing the launch or it will disable the AP without warning.(View from external views and glass cockpit or virtual 3D cockpit are my favorites).
AT: GET 000:00:00.00 Clock is ticking and Apollo 11 is GO for launch. All engines should be GO at ground zero.
(Soon, I will detail the specifics of Apollo 11's EOI launch program's flight altitudes, burn vectors, and pitch,roll, and yaw attitude information as a function of time for doing a manual launch).
Step 3. Sit back and watch your very nominal AMSO Auto Pilot (AP) launch into space which will occur for the next 12 minutes 15 seconds or so.
(Note: You should see an "AP" in the bottom left corner of your screen from AMSO's Autopilot the entire time of your launch up to Single Engine Cut Off or "SECO".)
This launch gets you and your crew into an almost perfectly circular LEO automatically at around a 187.5 X 188.1 km orbit. Your flight azimuth from the roll program starts at 72.058°. More detail from Align Plane MFD will show a final orbital Inclination (Inc) of 9.00* at cutoff and a LAN of 353.44*. Orbit MFD will show that your orbital period is around 5.286k seconds indicated by the letter tango"T". This means that every 01:28:06 (1 hour, 28 minutes, 6 seconds) you should complete 1 orbit around the earth. Handy knowledge if you plan to follow Columbia's TLI at 1.5 orbits like they did in 1969.
Step 4. When the AMSO AP finishes your insertion into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) you will hear the Single Engine Cut Off (SECO). Then you will receive the "go for orbit" radio communication on Channel 1 from Houston.
You should be located to the east of Florida. You will need to pass up Florida 1 more time and then wait until you begin to approach Austrailia also for the second time. At this time you may follow the TLI preperations proceedure below. (At GET 001:52:52.00 or so you pass Moon Plane Cross Range 0.0. This is 1 complete orbit.)
A. Using GET for TLI Preperations
Step 5. IF not already set, set your Left Multi Function Display (LMFD) to Orbiter's Map Default Program MFD.
You may want to select the target button (TGT) as being "AS-506" to select your own ship as the target vessel. Now you must watch your orbits until you have gone around the Earth at least 1.25 times.
This works out to about GET 002:21:00.00 or so. If you use Time Warp you will need to slow Time Warp down to 1X at this GET in order to go to the next step. If you are about to pass over Austrailia and your GET is around the GET listed above, then you are ready for the next phase: Part 2 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Trans Lunar Insertion (TLI).
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Part 2 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Trans Lunar Insertion (TLI)
GET 002:21:00.00 is about 1.25 orbits from the time you are Go for orbit. You will now begin preperations for a Trans-Lunar Insertion(TLI) Burn. This is going to require the use of the powerful and very accurate IMFD. You should be about to approach the western coast of Austrailia so ready or not your going to the moon.
A. Set up IMFD to be more realistic for 1969
Step 1. Open IMFD in the Left Multifunction Display (LMFD) (pressing select, then “Interplanetary”).
Step 2. Press MNU to access the IMFD’s menu.
Step 3. Press MOD to modify the configuration.
(Here we are going to set the parameters for making IMFD use Apollo-like attitude correction which is more like a "point and shoot" configuration. The next few steps (Step 4 and 5) are optional but mandatory if you wish to continue with this tutorial.
Step 4. Set LambertAP mode to Apollo P30.
(Next step sets IMFD to do a more realistic Apollo-like burn as the real Apollo burns were done. The throttle-down of the main engines were cut offs to a thousandths of a second and this setting makes IMFD cutoff with the same accuracy).
Step 5. Set AB Throttle down to 0.00 using the “Set” button (<) and entering “0”.
(Note: Make sure to enter 0 here and then press the keyboard Enter not the Numpad Enter because if you do you will ignite your thrusters and this would be very bad)
Step 6. When these steps are done press MNU.
B. Select the Moon as the Target Object for Interplanetary Flight
Step 7. Open Course program.
Step 8. Select Target Intercept. Press Set, then TGT.
Step 9. Enter “Moon”
Step 10. In the Right MFD (RMFD), open IMFD("Interplanetary").
Step 11. Press MNU ("-")
Step 12. Share the two IMFDs by pressing “PG” then entering “0” for the ID of the LMFD-IMFD
(You can see the ID of the IMFD in the top right hand corner in the MNU)
C. Set up IMFD Map to Show More Accuracy
Step 13. Select Map.
Step 14. Press "PRJ" to set the projection to self from Equator.
Step 15. Press "MOD" three times to get into the IMFD's Map Program Configuration window.
Step 16. Set the accuracy to 1.00 by pressing "Nxt"
(Note: If you crash to the desktop or Save your scenario and come back to finish, you must set this again).
Step 17. Press "MOD" to see the new configured IMFD Map view.
Step 18. Press "Dsp"
Step 19. Press "PG" then "Plan" and "Soi" and "Int" then "Find"
Step 20. Zoom into planet Earth (press "PG" then "Z+" to zoom in) so that you can see yourself orbiting the Earth.
D. Set up RMFD IMFD -Map to Show The Lunar Intercept Point
Step 21. Press "Sel" to select the "Ref" to "Moon (weak)" in RMFD.
Step 22. Press "Cnt" to open the center dialoge box.
Step 23. Enter "p-moon" to center on the moon's PeriCynthion (PC)
(Note: the RMFD might still show the orbit around earth or a short ejection vector or maybe focus on the moon where it is now. This is ok. Dont worry as soon as you set the target and the correct parameters for the correct interception in the LMFD, you should be able to see the moon where it will be at its PC).
E. Set up the IMFD Navagation Computer to Calculate a Free-Return Lunar Interctption
(Note: if you already did steps 7, 8, and 9 from section B above, then you can skip to Step 26 below).
Step 24. You should have the LMFD, already set to Course Program. If not select it now.
Step 25. If you dont already have the moon selected as the target, select "Tgt" and enter "Moon" in the dialoge box now.
Step 26. Set the LMFD's Operation modes to: "Vel. Frame" by pressing MOD until you see "Operation Modes:" in the top left under the "Target Intercept" Program name. Pressing "MOD" will make it possible to navigate between the 2 main pages. You can then use "Nxt", "Prev", "Set", "(+)", and "(-)" buttons to change the default Operation Modes: from "Offset Disabled" to "Vel. Frame" Do this now.
Step 27. Set the default ammounts for a Free-Return" flight by pressing setting these ammounts: (You will use the "Set" button for entering these ammounts)
Lon: 4.00
Lat : 4.00
Rad: 8.00M
(Note: Make sure you set the Rad to 8M at this point. If you do not you may see some crazy plan going no where near the moon)
F. Begin Course Program Calculations for Trans Lunar Insertion Burn
Step 28. Step to the next page using the "PG" button.
Step 29. Set the GET under "Intercept" to 75:54:28 which gives a TIn of about 265.3K
Step 30. Set the "Realtime" to "Off-Axis"
Step 31. Set the "TEj" to an amount that makes the Entroute "Tot" the lowest it can be.
(Note: Usually IMFD 5.1d Dec 16 2007 will set the TEj well after a time that is economically efficient so you will most likely be setting an earlier time than the default suggested time of ejection. Also, if you minus the TEj enough the "Tot" amount will begin to go back up, go back to the lower amount. My Tot was as low as 4.353K before fine tunning the PeA info for the TLI.
When you set these amounts in the LMFD you should begin to see the RMFD's Map show the moon's PC ("moon-pe") at the center and then you should see the base listed as "Tranquillity")
Step 32. Step up or step down the Rad in the LMFD to make the PeA in the RMFD to show 80.0 km.
From AMSO's "FreeReturn.doc":
In the Earth-Moon system free-return trajectory requires a transfer time higher than 240k. (Typical = 250k-290k) Shorter transfer time would mean that the vessel will approach the moon with higher orbital velocity and in that case it must pass the lunar surface from closer distance in order to get into a proper earth return.
If the transfer time is longer the vessel will have a lower orbital velocity and it must pass the lunar surface from greater distance.
The transfer time to target point in other words Time Of Flight (TOF) = TIn - TEj
Step 33. Step up or down the "Lat" in the LMFD to make the "EqI" in the RMFD as close to 180.00 as possible.
(Note: for Apollo 11 this amount wont go very much higher than 175.00. I was able to get an EqI of 176.47*).
Step 34. Step down to the Rad in the LMFD again to adjust the PeA in RMFD Map back down to 80.0k.
F. Fine tune your Course Program for TLI
For the next few steps it will depend grately what the RMFD Map shows. You may need to do the following steps several times to get the amounts to be correct and the computer will take about 1 second to calculate its amounts after pressing your button so be patient with this next part.
Step 35A. Set the Adjustment amount to x10 by pressing the "Adj" button.
Step 35B. IF the GET in RMFD Map shows a GET HIGHER than 75:54:28 step UP the "Lon" 1 step ONLY (at x10).
Step 35C. IF the GET in RMFD Map shows a GET LOWER than 75:54:28 step DOWN the "Lon" 1 step ONLY (at x10).
Step 35D. Set your Adj amount back down to x1.
Step 35E. Step UP or DOWN your Rad to adjust your PeA in RMFD Map to be 80.0 Km again or as close as you can get to it.
Step 35F. Check your GET in RMFD Map. If it is NOT within a few seconds of GET 75:54:28, then redo Steps 35 A - F until your GET is 75:54:28 (+/- a few seconds) and your PeA is around 80.0 Km (+/- 0.5 Km).
(Note: If you are unable to get close to the correct PeA and GET time, try using an Adj amount of x1 for both parameters. This will allow you to further fine tune them to acceptable amounts. You must get the GET down to +/- 5 seconds within 75:54:28 and your PeA should be around 80.0 km (+/- 0.5 Km) in order to do your TLI burn.)
When the above process is finished, you will have met the same flight parameters for a free-return trajectory as the actual Apollo 11 flight go to the next step.
G. Set your IMFD Auto Pilot to Fire Main Engines for Trans Lunar Ejection (TLI)
Step 36. Step to the next page and press "AB" for the IMFD to conduct an auto-burn at your set ejection time and burn vector.
(Note: because we have set IMFD's throttle down to .01, your Burn Time ("BT") should be exactly enough to get you to the Moon at the right time and altitude above the Moon. You can see this information if you press "BV" for your Burn Vector. The burn will be accurate to a thousandths of a second which is how the Apollo 11 Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) did it in 1969).
Part 3 - Lunar Module Extraction and Jettison of The Saturn V Stage 3.
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"Com'mon Rookie park that thing" "If he cant dock that CSM, we dont have a mission"
Ok your now on the way to the moon. About 1/2 hour after finishing the TLI Apollo 11 detatched from the S-IVB third stage, pitched up, and docked with the LEM still lodged inside the S-IVB third stage. The CM pilot Michael Collins then seperated the LEM from the rocket stage and began the barbecue roll for their coast phase. To do this we will need the help of the included Dock MFD and the Apollo docking mechanism.
STEP 1. You will face the front of the spacecraft towards the sun. This is to ensure that you have plenty of light to see the docking target on the LEM. You can use Attitude MFD to orient your nose toward the sun by pressing MOD twice until the Attitude MFD is in target mode. Press TGT and then enter "Sun" into the data window. Now press "HLD" to hold the ship's attitude toward the Sun. After Attitude MFD finds the sun for you, you can press HLD again to release the hold attitude on the sun. Press "KillRot" and the proceed to STEP2.
STEP 2. You will now press "K" to detach from the S-IVB third stage. You may want to be in external mode to see the awesome AMSO animation of the seperation process. You should hear Bill Paxton say "Houston, we have a good seperation" from the Apollo 13 movie. Wait a few seconds and then proceed to STEP 3.
STEP 3. Switch to glass cockpit mode and then press F8 until you can see the virtual cockpit. (Lots of buttons) Now press CTRL + ALT + Up Button on your directional buttons. (This is not the numpad UP/8 button) You should be able to see the docking mechanism in front of you.
STEP 4. Pitch up by hitting Numpad 2 several times. While you pitch up you can open an external MFD and set it to Dock MFD. Set the target to the S-IVB docking port 1.
STEP 5. When you see the S-IVB third stage with the LEM inside you should null your pitch rate by pressing Numpad 5. Try and get your targetting rectical to slightly to the left and above the LEM's docking collar.
STEP 6. Now roll to where the LEM's targeting mechanism is in your targeting recticle or close to it. Null your roll and then press Numpad "/" to switch to translation thrusters.
STEP 7. Begin to thrust forward by pressing Numpad 6.
STEP 8. Ok now here is when you must use your own piloting skill. use the Dock MFD and your viewer to dock the CSM to the LEM. When done, press "K" to extract the LEM from the S-IVB third stage hull.
Part 4 - Apollo 11 AS-506 TLI Coast.
For your trans lunar coast period, you will want to begin a Passive Thermal Control (PTC), also known as "barbecue" mode roll proceedure of about 0.25 degrees per second. This can been seen using AttitudeMFD.
NASA called this the "barbecue roll". Because the radiators for keeping the emmence electronics which were a miss mesh of 1969 avionics and computer simiconductors along with gimbaling motors and other flight instruments, the two vehicles needed to be cooled off at times and heated up at other times.
The "Barbecue Roll" manuver kept the radiators at a good temprature so as not to overheat or undercool them. As it turns out, the Barbecue Roll also helps keep your vehicles in a stable flight as it spins its way to the moon. You should press CTRL + Numpad 6 (4 times) to achieve this slow roll proceedure. It is not necessary, but again if you want realism and you want to see what the Apollo 11 astronauts saw through thier windows on the way to the moon, you will want to establish this roll program during your coast time to the moon.
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Part 5 Apollo 11 Mid Course Corrections
You will need to set your RMFD back to IMFD Map Program. Zoom out and make sure that SOI is set to on. When you pass the Earth's SOI you will want to check your PeA for the moon. If it has changed from 80km to any other amount, you must follow the steps below to correct your trajectory to the moon. If it is still 80km then you will not need a course correction at this point.
MCC #1 Proceedure
STEP 1. Change your LMFD to IMFD if its not already there.
STEP 2. Select Menu and then Course.
STEP 3. Select Delta Velocity.
STEP 4. Set the reference to Moon.
STEP 5. Set the dV to Zero "0"
STEP 6. Step up or down this ammount from 0.000 to an amount that gives the PeA in the R IMFD Map program an altitude of 80km.
STEP 7. Press AB in the LMFD to burn the correction burn for this MCC #1.
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Part 6 - Loss of Signal (LOS) and Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI)
Historically, the Loss of Signal was a good test for astronauts to determine if they are on schedule and arriving at the correct telemetry. I will show you how to determine when your LOS occurs and how to know if your on schedule or not.
Loss Of Signal Timming Calculation
If you made a mid course correction then this process wont apply. However if you didnt then there is a simple equation that will tell you when you are supposed to loose signal.
To Be continued soon.
Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) Proceedure:
This is a very important proceedure. If the Apollo 11 crew didnt complete the LOI correctly and on time (because they were out of communication with NASA Mission Control -Houston), this could have happened very easily and so it was very important that they did it correctly and on time or they could tumble off into space even though they were on a free-return trajectory. Luckily, you have the IMFD on board and you will be able to do this proceedure without Houston.
After LOS (you can determine this by externally viewing your ship with the Earth behind you and the moon approaching from one side). Once the Earth goes behind the Moon you would have lost the signal to Houston as radio signals travel at the speed of light in a straight line. Because the Moon is in between you and the Earth, you would have lost signal and all radio communications with Mission Control.
STEP 1. After LOS, set up your LMFD to IMFD if its not already set correctly to this MFD.
STEP 2. Select Menu, and then Course.
STEP 3. Select Orbit Insert.
STEP 4. Set the Reference to Moon.
STEP 5. Press AB and wait.
IMFD will now circularize your orbit at the correct time of your PeA of the Moon and will burn the correct ammount of time to put you into a perfect orbit around the moon.
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Part 7 - Tranquillity Base Alighnment
\
This process is done by pressing the "K" to access AMSO's Lunar AP.
To be added later
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Part 8 - Lunar Excursion Module Detatch and De-Orbit Burn
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Part 9 - LEM Powered Decent Phase
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Part 10 -Landing Phase
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Part 11 -Houston, The Eagle Has Landed
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Part 12 -Powered Ascent Phase
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Part 13 -Rendezvous with Service Control Module
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Part 14 -Transfer of Crew, Cargo and Detatch the LM Ascent Stage
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Part 15 -Preperations for Loss of Signal and TEI
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Part 16 -TEI from Moon Using IMFD in the DG S
Preface: To make this tutorial, I made a trip to the moon in the default DG S to verify some terms and while following the Apollo 11 Timeline.
I was able to create this small tutorial for people to use IMFD to get home from the moon. I noticed that there was a serious lack of this data on this procedure in the Orbiter community and so I felt the need to fill this vacuum -hence this tutorial was created in very little time.
Preflight Steps
You can re-create the situation I have made here by opening a DG S scenario that comes with Orbiter 2006 P1:
Delta-glider/"DG-S ready for takeoff"
The Scramjet delta-glider (DG-S) is ready for takeoff from runway 33 of the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at Kennedy Space Center.
Take off using main engines and climb to 10km. Then try the air-breathing scramjet engines and test the performance for different speeds and altitudes.
...and then by changing the date in Scenario Editor to July 16 1969 at 13:26:00 UT (T-5min to Launch), then you can save the edited scenario as the start of your flight to the moon. You must then re-open the saved scenario in order to make the Sim time set back to 0. You need this for IMFD to function correctly.
You will launch from Canaveral horizontally and then ascend into an orbit of 178km X 178km. If your using AMSO as this tutorial is supposed to be designed for and I’m using the DG S for this flight, your numbers may be very different.
I used the IMFD tutorial to get to the moon using the Free-return document in the Doc/AMSO folder called: FreeReturn.doc
-AND-
The Offset Procedure document tutorial located in the
C:\...Doc\AMSO\IMFD5_OffsetProcedure.zip and then you can unzip the files inside and read OffsetTuto.html.
You also need to:
* Have the latest version of AMSO, Orbiter, and IMFD and that you know how to do the Free-Return TLI (Trans-Lunar Injection) and Offset procedure and have done so to get to the moon.
* Have made at least 1 course correction burn during transit to the Moon to set your final PeA to 110km
* You have successfully entered an orbit around the moon at an altitude of no greater than 110km.
* Your simulated dock with your orbiter vessel occurs approximately 28 hours after undock. (This comes out to about 30 orbits I think total for the orbiter vehicle assuming that you’re at an altitude of 110km.)
* Your altitude is about 110km when you dock.
* You have jettisoned your simulated Lander about 2 hours after docking.
* Your transfer got you to the moon around GET 75:54:29.
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A. --To make your burn based on my 28-30 hour EVA on the Lunar Surface, see the next section "Section A -Rendezvous Flight Timings -EVA Procedure”
1. To make you’re Trans Earth Injection burn using Base Approach (for non-specific landing footprint/recovery zone)
See Section A1. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Base Approach
2. To make your Trans Earth Injection burn using Planet Approach (for almost exact landing coordinates) see Section A2. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Planet Approach
B. --To make your burn via an earthrise count, sunrise count, or counting total SCM orbits, see section "Section B -Rendezvous Special Flight Timings -Earthrise/Sunrise/Orbits Procedure" (to be posted soon)
Section A -Rendezvous Flight Timings -EVA Procedure
Notes: For a return flight, the Apollo 11 astronauts found themselves wanting to hit a specific target on the earth. This technique is somewhat entailed and we wont be showing you how to do a precision hit on a greater body, But I will tell you that the orbit you leave on is important.
In orbiter the earth and the moon are exactly where they would be at the time of the Apollo 11's Trans Earth Injection (TEI) ignition burn time of GET 135:23:42. If you leave at the right time and make your MCC at the right time, you should come very close to the location you wish to land as long as your doing a lifting entry with a hypersonic trim angle of attack of −27°.
If your GET time doesn’t match mine, all you have to do is prepare for your TEI burn on the IMFDs at about 20 min before you see the earthrise For my flight in the DG S, the second to the last earthrise occurred at GET133:28:29 so I wait until the next sunrise to begin my TEI preparations which occurred at 134:56:00 or so. This is about 11 min before your TEI burn and that should be plenty of time.
A1. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Base Approach
1. Fast forward to GET 135:20:42 -OR- count your orbits and make sure your at orbit #60 to start this tutorial.
When this has been done your ready to rock and roll.
2. Set both Left MFD (LMFD) and Right MFD (RMFD) to Interplanetary MFD (IMFD).
3. Open the menu of both IMFDs and set the RMFD to share with the left.
4. Set the LMFD to Base Approach and the right MFD to Orbit Eject.
5. Set the LMFD source to Moon (VERY IMPORTANT STEP), and the RMFD to Base Approach instead of its default Higher Orbit.
6. Set the Target on the LFMD coordinates to Lon -172.40 (which sets it to 172.40* W), the Lat to 10.60* and the ReA to 6.37*. The rest (Alt 120.0K and Ant 21.00*) are left as the default.
7. Start to increase the Hint in the LMFD at X1 until a burn vector appears on both MFDs.
Now here is the trick. Depending on your window, or when you decide to set this, and various other factors like mass, and thrust ratio, the burn vector may show a very straight line on the RMFD. Look at the oV amount. It may be around 5.818K or above.
If it is then your setting up a more expensive faster flight.
8. If this is so, keep Hinting up or increasing the Hint in the LMFD past this vectoring. Note that your burn solution or vector will disappear in the RMFD after a bit of increasing again -THIS IS NORMAL Don’t panic!!
Anything above 3.000K of oV is too much for the Apollo 11 mission.
9. After you are done passing the larger oV number up, and you have seen your old vector disappear, you will see a second burn vector appear in the LMFD.
When it shows up again you might find a somewhat less expensive flight but it may not be enough so you can even go past that one to see if there is a less expensive flight window here.
(By the second or third window you find you should find a window that shows the oV to be about 1.772K to about 2.200K and not below 1.000K. Again, this depends on vessel, mass, fuel consumption up to now, thrust ratio for the vessel).
10. Zoom in on the earth in the LMFD. You should see that the Earth is at the center of your screen and the TEI result shows your path going through the far right side of the Earth and slightly through the Earth no matter what projection you choose.
This is fine as you may change your dV later to fix your approach to the Earth for passive re-entry later.
(Also, you may see an squiggly line representing the path in the LMFD. This is also ok.)
(...Don’t worry don’t panic; make yourself a homemade carbonation re-breather out of your flight manual and some duct tape if you begin to panic .)
Note: This is completely normal sometimes as your IMFD tries to get the right vectoring for its burn to get you home. You will either see the squiggly line or the good line either way your going home at the oV you chose which is all we want for now.
Your direction is chosen when you open the LMFD and the reference is set to Earth so LMFD knows which heading to take kind of. It needs Orbit insert to do the rest.
11. Now your ready to burn. Click on the AB to start the Auto Burn for the LMFD and you’re off like a prom dress!!!
You’re done and en route to Earth!!! Have a nice flight back to earth you wont know where you will land but your MCC should use Delta Velocity and the IMFD Map program to set an altitude of 36km to 40km in the IMFD Map. The MCC should be done about GET 150:00:00 or so.
A2. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Planet Approach
Special thanks to pete.dakota for this section.
(Note: Do this procedure on your last orbit, so you don't use any time acceleration, except up to the burn time. This will insure greater accuracy.)
1. LMFD set to Planet Approach mode. Reference EARTH Target MOON.
2. RMFD set to Orbit-Eject mode. Set to COURSE and OFF AXIS. Reference MOON.
3. LMFD: Set EqI as low as possible. PeA to 36 to 40km. Under PET MANUAL (NOT TEJ), set GET to the mission specific splashdown time. GET 195:18:35 for Apollo 11.
4. Make GET under TEj in the LMFD the same as the GET in the RMFD.
If you have RMFD shared with LMFD and set to course and off-axis then you'll see it updating correctly. You get your burn-vector and auto-burn from Orbit-Eject NOT Planet Approach. Use the RMFD to auto-burn.
If you look at the IMFD Map after your burn you may be thinking that the planned orbit looks like it is way to big and fast. But this was how it was done in the Apollo missions so go for it!!
If TEj in the RFMD is showing 0.000 then change off-axis to real-time and then back to off-axis again to reset the timer. Then hit auto-burn and wait. You should be looking at about a 195 second burn in Apollo 11.
This means that the coast back to Earth (with the odd correction burn) will have you hitting the atmosphere at the same time as the actual mission did, give or take a few minutes, ensuring that you are going to splashdown in the Pacific.
Part 17 -Trans Earth Flight Coast
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Part 18 -Trans Earth Mid Course Corrections
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Part 19 -Jettison Service Module and Prepair for Re-Entry
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Part 20 -Re-Entry and Earth Landing
The admissible dynamic pressure for the thermal shield configuration is 250 kPa (about -12,5 G) and without is 35 kPa.
For the CM splashdown, the admissible impact survival speed: horizontal speed in both axes +-8 m/s and vertical speed -12 m/s.
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Landing
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_24"]July 24[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame]
16:50:35 UTC
Mission duration
8 d 03 h 18 m 35 s
Thes are a few facts that may not be needed to fly the tutorial but are some fun facts about Apollo 11 that we may look at as I have just finished my 3rd test of 3 different starts from the AS-506 Apollo 11 lift off scenario in the AMSO scenario folder.
All three missions started from scratch and were done according to my fligt plan which places you in the same location on the earth at a similar time to the actual spashdown and gets near the historical location but not quite. I land at Pos:149.11* W, 8.56* N to around 155.16*W, 8.62* N
The third landing was around 151.56* W, 9.12* N as you can see in this picture below made in [ame="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=13.316667,-169.15&spn=0.3,0.3&q=13.316667,-169.15"]Google Maps[/ame]
Here is a hosted image on Image Shack
(Click me Im a link image)
[IMG=http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/2051/googlemap0010vj2om9.th.jpg]
My flight landings compared to the historical location in Google Maps ©2008 Google
As you can see Im way off from the historical landing site but all three of my landings occur in a similar location which allows me to somewhat predict whre the final resting locaiton of the CM will be if my tutorial is followed.
This is all I wanted and now I shall publish all parts of the mission I have done to land at this location at a GET of 193:15:00 or around that time. If all steps in my tutorial are followed then one can reasonably predict a landing in this part of the earth.
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Apendix 1 Mission Parameters
Mission name Apollo 11
Here are the stats on our mission:
(thanks to Wikipedia)
Service Module SM-107
Command Module CM-107
callsign Columbia
mass 30,320 kg
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module"]Lunar Module[/ame] LM-5
callsign Eagle
mass 16,448 kg
Crew size 3
Booster [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V"]Saturn V[/ame] SA-506
Launch date [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_16"]July 16[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 13:32:00 [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC"]UTC[/ame]
Lunar landing
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_20"]July 20[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 20:17:40 UTC
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_Tranquillitatis"]Sea of Tranquility[/ame] 0° 40' 26.69" N 23° 28' 22.69" E
(based on the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronomical_Union"]IAU[/ame] Mean Earth Polar Axis)
Lunar EVA duration 2 h 31 m 40 s
Lunar surface time 21 h 36 m 20 s
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock"]Lunar sample[/ame] mass 21.55 kg (47.5 lb)
Number of lunar orbits 30
Time in lunar orbit 59 h 30 m 25.79 s
Landing [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_24"]July 24[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 16:50:35 UTC
Location:
Apendix 2 Documents Used:
Simple Freereturn tutorial 30.8.2007 by Jarmo Nikkanen,
Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference (SP-4029) by NASA
Apollo 11 Timeline by NASA
Official NASA Flight Plan by NASA
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11"]Wikipedia's Apollo 11 page[/ame] by Wikipedia
AMSO-User-manual by AMSO
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Special thanks to Dr. Martin Schweiger for Orbiter 2006 P1, Alain Capt and ACSoft for AMSO, and Jarmo Nikkanen for IMFD, DanSteph for Orbiter Sound 3.5 pete.dakota for the Planet Approach procedure and Sonicboom.com for the video.
--Please feel free to use, copy, paste or distribute this tutorial free of charge as long as you give me credit for the creation of the document.
Adam RodrigueZ (polaris149Tiberius)
Email:
This tutorial I am completing with some help from Jarmo Nikkanen (IMFD author) and will endeavor to be as close to the original Apollo 11 flight plan (using the Apollo 11 Timeline) as possible for all users whether your new to Orbiter or a vetran user.
For all of you Apollo 11 historians who want to re-create the mission for realism purposes, this can be a good tutorial to get started but sadly it will not be as historical as you may wish due to the limitations of AMSO, BUT its pretty darn close and can serve to be an extreamly visually pleasing mission.
This flight is for use with Orbiter 2006 P1 (build 060929) w/sound 3.5, AMSO v 1.15 to v1.17, and IMFD v5.1h to 5.1m and it will try and meet the all the relavant mission brief goals that the original Apollo 11 mission achieved.
This includes:
1. A launch window that puts the Apollo 11 Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) on the surface when Tranquillity Base is illuminated by sunlight.
2. A Trans Lunar Insertion(TLI) that puts the vehicle in a Free-return trajectory flight path in case something goes wrong during the flight.
3. Done in a time frame that that accounts for fuel and consumable limitations which will only support a 3 man crew for the duration of a nominal flight.
This tutorial will get you to the moon at an almost exact historical time and a landing time close to when [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong"]Neil Alden Armstrong[/ame] and [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin"]Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr[/ame] landed on July 20 1969 and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins. This tutorial will also allow the flight to complete with a safe re-entry and a landing in the Pacific Ocean close to the location where the crew was recovered at nearly the same time.
This tutorial tries to re-create the Apollo 11 mission in a historical way to give the pilot similar views and experiences the actual crew would have experianced during the REAL flight.
As a preperation to the flight I recommend watching this video to see some of the actual Apollo program's greatest moments.
Well worth watching this 08min 22seconds long video
Video Apollo 11 - The Moon shot by Sonicboom.com
Keep checking back to this thread for any further changes that may be made to this tutorial, as it will be updated as I gather information and compile it for posting here. Feel free to print this tutorial for use. You may also re-post this tutorial elsewhere un-edited and as long as you include credit to me and the others who are listed in the special thanks area.
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That said, we are going to have to agree that AMSO was not meant to be an exact historical rendition of the actual Apollo flights. It has its own Auto Pilot (AP), which gets you into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), but then you must use some external MFD to calculate your TLI if you want to do anything but orbit the Earth.
This tutorial will use IMFD for this and I highly recommend it for this and other interplanetary flights. After getting to the moon you can use the AMSO AP again to land, but you will want IMFD again in order to get you and your crew home or you will orbit the moon indefinately.
The Interplanetary Multifunction Display "IMFD":
Possibly the most accurate, most powerful, and most useful MFD I have seen yet is the IMFD by Jarmo Nikkanen and when you realize that it’s a lot harder to complete a historical mission to the Moon in AMSO than you ever guessed, you might end up browsing an Orbiter forum for information as I did.
Some very nice people gave me this information and I in return must pass it along to those of you who want it as well. The catch is, if somone ever wants to know something you know, you must pass it on to them just as I am to you.
Do what you can to help others to know what you have learned and I will be happy. What I can tell you is that if you want to send something to the moon and back again safely in Orbiter, IMFD is the tool you want.
Achievements and Needs:
When you realize that hitting the moon at the right time and location is a lot like hitting a basket ball with a pencil after throwing them both up from either side of a house at similar times and the place the pencil must hit the basketball is less than the width of a slice of notebook paper or your crew dies, you may begin to understand what achievements NASA made and what Orbiter and yourself are capable of doing.
You may want to take a moment and think about what it is you will need to know to begin this journey back in time.
If you need...
If your having trouble with getting to the moon, this tutorial will get you there.
If your having trouble learning about how to use IMFD then this tutorial will show you how.
If your having trouble landing on the Moon, this tutorial will get you on the surface at almost the same time as the real Apollo 11 Lander.
If your having trouble rendezvousing with the CM, this tutorial will get you to within 30m at zero velocity relative to the CM for CM/LM dock.
If your having trouble docking the CM to the LM, this tutorial will have you using the sights in AMSO's virtual cockpit to dock.
If your having trouble with the TEI burn to go home, this tutorial will get you home safely at close to a historical time.
If your having trouble doing any kind of Mid Course Correction(MCC) burns that are optimal for fuel conservation as well as achieving a correct re-enty corridor, this tutorial will teach you about trim and course correction without using an autopilot.
If your slamming into the atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour (Mach 35)and either bouncing off into space or coming in too shallow and burning up in the atmosphere, this tutorial will get you on the ground safe and in a fairly close location to the historical site of recovery.
If your looking for a tutorial that will show you how to pilot the chopper to pickup the crew, sadly you’ve come to the wrong tutorial.
What you can expect:
This tutorial when its finished will include:
A nominal launch to LEO, TLI to the moon, a landing, LM ascent and rendezvous with the orbiting vehicle, jettison of LM and TEI plus a few course corrections to ensure you enter earths atmosphere at the nominal angel of attack (AoA), reentry and a safe landing in the ocean at near the historical location.
I will further advise the reader on the minimal tools needed to achieve this mission and which will be fully documented for use on your trip into the depths of lunar space and back. Any further scientific micro-testing or comparisons to the actual Apollo 11 flight will sadly cause you to pound your head into the screen at 9.8m/s^2 and damage your simulator.
[/LIST]There were no atmospheric enhancers or orbital stability mods installed and I decided for this tutorial that I wouldn’t install any special camera add-ons that allowed me take some awesome pictures of the lunar surface so If you don’t want to see the LEM sitting on the moon from the CM in orbit, then don’t install [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2989"]TelescopeMFD_0.1[/ame] or [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2645"]CameraMFD 0.12 Beta[/ame]
. And if you don’t want to know what stars the Apollo 11 navigator had to use to check his guidance computer's trajectory and telemetry and that it was a correct burn attitude then don’t go get [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3165"]Attitude MFD V3.2[/ame]. In fact, don’t learn physics or Newton’s Third Law of Motion or look at any Leonardo Divinci’s drawings and don’t ever read any Shakespeare. You know what, just go hide in your room and forget you ever saw this simulator cuz you’re not going to like loosing this game. It has no bullets or lasers to shoot and there is no score to gain. Ths simulator is for personal achievment saticfaction. When you realize that your at the moon and you got here with [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton"]Sir Isaac Newton[/ame] in the driver's seat most of the way, you may decide that this game is not a game but a labratory for testing your knowledge of physics and orbital mechanics.
For the rest of you -your EVA suit is waiting for you down the hall on the right in the PRE-LAUNCH WHITE ROOM so get suited up and get for a little jolt fellas.
What you will get that’s NOT Historical:
Enjoy this very long and detailed instruction set for a flight that for me was nominal and historical up to the undock of the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). Various attempts were made to make the CSM end up near the location it would have been at the point of TEI for a historical recovery back on Earth but sadly the flight is un-predictable after this point. You may keep this in mind when you are rendezvousing with the CM because that is when the AMSO rendezvous AP changes the time line. Still, I hope you like what I hope will be one of the BEST ways I have found to fly Apollo 11.
But it was not able to actually BE EXACTLY historical. I can’t stress to you how unimportant it is that you do this flight the way I describe below. Know only that these instructions will help you to piece together a flight of your own however if you follow them correctly, you should end up at home around the same time Apollo 11 did. I will say to you this: May the force be with you -always, and if for some accidental reason you start to pitch past zero degrees during your launch and begin to head back into the Atlantic, you might want to hit the “J “ key. Lets get started shall we?
Things you will need to know about:
- All Ground Elapsed Times (GETs) will be of the format: GET 000:00:00.00 which from left to right will read: Hours: Minutes: Seconds, and Hundredths of a second (hhh:mm:ss.hshs)
- Speeding up your time scale can cause IMFD to make bad calculations so when doing a burn or making critical calculations, be sure to be at x 1.00.
- Speeding up time while the Orbiter HUD pilot is pointing in Normal (-), Normal (+), Prograde, Retrograde, or any of the other settings at the bottom of your glass cockpit will cause a tremendous loss of fuel. NEVER do this or you will be starting over from your last quick save.
- IMFD has a bit of a problem keeping its attitude hold and some calculations when in Virtual Cockpit Mode. Please do all burns in Glass Cockpit mode for accuracy. It is unknown why this happens.
- AMSO’s usage is simple. It involves mainly only three keys:
- "J" key, called "Action" key.
- "K" key, called "Alternate Action" key.
- "M" key, called "Focus Toggle" key.
Pre-Flight Steps for Orbiter 2006 P1
Here I will have you
make some small changes to Orbiter that will allow for a more realistic experience. You will need to be in Orbiter's Launchpad window and configure it for some settings that you may not normally set. Using the tabs along the top of Orbiter Launchpad select and set the following:
In the PARAMETERS tab, you must have these settings:
1. Complex flight model -checked.
2. Limited fuel -checked.
3. Non spherical gravity sources -checked.
4. Gravity-gradient torque -selected.
(While your here: I like a star count of about 7000 -14,000 any more than that fries my 286's video card. Vessel shadows, object shadows, specular reflections, particle streams and the reentry flames are all good for this viewing in AMSO and should not cause your video card to have a problem as long as you use a 128Mb video card.)
Preflight Steps -Open Your Orbiter Simulator and Suit Up for Flight
Step 1. Open your Orbiter Simulator and in the SCENARIO tab double click on the AMSO folder.
Step 2. Double click on the ALL MISSIONS LIFT OFF folder and select this scenario for use with this tutorial:
"Apollo 11"
Launch Apollo-11 mission from Launch complex 39A. Date 16 July 1969, launch time: 13:32 UT, azimut: 72.058 degrees.
You are 5 minutes 30 seconds before launch time.
At precisely minus 5 minutes, press "J" action key to retract launch tower arms. Attention, from this point, if you press "J" action key at any time, you will abort the flight...
(This tutorial begins with this scenario and should be flown using either this scenario in AMSO folder or the first scenario listed in the AS-506 folder. They are both the same scenario)
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Part 1 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Liftoff and Earth Orbit Insertion (EOI)
This part is simple but for those of you that do not know the AMSO launch process this section is here for you to complete a nominal Auto Piloted (AP) Earth Orbit Insertion (EOI) in to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Earth orbit was achieved around Ground Elapsed Time (GET) 000:11:44.00. Apollo 11 was then cleared for LEO at around GET 000:12:15.00. With this tutorial section you will achieve a very similar orbit to the historical orbit altitudes (alt), inclination (Inc), and cutoff time.
Step 1. PRESS "J" to retract the tower.
Step 2. Wait until UT 13:31:50 to PRESS "K" for Launch Sequence.
This starts the count down to launch and there is no going back after this. If your launch fails for any reason or the AP in the bottom left corner disappears after lift off you may hit the "J" key to abort up until the time the tower jet fires. After that the recovery of your crew may not be guaranteed.
BE ADVISED!! DO NOT press any flight controls during lift-off (ground zero), launch, or Earth Orbit Insertion program. No buttons can be pressed that change your ship's movement when the AP is doing the launch or it will disable the AP without warning.(View from external views and glass cockpit or virtual 3D cockpit are my favorites).
AT: GET 000:00:00.00 Clock is ticking and Apollo 11 is GO for launch. All engines should be GO at ground zero.
(Soon, I will detail the specifics of Apollo 11's EOI launch program's flight altitudes, burn vectors, and pitch,roll, and yaw attitude information as a function of time for doing a manual launch).
Step 3. Sit back and watch your very nominal AMSO Auto Pilot (AP) launch into space which will occur for the next 12 minutes 15 seconds or so.
(Note: You should see an "AP" in the bottom left corner of your screen from AMSO's Autopilot the entire time of your launch up to Single Engine Cut Off or "SECO".)
This launch gets you and your crew into an almost perfectly circular LEO automatically at around a 187.5 X 188.1 km orbit. Your flight azimuth from the roll program starts at 72.058°. More detail from Align Plane MFD will show a final orbital Inclination (Inc) of 9.00* at cutoff and a LAN of 353.44*. Orbit MFD will show that your orbital period is around 5.286k seconds indicated by the letter tango"T". This means that every 01:28:06 (1 hour, 28 minutes, 6 seconds) you should complete 1 orbit around the earth. Handy knowledge if you plan to follow Columbia's TLI at 1.5 orbits like they did in 1969.
Step 4. When the AMSO AP finishes your insertion into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) you will hear the Single Engine Cut Off (SECO). Then you will receive the "go for orbit" radio communication on Channel 1 from Houston.
You should be located to the east of Florida. You will need to pass up Florida 1 more time and then wait until you begin to approach Austrailia also for the second time. At this time you may follow the TLI preperations proceedure below. (At GET 001:52:52.00 or so you pass Moon Plane Cross Range 0.0. This is 1 complete orbit.)
A. Using GET for TLI Preperations
Step 5. IF not already set, set your Left Multi Function Display (LMFD) to Orbiter's Map Default Program MFD.
You may want to select the target button (TGT) as being "AS-506" to select your own ship as the target vessel. Now you must watch your orbits until you have gone around the Earth at least 1.25 times.
This works out to about GET 002:21:00.00 or so. If you use Time Warp you will need to slow Time Warp down to 1X at this GET in order to go to the next step. If you are about to pass over Austrailia and your GET is around the GET listed above, then you are ready for the next phase: Part 2 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Trans Lunar Insertion (TLI).
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Part 2 - Apollo 11 AS-506 Trans Lunar Insertion (TLI)
GET 002:21:00.00 is about 1.25 orbits from the time you are Go for orbit. You will now begin preperations for a Trans-Lunar Insertion(TLI) Burn. This is going to require the use of the powerful and very accurate IMFD. You should be about to approach the western coast of Austrailia so ready or not your going to the moon.
A. Set up IMFD to be more realistic for 1969
Step 1. Open IMFD in the Left Multifunction Display (LMFD) (pressing select, then “Interplanetary”).
Step 2. Press MNU to access the IMFD’s menu.
Step 3. Press MOD to modify the configuration.
(Here we are going to set the parameters for making IMFD use Apollo-like attitude correction which is more like a "point and shoot" configuration. The next few steps (Step 4 and 5) are optional but mandatory if you wish to continue with this tutorial.
Step 4. Set LambertAP mode to Apollo P30.
(Next step sets IMFD to do a more realistic Apollo-like burn as the real Apollo burns were done. The throttle-down of the main engines were cut offs to a thousandths of a second and this setting makes IMFD cutoff with the same accuracy).
Step 5. Set AB Throttle down to 0.00 using the “Set” button (<) and entering “0”.
(Note: Make sure to enter 0 here and then press the keyboard Enter not the Numpad Enter because if you do you will ignite your thrusters and this would be very bad)
Step 6. When these steps are done press MNU.
B. Select the Moon as the Target Object for Interplanetary Flight
Step 7. Open Course program.
Step 8. Select Target Intercept. Press Set, then TGT.
Step 9. Enter “Moon”
Step 10. In the Right MFD (RMFD), open IMFD("Interplanetary").
Step 11. Press MNU ("-")
Step 12. Share the two IMFDs by pressing “PG” then entering “0” for the ID of the LMFD-IMFD
(You can see the ID of the IMFD in the top right hand corner in the MNU)
C. Set up IMFD Map to Show More Accuracy
Step 13. Select Map.
Step 14. Press "PRJ" to set the projection to self from Equator.
Step 15. Press "MOD" three times to get into the IMFD's Map Program Configuration window.
Step 16. Set the accuracy to 1.00 by pressing "Nxt"
(Note: If you crash to the desktop or Save your scenario and come back to finish, you must set this again).
Step 17. Press "MOD" to see the new configured IMFD Map view.
Step 18. Press "Dsp"
Step 19. Press "PG" then "Plan" and "Soi" and "Int" then "Find"
Step 20. Zoom into planet Earth (press "PG" then "Z+" to zoom in) so that you can see yourself orbiting the Earth.
D. Set up RMFD IMFD -Map to Show The Lunar Intercept Point
Step 21. Press "Sel" to select the "Ref" to "Moon (weak)" in RMFD.
Step 22. Press "Cnt" to open the center dialoge box.
Step 23. Enter "p-moon" to center on the moon's PeriCynthion (PC)
(Note: the RMFD might still show the orbit around earth or a short ejection vector or maybe focus on the moon where it is now. This is ok. Dont worry as soon as you set the target and the correct parameters for the correct interception in the LMFD, you should be able to see the moon where it will be at its PC).
E. Set up the IMFD Navagation Computer to Calculate a Free-Return Lunar Interctption
(Note: if you already did steps 7, 8, and 9 from section B above, then you can skip to Step 26 below).
Step 24. You should have the LMFD, already set to Course Program. If not select it now.
Step 25. If you dont already have the moon selected as the target, select "Tgt" and enter "Moon" in the dialoge box now.
Step 26. Set the LMFD's Operation modes to: "Vel. Frame" by navigating between the 2 pages and useing "Nxt", "Prev", "Set", "(+)", and "(-)" buttons.
Step 27. Set the default ammounts for a Free-Return" flight by pressing setting these ammounts: (You will use the "Set" button for entering these ammounts)
Lon: 4.00
Lat : 4.00
Rad: 8.00M
(Note: Make sure you set the Rad to 8M at this point. If you do not you may see some crazy plan going no where near the moon)
F. Begin Course Program Calculations for Trans Lunar Insertion Burn
Step 28. Step to the next page using the "PG" button.
Step 29. Set the GET under "Intercept" to 75:54:28 which gives a TIn of about 265.3K
Step 30. Set the "Realtime" to "Off-Axis"
Step 31. Set the "TEj" to an amount that makes the Entroute "Tot" the lowest it can be.
(Note: Usually IMFD 5.1d Dec 16 2007 will set the TEj well after a time that is economically efficient so you will most likely be setting an earlier time than the default suggested time of ejection. Also, if you minus the TEj enough the "Tot" amount will begin to go back up, go back to the lower amount. My Tot was as low as 4.353K before fine tunning the PeA info for the TLI.
When you set these amounts in the LMFD you should begin to see the RMFD's Map show the moon's PC ("moon-pe") at the center and then you should see the base listed as "Tranquillity")
Step 32. Step up or step down the Rad in the LMFD to make the PeA in the RMFD to show 80.0 km.
From AMSO's "FreeReturn.doc":
In the Earth-Moon system free-return trajectory requires a transfer time higher than 240k. (Typical = 250k-290k) Shorter transfer time would mean that the vessel will approach the moon with higher orbital velocity and in that case it must pass the lunar surface from closer distance in order to get into a proper earth return.
If the transfer time is longer the vessel will have a lower orbital velocity and it must pass the lunar surface from greater distance.
The transfer time to target point in other words Time Of Flight (TOF) = TIn - TEj
Step 33. Step up or down the "Lat" in the LMFD to make the "EqI" in the RMFD as close to 180.00 as possible.
(Note: for Apollo 11 this amount wont go very much higher than 175.00. I was able to get an EqI of 176.47*).
Step 34. Step down to the Rad in the LMFD again to adjust the PeA in RMFD Map back down to 80.0k.
F. Fine tune your Course Program for TLI
For the next few steps it will depend grately what the RMFD Map shows. You may need to do the following steps several times to get the amounts to be correct and the computer will take about 1 second to calculate its amounts after pressing your button so be patient with this next part.
Step 35A. Set the Adjustment amount to x10 by pressing the "Adj" button.
Step 35B. IF the GET in RMFD Map shows a GET HIGHER than 75:54:28 step UP the "Lon" 1 step ONLY (at x10).
Step 35C. IF the GET in RMFD Map shows a GET LOWER than 75:54:28 step DOWN the "Lon" 1 step ONLY (at x10).
Step 35D. Set your Adj amount back down to x1.
Step 35E. Step UP or DOWN your Rad to adjust your PeA in RMFD Map to be 80.0 Km again or as close as you can get to it.
Step 35F. Check your GET in RMFD Map. If it is NOT within a few seconds of GET 75:54:28, then redo Steps 35 A - F until your GET is 75:54:28 (+/- a few seconds) and your PeA is around 80.0 Km (+/- 0.5 Km).
(Note: If you are unable to get close to the correct PeA and GET time, try using an Adj amount of x1 for both parameters. This will allow you to further fine tune them to acceptable amounts. You must get the GET down to +/- 5 seconds within 75:54:28 and your PeA should be around 80.0 km (+/- 0.5 Km) in order to do your TLI burn.)
When the above process is finished, you will have met the same flight parameters for a free-return trajectory as the actual Apollo 11 flight go to the next step.
G. Set your IMFD Auto Pilot to Fire Main Engines for Trans Lunar Ejection (TLI)
Step 36. Step to the next page and press "AB" for the IMFD to conduct an auto-burn at your set ejection time and burn vector.
(Note: because we have set IMFD's throttle down to .01, your Burn Time ("BT") should be exactly enough to get you to the Moon at the right time and altitude above the Moon. You can see this information if you press "BV" for your Burn Vector. The burn will be accurate to a thousandths of a second which is how the Apollo 11 Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) did it in 1969).
Part 3 - Lunar Module Extraction and Jettison of The Saturn V Stage 3.
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"Com'mon Rookie park that thing" "If he cant dock that CSM, we dont have a mission"
Ok your now on the way to the moon. About 1/2 hour after finishing the TLI Apollo 11 detatched from the S-IVB third stage, pitched up, and docked with the LEM still lodged inside the S-IVB third stage. The CM pilot Michael Collins then seperated the LEM from the rocket stage and began the barbecue roll for their coast phase. To do this we will need the help of the included Dock MFD and the Apollo docking mechanism.
STEP 1. You will face the front of the spacecraft towards the sun. This is to ensure that you have plenty of light to see the docking target on the LEM. You can use Attitude MFD to orient your nose toward the sun by pressing MOD twice until the Attitude MFD is in target mode. Press TGT and then enter "Sun" into the data window. Now press "HLD" to hold the ship's attitude toward the Sun. After Attitude MFD finds the sun for you, you can press HLD again to release the hold attitude on the sun. Press "KillRot" and the proceed to STEP2.
STEP 2. You will now press "K" to detach from the S-IVB third stage. You may want to be in external mode to see the awesome AMSO animation of the seperation process. You should hear Bill Paxton say "Houston, we have a good seperation" from the Apollo 13 movie. Wait a few seconds and then proceed to STEP 3.
STEP 3. Switch to glass cockpit mode and then press F8 until you can see the virtual cockpit. (Lots of buttons) Now press CTRL + ALT + Up Button on your directional buttons. (This is not the numpad UP/8 button) You should be able to see the docking mechanism in front of you.
STEP 4. Pitch up by hitting Numpad 2 several times. While you pitch up you can open an external MFD and set it to Dock MFD. Set the target to the S-IVB docking port 1.
STEP 5. When you see the S-IVB third stage with the LEM inside you should null your pitch rate by pressing Numpad 5. Try and get your targetting rectical to slightly to the left and above the LEM's docking collar.
STEP 6. Now roll to where the LEM's targeting mechanism is in your targeting recticle or close to it. Null your roll and then press Numpad "/" to switch to translation thrusters.
STEP 7. Begin to thrust forward by pressing Numpad 6.
STEP 8. Ok now here is when you must use your own piloting skill. use the Dock MFD and your viewer to dock the CSM to the LEM. When done, press "K" to extract the LEM from the S-IVB third stage hull.
Part 4 - Apollo 11 AS-506 TLI Coast.
For your trans lunar coast period, you will want to begin a Passive Thermal Control (PTC), also known as "barbecue" mode roll proceedure of about 0.25 degrees per second. This can been seen using AttitudeMFD.
NASA called this the "barbecue roll". Because the radiators for keeping the emmence electronics which were a miss mesh of 1969 avionics and computer simiconductors along with gimbaling motors and other flight instruments, the two vehicles needed to be cooled off at times and heated up at other times.
The "Barbecue Roll" manuver kept the radiators at a good temprature so as not to overheat or undercool them. As it turns out, the Barbecue Roll also helps keep your vehicles in a stable flight as it spins its way to the moon. You should press CTRL + Numpad 6 (4 times) to achieve this slow roll proceedure. It is not necessary, but again if you want realism and you want to see what the Apollo 11 astronauts saw through thier windows on the way to the moon, you will want to establish this roll program during your coast time to the moon.
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Part 5 Apollo 11 Mid Course Corrections
You will need to set your RMFD back to IMFD Map Program. Zoom out and make sure that SOI is set to on. When you pass the Earth's SOI you will want to check your PeA for the moon. If it has changed from 80km to any other amount, you must follow the steps below to correct your trajectory to the moon. If it is still 80km then you will not need a course correction at this point.
MCC #1 Proceedure
STEP 1. Change your LMFD to IMFD if its not already there.
STEP 2. Select Menu and then Course.
STEP 3. Select Delta Velocity.
STEP 4. Set the reference to Moon.
STEP 5. Set the dV to Zero "0"
STEP 6. Step up or down this ammount from 0.000 to an amount that gives the PeA in the R IMFD Map program an altitude of 80km.
STEP 7. Press AB in the LMFD to burn the correction burn for this MCC #1.
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Part 6 - Loss of Signal (LOS) and Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI)
Historically, the Loss of Signal was a good test for astronauts to determine if they are on schedule and arriving at the correct telemetry. I will show you how to determine when your LOS occurs and how to know if your on schedule or not.
Loss Of Signal Timming Calculation
If you made a mid course correction then this process wont apply. However if you didnt then there is a simple equation that will tell you when you are supposed to loose signal.
To Be continued soon.
Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) Proceedure:
This is a very important proceedure. If the Apollo 11 crew didnt complete the LOI correctly and on time (because they were out of communication with NASA Mission Control -Houston), this could have happened very easily and so it was very important that they did it correctly and on time or they could tumble off into space even though they were on a free-return trajectory. Luckily, you have the IMFD on board and you will be able to do this proceedure without Houston.
After LOS (you can determine this by externally viewing your ship with the Earth behind you and the moon approaching from one side). Once the Earth goes behind the Moon you would have lost the signal to Houston as radio signals travel at the speed of light in a straight line. Because the Moon is in between you and the Earth, you would have lost signal and all radio communications with Mission Control.
STEP 1. After LOS, set up your LMFD to IMFD if its not already set correctly to this MFD.
STEP 2. Select Menu, and then Course.
STEP 3. Select Orbit Insert.
STEP 4. Set the Reference to Moon.
STEP 5. Press AB and wait.
IMFD will now circularize your orbit at the correct time of your PeA of the Moon and will burn the correct ammount of time to put you into a perfect orbit around the moon.
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Part 7 - Tranquillity Base Alighnment
\
This process is done by pressing the "K" to access AMSO's Lunar AP.
To be added later
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Part 8 - Lunar Excursion Module Detatch and De-Orbit Burn
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Part 9 - LEM Powered Decent Phase
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Part 10 -Landing Phase
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Part 11 -Houston, The Eagle Has Landed
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Part 12 -Powered Ascent Phase
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Part 13 -Rendezvous with Service Control Module
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Part 14 -Transfer of Crew, Cargo and Detatch the LM Ascent Stage
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Part 15 -Preperations for Loss of Signal and TEI
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Part 16 -TEI from Moon Using IMFD in the DG S
Preface: To make this tutorial, I made a trip to the moon in the default DG S to verify some terms and while following the Apollo 11 Timeline.
I was able to create this small tutorial for people to use IMFD to get home from the moon. I noticed that there was a serious lack of this data on this procedure in the Orbiter community and so I felt the need to fill this vacuum -hence this tutorial was created in very little time.
Preflight Steps
You can re-create the situation I have made here by opening a DG S scenario that comes with Orbiter 2006 P1:
Delta-glider/"DG-S ready for takeoff"
The Scramjet delta-glider (DG-S) is ready for takeoff from runway 33 of the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at Kennedy Space Center.
Take off using main engines and climb to 10km. Then try the air-breathing scramjet engines and test the performance for different speeds and altitudes.
...and then by changing the date in Scenario Editor to July 16 1969 at 13:26:00 UT (T-5min to Launch), then you can save the edited scenario as the start of your flight to the moon. You must then re-open the saved scenario in order to make the Sim time set back to 0. You need this for IMFD to function correctly.
You will launch from Canaveral horizontally and then ascend into an orbit of 178km X 178km. If your using AMSO as this tutorial is supposed to be designed for and I’m using the DG S for this flight, your numbers may be very different.
I used the IMFD tutorial to get to the moon using the Free-return document in the Doc/AMSO folder called: FreeReturn.doc
-AND-
The Offset Procedure document tutorial located in the
C:\...Doc\AMSO\IMFD5_OffsetProcedure.zip and then you can unzip the files inside and read OffsetTuto.html.
You also need to:
* Have the latest version of AMSO, Orbiter, and IMFD and that you know how to do the Free-Return TLI (Trans-Lunar Injection) and Offset procedure and have done so to get to the moon.
* Have made at least 1 course correction burn during transit to the Moon to set your final PeA to 110km
* You have successfully entered an orbit around the moon at an altitude of no greater than 110km.
* Your simulated dock with your orbiter vessel occurs approximately 28 hours after undock. (This comes out to about 30 orbits I think total for the orbiter vehicle assuming that you’re at an altitude of 110km.)
* Your altitude is about 110km when you dock.
* You have jettisoned your simulated Lander about 2 hours after docking.
* Your transfer got you to the moon around GET 75:54:29.
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A. --To make your burn based on my 28-30 hour EVA on the Lunar Surface, see the next section "Section A -Rendezvous Flight Timings -EVA Procedure”
1. To make you’re Trans Earth Injection burn using Base Approach (for non-specific landing footprint/recovery zone)
See Section A1. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Base Approach
2. To make your Trans Earth Injection burn using Planet Approach (for almost exact landing coordinates) see Section A2. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Planet Approach
B. --To make your burn via an earthrise count, sunrise count, or counting total SCM orbits, see section "Section B -Rendezvous Special Flight Timings -Earthrise/Sunrise/Orbits Procedure" (to be posted soon)
Section A -Rendezvous Flight Timings -EVA Procedure
Notes: For a return flight, the Apollo 11 astronauts found themselves wanting to hit a specific target on the earth. This technique is somewhat entailed and we wont be showing you how to do a precision hit on a greater body, But I will tell you that the orbit you leave on is important.
In orbiter the earth and the moon are exactly where they would be at the time of the Apollo 11's Trans Earth Injection (TEI) ignition burn time of GET 135:23:42. If you leave at the right time and make your MCC at the right time, you should come very close to the location you wish to land as long as your doing a lifting entry with a hypersonic trim angle of attack of −27°.
If your GET time doesn’t match mine, all you have to do is prepare for your TEI burn on the IMFDs at about 20 min before you see the earthrise For my flight in the DG S, the second to the last earthrise occurred at GET133:28:29 so I wait until the next sunrise to begin my TEI preparations which occurred at 134:56:00 or so. This is about 11 min before your TEI burn and that should be plenty of time.
A1. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Base Approach
1. Fast forward to GET 135:20:42 -OR- count your orbits and make sure your at orbit #60 to start this tutorial.
When this has been done your ready to rock and roll.
2. Set both Left MFD (LMFD) and Right MFD (RMFD) to Interplanetary MFD (IMFD).
3. Open the menu of both IMFDs and set the RMFD to share with the left.
4. Set the LMFD to Base Approach and the right MFD to Orbit Eject.
5. Set the LMFD source to Moon (VERY IMPORTANT STEP), and the RMFD to Base Approach instead of its default Higher Orbit.
6. Set the Target on the LFMD coordinates to Lon -172.40 (which sets it to 172.40* W), the Lat to 10.60* and the ReA to 6.37*. The rest (Alt 120.0K and Ant 21.00*) are left as the default.
7. Start to increase the Hint in the LMFD at X1 until a burn vector appears on both MFDs.
Now here is the trick. Depending on your window, or when you decide to set this, and various other factors like mass, and thrust ratio, the burn vector may show a very straight line on the RMFD. Look at the oV amount. It may be around 5.818K or above.
If it is then your setting up a more expensive faster flight.
8. If this is so, keep Hinting up or increasing the Hint in the LMFD past this vectoring. Note that your burn solution or vector will disappear in the RMFD after a bit of increasing again -THIS IS NORMAL Don’t panic!!
Anything above 3.000K of oV is too much for the Apollo 11 mission.
9. After you are done passing the larger oV number up, and you have seen your old vector disappear, you will see a second burn vector appear in the LMFD.
When it shows up again you might find a somewhat less expensive flight but it may not be enough so you can even go past that one to see if there is a less expensive flight window here.
(By the second or third window you find you should find a window that shows the oV to be about 1.772K to about 2.200K and not below 1.000K. Again, this depends on vessel, mass, fuel consumption up to now, thrust ratio for the vessel).
10. Zoom in on the earth in the LMFD. You should see that the Earth is at the center of your screen and the TEI result shows your path going through the far right side of the Earth and slightly through the Earth no matter what projection you choose.
This is fine as you may change your dV later to fix your approach to the Earth for passive re-entry later.
(Also, you may see an squiggly line representing the path in the LMFD. This is also ok.)
(...Don’t worry don’t panic; make yourself a homemade carbonation re-breather out of your flight manual and some duct tape if you begin to panic .)
Note: This is completely normal sometimes as your IMFD tries to get the right vectoring for its burn to get you home. You will either see the squiggly line or the good line either way your going home at the oV you chose which is all we want for now.
Your direction is chosen when you open the LMFD and the reference is set to Earth so LMFD knows which heading to take kind of. It needs Orbit insert to do the rest.
11. Now your ready to burn. Click on the AB to start the Auto Burn for the LMFD and you’re off like a prom dress!!!
You’re done and en route to Earth!!! Have a nice flight back to earth you wont know where you will land but your MCC should use Delta Velocity and the IMFD Map program to set an altitude of 36km to 40km in the IMFD Map. The MCC should be done about GET 150:00:00 or so.
A2. Trans Earth Injection Burn Using Planet Approach
Special thanks to pete.dakota for this section.
(Note: Do this procedure on your last orbit, so you don't use any time acceleration, except up to the burn time. This will insure greater accuracy.)
1. LMFD set to Planet Approach mode. Reference EARTH Target MOON.
2. RMFD set to Orbit-Eject mode. Set to COURSE and OFF AXIS. Reference MOON.
3. LMFD: Set EqI as low as possible. PeA to 36 to 40km. Under PET MANUAL (NOT TEJ), set GET to the mission specific splashdown time. GET 195:18:35 for Apollo 11.
4. Make GET under TEj in the LMFD the same as the GET in the RMFD.
If you have RMFD shared with LMFD and set to course and off-axis then you'll see it updating correctly. You get your burn-vector and auto-burn from Orbit-Eject NOT Planet Approach. Use the RMFD to auto-burn.
If you look at the IMFD Map after your burn you may be thinking that the planned orbit looks like it is way to big and fast. But this was how it was done in the Apollo missions so go for it!!
If TEj in the RFMD is showing 0.000 then change off-axis to real-time and then back to off-axis again to reset the timer. Then hit auto-burn and wait. You should be looking at about a 195 second burn in Apollo 11.
This means that the coast back to Earth (with the odd correction burn) will have you hitting the atmosphere at the same time as the actual mission did, give or take a few minutes, ensuring that you are going to splashdown in the Pacific.
Part 17 -Trans Earth Flight Coast
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Part 18 -Trans Earth Mid Course Corrections
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Part 19 -Jettison Service Module and Prepair for Re-Entry
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Part 20 -Re-Entry and Earth Landing
The admissible dynamic pressure for the thermal shield configuration is 250 kPa (about -12,5 G) and without is 35 kPa.
For the CM splashdown, the admissible impact survival speed: horizontal speed in both axes +-8 m/s and vertical speed -12 m/s.
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Landing
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_24"]July 24[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame]
16:50:35 UTC
Mission duration
8 d 03 h 18 m 35 s
Thes are a few facts that may not be needed to fly the tutorial but are some fun facts about Apollo 11 that we may look at as I have just finished my 3rd test of 3 different starts from the AS-506 Apollo 11 lift off scenario in the AMSO scenario folder.
All three missions started from scratch and were done according to my fligt plan which places you in the same location on the earth at a similar time to the actual spashdown and gets near the historical location but not quite. I land at Pos:149.11* W, 8.56* N to around 155.16*W, 8.62* N
The third landing was around 151.56* W, 9.12* N as you can see in this picture below made in [ame="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=13.316667,-169.15&spn=0.3,0.3&q=13.316667,-169.15"]Google Maps[/ame]
Here is a hosted image on Image Shack
(Click me Im a link image)
[IMG=http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/2051/googlemap0010vj2om9.th.jpg]
My flight landings compared to the historical location in Google Maps ©2008 Google
As you can see Im way off from the historical landing site but all three of my landings occur in a similar location which allows me to somewhat predict whre the final resting locaiton of the CM will be if my tutorial is followed.
This is all I wanted and now I shall publish all parts of the mission I have done to land at this location at a GET of 193:15:00 or around that time. If all steps in my tutorial are followed then one can reasonably predict a landing in this part of the earth.
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Apendix 1 Mission Parameters
Mission name Apollo 11
Here are the stats on our mission:
(thanks to Wikipedia)
Service Module SM-107
Command Module CM-107
callsign Columbia
mass 30,320 kg
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module"]Lunar Module[/ame] LM-5
callsign Eagle
mass 16,448 kg
Crew size 3
Booster [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V"]Saturn V[/ame] SA-506
Launch date [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_16"]July 16[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 13:32:00 [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC"]UTC[/ame]
Lunar landing
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_20"]July 20[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 20:17:40 UTC
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_Tranquillitatis"]Sea of Tranquility[/ame] 0° 40' 26.69" N 23° 28' 22.69" E
(based on the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronomical_Union"]IAU[/ame] Mean Earth Polar Axis)
Lunar EVA duration 2 h 31 m 40 s
Lunar surface time 21 h 36 m 20 s
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock"]Lunar sample[/ame] mass 21.55 kg (47.5 lb)
Number of lunar orbits 30
Time in lunar orbit 59 h 30 m 25.79 s
Landing [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_24"]July 24[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969"]1969[/ame] 16:50:35 UTC
Location:
Apendix 2 Documents Used:
Simple Freereturn tutorial 30.8.2007 by Jarmo Nikkanen,
Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference (SP-4029) by NASA
Apollo 11 Timeline by NASA
Official NASA Flight Plan by NASA
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11"]Wikipedia's Apollo 11 page[/ame] by Wikipedia
AMSO-User-manual by AMSO
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Special thanks to Dr. Martin Schweiger for Orbiter 2006 P1, Alain Capt and ACSoft for AMSO, and Jarmo Nikkanen for IMFD, DanSteph for Orbiter Sound 3.5 pete.dakota for the Planet Approach procedure and Sonicboom.com for the video.
--Please feel free to use, copy, paste or distribute this tutorial free of charge as long as you give me credit for the creation of the document.
Adam RodrigueZ (polaris149Tiberius)
Email:
First order of business:
Note: This tutorial is free for all to use, read, print, suggestions. You may also link to this forum post elsewhere as long as it is ok with the admins of orbiter-forums.com BUT it must be un-edited and you may not sell it or call any small portion of it your own. You may publish it as a whole as long as you give authored credit to me and the others who are listed in the special thanks area. That said, lets get this show on the road shall we?
This tutorial will use IMFD for this and I highly recommend it for this and other interplanetary flights. After getting to the moon you can use the AMSO AP again to land, but you will want IMFD again in order to get you and your crew home or you will orbit the moon indefinately.
The Interplanetary Multifunction Display "IMFD":
Possibly the most accurate, most powerful, and most useful MFD I have seen yet is the IMFD by Jarmo Nikkanen and when you realize that it’s a lot harder to complete a historical mission to the Moon in AMSO than you ever guessed, you might end up browsing an Orbiter forum for information as I did.
Some very nice people gave me this information and I in return must pass it along to those of you who want it as well. The catch is, if somone ever wants to know something you know, you must pass it on to them just as I am to you.
Do what you can to help others to know what you have learned and I will be happy. What I can tell you is that if you want to send something to the moon and back again safely in Orbiter, IMFD is the tool you want.
Achievements and Needs:
When you realize that hitting the moon at the right time and location is a lot like hitting a basket ball with a pencil after throwing them both up from either side of a house at similar times and the place the pencil must hit the basketball is less than the width of a slice of notebook paper or your crew dies, you may begin to understand what achievements NASA made and what Orbiter and yourself are capable of doing.
You may want to take a moment and think about what it is you will need to know to begin this journey back in time.
If you need...
If your having trouble with getting to the moon, this tutorial will get you there.
If your having trouble learning about how to use IMFD then this tutorial will show you how.
If your having trouble landing on the Moon, this tutorial will get you on the surface at almost the same time as the real Apollo 11 Lander.
If your having trouble rendezvousing with the CM, this tutorial will get you to within 30m at zero velocity relative to the CM for CM/LM dock.
If your having trouble docking the CM to the LM, this tutorial will have you using the sights in AMSO's virtual cockpit to dock.
If your having trouble with the TEI burn to go home, this tutorial will get you home safely at close to a historical time.
If your having trouble doing any kind of Mid Course Correction(MCC) burns that are optimal for fuel conservation as well as achieving a correct re-enty corridor, this tutorial will teach you about trim and course correction without using an autopilot.
If your slamming into the atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour (Mach 35)and either bouncing off into space or coming in too shallow and burning up in the atmosphere, this tutorial will get you on the ground safe and in a fairly close location to the historical site of recovery.
If your looking for a tutorial that will show you how to pilot the chopper to pickup the crew, sadly you’ve come to the wrong tutorial.
BLAH:
What you can expect:
What you will get that’s NOT Historical:
Enjoy this very long and detailed instruction set for a flight that for me was nominal and historical up to the undock of the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). Various attempts were made to make the CSM end up near the location it would have been at the point of TEI for a historical recovery back on Earth but sadly the flight is un-predictable after this point. You may keep this in mind when you are rendezvousing with the CM because that is when the AMSO rendezvous AP changes the time line. Still, I hope you like what I hope will be one of the BEST ways I have found to fly Apollo 11.
But it was not able to actually BE EXACTLY historical. I can’t stress to you how unimportant it is that you do this flight the way I describe below. Know only that these instructions will help you to piece together a flight of your own however if you follow them correctly, you should end up at home around the same time Apollo 11 did. I will say to you this: May the force be with you -always, and if for some accidental reason you start to pitch past zero degrees during your launch and begin to head back into the Atlantic, you might want to hit the “J “ key. Lets get started shall we?
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