posted 11-21-2012 11:51 AM               

• Michael Minovitch was the young maths graduate who in 1961 came up with a solution to the '3 body problem'. This enabled him to work out and predict the path of a spacecraft to use the gravitation effect of planets and so accelerate a satellite to reach the outer planets.

• Gary Flandro, using the work of Minovitch, spotted the alignment that enabled the Voyager missions to be launched on their trip to the stars.

• Jack Garman was the man in the backroom that called the 'Go' on the 1201/2 alarms on Apollo 11. It was Jack who passed the message on to Steve Bales who then made the call. In fact, Jack had the alarms written down on a crib sheet, the notation beside them reading "Exect.O.F." meaning 'Executive Overflow'.

posted 11-21-2012 09:17 PM               

Just to clarify, Minovitch was also not the first to use gravity to accelerate spacecraft - although he did perform important work in that regard.

Also true that Flandro used the work of Minovitch, but he also used the work of the likes of Richard Battin and Krafft Ehricke, who both published gravity-assist papers years before Minovitch came along.

Flandro's discovery of the Grand Tour Opportunity had absolutely nothing to do with Minovitch.

Flandro discovered the Opportunity, Charles Kohlhase designed the mission, and Bud Schurmeier ran the project until shortly before launch. They are Voyager's Golden Triangle.

posted 11-22-2012 01:30 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Jay Gallentine:
Flandro's discovery of the Grand Tour Opportunity had absolutely nothing to do with Minovitch.

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I don't believe my original post suggested this. I just indicated that Flandro used, in part, the work done by Minovitch as a basis. However, many thanks for your contribution and I don't disagree with anything you said.

Just a small point. It would help if those posting names could include a brief explanation as to why they posted them. Not everyone will be aware of John Stapp or John Houbolt.

posted 11-22-2012 10:28 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by moorouge:
I just indicated that Flandro used, in part, the work done by Minovitch as a basis.

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JPL's Charles Kohlhase and Paul Penzo worked on a team that weeded through over 10,000 possible Voyager flight trajectories. Minovitch was not on this team and did not work on the mission's design.

The final Voyager 2 Neptune trajectories were calculated by Bob Cesarone at JPL.

Not until the Voyager program was well underway did Minovitch review his reams of printouts and discover that they held a similar calculation to what Flandro had already submitted.

Mike Minovitch certainly did a lot of work to develop the gravity-assist technique, and that work has been cited by many including Flandro. But Minovitch was not in the Voyager mix. At all.

posted 11-24-2012 02:48 PM               

For that matter, I think the wonderful treatment provided Farouk El-Baz, Lee Silver and John Houbolt, as well as Guenter Wendt, by Tom Hanks' "From the Earth to the Moon" would put these fine gentlemen into a separate category from the "unsung."

If this was Hollywood, then perhaps they would be on the so-called, "D-List," with the "A-List" stars being astronauts like the late Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride, and flight director Gene Kranz (due to "Apollo 13"), whereas the "B-List" would be other lesser-known astronauts and flight directors.

posted 11-24-2012 06:11 PM               

Tindall was the lead trajectory analyst that defined how to rendezvous during Gemini and how to get to the moon for Apollo, the latter of which was so resoundingly demonstrated on Apollo 8. One of Tindall’s most famous products was his series of “Tindallgrams” where he documented the development of the trajectory decisions made and techniques with humor and irreverence. He was well known around JSC, and talked about in Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox's "Apollo The Race to the Moon", but had certainly not been a household name.

In 1993 JSC had an Apollo 8 25th Anniversary Celebration featuring the crew and all of the autographees shown above. Tindall was honored with many kind words about figuring out how to get the crew to the moon, making it happen, and getting the crew back on the very first try. After the celebration I approached Tindall for an autograph. He asked "You want an autograph from ME? Are you sure?". Then when he finished autographing my cover, someone else approached him for an autograph. He told that guy "You are the second person who has ever asked me for an autograph, and (pointing at me) there is the first!"

posted 11-26-2012 12:54 PM               

I would also say that there are an awful lot of contractors who should go on the list of unsung heroes. A few have some name recognition becuase of "From the Earth to the Moon" or they've written books (Tom Kelly, Harrison Storms, etc.), but most of them received even less recognition than their NASA counterparts.