Milestone-Proposal talk:Apollo Unified S-Band Communications System, 1969

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Advocates and reviewers will post their comments below. In addition, any IEEE member can sign in with their ETHW login (different from IEEE Single Sign On) and comment on the milestone proposal's accuracy or completeness as a form of public review.

Advocates’ Checklist

  1. Is proposal for an achievement rather than for a person?
  2. Was proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology?
  3. Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature?
  4. Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology?
  5. Is proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the advocate. If the advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
  6. Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent?
  7. Is proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public?
  8. Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements?
  9. Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications?
  10. Scientific and technical units correct? (e.g. km, mm, hertz, etc.) Are acronyms correct and properly upperercased or lowercased?
  11. Date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Helpful_Hints_on_Citations,_Plaque_Locations

Reviewers’ Checklist

  1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
  2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
  3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
  4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?

Advocate Comments -- Dmichelson (talk) 10:41, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Robert Colburn has reminded me that the Milestone proposal is still in progress and has not been submitted.

A few comments at this early stage.

The Unified S-Band System was certainly a transformational development in space communications. I have several concerns, however.

Procedural Issues

First, the title of this page should be corrected: s/Appollo/Apollo/

Second, as a courtesy, I believe that we should coordinate with NASA History Division. An obvious place to start is with Steve Garber:

Stephen Garber NASA History Division. Office of Communications NASA Headquarters, Room 5P25 Washington, DC 20546

Third, we need to be mindful that JPL and Rockwell Collins feel a strong ownership of the Unified S-band System. We should ensure that they don’t feel left out.

Finally, the proposed wording for the plaque is a bit rough and needs editing.

Technical Issues

There are a few technical issues with the proposal.

First, the number of references is lacking and there are no shortage of references that describe this work and its significance. Please fix this.

Second, the USB system also worked with the S-IVB and the lunar sub-satellites. This needs to be clarified. The S-IVB was almost an issue with Apollo 13 because it used the same frequency as the LM. Not an issue on a regular mission, but potentially difficult on that mission.

Re: Advocate Comments -- hswarford (talk) 13:58, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Based on advocate's comments, this proposal is under revision to broaden the scope and include the multiple entities involved in development of the Unified S-Band communications system utilized on later Apollo missions.