Talk:Apollo 10

What seismometers on the Moon?

The current article has this line: "All other ascent stages were either left in lunar orbit to eventually crash, intentionally steered into the Moon to obtain readings from seismometers placed on the lunar surface, or else burned up in Earth's atmosphere." But what seismometers would those be? Were there actually seimometers places on the Moon before Apollo 11? Supermagle (talk)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Supermagle (talk • contribs) 2016-01-04T18:47:48?

edit: I think I understand - it means LM ascent stages from other (later) Apollo missions. It is possible that I am the only one confused by that line - otherwise it should be reworked.

Run-on sentence

This sentence has too many statements: "After the prime crew of Apollo 2, led by Wally Schirra, went to NASA management with a list of demands concerning their mission, Apollo 2 was cancelled in November 1966, and Stafford was assigned as backup commander for the second Apollo mission under a new schedule, planned to involve the first crewed flight of the lunar module, to be commanded by James McDivitt, with Young as backup CMP and Cernan as backup LMP." I suggest it be broken up. I was paused for too long trying to figure out if the demands were related to the fire. Only later in the article did I learned the fire was after the demands. Rather than trying to sort it out, I stopped reading. After all, the article is about Apollo 10. Timhowardriley (talk) 09:18, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to change it. We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, because wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse. TJRC (talk) 19:45, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

What does "farthest from their homes" mean?

I don't understand the sentence "The Apollo 10 crew also traveled farther than any humans before or since from their (Houston) homes: 408,950 kilometers (220,820 nmi) (though the Apollo 13 crew was 200 km farther away from Earth as a whole)."

Does it want to say that Houston was approximately on the opposite side of Earth so that Apollo 10 travelled farther from Houston (but not from the Moon-facing side of Earth's surface) than any other human crew ever? Glasfaser Wien (talk) 07:01, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

That's my understanding. Remember the Apollo 13 crew were only beyond the Moon for a relatively brief time since they looped around it and did not enter orbit. Houston was presumably not facing away from the Moon at the time, judging by this. Since Apollo 10 spent over a day in lunar orbit, they had plenty of time to have Earth rotate and Houston to face away. You might not get Houston at its furthest point but since a lunar orbit usually took about two hours, you're at most going to be an hour away from that, which isn't going to make much difference to the distance. I do recall that Apollo 10 and 13 were the missions that took place with the Moon the furthest from Earth, which is the other major factor. Wehwalt (talk) 12:33, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Interesting. Makes sense, thank you. Glasfaser Wien (talk) 17:20, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Popular culture

Joel Kinnaman playing as the main character in Far All Mankind series is the commander of this mission. Should this be added under the popular culture section? Footy2000♡; 05:07, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

No, I don't think so. We do not need to add chance references such as that. Wehwalt (talk) 12:41, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Unmatched source

I don't see any information regarding the statement "While most Apollo missions orbited the Moon at 111 kilometers (60 nmi) ... at about the same time Earth's rotation put Houston nearly a full Earth diameter farther away." in the whole Guiness 2010 book. Where did these numbers come from? Ctdbsclvn (talk) 17:11, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

That's a good question. What is supported by the text of whatever is in the book you have? Anything else we should delete, unless it can be sourced to elsewhere. Wehwalt (talk) 19:16, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

I borrowed the book from the Internet Archive link and checked page 13. I didn't see any mention of Apollo 10, only Apollo 13 being the farthest crew from Earth. It also doesn't have any information about the variation of distance from Moon to Earth. Ctdbsclvn (talk) 05:54, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Lunar landing software capability

I tried to updated the Lunar landing capability section where we currently say "Additionally, the software necessary to guide the LM to a landing was not available at the time of Apollo 10." but my edits were reverted by @Wehwalt for not citing a reliable source. My edited version was "In 2020 the flight software for Apollo 10, LUMINARY 69 Rev 2, was reconstructed and shown to be capable of landing on the moon."

In 2020, software historian Mike Stewart, part of the team that restored a real AGC, reconstructed the Apollo 10 flight software (LUMINARY 69 Rev 2) from available documentation. According to his work documented on the CuriousMarc YouTube channel, this reconstruction revealed that LUMINARY 69 Rev 2 did contain landing guidance code capable of landing on the moon. At least one of the developers of the NASSP/Orbiter simulator have successfully landed on the moon in their sim using this reconstructed software and a LM configured with the same weight and fuel load of Snoopy, Apollo 10's LM.

I've looked for more reliable sources for this but I haven't found anything yet that I'm sure would meat wikipedia's standards for a "reliable source." Here's what I do have:

• Youtube video of Mike Stewart reconstructing Snoopy's flight software and discussing if it was capable of a moon landing
• A post of the Orbiter Forums from one of the NASSP devs where they discuss landing with the Apollo 10 flight software and linking to a Youtube video of them doing it
• A blog post from the Lighthouse Foundation covering the software reconstruction and demonstration of landing capability

Akersmc (talk) 18:11, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't think any of those are reliable sources. And what real difference does it make anyway? They all thought it couldn't land it on the Moon, and no attempt was made. Hawkeye7, do you have any thoughts on this? Wehwalt (talk) 18:16, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't disagree that they all thought they couldn't land and successfully lift off again, but right now the article asserts that one of the reasons for that belief was lack of guidance software. We can't know that for sure, given that we now know that the software at the time of Apollo 10 was capable of doing a landing. Akersmc (talk) 18:52, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Are you saying we can't be sure what they believed? That's the way it sounds. Wehwalt (talk) 19:01, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Sitting here right now, I don't know what they believed :) I re-read the section of Don Eyles's memoir about Apollo 10 and he doesn't say either way. Maybe there are reliable sources that can answer this question but I don't have them at the moment.

You are a much more experienced wikipedia editor than me so I'll defer to you but maybe the best thing to do is remove the sentence saying the necessary software wasn't available. Akersmc (talk) 19:52, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

I checked Don Eyles, Sunburst and Luminary. It does not says whether Luminary 69 had the required code for landing, although I am certain that it did. It says little about Apollo 10, but notes that "Armstrong himself was unsure, until Apollo 9 and Apollo 10 flew, whether Apollo 11 would even get to make the attempt". I am not ranking the sources listed by Akersmc as unreliable. The one used in the article is Hamish Lindsay, Tracking Apollo to the Moon. Lindsay only says: "the lunar landing computer software wasn't quite ready". (p. 198) Eyles notes only that there was a uncertainty about the radar and mascons. (p. 133) Thomas Kelly, Moon Lander, adds: "These concerns, together with a desire for a close reconnaissance of the tentatively selected first lunar landing site, were NASA's basis for performing the Apollo 10 low altitude lunar mission instead of going directly for a landing." So then I checked Brooks et al., Chariots for Apollo: "From a technical standpoint, Apollo 10 could have landed on the Moon. It probably would have - with some offloading of fuel to shed a little weight - had the flight been scheduled for the last few weeks of the decade." (p. 300) My recommendation is to remove that sentence, given the uncertainty. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:54, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Done. Wehwalt (talk) 20:54, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for doing all this research and giving me some great additions to my reading list! Akersmc (talk) 17:52, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

I highly recommend Eyles. There are other books on the AGC, but they area about the hardware. Eyles's book is about the software. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:10, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

Eyles is very good Akersmc (talk) 20:03, 26 November 2025 (UTC)