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Lot 519
NASA HAND-MADE CIRCULAR SLIDE RULE.
5 December 2018, 14:00 EST
New YorkUS$6,000 - US$8,000
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NASA HAND-MADE CIRCULAR SLIDE RULE.
Used in the "Trench" at Mission Control during Apollo 7.
Plastic sheet, card stock, central metal brad hub, 280 mm diameter, hand-made at NASA Mission Control to calculate trajectories. Contained in sleeve made of heavy card stock and stapled around three edges.
WITH: All Purpose Space Rule. Houston: NASA Flight Control Division, 1967. Folding whiteprint chart tipped in at back, showing graphs of trajectory calculation. Bound with staples, on 5-hole punched paper.
In a 2006 interview for NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, Granville E. Paules III explained the "Space Rule":
"We didn't have all the computer programs for calculating backup procedures if the computer failed, for getting the crew in the right attitude to reenter safely. They were in a circular orbit, so there shouldn't have been any problem.
When you're going around, and if they had to go to alternate sites around the world because of a problem, you need the computer to calculate the correct attitude of the spacecraft so it comes in right and it does all the right yaw maneuvers. You needed to align the platform, the inertial platform on board, correctly so that it would handle the spacecraft, and it wouldn't get in a position where it was what we call gimbal lock. This inertial platform can only go so many degrees in different axes, and so you align it to get the most reasonable midpoint of where any extreme would occur, rolling and rocking around, pitching.
You always had to align the spacecraft platform, depending on where you were going to come in, and we didn't have a computer program to do all that, so in terms of these procedures we all developed, I had a great big wheel. It was made out of cardboard with plastic and stuff on it that had all the key stars that they might see. I put them in the right star field orientation, and then if they were to see a certain star and they could identify it, we could tell them what angles they needed to put into the spacecraft backup system to reenter properly. That was all a handmade thing. It didn't depend on any computers."
Plastic sheet, card stock, central metal brad hub, 280 mm diameter, hand-made at NASA Mission Control to calculate trajectories. Contained in sleeve made of heavy card stock and stapled around three edges.
WITH: All Purpose Space Rule. Houston: NASA Flight Control Division, 1967. Folding whiteprint chart tipped in at back, showing graphs of trajectory calculation. Bound with staples, on 5-hole punched paper.
In a 2006 interview for NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, Granville E. Paules III explained the "Space Rule":
"We didn't have all the computer programs for calculating backup procedures if the computer failed, for getting the crew in the right attitude to reenter safely. They were in a circular orbit, so there shouldn't have been any problem.
When you're going around, and if they had to go to alternate sites around the world because of a problem, you need the computer to calculate the correct attitude of the spacecraft so it comes in right and it does all the right yaw maneuvers. You needed to align the platform, the inertial platform on board, correctly so that it would handle the spacecraft, and it wouldn't get in a position where it was what we call gimbal lock. This inertial platform can only go so many degrees in different axes, and so you align it to get the most reasonable midpoint of where any extreme would occur, rolling and rocking around, pitching.
You always had to align the spacecraft platform, depending on where you were going to come in, and we didn't have a computer program to do all that, so in terms of these procedures we all developed, I had a great big wheel. It was made out of cardboard with plastic and stuff on it that had all the key stars that they might see. I put them in the right star field orientation, and then if they were to see a certain star and they could identify it, we could tell them what angles they needed to put into the spacecraft backup system to reenter properly. That was all a handmade thing. It didn't depend on any computers."