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 APOLLO EARTH RETURN ABORT CAPABILITIES

Introduction

It has always been a stated desire, as regards Project Apollo, to have continuous abort-to-earth capability throughout the entire lunar landing mission. This paper will examine the capability of the spacecraft to satisfy this objective through each mission phase of the lunar landing mission. The abort capability will be discussed primarily from a performance standpoint. In other words examining whether or not the spacecraft has the necessary performance required for continuous abort capability through— out the mission, Portions of the mission where redundancy exists will be pointed out as well as portions of the mis- sion which are critical or marginal as regards abort capa- bility. The primary ground rules for this discussion are as follows;

The items which will be discussed for each mission phase are as follows:

The capability of the spacecraft of actually performing abort maneuvers will be disscussed. Included here will