Posts: 3560
From: Belfast, United Kingdom
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 02-20-2023 06:37 PM            

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Understandably, given the distance from Earth and the limited bandwidth for voice and TV transmissions, some Apollo mission dialogue is difficult to make out. It is clear from the meticulously-prepared Apollo Lunar Surface Journal voice transcripts that even NASA misheard and misreported a lot of Apollo dialogue in its original transcripts.

However, one entry in the Apollo 11 ALSJ still troubles me: about 20 seconds before the lunar landing, the Journal notes "garbled) shadow." Every time I listen to the recording, I find myself saying, "Of course Buzz is saying 'faint shadow' " Yet, even in 2019 the Journal considers the adjective to be unclear. Does anyone NOT agree that Buzz said "faint shadow?"

On a personal note, I have just solved a (very) minor mystery dating back to Apollo 16. I have an audio recording from a news broadcast in which Ken Mattingly is playing some of his music, "Symphonie Fantastique" by Berlioz. Then Capcom (Stu Roosa) says: "It didn't sound as good as [??????] but I guess it'll do." From the time I first heard this, I couldn't for the life of me work out what Roosa said. I thought it had to be a singer or a composer, and the best I could come up with "Nigel [or Rigel] Payne." Even in recent years using Google, I couldn't work out what Roosa said. Last week I was looking for something on Apollo 16 in Andy Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon." And there it was! It was the name of a (to me) completely obscure and rather turgid song by singing cowboy Tex Ritter, "Ridin' Old Paint." Hardly very important, but it's nice to solve a small Apollo mystery after all these years.

[It occurs to me that Stu Roosa was only in Houston, but his voice still had to be bounced off a couple of satellites before I heard it.]

Posts: 1442
From: Perth, Western Australia
Registered: Apr 2015

posted 02-21-2023 04:38 AM               

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I though Buzz says "great shadow."

The Apollo crew trained to reference the shadows of both the lunar surface features and the lunar module as a way of gauging depth perception and range. Given that the lunar surface was alien to the crew, the only familiar thing that they could use to reference size was the LM shadow.

Maybe I have been mistaken.

Posts: 924
From: Danville, Ohio
Registered: Dec 2002

Posts: 1442
From: Perth, Western Australia
Registered: Apr 2015

Posts: 3560
From: Belfast, United Kingdom
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 02-22-2023 10:07 AM            

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Bearing in mind that the movie footage was not shot at "normal speed" are you sure the scene to which you refer is correctly matched to the audio? I've just looked at a version which has the picture tilted at an angle to show the corrected view out of Aldrin's window. The first view of the LM's shadow (in the camera frame, not necessarily the same as the view Aldrin himself had) shows one of the probes (greatly elongated because of the sun angle), then the footpad, then the landing leg, then the bulk of the descent stage, all against a carpet of dust blasting away from the surface. If Aldrin's own view was similar, it wouldn't be too surprising to hear him refer to the shadow of the probe and footpad as "faint." On listening again, I'm still very comfortable with "faint."

It's worth adding that when we are talking rapidly in high-stress situations (usually nothing like as stressful as the first lunar landing!) we sometimes use words that, in retrospect, we might not have used. So it's not necessarily a case of "why would he say 'faint' " but "did he actually say 'faint'?"

Posts: 3734
From: Ontario, Canada
Registered: Oct 2010

posted 02-22-2023 11:50 AM            

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Armstrong and Aldrin talked about the LM shadow in the post-flight debrief:

ARMSTRONG: Since we were moving left, we were yawed slightly to the left so I could get a good view of where we were going. I think we were yawed 13 degrees left; and, consequently, the shadow was not visible to me as it was behind the panel, but Buzz could see it. Then I saw it in the final phases of descent. I saw the shadow came into view, and it was a very good silhouette of the LM at the time I saw it. It was probably a couple of hundred feet out in front of the LM on the surface.

This is clearly a useful tool, but I just didn't get to observe it very long.

ALDRIN: Here's a log entry: 46 seconds, 300 feet, 4 seconds after the next minute. Watch your shadow, and at 16 seconds, 220 feet. So I would estimate that I called out that shadow business at around 260 feet, and it was certainly large at that point. I would have said that at 260 feet the shadow would have been way the hell and gone out there, but it wasn't. It was a good-size vehicle. I could tell that we had our gear down and that we had an ascent and a descent stage. Had I looked out sooner, I'm sure I could have seen something identified as a shadow at 400 feet; maybe higher, I don't know. But anyway, at
this altitude, it was usable. Since the ground is moving away, it might be of some aid. But of course, you have to have it out your window.