OT: Apollo Splash Down Module
There might be some metalworking in here, but that is not the question. This is more of an aerodynamic question.
Would the splash down module self correct in free fall r did it "have to be" oriented properly. I don't mean if it had massive out of control inertial spin/tumble, but rather if it just happened to be out of correct orientation when it started to hit significant atmospheric drag.
Long gone are the days when I could ask my grandfather a dumb question like this and he could show off by asking the eggheads over at Lewis before responding.
Anything I read on this topic is long forgotten. I've haven't been a space nerd in a long time.
Bob La Londe
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"The Apollo command module is designed with an offset center of gravity to provide a trimmed entry angle of attack (with the heat shield forward)."
In contrast Columbia lost its necessary active stability after the punctured wing's hydraulic lines burned through. It apparently entered a flat spin, the damaged wing came off, followed by the payload bay doors which exposed the aluminum structure to burn through at the joint between the payload bay and the crew cabin. The freed front end tumbled until its tile-protected outer shell was blown off by shock wave pressure entering at its rear, then the exposed aluminum cabin burned up in about 10-15 seconds. Based on stored mission shoulder patches found early in the debris track they think the pressurized cabin shifted and was punctured in the storage compartment holding the patches by part of the outer shell frame, and since the crew hadn't lowered their face shields (intentionally?) to pressurize their suits they likely passed out very rapidly in the near vacuum before it burned.
If they had survived down to SR-71 flight conditions they could have bailed out and parachuted down, but not at Mach 18.
I knew an excellent NASA source at Mitre until he retired. He explained in detail how the Apollo 11 flight control computer he helped design became overburdened by routines they kept adding to it and unforeseen flight conditions, until the loop watchdog timer briefly lit its fault light at the end of each cycle before being reset. The programmers hadn't thought to extend the hardware timeout, and by then he was on another project.
I built a lab demo of a proposed DS5 laser comm crosslink for TDRSS, partly in my basement, otherwise my space program involvement was on ground terminals for Milstar.
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It's an upgrade to an early, encrypted predecessor of of Starlink. The US military has had a global secure communications network similar to wired and wireless Internet since the 1960's (with Teletypes and card readers), and I maintained it in the early 70's.