Category:Splashdown

Command Module Splashdown [image info]

The final stage of an Apollo mission involved the Command Module (space capsule) undergoing rentry, then deploying its parachutes and splashing down in the ocean where it would await recovery by the US Navy.

A spaceship reimagined as a boat

This in itself was a difficult set of tasks: Initially, the capsule would vent its unused fuel for safety, then after realising that one of the parachutes didn't open on one of the recoveries, this was blamed on vented fuel getting onto the parachute deployment hardware, and the procedure was changed.

On one of the early umanned tests, the capsule actually sank (which on a full mission would have resulted in the astronauts successful surviving a space journey, then drowning). The capsule had to deploy a ring-shaped section of floats, but with a cutout below the hatch to allow a navy diver to approach easily: the colourful top balloons were not just for high-visibility, they were designed to try to auto-right the capsule if it accidentally ended up in the water upside down.

A complication would be that the astronauts, while super-fit and presumably knowing how to swim, would be wearing bulky spacesuits, would be exhausted from the gruelling mission, would be weak and unused to Earth gravity, and would also still be adjusting to breathing air at normal pressure. In bad weather, they might also have to deal with significant water ingress when the large hatch was open.

Helicopter 66

Since the mission wasn't over until after retrieval, the Sikorski "Sea King" helicopter that winched the astronauts to safety, and then "hooked" the space capsule with its stowed payload of moon-rock, could be considered an integral part of the Apollo hardware suite.

US Navy helicopter 66 achieved a degree of celebrity for its role in the early Apollo missions, to such an extent that when the US Navy renumbered their helicopters to use a difference scheme with more digits, the 'copter used for capsule retrieval was actually temporarily repainted back to the old markings, complete with a large "66", so as not to disappoint the watching journalists.

The Dinky model

The Dinky Toys 724 set, including a motorised helicopter with manual winch and plastic floating space capsule, while contemporary with the US Apollo space programme, was a little late to the game, only appearing in 1971, and therefore missing out on the initial surge of interest in the televised recovery of the Apollo 11 capsule in 1969, at the end of the first manned trip to the Moon.