Alain Capt

The deploy of a sub-satellite

This launches the sub-satellite which is stored inside the SIM bay. The satellite drifts away while its 3 antennas automatically deploy.
The Deploy or stow of magnetometer antennas

These magnetometers were deployed during the time the LM was gone for its stay on the Moon and the CSM remained in orbit. During these procedures, the two cameras seen in the SIM bay were also taking pictures of the Moon’s surface.

Space EVA to retrieve film cassettes

As soon as the space EVA is activated, the astronaut is seen either going out of the hatch or you will see from the EVA astronaut’s perspective, depending if you were in outside view or cockpit view. You will hear the dialog, which occurred during this time, on the Apollo 17 flight.

Obviously, it is not possible to simulate in Orbiter’s environment an astronaut moving to the camera location, retained by his umbilical and by holding the numerous handles installed on the vessel for this purpose. Your astronaut has no umbilical, but instead an invisible MMU, which allows you to control him with both Orbiter’s linear and rotational attitude controls. Use the standard Orbiter commands to move the astronaut.
The display line shows the actual translation mode (ROT or LIN), and the EVA duration. Eventually a warning message appears when oxygen runs low or critical. Finally, information about the film cassettes you must retrieve is also displayed. The data tells the distance from the left hand of the astronaut to the cassette handle.
The astronaut’s left hand must be less than 5 cm from the cassette for the astronaut to grab it automatically. A feedback sound is played when this occurs and the display line reads "IN HAND" instead of the distance remaining.
When the astronaut has a cassette in hand, he must return to the hatch to put the cassette inside the CSM. Just putting the left hand with the cassette a bit inside the hatch opening does this. The cassette will be automatically stored in the CSM. A feedback sound is played when this occurs and the information about this cassette disappears from the display line.
To terminate the EVA, you must maneuver the astronaut inside the CSM through the hatch. When he’s inside, PRECISELY on the middle seat, the hatch will close automatically. You may enter inside the CSM with a cassette in hand.
During the EVA you may switch focus between your astronaut and the CSM by using the "M" key.
The alternate action key "K" allows you to perform a "KILL-LINEAR". This function will kill any linear translation speed relative to the CSM vessel even if the astronaut has rotational movement.
Your EVA oxygen autonomy is 60 minutes. If you do not terminate the EVA before the oxygen is exhausted, you will die. In this case, you cannot do anything more with your astronaut than to use the "M" key to return the focus to the CSM. The hatch will close automatically if the astronaut dies. After 45min, "WARNING" will be displayed in the display line and "DANGER" 5min before the end of oxygen autonomy.
You may maneuver your astronaut from the outside view or cockpit view. The "cockpit" camera has been tuned to avoid graphic clipping at a reasonable distance and correspond to astronaut eyes view.

MOON LANDING SITES SCENERY

Each landing site location now has realistic scenery. This allows the simulation of most of the real Lunar activities the astronauts performed during all the Apollo missions, including multiple EVA and multiple EVA stations, each with rock samples to be collected, or the drilling lunar soil to get underground samples. Please refer to the document "EVA.doc" for your Moon journey.

During approach, you will see a beautiful rendering of the Moon terrain when closing to the ground. A full automatic landing will put you right on the historical theoretical programmed landing point. You can have confidence in the very high precision of the "LazyD" autopilot. But attention!!! Some of these locations are hazardous! You will almost inevitably have to use the "CHANGE TARGET" feature to choose a safe location according to the Moon terrain you see. This feature is covered extensively in the "P64 -> Approach phase" section of the chapter "AUTOPILOTS".
REMARK: As you should know, this actual version of Orbiter does not include collision detection, nor support 3d landscape. The design of these sceneries tries to hide the flatness of Orbiter’s ground, with some relief relative to this ground. It is done in a way that it is never necessary to be in such areas in order to accomplish the mission. But if you go there, it is unfortunately obvious that you will be either levitating over or sinking into the scenery.
If you perform a fictitious Apollo 13 successful mission, you will get the same scenery and EVA mission duty as for Apollo 14.
The fictitious Apollo 18 will use the landing site "Marius Hills" and Apollo 19 or later uses the "Copernicus" crater site. These two sceneries use a generic scenery with no EVA defined.

DAMAGES AND FAILURES

If you activate the Orbiter launch pad option "damage & failure simulation" in the "parameters" section, AMSO may randomly generate the following malfunctions:

CARBURANT LEAK - DANGER OF EXPLOSION

This may happen when Saturn V is on the launch pad or the LM in liftoff preparation mode. For this failure, the only survival solution is an immediate abort. Ten seconds after this alarm, if you haven’t reacted, you will be with the Angel.

HIGH VIBRATIONS - POTENTIAL STRUCTURAL DAMAGE

This may happen during any burn of any main engine(s) on both vessels. Immediate abort or main engine cut is the survival solution.

AUTOPILOT MALFUNCTION - DISCONNECTED

This can happen during any usage of any autopilots in both vessels. So, the appropriate reaction will depend on the situation you are in, when this malfunction occurs. This malfunction may also HALT the computer. In this case, you can try to reset the computer during the first 10 minutes by pressing "K" key, but over this delay you will have to wait 50 more minutes, for Houston to found a solution.

20% THRUST POWER LOST

This may happen during any burn of any main engine(s) in both the Apollo and the LM vessels. Here again the appropriate reaction will depend on the situation you find yourself in when this malfunction occurs. You may abort, or try to continue with the hope the power loss will not affect the flight path too much. Note that if this malfunction happens during the Saturn V ascent, the central engine cut off of both stages 1 & 2 will not occur. Depending on when this malfunction occurs, there’s a greater possibility later on of a Saturn V autopilot failure, because it can no longer insure a good trajectory.

SPS ENGINE MALFUNCTION

This may happen the first time you will use your CSM SPS engine, probably for the first middle course correction. But if you get a first successful burn, the probability you get a later malfunction is almost null. This will force you to fly the free return trajectory and use only your RCS system to get a correct entry interface.

PRESSURE NULL IN CRYO-TANK #2

This failure simulates the Apollo 13 problem. As with Apollo 13, the failure will occur right on time (56 hours into the mission). But this problem may also occur purely randomly with Apollo 11 & 12 (but not after 100 hours into the mission). Here you will hear a loud explosion and get the alarm. Then the CSM will remain operational for 1 hour 30 minutes more Then it will die (you won't be able to do anything anymore). But these 90 min of time runs only when you are inside this vessel (focus on CSM). So you will be forced to go inside the LM to preserve this precious time of remaining autonomy for the reentry. When you are inside the CSM, you will see the indication "POWER BUS 28.0 Volt ", on the mini-panel of the virtual cockpit. This tension will start to decrease 30 minutes before the CSM dies. ATTENTION!!! You need an operational vessel until the main parachute extraction, so you must carefully plan your reentry. You may try to use the CSM main engine, but here there is a high probability (5% chance) that you will blow up. It is therefore better to use the LM for all trajectory corrections, as it was actually done. For this purpose, you will have the assistance of the autopilot. See the "AUTOPILOTS" chapter, particularly the section "FULL STACK MANOEUVER auxiliary function" and read all about the P13 fictitious program. Similarly, don't miss the Apollo 13 tutorial and the associated set of scenarios which quite accurately simulate this dramatic flight.

When the malfunction occurs, you will see the malfunction message on the screen and hear a warning siren. In this state, most of the interface functions are temporary disabled until you acknowledge the warning by pressing either the "J" or "K" keys. This will stop the siren, erase the message, and again restore full vessel control.
If the malfunction is not mastered and leads to vessel destruction, you will see the Angel, as described in a previous chapter! But if you have disabled inhabited vessels vulnerability, you will survive (see chapter TECHNICAL INFORMATION).
A technical word about this feature: All malfunctions rely on specific situations to occur. For example, the engine ON, autopilot ON, lift off countdown, etc... Depending on the specific situation, the engine will build a different probability, based upon a general probability factor, set by default to 0.05 % of chance. In other words, the probability for a specific event, is lowered or increased, according to the characteristics of this event. For example, for a malfunction which can occur during long period of time, the probability factor is lowered. But for an engine failure, the factor will be increased, as the malfunction can only occur, while the engine is running. Of course, the type of malfunction is also considered. Fatal malfunctions have a lower probability to occur than recoverable malfunctions. You can modify the general factor, by adding a custom parameter in scenarios (see chapter TECHNICAL INFORMATION for more details). To build the final probability, the engine use a technique of double drawing of lots. Drawing of lots are performed each second, so that the engine is independent of computer performances.
You have 2 "magic keys" to increase (F12) or decrease (F11) the probability by a 10x factor. When you hit the key, the actual factor is just shortly displayed on the bottom line. To change it, you must re-hit the key during the display time. This will allow you to practice your ability to react well to malfunctions. This modification is not memorized, so if you save just after having modified, when you will reload the saved scenario, you will be again with the initial probability.