This man, more than anybody else in the last 50 years, changed our quality of life, giving technology a human side and adapting it to the user's needs, instead of forcing the user to adapt to technology. Directly (using his Company's products) or indirectly (using other products) all people working in the technical world have been affected by his dreams and his accomplishments. We are in debt to him and we mourn his untimely departure.

If the space world had had somebody like him to rely on, to follow, to be inspired by, most dreams portrayed in "2001: A Space Odissey" would have been reality not imagination.

One of the speeches he most likely would have liked to be remembered with.

Thanks to librarian for corrections.

What would have happened if the Apollo 13 crew wasn't able to alter its trajectory after the accident that hampered their achieving the goal of the mission?

Originally, and according to mission documents, the trajectory achieved after theTrans Lunar Injection burn was not the safe free return trajectory used, for instance, by Apollo 11. After the accident the crew was first directed to perform a burn with the LM DPS to modify the trajectory to get back to Earth. Then, after going around the Moon, they had to perform a trajectory correction maneuver. From the video clip provided by Chaikin and AGI, it is not clear which maneuver they refer to, but we think it is this second maneuver: if they missed it, they were supposed to get lost in space forever.

Instead, here comes Andrew Chaikin, noted and respected Apollo history author, that asked AnalyticalGraphics (owner of the Satellite Toolkit, STK, a good software for mission analysis) to perform some studies about Apollo 13 trajectory.

To make a long story short it has been discovered that the S/C trajectory, in case no correction maneuver is performed, would have kept the S/C in a highly elliptical orbit for just one round trip of the Earth, until the trajectory is being altered by the Moon for a subsequent high speed plunge into the Earth atmosphere.

An interesting result that doesn't change anything about the story of the mission, but underlines possible scenarios after possible negatives events. Also, a good result to understand a bit more about S/C trajectory simulation and the role it plays in the modern world.

Please see this video for a more comprehensive description by Chaikin itself:

http://youtu.be/KUAo_T__J2A

A few days ago we attended a presentation by Andrew Chaikin, famous space history author. The presentation was held at the Boulder, CO, office of Southwest Research Institute, where scientists and researchers work mostly on planetary sciences and astronomy. In case you do not know, Chaikin is the acclaimed author of "A Man On The Moon" one of the best accounts about the Apollo program, one of the top 10 books (perhaps even the top 5) that must be read on this subject. From the book, in a rare moment of enlightment from TV producers (and on the wake of the success of the movie "Apollo 13"), the series with the homonymous title was produced, another very good account of the epic of Apollo.

The subject of the presentation was Apollo 15, because of the recent 40th anniversary of the mission, a good reminder that we should keep watching for these anniversaries. We remember that mission whose launch was afflicted by the Soyuz 11 tragedy in which three russian cosmonaut, returning from the Salyut space station, died during re-entry in the first in-space tragedy of human exploration of space.

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In recent years there has been a steady increase in the offering of web sites in relation to astronautics and space exploration. Thanks to the work of many enthusiasts, a wealth of information about the past and present of astronautics is now on-line. In addition, the availability of a great number of important technical documents, as well as of information provided by different historical services and archives, has created a critical mass of information that now requires effort to get ordered and organized, at least from a knowledge management view point. 

However not all the web sites are 'good enough' for those die-hards who find engineering applied to space exploration one of the great achievements of our age: many enthusiasts often "drool" after an astronaut picture in training but they do not look at the technical details being accomplished or the engineering details of the tools/instruments at use. Only after the Apollo 13 movie, did people start to learn about the heroic efforts of 'those nerds' in mission control, but again that was the tip of an iceberg of engineers and technicians that made it happen. The truth is that very seldom discussed, or hinted at, are the heroics of those thousands and thousands of engineers who, working behind the scenes of their own companies and agencies, made the impossible, possible and, borrowing from the British Interplanetary Society, built the bridges from imagination to reality.