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DESTINATION MOON: A History of the
Lunar Orbiter Program
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- CHAPTER VIII: LUNAR ORBITER
MISSION OBJECTIVES AND APOLLO REQUIREMENTS
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- A Change in Delivery
Incentive
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- [222] Other areas of
major concern existed. One was in the NASA-Boeing contract and the
funding relationship. During March and April 1966, the Lunar
Orbiter Project Office at Langley negotiated a new delivery
incentive with the Boeing [223] Company because
of the necessity of moving the first launch date from early June
to mid-July. The new delivery date was June 20, and the change
relieved some of the pressure that schedule delays, especially on
the photographic subsystem had caused in the timetable. In
addition NASA officials had taken the opportunity to correct
previous weaknesses in the incentive clause of the
contract.79
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- Scherer reported to Nicks on April 7 that
the Lunar Orbiter Program was close to meeting its obligations
according to plan., but that accrued costs were about $10 million
behind the plan. The completion costs for RCA were expected to end
up one half to one million dollars below the level planned. In
addition the Machinists' Union at Boeing had not reached a new
contract settlement with the company by the April 7 deadline, and
a strike appeared likely. If the union struck before April 30,
negotiations would move to Washington, D.C. A strike would affect
Lunar Orbiter operations at Cape Kennedy.80
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- Langley had reported to Headquarters at
the end of March that the program was proceeding toward a launch
readiness [224] date of July 11, 1966, despite several technical
problems that continued to hold up testing. The major problems
were in the photographic subsystem. The shutter mechanism for the
610 mm lens and the V/H sensor had not yet been perfected, and
their absence was delaying vital tests of the subsystem at the
flight spacecraft level.81 The problem continued to persist almost to the
actual launch date. Indeed, the July launch date had to be
canceled because the photographic subsystem was not available and
it was not until the second week in August that the program was
able to launch a spacecraft.82
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