Apollo Training 1966 — Structures and Mechanical Subsystems

Course A-512S, dated April 1 1966: an internal NAA training package for the company’s Apollo Logistics Training program at Downey, California, covering launch escape system structures, the command module’s inner and outer structure, mechanical systems, the service module, and the spacecraft-LEM adapter.

Its crew-hatch chapter documents, in isometric line drawings and mechanical detail, the Block I spacecraft’s three nested crew hatches — the Boost Protective Cover hatch, the command module’s outer ablative hatch, and the pressure-sealing inner hatch, the last of which locked and unlocked with a dedicated torque wrench turned a full 360 degrees clockwise to lock and 360 degrees counterclockwise to unlock.

This is the same three-hatch configuration that, ten months after this manual’s issue date, prevented the crew of Apollo 1 from escaping the January 27 1967 pad fire; Block II replaced it with a single outward-opening hatch. The manual does not mention the fire or crew safety, predating both by ten months, and it is not cited in either the Apollo 204 Review Board or Senate Committee reports on the accident.