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Panoramic Photos From The Apollo Missions
Ant writes "This link lets you experience the moon just as the Apollo missions' astronauts did -- almost as you were there -- with QuickTime panorama views. Less known is that during all the missions they made image sequences which with todays computer technics can be stitched together into 360-degree interactive panoramas giving you the possibility to view the moon almost as you were there. Many of these panoramas have been published before, but in low resolution and displayed in small sizes. During the last year the original films have been rescanned in large resolution and the Apollo 11 images were released the week before the 35 year anniversary."
The Apollo missions, like most of our early space program, were largely a kludge, and, in some opinions, a huge waste of time and resources.
New technologies and PR aside, the Apollo program accomplished very little except getting some footprints on the moon. We'd focused all our energy on sending people to the moon, once that was accomplished, we were ten years behind in establishing a support base upon which to implement constant space exploration, and lack of motivation kept us slipping past that. We never really recovered, and today we aren't much further along than we were in 1962, except in terms of technology. The shuttle is of limited use, and the space station itself is nearly useless as an orbital base (thanks to its orbit and lack of any crew transfer mechanism except the oversized, over-expensive shuttle). Can't recall where I'd heard it, but there's a comparison to using the shuttle to get to the space station like using a semi to get to work. It's impractical, we need a small commuter car, and maybe an SUV for the mid-sized jobs as well.
That's not to say that nothing good came out of the Apollo program. But, we spent so much money on it that once we got there, the "now what" train of thought kicked in, and other programs that were less exciting (space lab, etc) received less funding.
Instead of rushing to the Moon, if we'd focused first on establishing a permanent orbital presense along with a small suite of multipurpose reusable spacecraft (large cargo units like the Shuttle, along with small crewboats for crew transfers), and *then* gone to the moon, we'd be a lot further along now than we are.
Hopefully, NASA is looking further ahead than the next "big thing". Slow and steady wins the race, and planting feet on Mars will be meaningless if we don't follow it up with a continuious presence, a goal we abandoned following Apollo.
The Van Allen belts are actually mostly located over the equator- or atleast that's where they are strongest. By carefully choosing their trajectory, NASA were able to avoid the worst of the belts. However the astronauts still got about 1% of the dose necessary to get radiation poisoning.
* One movie shows the astronauts blasting off from the moon on their way home and the camera, which was on the moon, tilted up to follow the space craft. Who was left behind so they could tilt the camera up to follow the space craft?
It's an automated camera. Amazing what technology they had in those days! Lucky that, otherwise they would have had to leave a cameraman behind to die :-)
* The engine that was used to slow the Lunar Module down, so it didn't crash into the moon surface, puts out thousands of pounds of thrust. Where is the crater under this engine on the moon's surface? The surface dust wasn't even disturbed.
Look, gravity is only 1/6 of that on the earth. A helicopter flies by throwing its own weight in air downwards every second, which is similar to what the lander does; but the helicopter applies about 6x *more* force on the ground than the Lunar Module does with its landing rocket. Why doesn't the ground blow away when a helicopter lands?
* Supposedly, the temperature on the moon's surface is -200 degrees in the shade and over 200 degrees in the light. This means, since there is no atmosphere, there is nothing to hold the heat onto the surface.
Wrong! The surface itself holds the heat. And don't forget- it's in a vacuum, so it loses heat more slowly... just like a thermosflask.
So, when I am facing the light (sun), the front of my suit would be over 200 degrees and the back of my suit (shade) would be -200 degrees. My front would be toast and my back would be ice, instantly, since there is no atmosphere.
No, the heat of the sun is much the same on the moon since the moon is very nearly the same distance from the sun as the earth is. Actually you get reflection of the sun off the ground around you on the moon too, so it isn't so clearcut. The suits actually had airconditioning system in the backpack to keep the astronauts cool (it boiled water to the vacuum to take their heat away, and that of the sun- again because it's hard to cool down in a vacuum.)
* The surface of the moon is covered with dust. This dust was easily "kicked up", as shown by the astronauts. Why isn't there any dust settled on the space craft after the landing?
Actually that's pretty cool. If you look at the dust kicked up it goes in a tiny parabola away from the boot and then lands. It looks very different from what happens on earth due to the lack of air to hold it up. Any dust kicked up from the space craft would fly in a parabola and land directly away from the spacecraft. There's no easy way for it to come back towards the spacecraft, unless it bounced off a rock or something.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"The real mystery is why it took NASA only 7 years after jfk's speach in 62 to make it to the moon. But they estimate it will take 15 years here in 2005 to go again.
(copies old post)
Here are some good reasons for why it'll take longer this time:
1. They had pretty much all the funding they could possibly want during the space race. This time they don't have that luxury.
2. Much greater safety paranoia now. When the crew of Apollo 1 was killed, NASA fixed the problem and moved on with the program. They didn't paralyze their manned spaceflight program, go into a period of national mourning, and launch congressional investigation committees.
3. Von Braun and the other German rocket geniuses who essentially designed and built the rockets they used are just about all dead. Granted, there's some folks around who trained under them, but there's no one with their sheer amount of experience.
4. NASA is much more diversified now than it used to be. Back then, landing on the moon was their one and only goal, and they were able to focus all their resources towards achieving that goal. Nowadays, it's almost impossible to cancel old programs and refocus on something else, because some constituency is going to have NASA's head on a platter.
5. The last time around, all they cared about was getting on the moon. This time, we want to not only land a brief mission on the moon, but we want to create a permanent, self-sustaining settlement there. We want to be sure that the systems we develop are not just going to be suitable for a one-shot quick landing, but that they'll also be useful for a permanent moon settlement.