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The Mission Profile Graphic


I really would have liked a better look at NASA's big display on the wall of the Pilgrim mission's public relations center, the one Ted Knight was walking around in front of. But it was always shown off in the distance and my setup was not able to bring it big enough to study it. I saw it years ago on VHS (I had taped it off cable.) That copy wasn't good enough for zooming in and seeing the graphic.

(It certainly showed at least two paths between the Moon and the Earth. I had supposed one would be the manned ship going up, and the other would be the manned ship's "abort" trip coming back down. It wasn't until much later that I considered that the second one might be the "Chuck Wagon" flight of the shelter going up.)

I wanted to see the labels and all the hardware as depicted. Presumably there would be mid-course corrections, like in all the real missions, but they'd have different names for some of the other mission points. For instance, I don't think they had a "LOI" or "lunar orbit insertion", because I don't believe either ship was supposed to go into orbit before landing, but just make a direct drop to the landing, like a Surveyor probe.

Also, especially, how did they depict the Gemini+LEM combination in flight on the graphic? A LEM stage certainly couldn't fit on top of a Titan booster, as shown in the film.

Of course, this film is dated and not that popular, so it is not in my local or county library.

Now I think it is available for eleven bucks plus shipping at Warner's site (see the oldest thread on this message board). But I don't want to own a DVD, I just want to know more about the mission graphic. (Still I may cave and spend the $11, but I have a family and don't get to waste money as easily as in my bachelor days.)

Can anyone please take a good look at it for me? Or ideally put a jpeg or gif of it somewhere?

Either way, thanks for reading.

I don't know how many times I read the book, way back when, when it was a Mercury flight, and I'm impressed with the film's trueness to the book. And, btw, it was good to see Ted Knight before he was terminally typecast by Mary Tyler Moore's show and the Caddyshack film, but the Walter Larson character in the book was of that ilk, pompous and not to be taken seriously.

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