Author Topic: Apollo 10 spashdown video?  (Read 8565 times)

Offline mako88sb

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Apollo 10 spashdown video?
« on: May 15, 2012, 02:31:49 PM »
Hi. Great site here and I'm hoping somebody can point me in the right direction regarding the Apollo 10 splashdown. I read Tom Staffords book a couple months ago and he mentioned how close they where able to splashdown to the prime recovery ships. I thought it would be great to see the video for it but so far I haven't had any luck finding it. The Apollo archive site seems to only have an audio file.

I lent the book to a friend so I'm not sure about this but didn't they set a record for closest landing to the intended target?
« Last Edit: May 15, 2012, 04:03:25 PM by mako88sb »

Offline ChrLz

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Re: Apollo 10 spashdown video?
« Reply #1 on: May 15, 2012, 06:54:13 PM »
The problem may have simply been that it was still quite dark - it was a pre-dawn splashdown... - and so very difficult to capture with the technology of the day.

ETA And while they were pretty 'close', it was still about 6km away - that would have been very challenging to find and film in a pre-dawn sky!
« Last Edit: May 15, 2012, 06:56:26 PM by ChrLz »

Offline Kiwi

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Re: Apollo 10 spashdown video?
« Reply #2 on: May 16, 2012, 08:47:18 AM »
Welcome to ApolloHoax, mako88sb.

The copy of the Nasa movie Apollo10: To Sort Out the Unknowns I have on DVD doesn't show the splashdown, only one of the astronauts being winched up from the command module, but it does show film of the fiery re-entry in dark sky, so it probably was too dark to catch the splashdown.

Apollo By The Numbers gives splashdown distances to the planned target and the recovery ship.  Some missions did better than Apollo 10, but most were pretty close, at least to a layman like me.
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-40_Entry_Splashdown_and_Recovery.htm

Distance To -- Target -- Recovery Ship (n mi)
Apollo 7 -- 1.9 -- 7
Apollo 8 -- 1.4 -- 2.6
Apollo 9 -- 2.7 -- 3
Apollo 10 -- 1.3 -- 2.9
Apollo 11 -- 1.7 -- 13
Apollo 12 -- 2.0 -- 3.91
Apollo 13 -- 1.0 -- 3.5
Apollo 14 -- 0.6 -- 3.8
Apollo 15 -- 1.0 -- 5
Apollo 16 -- 3.0 -- 2.7
Apollo 17 -- 1.0 -- 3.5

This thread at the old board gives more links to Apollo By The Numbers:
http://apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=apollo&action=display&thread=1356
« Last Edit: May 16, 2012, 09:06:23 AM by Kiwi »
Don't criticize what you can't understand. — Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin'” (1963)
Some people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices and superstitions. — Edward R. Murrow (1908–65)

Offline mako88sb

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Re: Apollo 10 spashdown video?
« Reply #3 on: May 16, 2012, 03:24:39 PM »
Thanks guys. must admit I didn't think about the possibility it might of been too dark to capture the splashdown on film. Kind of odd. You would think they would try to time the re-entry when there's more light or where they ahead of schedule a bit?

I guess Stafford suffers from a bit of excess ego for him to make that claim of closest splashdown. Goes with the territory I guess. I know one Amazon review had a issue with him when it came to Apollo 13 that I would have to agree with. Sounds like nobody at NASA thought about using the LM as a lifeboat until he called them and got the ball rolling. Still, a pretty good book, and it was great reading about how he got the color TV camera together in time for the launch. I watched that video you mention Kiwi, and the docking sequence was great.

One other thing I should like some opinions on what's discussed in this review over at Amazon by Thomas S. Fiske :

"General Stafford's book was pleasingly done, both crisp and authoritative. He balanced technical and historical details quite well, so the book did not become mired down in details that only an astronaut could love. The only bone I have to pick with General Stafford's book is that he was simply not the first American to reach Baikonur as he claimed. For nine years another American, a space medicine scientist, flew back and forth from Langley AFB to Moscow, Baikonur and back to Langley. He did this several times per year. It does not hurt General Stafford's story or reduce his heroism at all. He is a brilliant hero.

The problem is that one cannot believe one's own country's Intel agencies. General Stafford told what he knew. He just was not allowed to know someone had been there before him. In fact, General Stafford took the scientist back to Baikonur on his plane. He might have noticed that the Soviets hugged and shook hands with the loner who hitched a ride on the plane at the last moment. But if he noticed, he did not write about it.

I knew the space medicine scientist personally and my book, "The Insider," explains his role in the Soviet scheme of things.

Other than that one discrepancy, I recommend General Stafford's book for anyone who would like a simple, well-written history of this early section of the Space Race."


Curiosity compelled me to get this book and even though it was written as a fictional account to protect the identity of the  scientist, I still found it an interesting read. Just curious if this has been discussed here before. I can't seem to search the archives for some reason. Username and password too new perhaps?
« Last Edit: May 16, 2012, 03:59:30 PM by mako88sb »

Offline Kiwi

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Re: Apollo 10 spashdown video?
« Reply #4 on: May 16, 2012, 11:31:43 PM »
I guess Stafford suffers from a bit of excess ego for him to make that claim of closest splashdown. Goes with the territory I guess.

Not necessarily.  There has been plenty of talk here, or at the old board, about how unreliable eyewitness accounts of dramatic events can be, and the main reasons I can think of are:
1.  Our memories are often coloured by our perceptions and experiences.
2.  Our brains are extremely good at filling in missing details, even by making them up.  **
3.  Our view of an event may have been limited.
4.  Many of us have a natural tendency to exaggerate.
5.  Over a long period we often merge unrelated but similar details or events.
 
I've kept diaries since 1972 -- just brief "what-I-did-today" entries -- and have often been horrified to find on re-reading them that I've embellished a story over the years when I really intended to tell it factually.

A good example is back in January 2002 when I showed a five-year-old visitor satellites for the first time.  It was a beautiful, warm, clear, first-quarter-moon, summer night and she was enjoying herself because it was the holidays and she was allowed to stay up as long as she liked.  So after sunset I looked up HeavensAbove and found that around 11pm there were going to be five of the brighter satellites high in the sky over a period of about 12 minutes.  Asked her if she wanted to see them and she didn't even know what they were.

Being a bright kid, she got a tremendous kick out of learning what they were and seeing them, and even finding some herself because I told her where and when to look, turned my back, then told her how clever she was when she excitedly exclaimed about two satellites almost crossing paths.

That story above is accurate, but over the years when telling it, it grew, with the number of satellites increasing and the number of minutes decreasing, changing to about eight or ten in nine minutes.  Had  I carried on and not checked, the original numbers would have probably reversed.

I've had plenty of other cases of doing the same thing and have a few recent videos of Apollo astronauts reminiscing, and yes, when you know the original details it's very clear that they also do it.  In one documentary Bill Anders seems to give Frank Borman that bemused look that says, "Not quite, Frank. Didn't exactly happen that way!"

The saddest thing about that sort of thing is that some hoax-believers, being out of touch with how the real world works, will exclaim that they are deliberately lying to cover things up.  Not at all!

Just curious if this has been discussed here before. I can't seem to search the archives for some reason. Username and password too new perhaps?

Don't recall such a discussion, but that doesn't mean anything!  Does the link at the bottom of my last post take you to the thread at the old board?  It works for me.

 **  Just noticed.  Whose brain didn't fill in the missing "l" in the thread's title?

[Fixed typos and a lack of clarity.  Oldfartitis strikes again!]

 
« Last Edit: May 17, 2012, 12:19:49 AM by Kiwi »
Don't criticize what you can't understand. — Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin'” (1963)
Some people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices and superstitions. — Edward R. Murrow (1908–65)

Offline ChrLz

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Re: Apollo 10 spashdown video?
« Reply #5 on: May 17, 2012, 07:35:50 AM »
**  Just noticed.  Whose brain didn't fill in the missing "l" in the thread's title?
Hrumph.  I noticed right from the star.. oh alright, I noticed it as soon as you pointed it out   :P