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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.