Stuff...The kind of stuff people didn't know about.
The problems encountered.
Of course, it was expected that things would come up. Any time you have a highly complex bunch of machinery, supremely complex, and you're in the midst of an engineering test flight program with that mess, to think that some anomalous behavior won't be encountered is pretty naive.
Apollo had anomalies on every mission...dozens of them. What these things did was provide information to engineers so as to improve performance and perfect the system.
Apollo 9 was the first manned flight of the LM. There were 31 anomalies analyzed for Apollo 9. Frankly, these anomalies in total were alot less, and alot less impactful than what might have been expected.
What these things involved were fixes...in procedures, sometimes in replacement equipment, sometimes in fixing errors in things that were done in manufacture or testing and which would involve checks of subsequent spacecraft, and in ground support equipment changes and/or repairs. Some of the anomalies had no mission impact or were unique to the configuration of Apollo 9 and either were assessed not to have any impact on future operations, or wouldn't occur on subsequent missions due to different spacecraft configurations.
It's impossible to describe all of these things...and it would bore you to death.
An interesting one on Apollo 9 was the fact that the LM forward hatch wouldn't stay open during the AS-09 EVA.
This was not an issue for Apollo 10, since that hatch would never be opened during the flight profile of AS-10. But, back in the VAB, LM-5, assigned to Apollo 11, was having some re-working done to it's front hatch.
Now, when these various things have to be fixed, how do you do that? Apollo 10 was on the pad before Apollo 9 splashed down.
Well, there's this often un-seen behemoth structure, one which makes the launch tower and the Saturn V itself look small...
That thing is the mobile service structure. It's bigger than the entire Saturn launch pad itself, and slides in to completely cover the Saturn V. It permitted complete access to the entire launch vehicle, and complete servicing of the vehicle and spacecrasft could be accomplished via this massive superstructure.
Here's a side-view of her:
Zowie, huh?!
Here's a view showing how big that thing was and how it slid up into place relative to the Saturn (note the technicians standing on the pad at the base of the Saturn V)..
Kinda makes a believer out of you, huh?
Breathtaking, standing there looking up at this thing...
She stood around 400 feet tall, and you can see how it literally wrapped itself around the Saturn V as it sat on the pad.
Where ever you needed to get to, you could through the MSS; into the LM, the SM, inside the stages...where ever, ther MSS was the place to go...and, they did go frequently.
Right about now, 40 years ago, analysis was being done on the various AS-09 problems, and things were being done all over the Apollo 10 vehicle, which was shoruded by the MSS at the launch pad, and would be for some time to come as prep-work continued.
Here it is coming into the vehicle...you'll note the fellas hanging all over the place...
Takes your breath away, doesn't it?
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