Apollo missions Transcripts

a reply to: Phage

Who hired Farouk El-Baz to work at NASA?

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

I don't suppose you could source that quote.
But I thought that you don't think humans have ever left low Earth orbit. What's your point?

Who hired Farouk El-Baz to work at NASA?

No one. He didn't work for NASA.

a reply to: Phage

Okay, let me rephrase the question. Who hired the Egyptian born geologist Farouk El-Baz over at Bellcomm?

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

Beats me.

a reply to: Phage

Beats me is not the answer.

The correct answer is Ed Nixon hired Farouk El-Baz at Bellcomm. Ed is the brother of Richard Nixon.

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter
Neat.
So what?

What does your Nixon based OCD have to do with the Apollo transcripts?

On second thought, never mind.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: SayonaraJupiter
Neat.
So what?

What does your Nixon based OCD have to do with the Apollo transcripts?

That's funny that you call it a "Nixon based OCD". The OP showed us the transcript from Apollo 14 that mentions Farouk El-Baz, the same "Farouk", as mentioned in the Apollo 14 transcript.

How did Farouk achieve his position at Bellcomm? Did Ed Nixon play a role? How did Ed Nixon achieve his position at Bellcomm, as a hiring manager?

So when the Apollo 14 CMP mentioned "Farouk" in the transcript it is totally on-topic with this thread. Wouldn't you agree?

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

Why not tell us who hired everyone mentioned in transcripts?
Go for it.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: Phage

Beats me is not the answer.

The correct answer is Ed Nixon hired Farouk El-Baz at Bellcomm. Ed is the brother of Richard Nixon.

What's your point he worked for at&t before NASA even made the request for their help on Apollo. He was selected by at&t to assist the Apollo progtam. The contract with NASA was expenses plus one dollar. Oh and he only had one meeting with Ed and was not actually the one who hired him. Bruno [E.] Sabels made the final decision. He needed help with us bro logical surveys. There job was to condense the reports making them easier to read, again prior to apollo.

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
i don't get this transcript. If they are shooting # as Phage says...it's not even remotely funny. Not a single humorous sentence.

Why would they be talking stupid nonsense and not report on what they see ?

Is this standard protocol while EVA ?

A lot of the humour and banter is what you would get between any group of tight knit individuals who have spent a lot of time together (enough to generate a whole slew of in jokes) and are currently cooped up in a tin can a long way from home.

They spent a lot of time describing what they could see, and a lot of time they couldn't see anything to describe thanks to the way the spacecraft was oriented.

One of the funnier ones is Apollo 16's Command Module Transcript (can't swear to either mission or transcript) where you get a good old bitching session about NASA and how things are organised, but I can't find it at the moment.

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

Shock news: Geologist hired to do geology. Does geology.

a reply to: onebigmonkey

But...but... Egyptian.
But...but...Nixon ('s brother).
But...glass ceiling. Low Earth orbit.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: onebigmonkey

But...but... Egyptian.
But...but...Nixon ('s brother).
But...glass ceiling. Low Earth orbit.

My God you broke phage he's in a logic loop. Quick get the paddles. It's very dangerous to try to follow the logic when it doesn't exist.... I think this is why they have to wear the tin foil hats I'm almost sure this prevents a melt down.

Just to add to Phage's confusion, check out who's looking at alien moon bases with Farouk here:
www.jamesoberg.com...

check these time stamps on apollo 14 its with regard to the earthshine and being able to see stars around the moon

03 13 50 41 -
03 13 51 57

There are lots of things which could be read differently , target this , pads here , names of people with no descriptions of why , like the Farouk thing I questioned that too!

some of the transcript is just a bit hard to understand without any real reference of what they were doing at the time.
i'll keep reading it today and see if I can find more things which peak my interest

originally posted by: sapien82
check these time stamps on apollo 14 its with regard to the earthshine and being able to see stars around the moon

03 13 50 41 -
03 13 51 57

Why is this a problem? At that time they were on the lunar far side just after LOS (Loss of signal) and over an area of the moon that was in darkness. You can check whether that is the case yourself. Apollo astronauts repeatedly spoke about stars, and photographed them.

There are lots of things which could be read differently , target this , pads here , names of people with no descriptions of why , like the Farouk thing I questioned that too!

Or they can be read exactly as they are written. Each mission had their own photographic targets because they had different orbits. Pads were the sequences of instructions they needed to give to their guidance systems in order to keep the ship flying where it was supposed to. Names of people? Such as? Many craters are named after people. Many people also worked at Mission control and they are also referenced. Why would they explain them? They weren't broadcasting to a general audience. The general audience just happened to be listening.

There is absolutely nothing of significance about 'Farouk' other than it he was the lunar geological expert and was responsible for drawing up different categories of lunar feature and organising which ones they wanted them to look at.

some of the transcript is just a bit hard to understand without any real reference of what they were doing at the time.
i'll keep reading it today and see if I can find more things which peak my interest

The information about what they were doing can be found in mission timelines and flight plans, all of which are available on the web. A lot of the transcript is very technical because that is what the transmissions were for: getting information to and from the crew, and a lot of that information is very technical. It wasn't necessary for members of the public to understand it, just the astronauts.

I never said it was a problem , I just thought it odd that one of the astronauts said it was strange that's all.

I know the whole thing is for communicating data , I'm just saying alot of it could be misread without any real understanding of what they are doing.

There are alot of names mentioned which is just interesting like even though they are doing a totally scientific task they are still human and still joke and relate everything to normal every day human tasks.
It's just kind of nice and odd at the same time .

Like one minute they are complaining about the damn cables being too long , not in the right place due to the tech guys loading it all , the next they are making complex astronomical calculations , recording readings on burn time, o2 , Co2 etc etc , making tiny errors then correcting them then having a laugh about the food.

a reply to: sapien82

A fair enough - maybe I misunderstood what you were getting at.

There's an excellent book by David Woods called 'How Apollo flew to the moon' which explains a lot of the technical stuff, although the explanations are still quite tricky to get your head around. As David is the editor of the Apollo Flight Journal

history.nasa.gov...

you can find a lot of explanation in the web version of the transcripts there.

It's easy to forget that while they got a lot of data from the telemetry they didn't have any kind of remote control, pretty much everything had to be done by the astronauts. A lot of what you read in the transcript is Houston relaying instructions, crew read backs of those instructions and confirmation of the read back, then them confirming that they've followed them. Then there is the crew relaying whatever they have written down in their flight plans that they need to do, and Houston confirming that this is correct (or not) and so on.

You could misinterpret them, if you wanted to, but once you understand what's going on in them it's clear what's going on.

a reply to: onebigmonkey

yeh I think its really quite interesting reading the transcript as they are pretty much flying by the seat of their pants in the real event compared to the simulation how they were feeling odd or disorientated or tried to make themselves disorientated.

I like how they make all the little corrections and then they are excited because they broke a record or saved some time here or there.
Its literally a live science experiment which is truly amazing , I like how they were recording things for improvement as well like they should stow this here or there because its not right for the mission at that time or they should hang something on this hook or tether it here instead of there.

I guess its easy without an understanding of their mission protocol to misinterpret what is going on and for a person to jump to conclusions simply based on the language used.

a reply to: sapien82

One of the things you see from reading the biographies and histories and so on is how competitive these guys were in terms of doing the job absolutely right, and hopefully better than the next guy. They didn't get to be in that seat by being shy retiring 'after you' types.

The other thing you get from listening to these guys (and I've heard several speak) is the depth of technical knowledge they have, even in their current advanced years. It's like listening to Formula One drivers talk about the tiniest technical detail about their car's performance or design feature. They knew their stuff - they had to!