Fifty years ago today, March 3, 1969, Apollo 9 launched into Earth orbit. It's mission was to test out; the Lunar Module (LM), rendezvous techniques between the LM and the Command and Service Module (CSM), and the new Apollo era spacesuits. The crew consisted of Commander Jim McDivitt, CSM pilot Dave Scott and LM pilot Rusty Schweickart. Apollo 9 is one of the forgotten Apollo missions. Apollo 8 was the first mission to the Moon, so coming back to an Earth orbit mission seemed not very important to many people. For those that are interested in the space program, Apollo 9 is one of the most impressive of all the Apollo missions. It was the so called, "Test pilots dream flight". During the summer and fall of 1968 it became obvious that the LM would not be ready in time for the scheduled Apollo 8 mission. McDivitt and his crew were scheduled to fly the second manned Apollo mission. McDivitt was given the choice to, in essence, have his crew abandon the mission of testing out the first human rated LM, and go to the Moon instead. He declined (and his crew all supported his decision) as he felt that as a "testing" mission the first flight of the LM was far more interesting than the first flight to go to the Moon. McDivitt's crew's flight was pushed back and became Apollo 9. The LM was the first true spaceship ever created. It was designed to fly solely in space. It could NOT fly in an atmosphere, and could not return to the Earth as it had no heat shield. Not only that, it was designed to only support people in the 1/6 gravity of the Moon. While NOT flimsy, as a flying machine it was VERY lightweight. During construction, a screwdriver was dropped by mistake in the crew cabin, and the screwdriver went right through the floor. The LM (named Spider) consisted of a descent stage and an ascent stage. The mission objective was for McDivitt and Schweickart to use the descent engine to take the LM out about 100 miles from the CSM. Then they would blow off the ascent stage from the descent stage and return in it to the CSM (named Gumdrop). They were successful in this maneuver. The Apollo era spacesuits were far more complex than the Gemini era spacesuits, with constant size functionality. The Gemini era spacesuits were basically inflatable balloons, that unless the astronaut was directly moving it would assume a more or less fetal position. It was VERY tiring to use, as the astronauts had to fight the neutral position of the suit. Furthermore, the Gemini spacesuit was linked to the Gemini spacecraft via an umbilical cord, which carried it's oxygen etc. The Apollo era spacesuit had all sorts of wires (and sprockets if you will). An astronaut could move in it to (relatively) any given position and the spacesuit would stay in that position. It was self contained... in essence it was it's own spaceship, and an astronaut could go wherever he wanted to in it, for up to 8 hours at a time. Schweickart and Scott successfully tested the spacesuit. Here's a roughly 4 minute NASA video about the mission: I've been lucky enough to meet and talk with all three of the crew members, in particular with McDivitt and Scott multiple times. They are very enjoyable to talk with. Here are a couple signed mission pictures from my collection. A mosaic of 4 mission pictures signed by Scott and Schweickart. A picture of the LM Spider signed by McDivitt to yours truly. Here are the Apollo 9 pieces of my space collection. ALL the items that are pictured were flown on the mission. Given that this is a numismatic forum, let's start with this. It's a Robbins medallion (so called because they were minted by the Robbins company). It is a metallic representation of the mission patch. After the flight the pertinent information was added to the reverse. Here's a mission patch. Note that the D in McDivitt is highlighted in red. The assorted types of Apollo missions were designated with numbers; A - J at the higher planning levels (e.g. upper management), with the letters designating different types of missions. Apollo 9 was considered a D class mission. Here's an eye patch. It was used to dark adapt the eye so that it could be used soon after moving into darkness (remember, each orbit consisted of roughly 45 minutes of daylight and 45 minutes of darkness). It was particularly helpful for preparing for use of the sextant. Here's a pic (taken in 2010) with Jim wearing the patch... Here's a movable utility light that was used in the LM. It's roughly the size of 2 - 3 decks of cards stacked on each other.
Man brings back memories of grade school watching all the launches on a black & white portal TV. Our eyes glued to the screen hoping nobody moved to mess up the picture on the set.....hey kids Google "rabbit ears" because with out a set in the early 60's you watched a polar bear in a snow storm! BTW we had 3 channels......by 1965 some were in color......what a rush the opening of The wonderful world of color...As well the NBC pecock spreading its tail. I went to Catholic school the nun's would tell us we were "jet age kids"! But oh what excitement 200 kids from grade 1 -8 all amazed as those missions launched. And friends those years life was a tire swing.....
Very cool stuff their Sy...and nice write-up on a classic mission. Here is something I posted on CS as part of an ongoing project of mine...I know you visit their occasionally, check it out. http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/005316.html
