Vi segnalo un thread molto interessante su JoAnn Morgan, l’unica donna presente nella control room per il lancio di Apollo 11.
Il thread comincia qui:
https://twitter.com/megsylhydrazine/status/1133591034917662720
Lo trovate raccolto in un’unica pagina qui:
All’interno è segnalata anche una intervista di Vanity Fair
Nulla di tecnico ma è comunque interessante perché racconta un po’ la NASA e gli Stati Uniti di quegli anni. Fra l’altro ho scoperto che i russi provarono a interferire con le comunicazioni di Apollo 8, cosa che proprio ignoravo.
What were some of the things you were entrusted with as an instrumentation controller?
Well, the guidance computers at the Central Instrumentation Facility, that’s the biggie. The whole lightning-detection and fire-detection systems at the launchpad. The operational communications and television systems. Monitoring the command carrier for any interference, which meant a ship or submarine trying to get on the frequency that we were using to send commands out to the vehicle.
And that had really happened in the past.
Oh, yeah, it happened. On Apollo 8, the Russians were offshore with a trawler and submarine, and they tried interfering with our transfer of command. They would try to block frequencies so we couldn’t give commands to the pad and the capsule. And it continued some on 9 and 10. What we had to do is put different antennas on and direct them differently so we could block them from interfering with our command process.
