Talk:Apollo Lunar Module

Correction at "Masses" in Description

It should be: "Total at beginning of Descent" or "mission payload", "total at end of descent", and "total at ascent" the "total" in the Mass description its disturbing...

"Depiction in Film and Television".

Both the LM and CSM are depicted, and well, in the fictional film Apollo_18_(film)

Extended Lunar Module

I think it would be nice to add a section about the Extended Lunar Module, made larger for the last three missions to carry the rover. 2601:600:8D00:1D0:81E4:C103:F00F:E290 (talk) 04:42, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

The Lunar Module was not made larger. Only the nozzle of the descent engine was extended to generate more thrust. This and a modified descent schema enabled a higher weight. Thomas Weise (talk) 13:44, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

hushuddhyd 2600:8804:7B03:EF00:D400:FF18:B864:18A6 (talk) 04:09, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

A section on the Extended LM might be a good idea. There were actually numerous changes, mostly geared toward extending the payload capacity of the LM, extended the time it could stay on the surface, and accommodating the Lunar Roving Vehicle. The changes are outlined in the Apollo 15 Mission Report on page 252 of the PDF (which corresponds to page number 245 in the document):

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/static/history/alsj/a15/ap15mr.pdf

Thomas: I admit to being a newbie and never having edited a Wikipedia article. I can write a summary of the changes, if you would be willing to help answer questions about putting them in place. Mschulm (talk) 10:34, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Manual Control

In section "Operational profile", it reads "Astronauts flew Apollo spacecraft manually only during the lunar approach". This statement is misleading. The on-board computer did not offer an option of individually setting the thrust level for the 16 RCS thrusters, nor did it allow to specify the thrust level of the descent engine and its gimbal angle. So there was no way to fly an LM manually. In the final phase of the Apollo landings, the commander would rather go into "P66 attitude hold" mode, where the computer maintained a steady rate of descent while allowing the commander to change the orientation of the spacecraft to steer to a good landing site. The rate of descent could be adjusted in one-foot-per-second increments, and the goal would be to touch down at around 3 fps or less. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/40902/apollo-altitude-vs-rate-of-descent-schedule I would suggest to modify the text so that it reads "The LM was flown by its on-board computer. Only in the final phase of the landing, the commander would step in and determine the rate of descent and lateral movements of the spacecraft." Thomas Weise (talk) 11:04, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi Thomas. It's not quite true that the crew did not have the option of manually controlling the LM. P67 was the computer program for Manual Guidance. There were actually three programs available to the crew for the landing phase: P65 was known as Velocity-Nulling Guidance, and was essentially an automatic landing; P66 was Attitude Hold, which you described, and P67 was Manual Guidance. In P67 the crew controlled everything, including rate of descent and attitude. The computer was available to display information, but was otherwise out of the loop and had no actual control over thrusters or engines -- that was 100% up to the crew in P67. P65 and P67 were never used in flight -- every flight used P66 for the landing phase. When it became clear that no crew was ever going to use P65 for an automatic landing, P65 was removed, I think beginning on Apollo 14. But every flight still had the option of using P67, which left everything up to the crew. Mschulm (talk) 10:25, 19 April 2025 (UTC)