User:EHartwell
By Eric Hartwell - http://www.ehartwell.com
I am a software developer with experience in publishing and graphics and a keen interest in computers, human factors, robotics, flight, and spaceflight. Somewhere along the line I picked up a Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering.
Apollo 17 has always been my favorite moon mission. It flew in 1972, the same year I started university. As an engineering scientist, I identified with Jack Schmitt who was the first (and only) scientist to fly to the moon.[1][2]
This project started with a Geek Trivia article on TechRepublic.com, titled "Worth a thousand worlds", which claimed that "most people are looking at the Blue Marble photo upside down," since the photo was taken with Antarctica at the top of the frame.
I immediately jumped in with the obvious comment: "Given a weightless astronaut, floating around in the cramped cabin, peering through a tiny window (at a 45 slope), through the view screen[3] (perpendicular to the lens) on a Hasselblad, I don't see how anyone can claim to know what's up, down, or sideways." After a little research, I found that the spacecraft was in a "heads-down" attitude, so when they looked out the windows the astronauts saw the South Pole at the top and the North Pole at the bottom.. The Earth is generally shown with the North Pole "up", but who's to say which is "correct"?.
The article went on to say, "A member of the Apollo crew took the famous shot using a handheld Hasselblad camera. Exactly who took it, no one can say, as all three astronauts took turns snapping pics throughout the Apollo 17 mission. Astronaut Harrison Schmitt often asserts authorship of the photo, but there is no means to verify his claim." NASA officially credits the image to the entire Apollo 17 crew, all of whom took photographs with the on-board camera. NASA's official stand is that the identity of the photographer is unverifiable.
"The identity of the photographer is unverifiable"? - I decided to take that as a personal challenge. That's how this all began.
When I started doing research for Apollo 17: The Blue Marble, I keenly felt the lack of an Apollo 17 version of the Apollo Flight Journal. Where's the onboard transcript? Who was where? When did it happen? All the information is around, somewhere, but it hasn't been organized. I decided to contribute towards that end as well.
March 2007 update: The "Blue Marble" photo was taken at a busy time during the mission. I've narrowed it down to a 10 minute period, but, as Murphy's Law predicts, this was the only time during the mission when all three astronauts used the same camera. Still working on it ...
 
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| Next trivia question: Who took these pictures? |
- ↑ It turns out that Jack, along with the other scientist-astronauts, was treated as something of an outcast by the pilot-astronauts, just as I was as what later came to be called a geek.
- ↑ I've come to realize that, despite their jet-jockey reputation, most of the Apollo astronauts were dedicated and accomplished engineers. Neil Armstrong, in particular, was a superb choice for the first moon landing because of his engineering approach. It was, after all, the culmination of the most specacular series of test flights ever made.
- ↑ I've since determined that the Apollo cameras had no viewfinder. The astronauts practiced pointing the entire camera at their target, and that, along with a slightly wide-angle lens, was good enough.