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Author
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Topic: Secret Apollo: Chapel Bell experiment
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Obviousman
Member Posts: 438
From: NSW, Australia
Registered: May 2005
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posted 11-28-2007 03:20 AM
   
An offshoot from another thread, and a question which apparently has not yet been answered.Does anyone know what the classified "Chapel Bell" experiment was? |
nasamad
Member Posts: 2141
From: Essex, UK
Registered: Jul 2001
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posted 11-28-2007 03:46 AM
Rumours on the net believe it was to do with the crashing of the ascent stages and S-IVB stages into the lunar surface and measuring the impacts with the seismic stations.But as always on the net no-one knows what the "secret" bit of the experiment was! |
mjanovec
Member Posts: 3811
From: Midwest, USA
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted 11-28-2007 11:25 AM
Perhaps the secret was that they were really crashing the S-IVB stage into a studio set in California.  |
kr4mula
Member Posts: 642
From: Cinci, OH
Registered: Mar 2006
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posted 11-28-2007 11:32 AM
I don't think this mystery is that difficult to figure out. Chapel Bell was a now-declassified Over-the-Horizon (OTH) radar (you can google it and read all about it). OTH radars track missile launches and warheads in orbit and during reenty. They're still part of missile early warning systems. It seems logical that an Apollo spacecraft and upper stages stuck in Earth orbit would make an inviting target to track with such a radar system all the way through descent because you know exactly its parameters, trajectory, etc. Perhaps the DoD could even ask for a particular reentry profile. It might even be feasible to have the S-IVB do some maneuvers in orbit after the CM departed. It would be a great way to test or verify system performance without needing a specific launch. Such piggy-backing was often used in early radar system tests, going way back to V-2 launches in the American Southwest. Anyway, given that the military doesn't re-use code names, this seems like a much more likely scenario than anything involving the moon, seismometers, etc. This is just my educated guess, not based on any hard facts, other than what Chapel Bell was. |
YankeeClipper
Member Posts: 622
From: Dublin, Ireland
Registered: Mar 2011
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posted 05-21-2017 06:40 AM
Document AD373294 gives an insight into Chapel Bell experiments. |
YankeeClipper
Member Posts: 622
From: Dublin, Ireland
Registered: Mar 2011
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posted 05-21-2017 09:27 AM
The International Telephone and Telegraph Corp. Electro-Physics Laboratories Inc. (ITT-EPL) in Maryland, under the direction of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Virginia, were heavily involved in Chapel Bell studies.HF radar sites included the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)-ONR Chapel Bell facilities at Whitehouse, Virginia, and Muirkirk, Maryland. Missile and space vehicle signatures were probed with a mix of direct-look/line-of-sight and over-the-horizon technology. This document gives detail of Project May Bell in 1970, and more background to technology being explored at the time. |
Blackarrow
Member Posts: 3160
From: Belfast, United Kingdom
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 11-16-2017 07:28 AM
quote:
Originally posted by kr4mula:
It seems logical that an Apollo spacecraft and upper stages stuck in Earth orbit would make an inviting target to track...
Would it be reasonable to conclude that, on Apollo 17, the then-classified Chapel Bell experiment would only have been performed in the event that Apollo reached Earth orbit but could not perform the TLI burn and had to perform an Earth-orbital mission only; and that since Apollo 17 DID go to the Moon, the Chapel Bell experiment was not actually conducted? (I am assuming there would have been insufficient time to perform Chapel Bell in the brief time that Apollo 17 actually remained in Earth orbit.) |
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