Talk:Apollo 10

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Damn NASA and their screwball units of measure.

....within nine miles of the lunar surface. Except for that final stretch, the mission went exactly ... ????

Thanks, anonymous contributor, for helping me in my editing of this page by explaining where that inconsistent 14,450 meters, in one of four mentions of this distance, came from: a conversion of 9 statute miles. The other three gave it as 8.4 nautical miles, improperly changed from 2 significant digits to 5 significant digits in converting it to 15,557 meters.

Why in the world does NASA use those weird, out-of-place nautical miles in these measurements? Nobody else in all of the aerospace industry ever uses nautical miles to measure vertical distances. The worst of it is that when the NASA public affairs office gets their fingers on these numbers, they often get converted to statute miles. Unfortunately, neither the engineering sectors of NASA nor the public affairs office of NASA are particularly good at always identifying which miles they use, and we often don't really know if the original numbers have been tampered with or not. That is one damn good reason not to use miles of any sort for these numbers.

Note, of course, that 8.4 nautical miles is "within 9 miles", the next whole number up if you are talking nautical miles, but it is not "within 9 miles" if you are talking statute miles— it is about 9 2/3 statute miles. Gene Nygaard 12:07, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You're using the wrong tense and forgetting that this all happened 41 years ago. NASA doesn't use nautical miles any more. In those days, orbits were traditionally given in nautical miles dating back to the 1950's (why, I don't know.) Shorter-term measurements were given in English feet, more understandable to the (predominantly American) public. Sometime in the early 1970's, before Apollo 17, they switched to metric units. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:19, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The last topic probably explains what I just saw, namely that Snoopy's closest approach given as 15.4 or 15.6 km is wrong. Just recently I was perusing some NASA reports and I saw the precise number in the 40,000's of feet, so I know that was too big. Maybe we got the number from Mark Wade(?), who quotes a number in that range but gives Chariots for Apollo as his source. When I go there and actually read the Apollo 10 chapter, I find the number was given as 14,447 meters (metres?), which is only 14.4 km. I used this to fix the error in the Lunar Module article and plan to find the Apollo 10 number I saw and fix it here.

You also have to bear in mind that NASA often quoted "nominal" numbers for these mission parameters, which actually varied from specific mission to mission. The powered-descent initiation point would be quoted as "9 nautical miles" or "50,000 feet". You have to dig up the NASA technical reports for specific missions (some are available on line) to get accurate mission numbers. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:38, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I found the Apollo 10 mission report ([1]). We're forgetting one significant fact: the surface of the moon is very irregular. On page 6-20 there's a figure which shows the closest approach clearly: they measured 47.400 ft (14,447 meters) with their landing radar as the minimum distance to the ground, so Chariots for Apollo is correct. Pericynthion (aka perilune) is quoted as above the Moon's mean radius, but they were over a sea or crater 10,086 ft. below mean radius. I'm going ahead with this update. JustinTime55 (talk) 19:03, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Peanuts!

I recall at least one full-color one of Snoopy dancing while Charlie Brown, in a spacesuit, cheers, "We're back!"can anyone find scans?), and at least one regular strip related to the mission, where Charlie Brown consoles Snoopy about how the spacecraft named after him was left in lunar orbit. (Source: "All We Did Was Fly to the Moon," reference data below. Specifically described images found in it, but I don't have a scanner.)

This article

... needs a pro re-write and perhaps more info. It should be a dress rehearsal for the later Apollo articles! 68Kustom (talk) 08:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What is the source of the statement that Apollo 10 is going to Oklahoma in 2010? I have not heard anything of this, and how can you be so sure? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.111.254.11 (talk) 18:03, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Anecdote about Apollo 10

I remember reading about how some in NASA were worried that Apollo 10 would actually try to land on the moon so they specifically put less fuel in the LM so they would not attempt to do so. I know it was probably just to save money on the launch, as the extra fuel in the LM would require more fuel in the Saturn IV and thus more money.