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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."
But you can't prove it!
I hate wasting K on redundant slashisms, but there it is.
sigs, as if you care.
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
Just think, this Apollo 12 in all its glory had less computing power than a Furby.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
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.
From abc.net.au:
NASA explains it a little better, noting that the 74KB is actually 37KW, using 16-bit words:
Hardware
The guidance computer is a general-purpose digital machine with a basic word length, in parallel operations, of 15 bits with an added bit for parity checks. The instruction code includes subroutines for double and triple operations. Memory cycle time is 11.7 microseconds with a single addition time of 23.4 microseconds. The 'core rope', used for the fixed memory, has a capacity of about 36,864 words with an erasable memory (of ferrite core planes) of 2,048 words. The processor is formed from integrated circuits (ICs). The total computer weight is 29.5 kg. The fixed memory contains programmes, routines, constants, star and landmark co-ordinates and other pertinent data. The erasable memory acts as an intermediate store for results of computations, auxiliary programme information, and variable data supplied by the G&N and other systems of the spacecraft.
sigs, as if you care.
This was the space program with NASA in peak form. Perhaps it wasn't their finest moment (maybe either 11 or 13 was), but the breadth and ambition is utterly above NASA today. This was only the second landing, yet NASA aimed for that 31 hour stay on the surface.
They were confident that their communications around the world would keep the uplink with the astronauts as Earth rotated, confident that the first landing wasn't a lucky fluke, and willing to commit to keeping the crew there long enough to do a little real science. If the focus on 11 was largely on the medical situation of the crew, by 12 we were increasingly confident that people could survive on the Moon long enough to do something useful, and the focus began to shift to building a permanent presence there and answering some of the more interesting questions of the Planetologists.
The near disasterous shortage of fuel and over-abundance of rocky ground in the final seconds of Apollo 11's landing could have made NASA rely more on cautious approaches and more intensive micro-management, but instead it led to an increased recognition of the role of the astronauts on site in making the final decisions. That in turn gave us six successes and one gloriously redeemed failure.
Who is John Cabal?
>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
for those who where not around here's some links to the AGC, DSKY and more:
*Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC)
*slash article with source code listing
*Simulation of Apollo Guidance Computer
*DSKY
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
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 love the bit where the writer describes the recommendation by the software engineer to ignore the reported errors as "a gutsy call". There's these guys, in a tiny little spacecraft, about to land on the moon, with most of the world watching, and the prestige of the USA and indeed democracy and capitalism at stake. The computer's screaming error messages. If you call for an abort, the moon effort is a flop (at least temporarily). If you call proceed and the thing craters, you're going to be the guy whose screwup killed two American heroes. "Gutsy"...more like balls of titanium!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
IIRC, there were two unique things to Apollo 12. First, they landed amazingly close to an unmanned Surveyer probe that landed a couple of years before. They did this in part to test precision-guided landing techniques for later missions and to bring back samples of the old probe to see how it weathered on the moon.
They actually found viable bacteria spores on parts of the returned probe that lasted the entire flight from Earth and survived for two or so years on the Moon. They learned they had to improve the sterilization process for later probes to Mars and beyond to reduce the risk of contamination from the smallest Earthlings.
Another notable is that they accidently ruined the only TV camera they had by pointing it too long at a reflection of the sun off of a peice of equipment. It used new compact color technology and was fragile. Thus, there were no live TV pictures.
They perhaps should have brought along a lighter black-and-white one as a backup. However, weight was a premium, especially in the earlier missions. In fact, Apollo 11 (the first landing) almost skipped having a TV camera altogether because of load constraints. But mission planners were talked into carrying one.
Table-ized A.I.