This is quite different from my normal content…
I’ve been fascinated by the Apollo program for several years now, but one concept that has been on my mind lately is the Transposition, Docking, and Extraction phase of the mission. Specifically, I’ve been interested in the “probe and drogue,” assembly. I seem to remember Michael Collins complaining about how long it took to remove the equipment in his book, “Carrying the Fire.”
I listen to “How Apollo Flew to the Moon,” by W. David Woods on Audible quite often, and recently I’ve been listening to the section on Transposition, Docking, and Extraction lately, and decided to look up some additional references.
First, I found a great page with photos of one of the surviving examples at the Stafford Air and Space Museum.
http://heroicrelics.org/stafford/apollo-probe-and-drogue/index.html
I also found an excellent Youtube video on the process, including some actual mission footage of the Probe and Drogue being removed.
Another interesting resource I found is this PDF that includes photos of the Apollo panels, and and explanation of the various switches. This includes a brief mention of the displays and switches related to the docking process.
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/static/history/alsj/csm10_displays_&_controls_pp83-86.pdf
I also have these two photos I took at the Cosmosphere Museum. I could swear I took more pictures than this, but these are all that I’m finding. I have a couple of photos of the Apollo 13 Command Module, but they don’t show the docking mechanism very well.
Finally, I found a great video on YouTube that includes actual mission video and audio of the Apollo 14 Transposition, Docking and Extraction. This mission was the only one to experience some difficulty which was never explained. You can hear the docking latches engage at 1:54:53.
If you don’t watch the whole thing, I’d suggest watching starting at about 1:43:00. By that time, they’d tried to dock several times and failed. They’ve been considering suiting up, de-pressurizing, opening the hatch and removing the Probe for inspection. But starting at 1:43:00 Al Shepard can be heard explaining his understanding of the process he’s been instructed to carry out: one last attempt to dock by following the normal process, but rather than rely on the Probe and Drogue, they’ll keep thrusters pushing them against the LM and attempting to dock that way.
I also recently read that because of the problems with the Probe and Drogue on this mission, the equipment was actually returned to earth to be examined. Normally the equipment would have been thrown away in the ascent-stage of the LM when it was jettisoned. You think that’d be a nice museum piece, but it was evidently reused on either a Skylab or Apollo Test Program.
One thing I’m having a hard time finding is a photo of the index marks inside the tunnel. If I understand correctly, some sort of index marks were used to measure the amount of rotation between the CSM and the LM. This value was necessary to transfer the position information from the computer in the CSM to the computer in the LM, in order to ensure the computer had accurate information.