Apollo Lunar Module - Emergency Drop Lights

SAustin16

SAustin16

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Hello Everyone,


I recently read an interesting article (not in the public domain) that noted that Al Shepard had mentioned that in case the Apollo Lunar Module needed to make an emergency landing on the dark side of the Moon, they intended to drop several lights to illuminate the landing zone.


Initially, Shepard indicated the plan to drop just one light, but the person he was discussing it with persuaded him that multiple lights would be necessary to ensure that the astronauts would maintain their depth of field perception.


Does anyone know if this plan resulted in any provision in the actual final LM design?
 
I've never seen any drop lights on the various LM diagrams I've perused.

There was one point during the development phase when the engineers went over every aspect of the LM and shaved off ounces here and ounces there, to try to get the LM weight down to spec. (Known as the Scrape and SWIP programs: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-4205/ch7-3.html ). So if there were drop lights before the reduction, they surely would have been gone after.

Also it sounds like something that wouldn't work too well in an actual emergency. "Okay we dropped the lights, but we can't land here, lets fly elsewhere, hey we're out of lights!"
 
Why would the LM want to land on the moon in an emergency? That would put it further away from any help.
 
gwiz said:
Why would the LM want to land on the moon in an emergency? That would put it further away from any help.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's hard to conceive of a reason! The only one I can think of is the "do or die" aspect of getting onto the moon before the Soviets did.
 
Good Morning Everyone,
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[/size]Thank you for your responses.
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[/size]The article appeared on our company's intranet, and it is not accessible from outside. I apologize, but I cannot provide the article.
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[/size]The article was not very well written, and did not provide dates of when the discussion with Shepard occurred. It may have been very early in the U.S. space program when all aspects and contingencies of a moon landing were being contemplated...perhaps even prior to LOR, when the plan was to use the Direct approach, landing the CSM. This might explain the concern about landing in the dark. Whether they intended to use chem-lights or another design, I do not know, but would be interested to find out.
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[/size]As Antiquark notes, for weight and perhaps lack of necessity as the mission evolved, these lights were deleted if they were ever part of the early LM design. By the time the LM was designed and built, I believe the LM descent profile kept them in sunlight from un-docking until the landing.
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[/size]I have to wonder who had thought through an emergency landing on the dark side using drop lights, whether it was engineers or the astronauts. As several of you indicated, a landing would be one of the worst solutions to an emergency, with little or no hope of rescue. Dropping the LM Descent stage, and aborting back to the CSM was a much better plan, but they may not have been visualizing "LM" at the time of the drop light discussion. That was my main purpose for this thread...to document some of the problems / solutions worked through prior to a voyage to the Moon. In this case, the problem and solution became a very minor (though interesting) footnote.
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[/size]Cheers from Texas
 
Do you know who interviewed him? Can you contact the author of the article?

I suspect that this is just a badly written article and does not reflect reality.
 
Good Evening Blackstar,


I will try to track down the author of the internet article, and try to get additional information. I'm starting to wonder if it was written by an intern.


I'll let you know.


Cheers from Texas
 

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