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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.
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>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
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
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.
However, weight was a premium, especially in the earlier missions.
Why didn't they go for midget-astronauts?
bash$
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."