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Forum:	Mercury - Gemini - Apollo
Topic:	Excerpts from Apollo technical crew debriefings

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Your Reply: HTML is ON UBB Code is ON Smilies Legend	[QUOTE]Originally posted by LM-12: [B]the LM [i]Antares[/i] touchdown on Apollo 14: <BLOCKQUOTE>[i]SHEPARD: We came on down to P64, pitchover, and there it was. The landing area model was excellent in that respect. It was an excellent training tool, and there was no problem in recognizing immediately where we were. I think that was probably obvious from the in-flight voice comments. There was no question about where we were. If we hadn't been there, there might have been some question about where we were. But fortunately, we didn't have to make that kind of in-flight test. One LPD was used, I think one left, to designate to the point that I'd originally thought was the right one, slightly south of track. The LPD stayed good up until the point we got below 1000 feet. Then, it appeared as though it was going in a little bit short, right about in the middle of Triplet. So, I took over the PGNS, ATT hold ROD mode at that point. At that point, it became obvious to me that I didn't want to land south of track because the crater size was a little too large, I thought. So, I flew her on over using bank angle closer to the nominal original intended landing point where it looked a little smoother. We used the same techniques that we used in the LMS. Ed was inside the cockpit, mostly, giving me values of velocities, and I was outside the cockpit, mostly. I think that was the part that looked very smooth, relatively smooth, and I landed. The control of the vehicle I thought was good. Here again, of course, I did practice with the LLTV as well as the LLRF, and in the LMS. I felt completely comfortable and completely in control of the vehicle all the time. The landing spot did turn out to be slightly on a slope. I don't think that was because of touchdown velocity, which must have been pretty low. We didn't have any stroking of the gear at all. The LM ended up in about a 7-degree right-wing-down attitude, which was exactly that of the slope of the hole in which we had landed. In retrospect, maybe a little higher H-dot would have been better. We'd have ended with the vehicle at a more level attitude. But, in any event, with the combinations of slope, 7 degrees was not bad. For touchdown, we had the habit of waiting about 2 seconds after the lunar contact light came on before shutting the engine down. From the looks of things, we actually were on the ground and stopped before the engine shut off. It must have been a pretty light touchdown.[/i] ... and Shepard comments later about the dust ... [i]I believe that we had less problem with dust than they've had before. I think it's because, as we comment later on, the surface of the general area in which we landed was less dusty, that is, exclusive of the dust around the rim of craters. The general area appeared to have less dust and we certainly had no problem with dust at touchdown.[/i]<BLOCKQUOTE> [/B][/QUOTE]
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