Slashdot Mirror
Apollo 12 at 35
neutron_p writes "Thirty-five years ago this week, the sedentary, fine-grained powder began to rise, billow and race off toward the horizon. Soon after - at 1:54:35 a.m. EST on Nov. 19, 1969 - the lunar module Intrepid landed, bringing two more humans to the surface of another world. Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad and lunar module pilot Alan Bean would be on the Moon for more than 31 hours, with crewmate Dick Gordon orbiting above in the command module Yankee Clipper."
Its amazing that those guys had 256k of memory (I think, maybe that was the space shuttle), and they managed to write the flight control programs without any bugs. Programmers today have trouble with 256 megs of memory
"brxref
I think that the benefits of actual space exploration are extremely limited. But there are many positive externalities. Tang, goretex, materials advancement, programming advancement (fill me in on more, those are off the top of my head). I personally like F1, but see no great societal value in the actual racing. Many benefits have come however from the tech development required to make the cars go fast.
"brxref
I think the fact that something that has only happened a few times in the history of mankind is not considered "news worthy" IS the news.
This is exactly the attitude that ruined the moon program if you ask me.
I think the editor that posted this news story was trying to make this point.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Top Five reasons why the space program should be among our top priorities as a nation:
5. The world population doubles every 40 years. Eventually, we will have to either expand across other planets or enforce population control.
4. Every dollar invested in NASA pays off seven dollars in terms of technological development for the US economy.
3. We must expand from Earth to escape the threat of civilization-ending natural disasters, like a supervolcano, which could lower global temperatures below freezing for years. The chance of dying in a civilization-ending event is 1/455. Not to be grim, but that's 10 times more likely than dying in an commercial aircraft.
2. Scientific Exploration: Learning more about the universe around us will teach us more about our own world, ourselves, and our origins.
1. To provide the sense of progress which yields human happiness. No one likes stagnation. I can think of nothing more repulsive than the idea that in 200 years we could still be Earth-bound.
This is depressing. It used to be we had both _technological_ AND _social_ progress. For the last ~30 years, the social progress has flattened out and we are now going backwards, turning into a paranoid fascist consumer/security state with a bunch of robber-barons at the helm. Their slash-and-burn profiteering has now caused the U.S. to lose it's manufacturing and technological lead, so we are also stalled in technological progress also. Their criminal mismanagement is blamed on outsourcing and globalization, instead of bad trade policy and stupidity. Our country is now dumbed-down and medicated on a steady diet of poor public education, glorification of stupidity, media whores, and mind-numbing propaganda. The recent thievery of the national election is a new low point in our descent. RIP American Democracy, we hardly knew ye.
Visit the best Liberal Blog: DU
>all I have ever cared (heck, even known) to be remotely important was Apollo 11 and Apollo 13.
yap, the first one, and the one which failed. probably the only missions most people can think of, cos they were the more spectacular missions.
but the real missions were the later ones. like 16 & 17 with over 70h time on the lunar surface. they grew much more confident with what they can and cant do on the moon in the later missions.
flight summary of manned apollo missions
apollo lunar surface journals
I really sorry for kids that have had to grow up not knowing the excitement of those days of the Apollo moon missions. I can remember in school, all the students gathering in the gym to watch the TVs. That's why for the survival of NASA, I wish they would set a new goal like a manned mission to Mars.
Only if you have a small, envious mind. I'll be NASA tested for that, too. Some pluses come to mind:
sigs, as if you care.
Space exploration is cool. I support it. Please allow me to be a devil's advocate:
It seems to me that first world countries are having trouble keeping people procreating. The more advanced the society, the more rights the women, the better things the women have to do than sit at home and rear a half dozen to a dozen kids. Countries like Canada only grow because of immigration. Is it Taiwan that is trying to encourage procreation with subsidies?
NASA is, by every account, a grossly large organization with bureaucracy the likes of which no other entity in the world can hope to measure up to. They're too bureaucratic to save the Challenger. Why not invest incredible amounts of money in some targetted industries (A mach 10 aircraft has little real world application today) and in some "emerging" industries with higher financial risks / humanitarian rewards?
Most of the world ending scenarios seem to have other, potentially more beneficial solutions. Sure, leaving the world to go to the moon or someplace else may be a good way to spread the risk. It would be quite some time to set up the infrastructure to support a self sustaining populace that would not suffer from inbreeding. We may get to the point where this is possible, but NASA is not heading down a path to enable this. If there's a scenario that leads to a (nuclear or CO2) winter, why aren't we making subterrainian cities 10+ feet underground? I would expect one could even justify this by pointing out that such a city would be a prototype for an offworld city. Not that it should necessarily be a self contained monstrosity / joke, but something that starts to set up the infrastructure and maybe includes some geothermal carnot generators (what better way to take advantage of the perpetual winter outside than to make self-sustaining power by harnessing the power of the earth?
The inherant scientific value is irrefutable, but there is little real world application to this.
The dark ages were brought about because innovation stagnated. Everyone ran out of ideas and got so concerned with today that they stopped worrying about tomorrow. These days, we're perhaps on the brink of a newly perceived stagnation. We're masters of the air (airplanes), sea (gigantic boats and submarines) and land (earth destroying cranes, cars, trucks, trains, etc.). Microelectronics are banging against the Laws of Physics, with only nanotechnology seemingly a solution. In our daily lives, few people can think of a way to continue to innovate that makes a difference. Heck, most people don't want to upgrade their life centers (TVs) because the upgrades (HDTV) are too expensive despite how much better they are. Life changing innovation, the kinds of which impact "human happiness" are those leaps and bounds we've been hitting in the past century or two. You can't predict them, an
I'm frustrated with the direction our space program has taken over the past couple decades. I'm grateful to see things like the X Prize happening, but I wish that as a nation we would make space exploration a high priority. I mean perhaps all that's there is a big bunch of rocks, but there are so many benefits that come from the technology built to make space exploration posible.
Whatever happened to exploration for explorations sake? I think that a good measure of the health of a society is it's curiosity about what's around the next corner, and it's willingness to find out. This truly shows the measure of the people.
I know that at this point all of the social bleeding hearts usually chime in "but what about all the problems right here one Earth???". Unfortunately these people are focusing on the problems, not the solution. For these problems to be fixed society has to advance as a whole, not be drug down by social agendas. When a society advances, solutions to the previously mentioned problems will come. It's simply par for the course.
Exploration is fundamental to this advancement. There's an infinite universe of stuff out there that's waiting to be discovered, and we're content to just let it be? How is that healthy? How do we know that there isn't anything there until we look? Just because the few measly areas of the universe we've looked at "don't have anything" doesn't mean there's nothing out there. This would be like flipping open a random book, reading 10 words, and determining that it has no plot.
I for one support space exploration. If the human race is going to grow we need to renew the spirit of exploration. After all, where would we be if nobody questioned the fact that the world is flat and the sun revolves around it?
Seriously though, it's the kind of utterly stupid people that whine and carry on about the moon hoax crap that are more responsible than anyone for assisting the cultural decline of support for NASA and space exploration.
This happened about a year before I was born. I remember growing up in the 70s, and reading so many books and Popular Science articles about all the fantastic bases that would be on the moon and beyond within my lifetime.
Now, I think I'll be lucky if there's even a a single small moon outpost before I'm dead in another 30-40 years.
It makes me sad to think of all the space exploration that could have been bought and paid for with just the billions that we've spent on the Iraq war. Not to mention the billions (trillions?) that was spent on the arms race with the old USSR. What a tragic waste.
Heh, yes, well the supposed fight against the spread of communism was the driving factor for most of the explosion of tech. As were the world wars. We fought two 'wars' to stop communism. We fought two wars to fight facism. Hopefully this -ism of terror doesn't make us break that pattern.
;)
We still have innovation. Except that after the wall fell, our newfound enemies were/are far smaller than the USSR. Our innovations were built on the assumption we were one team against another, similarly sized team. It's no longer Team Reds vs. Team USA; it's the Uncle Sam vs. a ton of angry killer bees.
Because we needed things like spy satellites, big navies and fast fighters (all money) to beat team red, we developed our techs like crazy. We spent like hell, we developed like hell. Now, we don't need to so much. We need stealth. We need nimbleness. And we need drugs to soothe our shell shocked loved ones.
Now, what do we have: invisible robot-controlled planes, GPS guided munitions, golf clubs that seemingly defy the first law, and Rogaine.
The current -ism doesn't really make us build wholly new techs. Until we have Minority Report technology (read minds/motives), I don't think terror will be stopped. There's always going to be small countries/groups that have far less people than the US that hate us (or one of the countries we support); they have little choice other than to channel and foment their anger into terror. And because America is getting that feeling that we're not liked everywhere (yeah, it's mainly toward the prez, but it just seems that way,) we'll circle our wagons, and this circle of hate will continue.
In the meantime, I think that we are in a good time for progress of conveinience tech. (as for social progress, well, the US just becoming lazy and a little insular, that's all). Better mpg (SUVs notwithstatnding), faster internet, stronger, um, Viagra products. (Sort of reminds me of that BASF commercial) Yes, we aren't building wonderful Saturn Vs nowadays (The only way we'd ever go to the moon now would be if we heard BL had himself a terror training base buried underneath the Sea of Tranquility,) but I would rather live in an age of relative peace with my Roomba versus flying to the moon with the constant threat of Mutually Assured Destruction.
Just wait till India's or China's (more likely China at this point) GDP matches or surpasses the US. Someone will get pissed off at someone again and then the tech push will happen again. I wonder if the US would win then.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
However, weight was a premium, especially in the earlier missions.
Why didn't they go for midget-astronauts?
bash$
[weight was a premium] Why didn't they go for midget-astronauts?
At first I chuckled at that response, but then started thinking about it more (a geeky trait that ruins good lunches). I suspect for two reasons:
1. Astronauts were chosen from the pool of test pilots, and there probably were not a lot of midget test pilots because they are testing planes designed for average-sized people.
2. Prestige. Not to bash midgets, but frankly, midgets don't make very inspiring, bold magazine covers, at least not in the traditional Hollywood sense. The Soviets wouldn't stop making midget jokes if we did that.
Table-ized A.I.
If you're technologically advanced enough to be reading this, it is also likely that you are not having enough children.
(insert jokes here)
"Today about half the world lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility. ... East Asia ... Russia ... Europe ... Iran, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey, and Lebanon ... Canada, Australia, and New Zealand ... United States is just barely below replacement with about 2.0 births per woman. All four of these nations still have growing populations due to high rates of immigration."
...and for the first, and possibly last, time in human history, the marketing types actually made more sense than the engineers. :-)
>happen to be a NASA flight controller - and when you are in Mission Control, you are "it". Sometimes, you must make a decision that is time critical,
I did some satellite control for space telescopes, and even when it's an unmanned mission, it's tough. We had ops stationed 24/7, with mostly routine work, but they earned their pay whenever trouble hit.
Weird thing is, with it being unmanned, the usual procedure for trouble is 'go into safehold, then we'll diagnose on the ground'. But then you have to decide when you have enough information to make a decision.
You can go with the basic readings, and catch it on the next orbit pass and try a solution. Time lost= 90 minutes.
Or you can wait until the principal investigator gets into the office (maybe 4 hours later), let her do diagnostics, maybe check with the instrument team in California... you'll get a more robust solution, but it'll take 1-2 days.
And if it's really weird, you'll have to run sims before deciding on a solution.
So it's the opposite of joysticking-- it's figuring out when you have enough information to make a good call. No lives to worry about, just dollars. I think that makes it easier than manned ops, by far.
Mind you, since telescope time amortizes out to maybe $250/minute, a skilled person able to do in half a day what a sclub would do in 2 days, can justify their salary in one incident.
You hear about WalMart working to improve efficiencies by, like, 0.01% and reaping billions. Well, at NASA, we do stuff to improve things by 1% here and there to save tens of thousands.
A.