[math-fun] Dedication and paragraph from Buzz Aldrin's Ph.D thesis
From "Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous," Edwin Eugene Aldrin's January 1963 Ph.D dissertation at MIT in Aeronautics and Astronautics, January 1963, with Dedication reading
"In the hopes that this work may in some way contribute to their exploration of space, this is dedicated to crew members of this country's present and future manned space program. If only I could join them in their exciting endeavors!" Buzz got into the space program in 1966. Presumably this paragraph from page 88 wasn't held against him: "The basic conclusion to be drawn from all this discussion of rendezvous with targets in elliptic orbits is that, since the recommended techniques of intercepting such targets all stem from the similarity and analogies through transformation to intercepts of targets in circular orbits, all the succeeding analyses pertaining to intercepts between circular orbits are directly applicable through the same similarities and transformations to targets in elliptic orbits." Thane Plambeck 650 321 4884 office 650 323 4928 fax http://www.qxmail.com/home.htm
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Thane Plambeck