I worked on Apollo, Skylab, Shuttle and Space Station Programs.
Received NASA Apollo Achievement Award 1969 ... etc.
While Artemis is Welcome and was covered in the article and other writeups,,
I found lack of seriousness in lighter vein comments on Science during Apollo Missions.
There are not many of us alive or active but as implied in the article and others on Artemis topic there was an Office of Manned (now human) Space Flight OMSF and it had MSF Experiment Board.
We were part of the Board organization at NASA HQ that included 12+ Scientists. We were responsible for all experiments from ground, in labs, around earth orbit, on way to moon and on the surface and orbit around the moon and analyses after return and samples from Moon.
Geology (Lunar) was certainly the second priority, fist unspoken and spoken fact was leadership in space as announced by President Kennedy and credit taken by Presidents Johnson and Nixon.
The experiments had dozens of Private company contractors and universities for fabrication, tests and analyses, and hundreds of PIs for non sample studies.
We were responsible for training the astronauts.
Areas were:
- Space navigation, star trackers and contamination of spacecraft, a limit also seen for Artemis mission
- Particle dispersions and sublimation in space for Mars Atmosphere and interstellar grain studies
- Coronagraphs for solar studies
- Hasselblad Cameras for Lunar surface multispectral analysis
- Cosmic radiation on Lunar surface including reflected sunlight and astronauts helmet design in light of XUV.
- Entire Suite of ALSEP that included structure (internal( of Moon
- Seismometers
- Space Power RTG Radioisotope generation
- Spacecraft exterior samples and other measurements for meteorites and micrometeorites
- Impact of Saturn IVB rocket stages on moon and recording by ALSEP
- life support, Space biology and human performance parameters.
- Tracking of Spacecrafts and dumps of water waste water and cryogens in space
The list is from my memory and from my own work on many of them and many other colleagues in the team could each give a long list such as surface transport rovers.
Start of Ascent stages and performances.
Some of the scientists internal to NASA HQ team OMSF MSFEB are listed
Dr Julius Dohnanyi - meteorites
Dr Farouq Elbaz - Landing sites
Dr Tony Kontaratos
Dr Charles Buffalano
Dr David Wood
Dr Warren Grobman
Dr Bill MacLaughlin
Dr WM Smith Geology
Dr Noel Hinners
Dr Arnold Pearse
Dr Bill Thompson
Dr Ravi Sharma (author of this thread)
many more....
Supervisors Directors also included NASA Associate Administrators. Von Braun
Dr Chuck Matthews George Miller Nancy Roman and NRL Directors etc.
Beside there were eminent scientists such as
Tommy Gold - Lunar
William Fowler - Nuclear astrophysics
Carl Sagan - Lunar
Frank Low - IR Astronomy and detectors
Please note that seriousness for science was not lacking nor were the funds.
Accomplishments have also been sidestepped.
Hundreds of pathbreaking discoveries reports products and services have resulted from Apollo and subsequent missions.
It has anguished me that Apollo accomplishments of 50+ years ago in then unchartered territory have been pushed under the rug to glorify this long awaited Lunar mission, yet unmanned!
I want to point out only a few of the shortcomings of Artemis which I hope will be seriously addressed in Artemis 2 and 3 etc. to bring it at par with early apollo missions.
I have for past few weeks been asking whether full life Support systems are being tested.
Truth is being revealed now.
No - Nitrogen system tests are only part of what is needed.
Oxygen being more reactive as well as water for consumption should have been tested on this $4B dollar mission Apollo each was only $400M.
Why were the South pole target of future related rocket firings and restarts not attempted.
The list is long and needs to prioritize all and many more capabilities that should be tested on Artemis 2 and not be postponed to Artemis 3, thus we will reduce the risks to human missions and we could have taken a bit more bold steps now rather than on Artemis 2.
Finally our Apollo motto should be improved upon:
"If primary and Secondary systems fail, the tertiary systems should fail in safe-mode!"
I am afraid that lack of strict and logical and open communication is likely if we do not watch out.
I was not in the US during Challenger disaster and I am obviously not Feynman, but during the first night after the Columbia disaster when the suppressed email was public, I wrote to NASA 5 different actions that could have possibly saved the crew even if the Shuttle were to be abandoned or repaired in orbit.
3 of them were accepted by panel for subsequent shuttle missions over next several years.
Most important final message is that real science is allowed to yield maximum results in an open unobstructive collaborative environment and hope we strengthen that during the next 10-20 year lifecycle of the Artemis Program!
After Waiting 50+ years we are all thrilled at this great upscale and successful Artemis mission. ready to land soon.
Thanks.
Ravi
(Dr. Ravi Sharma, Ph.D. USA)
NASA Apollo Achievement Award
Chair, Ontology Summit 2022
Particle and Space Physics
Senior Enterprise Architect
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