posted 04-20-2015 09:50 AM               

Actually, the only stuff I collected were photos of some of the results of my Shock Tunnel testing (almost five years of it) of the landing of the descent stage of the LM (20th scale) and the lunar take-off of the ascent stage (10th scale). The entire external passive cooling system for the LM was based on that data and my analyses of it. The other thermo guys used my data and analysis of it to design the details of the protection system. I've enclosed some of the photos taken for your collection. (Test duration was on the order of 6 milliseconds before the vacuum chamber would increase in pressure and destroy the vacuum causing the exhaust plume to collapse.)

The probes on Figure 1 are significantly oversized models of the automatic engine shutoff sensors/switches that were installed in case the astronauts flubbed it. Three of the four landing pads had them. Only the pad that held the access ladder did not. NASA was concerned it would get bent somehow on landing and trip up the Astronauts during egress.

You can see the dish shaped shock wave being swallowed by the engine as LM approaches the surface of the "Moon." The reverse happens during ascent.

The 1/4" circular dots were Grumman designed and built thin film Quartz/Platinum calorimeters which measured the heat transfer coefficients, that allowed for the material design of the thermal protection system.

Just prior to the first lunar landing, NASA got wind of our test facility and made up run a full scale test in Vacuum "B" down at NASA Houston. The results were identical to our subscale testing of the same geometries. (They were quite impressed.)

(All of this occurred between 1965 and 1969. That was the end of the "Good Old Days". Almost everything was done with slide rules.