
Buzz Aldrin thesis: Line-of-sight guidance for manned orbital rendezvous (1963) - stmw
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/12652
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GlenTheMachine
Dr. Aldrin's intellectual contributions to manned spaceflight are
unfortunately overlooked. He was known as “Doctor Rendezvous”, and he didn't
just fly orbital rendezvous missions, he actually helped invent the techniques
and then got to demonstrate them on orbit.

Buzz is my hero. He does not deserve to be in Neil Armstrong's shadow.

~~~
stmw
Indeed - the early astronauts' stick-and-rudder flying skills and physical and
mental stamina get a lot of appreciation, less than their MIT rocket science
PhD's that led to practical conclusions e.g.: "From the above conclusions, the
first guiding rule for initiating the transition from the waiting orbit to the
intercept trajectory can be formulated: Simply stay in the waiting orbit until
the target reaches the angle 3 from the local vertical, then apply the nominal
deltaV in the direction a."

~~~
AceyMan
I find this interesting, >Simply stay in the waiting orbit until the target
reaches the angle 3 from the local vertical [...]

On terrestrial flight (airplanes) the standard approach to landing glidepath
is 3°, while the standard rate turn is 3°/sec (a "two minute turn") — I wonder
if 3 degrees is some magic value in flight dynamics, perhaps determined by our
local (Eatths's) gravitational force (G).

/Acey

Disclaimer: I haven't read Buzz's thesis, so this is purely an off the cuff
observation.

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one-small-step
Under DEDICATION:

    
    
      In the hopes that this work may in some way contribute to their exploration of space, this is dedicated to the crew members of this country' s present and future manned space programs.
      If only I could join them in their exciting endeavors.

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
Wow! It is either an intentional sarcasm or Mr.Buzz is a 'know-it-all' like it
was portrayed in the First Man movie.

~~~
manicdee
Year of publication of this paper: 1963, as a result of work done in the
Gemmy-nee program.

Apollo 7 (first crewed Apollo mission): 1968

Apollo 11 landing on the moon: 1969

I would suggest that Buzz was being quite sincere in this statement, with some
hint of confidence that he actually would participate in the Apollo missions.
The Gemini and Apollo programs were expected to be dangerous. There was no
guarantee that people who participated in Gemini would even be alive for the
Moon missions, much less physically capable of participating, much less the
best people for the job.

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
My bad, since he joined NASA in 1963; I assumed he wrote it while trainin.

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ekimekim
Off-topic, but if you were like me and confused why clicking the PDF link on
that page downloaded the PDF instead of opening it in the browser, the problem
is the "Content-Disposition: attachment" header which tells the browser to do
this. As a result, I now have this add-on which gives users the option to
ignore that header by file type: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/open-in-brows...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/open-in-browser/)

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nwhatt
Who stole page 69?

~~~
natch
My old boss who had some spooky jobs in the past (NSA, CIA) gave me a copy of
a public paper from a researcher at one of those places. I noticed a page was
missing from the body of the text. We were supposed to read parts of this
paper to understand how to implement something but it felt like my boss was
surprised I had noticed, as if he didn’t expect us to read fully. When I asked
about the missing page he gave me a knowing smile and said “it’s not
available” and contorted his mouth into an exaggerated mouth-clamped-shut
position, all the time holding my eye for several seconds and smiling this
very final “that’s all folks” look. I think sometime pages just go missing.
And we may never know why.

