Apollo 7

Mission insignia

Apollo 7 was the first manned mission in the Apollo program which reached orbit. It was an eleven-day earth-orbital mission, the first manned launch of the Saturn IB launch vehicle, and the first three-man American space mission. Wally Schirra, Walt Cunningham and Donn Eisele take the most complex machine yet created, the Apollo CSM, on its first test flight.

In Project Apollo - NASSP the Apollo 7 mission is available in Quickstart mode, Standard mode and Virtual AGC mode.

Quickstart mode

The Apollo 7 Quickstart - Launch scenario in the Quickstart Missions folder starts a new Apollo 7 mission. The following table shows the currently available mission phases together with the checklists to use:

Mission phase	Checklists	Scenario	Remarks
Prelaunch	-	Launch	Scenario starts 2h before lift-off, everything runs automatically. Use time acceleration up to 100 if you don't want to wait.
Launch & Earth orbit insertion	-	-	The Saturn is controlled by the autopilot. Time acceleration is reset to 1 at T-20s automatically, you should not use time acceleration until you reached Earth orbit. At about T+12min Engine cutoff occurs, the spacecraft is in the almost circular Earth Parking Orbit (EPO).
To be continued...

Standard mode

The Apollo 7 - Launch scenario in the Apollo - Historical Missions folder starts a new Apollo 7 mission. The following table shows the currently available mission phases together with the checklists to use:

Mission phase	Checklists	Scenario	Remarks
Prelaunch	Prelaunch checklist	Launch	Scenario starts 3h before lift-off. Because of the Saturn 1b booster there are small aberrations.
Launch & Earth orbit insertion	Launch checklist	-	-
To be continued...

Virtual AGC mode

The Apollo 7 - Launch scenario in the Virtual AGC folder starts a new Apollo 7 mission. The following table shows the currently available mission phases together with the checklists to use:

Mission phase	Checklists	Scenario	Remarks
Prelaunch	Prelaunch checklist	Launch	Scenario starts 3h before lift-off. Because of the Saturn 1b booster there are small aberrations.
Launch & Earth orbit insertion	Launch checklist	-	-
To be continued...

Mission Overview

The main purpose of the Apollo 7 Mission was to check out the Apollo CSM Spacecraft. The mission was sperated into two major portions, rendezvous maneuvers and SPS maneuvers. The rendezvous manuevers were designed to check out procedures and methods to rendevous with another spacecraft, in this case the SIVB. The SPS phase checked out the ability of the SPS to perform multiple burns.

Rendezous Maneuvers

At MET 2:55:00 the CSM seperates from the SIVB. The CSM perfroms a simulated tranposition and docking with the SIVB and then maintains station keeping with the SIVB.

At MET 3:20:00 the first phasing maneuver is performed. This maneuver should put the spacecraft approximatly 75 nmi ahead of the SIVB at MET 26:25:00. It is a retrograde maneuver, with the spacecraft pointing prograde, using the -X RCS. Historically the manuever was perfromed using the SCS, but it can be performed using vAGC. According to mission documentation the delta V for this maneuver is 5.7 ft/s, howerver in Orbiter a value of 2.5 ft/s will put the spacecraft in the perscribed position. A second phasing maneuver can be perfromed at MET 15:20:00.