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Acta Astronautica

Acta Astronautica 68 (2011) 1353–1360

0094-57

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Apollo: Learning from the past, for the future$,$$

Michael R. Grabois

United Space Alliance, LLC, Houston, TX, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 29 January 2010

Received in revised form

16 July 2010

Accepted 15 August 2010Available online 19 September 2010

Keywords:

Apollo

Constellation

Orion

Knowledge capture

Lessons learned

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016/j.actaastro.2010.08.010

s paper was presented during the 60th IAC in

opyright & 2009 by United Space Alliance, L

nsored by the National Aeronautics and Sp

ontract NNJ06VA01C. The U.S. Government

usive, irrevocable worldwide license in

ce, prepare, derivative works, distribute co

form publicly and display publicly, by or on

ment. All other rights are reserved by the cop

ail address: michael.r.grabois@nasa.gov

a b s t r a c t

This paper shares an interesting and unique case study of knowledge capture by the

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), an ongoing project to recapture

and make available the lessons learned from the Apollo lunar landing project so that

those working on future projects do not have to ‘‘reinvent the wheel’’. NASA’s new

Constellation program, the successor to the Space Shuttle program, proposes a return to

the Moon using a new generation of vehicles. The Orion Crew Vehicle and the Altair

Lunar Lander will use hardware, practices, and techniques descended and derived from

Apollo, Shuttle, and the International Space Station. However, the new generation of

engineers and managers who will be working with Orion and Altair are largely from the

decades following Apollo, and are likely not well aware of what was developed in the

1960s. In 2006, a project at NASA’s Johnson Space Center was started to find pertinent

Apollo-era documentation and gather it, format it, and present it using modern tools for

today’s engineers and managers. This ‘‘Apollo Mission Familiarization for Constellation

Personnel’’ project is accessible via the web from any NASA center for those interested

in learning answers to the question ‘‘how did we do this during Apollo?’’

& 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Project origins

Constellation is the name given by the NationalAeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to theprogram intended to succeed the Space Shuttle as itsnext-generation space vehicles. The various vehicles inConstellation include the crew vehicle Orion, the lunarlander Altair, and the launcher Ares. With the similarity inform and function of the Constellation vehicles to theApollo program of the late 1960s and early 1970s, aproposal was made by the Constellation Program Manager

ll rights reserved.

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to review the old documentation to see what is relevant intoday’s space program, rather than ‘‘reinventing thewheel’’ for mission techniques.

The vast majority of Apollo-era engineers who are withthe space program today are the agency’s senior managersand leaders, and the rank-and-file NASA and contractorengineers and middle managers have gained theirexperience only with the Space Shuttle or InternationalSpace Station. Consequently, few have working knowl-edge of Apollo-specific hardware, practices, and missiontechniques that may prove useful in the Constellationprogram.

In late 2006, the Constellation Program Manager atNASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) requested someMission Operations Directorate (MOD) personnel to forma team with three tasks: to create generic trainingmaterial on the fundamentals of spaceflight, to turn theold Apollo Mission Techniques documents into lessons onthe basics of flying to the Moon and back, and to establishtraining materials for engineers on the lunar environment.This project should be made available to the NASA

M.R. Grabois / Acta Astronautica 68 (2011) 1353–13601354

community (those behind the NASA Internet firewall) in adistance learning format. The original intent was to focusmore on ‘‘what’’ and ‘‘why’’ than the ‘‘how’’.

The project manager for the ‘‘Apollo Lessons Learned’’Knowledge Management task, as it came to be known,created a team of volunteers from within MOD, consistingprimarily of senior Space Shuttle instructors and flightcontrollers. Some of the flight controllers were Apolloveterans with first-hand knowledge of Apollo systems.The team members would use their knowledge of Shuttlesystems to understand the corresponding Apollo systems,such as electrical and environmental control systems,engines and propulsion, rendezvous, communications,extra-vehicular activities (EVA) and lunar surface opera-tions, and guidance/navigation/control (GNC).

In most cases, the Apollo mission reports and hand-books were written between 1965 and 1975, and theoriginal authors frequently left ‘‘lessons learned’’ sectionsin their reports for future engineers and designers.However, there was no follow-up planned, and limitedeffort had been made since the creation of the documentsto assemble a comprehensive archive of these lessons.

Nevertheless, the documents contained information onthe problems and limitations of the hardware, software,and techniques that needed to be brought out. The Projectsought to determine how these limitations drove missiontechnique design.

Fig. 1. Cover sheet of typical Mission Techniques document.

2. Obtaining and preparing the original material

2.1. Documents

Critical to developing the lessons was having theoriginal source material – the various Apollo Familiariza-tion Manuals, Experience Reports, Operations Handbooks,Mission Techniques, and graphics/photos – available tothe researchers. There was no single resource (library orweb site) that had all of the desired documentation.

Fig. 1 shows the cover to a typical document, thisparticular one presenting the guidance and navigationsequence of events, data flow, and real-time decisions forthe Mission J-1 (Apollo 15) lunar orbit activities.

The JSC Technical Library was the first location chosenfor searching. Many documents were not available inPortable Document Format (pdf) via download from thelibrary’s website. Turnaround time for these documents,which were not immediately available and were re-quested via e-mail, was less than a day for the documentsthat had already been scanned, and up to 2 weeks fordocuments that had not yet been scanned.

Other manuals and reports were downloaded fromother government-maintained web sites, such as theNASA History Office’s Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (ALSJ)[1] and the NASA Technical Reports Server [2]. Alldocuments were saved off to a local document repository.

Some documents were obtained from private individuals(such as amateur and semi-professional space historians)who were contacted directly and who have made the filesavailable online for download via the web [3] or offline viaDigital Video Disk (DVD). Other documents were obtained

from several web-based projects dedicated to explanationand emulation of the Apollo Guidance Computer [4–6]. Mostof these files have been previously obtained in person fromthe National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)by those individuals, as there was no publicly availabledownloading capability from NARA.

Of those documents that did not exist in easilyobtainable electronic format, the JSC library was able toscan many from original paper copies or from microfiche.The microfiche copies were consistently of much lowerquality than the modern scans and appeared to have gonethrough several generations of photocopying before beingscanned for fiche.

For ease of searching and copying text, all thedocuments were processed through Adobe Acrobat, acommercially available Optical Character Recognition(OCR) software package. Full licenses were available tomembers of the project team who then processed thefiles. The publicly available documents had been incon-sistently OCR processed, while none of the JSC library fileshad been OCR processed.

2.2. Photographs and drawings

In addition to the manuals, reports, and other docu-ments, the research team obtained photographs, sche-matics, and drawings from a number of sources, includingNASA’s online photo archives and private enthusiasts.Some schematics and drawings were cleaned up, en-hanced, and/or colored using various graphics programsfrom Microsoft Paint to Adobe Photoshop.

Fig. 2. Typical Kansas Cosmosphere photograph, showing panel O2 in the Apollo 13 Command Module Odyssey.

M.R. Grabois / Acta Astronautica 68 (2011) 1353–1360 1355

The JSC Photography Branch and the Still ImageryRepository provided requested electronic photos showinghardware and closeout photos.

The Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas, wasvery helpful in providing photos for the project from theirhardware on display, including the Apollo 13 CommandModule (CM) Odyssey and a Lunar Lander mockup. TheCosmosphere obtained permission from the SmithsonianInstitution’s National Air and Space Museum to open thesealed CM and photograph panels and switches for use inthis project free of charge, in exchange for an acknowl-edgement credit in any briefing material which used theirphotos. Fig. 2 shows a typical photo taken by the staff atthe Cosmosphere for this project.

In other cases, personal photographs found on theInternet were desired. The copyright owners were con-tacted and all were cooperative, permitting NASA to usetheir work for Governmental purposes without thepayment of a license fee, provided their copyright noticewas included beside the image and included a statementthat its use was with their permission.

3. Choosing and using software

The Apollo Lessons Learned project was designed to bean Internet-based distance-learning experience, thoughimplemented behind a NASA firewall such that userscould only access the web site from any NASA facility andauthorized contractor sites across the United States.

The target student was defined as someone who istechnical and familiar with the space program, most likelya veteran of the Shuttle program who wants moreinformation on Apollo techniques and systems. Thetypical student could be either an engineer or a manager.

The project manager investigated various options forcapturing the lesson content and presenting it to thestudent, ultimately deciding on a two-prong approach:streaming video lessons for short overview-level briefings,and static web pages for longer, more detailed descriptions.

Collaborative media software allows several concur-rent users to create and manage information in a website.For the Apollo Lessons Learned project, a collaborativeproject management tool was desired that could create a‘‘wiki’’ site; a wiki is a set of interlinked web pages createdand managed with software that tracks changes, hasrevision control, and allows registered users to edit anypage. The project manager also required a calendar as partof this tool in order to schedule group meetings and notifyproject members when information is updated.

The project was given a headcount budget, but littleadditional budget for software to produce the video briefingcontent or the detailed web pages. This essentially mandatedthat software that was either free or already licensed was tobe used.

To stay within the limited budget, the free version ofMicrosoft’s SharePoint v3.0 was chosen for the collabora-tive media software. Other collaborative softwares such asWindchill (by Parametric Technology Corporation) andConfluence (by Atlassian) were considered as they werealready being used in some Constellation projects. How-ever, only individuals working directly on those Con-stellation projects could use the software, and since manyof the lesson developers did not have this access, thedecision was made to use SharePoint.

The original plan for document storage was to useSharePoint’s capability, but two factors worked against that:too many documents, and the web server had limitationsthat prevented large files (frequently over 50 MB (mega-bytes), with the largest at over 470 MB) from loading.Instead, the 20 GB (gigabyte) archive was temporarily

Fig. 3. Screen shot of a typical customized lesson from Microsoft Producer.

M.R. Grabois / Acta Astronautica 68 (2011) 1353–13601356

housed on some users’ desktop personal computers untildedicated space was allocated on an internal network.Currently, a number of the documents are on the SharePointserver but the majority of them are archived on a separateserver. Only the users who obtained and OCR-processed thedocuments have write-capability on the server, everyoneelse has read-only capability.

For video content, the free Microsoft Producer 2007program was chosen over other commercial productsprimarily because of its unique ability to replicate in itsstreaming format the complex PowerPoint 2007 animationscreated in many of the Apollo lessons. Industry leadersMediasite (by Sonic Foundry) and Connect Presenter (byAdobe) were only able to capture simple animations.Additionally, MOD has been using Producer for several yearsto create streaming video lessons for the International SpaceStation (ISS) program; therefore, the video technologypersonnel already had a familiarity with the software andcould adapt many of the existing tools and templates used forthe ISS lessons. The Producer software also allows forcustomization, allowing the design team to create a fullycustomized online template with enhanced student features.See Fig. 3 for a screen shot of a typical video lesson.

Lesson content created with Producer can be playedfrom the beginning or from any section of the presenta-tion by selecting the desired topic from the index abovethe video window. The video always remains synchro-nized with the associated slides. Also provided are links tothe home page, help page, references, instructor’s e-mailaddress, and with selected lessons, instructor biography.

4. Creating content

The members of the Apollo Lessons Learned team wereassigned various systems briefings and mission techniquebriefings depending on their background. The original

documents were written by and for knowledgeableinsiders, with many unwritten assumptions includingthat the reader reasonably understands the systems andtechniques being discussed.

The team members used their knowledge of similar oranalogous Space Shuttle systems to summarize theappropriate material and create text-based wiki entries,in as much detail as was necessary for a full under-standing of the material, and then create video lessons atan overview level with less technical presentation. Mean-while, other team members focused their attention onmajor operational phases of flight (e.g., powered lunardescent, lunar rendezvous, trans-Earth injection, etc.)found in the Mission Techniques files.

The use of Shuttle instructors from MOD’s Space FlightTraining section was greatly beneficial to the project, asthey had experience distilling information from technicaldocuments into a lesson briefing for their students (i.e.,astronaut crews), and were generally comfortable pre-senting their lesson on camera. The rule of thumb was totry to make the video lesson briefings less than approxi-mately 40 min. These lessons with material that could notbe presented in less than 40 min were split into smallerparts for easier viewing.

As the instructors created their wiki pages and videolessons, other topics presented themselves as candidatesfor expansion into a separate lesson (e.g., a case study ofthe Apollo 13 accident grew out of separate discussions ofthe electrical power systems of the Lunar Module andCommand/Service Module). The Project Manager kepttrack of schedules and which lessons were complete via aMicrosoft Excel spreadsheet. A certain number of lessons(which included the wiki and video briefings) wererequired by the end of each fiscal year, with severalranked by the Project Manager as higher priority thanothers, but the team members generally had the freedomto create their topics as they saw fit.

M.R. Grabois / Acta Astronautica 68 (2011) 1353–1360 1357

As the project progressed, the scope of the overallcontent of the project slowly increased. One element ofthe original three-prong task – to turn old Apollo MissionTechniques documents into lessons on the basics of flyingto the Moon and back – had grown to encompasssystems-level lessons as well, with the understandingthat it was not possible to explain many techniqueswithout first explaining how the underlying hardware andsoftware works.

Periodically, the Project Manager submitted an an-nouncement in the ‘‘JSC Today’’ daily e-mail sent to all JSCemployees explaining the project and inviting users tovisit the web site. With exposure to the NASA communityoutside of the project, other groups volunteered to sharetheir Moon-related documents with the Apollo LessonsLearned project to further the project’s mandate. Thevideo developers recorded a series of briefings by Moonexperts from various institutions (including NASA’sJohnson Space Center, The Lunar and Planetary Institute,The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory,and others affiliated with the Constellation Lunar SurfaceSystems Project Office) called ‘‘Moon 101’’, with topicsranging from the physiography and geology of the Moonto lunar meteorites. After processing these briefingsthrough Microsoft Producer, they were then incorporatedinto the Apollo Lessons Learned material.

Similarly, MOD’s Flight Design and Dynamics Depart-ment offered their previously recorded briefings on ApolloGNC and mission techniques such as launch windowdetermination, lunar rendezvous, lunar orbit navigation,and powered descent. These, too, were processed throughProducer and made available via links on the web site.

The Fundamentals of Spaceflight section provides linksto training materials that provide entry level under-standing of spaceflight and orbital mechanics. It provideslinks to information from NASA’s Goddard Space FlightCenter and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and orbital

Fig. 4. Apollo Training

mechanics computer-based training and distant learninglessons from JSC.

5. Finished project

Approximately 40 people were involved in the creationof the material that makes up the website ‘‘Apollo:Learning From the Past, For the Future’’. The originalthree-pronged mandate for this project has been success-fully fulfilled:

�

Ma

The Fundamentals of Spaceflight is a main topic on theApollo Training Materials page.

� The old Apollo Mission Techniques documents, as well

as the technical documents on the various spacecraftsystems, have been turned into lessons on the basics offlying to the Moon and back. The team created 47video lessons with a total running time of over 26 h,and produced 345 pages of content in the wiki.

� Training materials for engineers on the lunar environ-

ment have been established, starting with videolessons by lunar experts from the greater NASAcommunity. The lunar expert briefings and FlightDesign lessons contributed another 18 lessons lastingnearly 17 h.

Fig. 4 shows the Apollo Training Materials web page.The links go to top-level pages for the different sections ofthe project:

�

Apollo Wiki � Apollo Systems Lessons � Case Studies � Fundamentals of Spaceflight � Apollo Mission Techniques � Moon 101 Lunch and Learn series

terials page.

M.R. Grabois / Acta Astronautica 68 (2011) 1353–13601358

�

External sources � Flight Design Apollo briefings

The Apollo Wiki, as seen in Fig. 5, contains links to thefollowing sections:

�

Vehicle Familiarization pages for Saturn launch vehiclefamily, the Command & Service Module, and the LunarModule.

Fig. 5. Apollo Wik

Fig. 6. Apollo Wiki, C

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i ma

SM

Mission techniques (from launch to lunar surface torecovery operations).

� Lunar environment. � Special topics

Fig. 6 shows the main wiki page for the Command &Service Module (CSM). Topics include Guidance andControl, Reaction Control System, Docking and Transfer,and Failure Modes and Failure History. Similar pages exist

in page.

subsection.

Fig. 7. Apollo Systems Lessons page.

Fig. 8. Screen shot of sample lesson.

M.R. Grabois / Acta Astronautica 68 (2011) 1353–1360 1359

for the Saturn and the Lunar Module vehicles, and eachpage might have several further subtopic links.

From the main Apollo Training Materials page,the user may select the Apollo Systems Lessons page,as seen in Fig. 7. This page has links to the variousvideo/PowerPoint lessons on topics such as Displays &Controls, Electrical, Environmental Control Systems,Saturn V, Case Studies, Communications, GNC, andPropulsion.

The distance-learning lessons are in the form of arecorded briefing by an instructor and the accompanyingPowerPoint slides, as seen in Fig. 8.

6. The future of the project

During its 2 years of existence, the Apollo LessonsLearned project had high visibility from NASA manage-ment and won high praise from its users. In October 2008,the group and project members were presented with aNASA Group Achievement Award ‘‘in recognition of theexemplary work of the Apollo Lesson Team who led thedevelopment and creation of the Apollo Mission Lessons’’.

Funding for the Apollo Lessons Learned project termi-nated at the end of Fiscal Year 2009 (October 1, 2009), withthe work that has already been done remaining in place.

M.R. Grabois / Acta Astronautica 68 (2011) 1353–13601360

With the success of this project in the nationwide NASAcommunity, the effort in knowledge capture may turn to thefuture rather than the past. It is possible that a similarlessons learned project for the Constellation program maybe implemented so that knowledge capture can be anongoing effort for contemporaneous material as opposed to(or in addition to) capturing the past. The decision-makersand the tradeoffs that have been made so far may be able tocontribute material that would otherwise go undocumentedin the typical day-to-day activities.

In retrospect, one function that was left out of theproject was a feedback mechanism on how the ‘‘lessonslearned’’ were applied. Those who accessed the ApolloLessons Learned project from the various NASA sites gavethe team little to no feedback of how the material wasused. Records of server logs showed that people from allNASA centers accessed the Apollo wiki and the videolessons, but these records were not analyzed for internettraffic patterns. Feedback and traffic analysis should bepart of the requirements for a future project of this nature.

7. Conclusions

The various team members of the Apollo LessonsLearned project reviewed and summarized the pertinentinformation from the 1960 to 1970s era Mission andSystems Reports using web-based collaborative docu-mentation (‘‘wiki’’) software, and created short summarybriefings using presentation software and captured video.

The original and new material is available via hyperlinksfrom the project’s main web site. Additionally, newlyadded materials such as lectures by Apollo-era expertsand briefings by lunar scientists originally outside thescope of the project have been added.

The Apollo Mission Familiarization website providestraining material and reference documentation on theApollo program for Constellation program personnel. Thissite focuses on three main areas: spaceflight fundamen-tals, the lunar environment, and Apollo systems andmission techniques.

References

[1] E.M. Jones, K. Glover (Eds.), Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, June 25,2009, Retrieved August 3, 2009, from /http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/frame.htmlS.

[2] NASA Technical Reports Server, July 5, 2007, Retrieved August 3,2009, from /http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jspS.

[3] B. Andrepont, Manned Spaceflight PDF Documents, February 2, 2008,Retrieved August 3, 2009, from /http://www.geocities.com/bobandrepont/spacepdf.htmS, since deleted but cached at the InternetArchive at /http://web.archive.org/web/20071014061358/http://www.geocities.com/bobandrepont/spacepdf.htmS.

[4] A. Brown, Apollo Guidance Computer Project Home Page, February 1,2003, Retrieved August 3, 2009, from History of Recent Science &Technology: /http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/apollo/public/index.htmlS.

[5] R. Burkey, Virtual AGC and AGS Home Page, July 22, 2009, RetrievedAugust 3, 2009, from /http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/S.

[6] R. Katz, Apollo Guidance Computer and Other Computer History,April 21, 2006, Retrieved August 3, 2009, from /http://klabs.org/richcontent/Misc_Content/AGC_And_History/AGC_History.htmS.