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The Return of Apollo?
hpulley writes "Bell bottoms are back, the Stones are still touring and Time has a piece on how NASA's _new_ space vehicle may actually be the return of a very old friend, a highly modified and modernized version of the Apollo Space Capsule. Manned spacecraft might actually leave low earth orbit again! Initially they'd fly with Delta and Atlas but more powerful boosters could be developed. We could go to the Moon again, and perhaps to Mars but I'm getting ahead of myself. Does that mean the last 30 years of space flight have been for naught? Expensive steps backward?"
Just wait until you hear about their Icarus project.
Regards,
--
*Art
First we bring back the Apple I, now Apollo. Please tell me disco isn't coming back too.
We've been to the moon? I thought Jonathan Frakes proved that it was a 40 billion dollar hoax!
In other news, the website reporting this releases their 50 year old bandwidth. Which is really slow because well, there wasnt the internet then.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
Initially they'd fly with Delta
Bad decision. They should fly with Southwest or Jet Blue.
Avoid Delta. United too, for that matter.
Disco never died - it always smelled that way.
T-shirt in 22nd century: "Disco _still_ sucks." (from an old Omni magazine contest)
Bell bottoms are back, the Stones are still touring and...
Oh, wait. For a minute there I was expecting this apollo.
Great idea. The Rocky franchise bottomed out after Drago broke him in that exhibition. I foresee dozens of Rocky sequels featuring Apollo and other members of the undead...
As long as it is a one-way ticket....two words:
Lance Bass.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Saturn 5, Ariane 4.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but after recently reviewing the film footage from Moonbase Alpha, I've joined the group of people who believe that the whole thing was a hoax.
I'd love it just as much as the next guy if our government really had built a moonbase, and Eagles, and everything else back in 1999. However, if you carefully look at the coverage of the events at the moonbase, there are just too many inconsistencies that can't be explained away: Serious violations of physics; handwaving passing for engineering; predictable news stories that seem contrived; people with stilted behaviours (as if they were bad actors) who wear clothes that have never been in fashion; images that just basically look faked.
I've read the websites that cast doubt on the whole scenario, and I have to say that I agree with what they're saying. Until somebody shows me some real compelling proof, I highly doubt that any of that stuff actually existed.
Well, they used to send an aircraft carrier loaded with about 5000 sailors and various support ships just to fish 3 people and a capsule the size of a Volkswagen out of the drink... that's pretty complicated and expensive.
I say the capsule floats... why not just put an outboard motor on the thing and drive it home? You could do some fishing while you're at it...
On second thought, maybe there's a solution somewhere in the middle.
Your multimillion dollar Boeing 777 aircraft still has windshield wipers.
Yeah, but at least they're high enough off the ground so that those damn squeegee guys can't reach 'em.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
You will agree with me the first time you get on one and find out that the jerk who got off on the previous floor pressed all 677,803 floor buttons on the way out.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Like a space shuttle, only instead of reusable tiles they use ablative poorly-researched Greek mythology.
I'm a big fan of capsules to go into space
What a goofy turn of phrase.
I picture you sitting there with a "Go Capsules!" pennant in one hand and a giant foam hand with #1 written on it on the other. Wearing one of those dual beer-can hats, your shirt off and "Appolo" in written in greasepaint across your beergut.
I'm so fucking bored it isn't even funny.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Oh, wait. For a minute there I was expecting this Richard Hatch. =)
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."