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APOLLO KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER Preserving and Transferring the Apollo Legacy to a New Generation

APOLLO KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER Preserving and Transferring the Apollo Legacy to a New Generation. Charles A. Lundquist, UAH Dennis Wingo, Skycorp. APOLLO KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER.

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APOLLO KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER Preserving and Transferring the Apollo Legacy to a New Generation

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  1. APOLLO KNOWLEDGE TRANSFERPreserving and Transferring the Apollo Legacy to a New Generation Charles A. Lundquist, UAH Dennis Wingo, Skycorp

  2. APOLLO KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER • A perplexing issue is how to convey knowledge and experience from the Apollo Program in a way that is effectively helpful to the present teams planning return missions to the Moon. • The transfer is particularly difficult because an interval of some forty years must be bridged and there is little personnel continuity.

  3. COOPERATION • Obviously, the effective transfer of Apollo know how will not be accomplished by any single entity. • Cooperation between national agencies, private companies, universities, libraries and other entities will be required.

  4. ONLINE INFORMATION ACCESS • Present lunar team members have grown up in the era of computer data bases. • They are skilled at accessing online data. • One obvious aid to them is to provide Apollo knowledge and experience in computer searchable data bases.

  5. OBJECTIVES OF THE UAH EFFORT An acknowledged role of any university is to provide a repository of knowledge and to convey that knowledge. The University of Alabama in Huntsville, UAH, accepts a particular responsibility to preserve and transfer space knowledge. The UAH Archives and Special Collections play a principal role in this function. Online access to the collections is a crucial policy decision.

  6. UAH ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS • Record collections for space programs • Selected space books and journals • Memoirs of space participants • Video and oral history recordings

  7. PERTINENT LUNAR PROGAM COLLECTIONS • Saturn V - catalog online • Apollo Missions - processing • Lunar Roving Vehicle - catalog online • Group for Lunar Exploration Planning - processing Online at http://lib.uah.edu/ then click ‘Digital Archives’

  8. GROUP FOR LUNAR EXPLORATION PLANNING • GLEP established in 1967 • Initial membership, Aug 1967 W.N.Hess,chair E.King P.Gast J. Arnold E.Shoemaker R.Jahns F.Press C.Lundquist M. Calvin F.Johnson D.Williams N.Roman P.Culbertson R.Allenby M.Faget W.Stoney H.Gartrell H.Schmitt Met frequently to recommend sites and objectives for Apollo missions

  9. VIDEO INTERVIEWS AND TALKS • 1980s interviews with von Braun team members • 2006-7 interviews with other early team members (some 70 to date) • Various forums, commemorations and public events Online at http://lib.uah.edu/ then click ‘Digital Archives’, then click ‘Oral Histories Collections’

  10. FACTORS FOR APOLLO SUCCESSDistilled from Oral Histories • Unequivocal political and popular support • Adequate budget • Recognized skillful leadership • Experienced team • Feasible plan • Schedule discipline • Commitment to testing • Open personal communications

  11. UPDATED STANDARD FORMAT • An issue faced by all archives is that most old records exist in print form. The task of scanning to modern electronic format is labor intensive and sometimes destructive to the original documents • An archiving entity has the task of transforming records into a current format that facilitates online access.

  12. UPDATING ELECTRONIC RECORDS • There are very few surviving electronic records from the Apollo era. Those that survive are in obsolete digital or analog formats. Also the machines that originally recorded them do not exist or have not been functional in decades. • Dedicated efforts must be undertaken by skilled engineers and retirees originally involved to recover these data sets.

  13. LUNAR ORBITER Analog Tapes , AN EXAMPLE • Lunar Orbiter Highest Resolution Images Recorded on 2 inch Analog Tape • Tape Drives are 40 years old and have not operated in over 20 years. • Equatorial Images have 1-Meter Resolution Equal to NASA LRO 2009 Mission

  14. LUNAR ORBITER IMAGE RECOVERY • A cooperative project between NASA Ames, UAH, and Skycorp to refurbish Ampex FR-900 tape drives to digitize original Lunar Orbiter data. • These data exists in lower resolution form at USGS but in 40 years the original high resolution data has not been downloaded. • The LO Recovery effort will begin this summer. Original analog data tapes archived by GSFC/JPL have been transferred to Ames. Tape drives preserved by a foresighted retiree have been transferred to Ames as well.

  15. LUNAR ORBITER VALUE TO CURRENT SCIENCE • Lunar Orbiter was NASA’s first planetary mapping mission. • Lunar Orbiter provides baseline for study of recent impacts for 1 to 1 comparison to LRO Images • (Image at lower left 1 meter resolution “Chit” digitized from tapes in 60’s of boulder tracks from rolling downhill)

  16. LUNAR CRATER INVESTIGATIONSOne example of the use of high resolution images • Crater and ejecta processes are major mechanisms on the lunar surface • Recent craters are interesting as sites for future visits. • Recent craters identified by brightness and through observations over time. • Telescope detection of impact flashes have been made over history and continue currently • One historic crater is identified where L. H. Stuart photographed an event on the moon in 1956

  17. REVIEWS • Besides online access to original literature, another aid to present lunar team members is recourse to comprehensive surveys and reviews of earlier experience and understanding. • A number of useful reviews have been prepared, and can be accessible online.

  18. A TYPICAL RECENT REVIEW • “Lunar Outpost Development and the Role of Mechanical Systems for Payload Handling” by Skycorp Inc. Feb. 10, 2007 112 pages • Authors: Dennis Ray Wingo, Gordon Woodcock, and Mark Maxwell

  19. Value of Archiving Apollo Era Data Today • The Apollo era datasets, documents, and science process can provide the USA valuable insights as well as guidance on where to maximize results from the return to the Moon. • Providing this online via professional archival methods brings an orderly and timely resource to the nation today and for future generations

  20. ASSESSMENT • Given the scope of past, present and future lunar programs, and recognizing the large number of organizations involved, the information preservation and transfer task is indeed a challenging social and technological problem.

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