Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NASA Learns Anew From the Apollo Program

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the oldies-but-goldies dept.

solitas writes "NASA isn't just "going back to the drawing boards" to get back to the Moon, they're also going through the museums and archives so that the new engineers can rediscover/learn how it was done the first time." From the article: "Some old Apollo engineers are even being brought back on a contract basis to work with the young folks, some of whom were not even born when the Saturn V was flying lunar missions. The new manned exploration project, called Constellation, is deliberately drawing upon lessons from the past as the space agency works to meet a congressional deadline of flying the Ares rocket ... In fact, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has described the new program as 'Apollo on steroids.'"

9 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Steroids, Hell by overshoot · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the description, it's more like "Apollo on Viagra."

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  2. they should patent that idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    "learning from past experience" - that has a nice ring to it.

  3. Back in my day... by Kesch · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...we had to get to the moon in foot deep snow, and it was all uphill, both directions!

    --
    If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
  4. Re:Joke... by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 2, Funny

    Actually, my favorite was the guy I saw in Florida who had a Challenger license plate with the inscription "KABOOM."

  5. Why go to the Moon? by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 3, Funny
    Why should we go to the Moon with a bunch of expensive little space ships that can only bring back a few pounds of material for study?

    Why don't we just put some big rockets on the dark side and push the whole thing down here were we can get at it easily?

    We could land it where it came from in the first place - the location of Atlantis.

    Anyhow, dropping the Moon onto the Earth should would shut up a lot of whiners.

    --
    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
  6. Reaching for his tin foil hat... by kiwipom · · Score: 2, Funny
    With the advances in CGI there's no need to dust off those old studios, the moon landings can be faked entirely in a computer.

    Sorry, it had to be said ;-)

    --
    Dum spiro spero
  7. Lesson #1 by tverbeek · · Score: 4, Funny

    Bring duct tape. Plenty of duct tape.

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  8. I thought the originals *were* on steroids by r_jensen11 · · Score: 2, Funny

    With as many deaths from accidents/errors/mishaps/fuckups on both sides (US and USSR,) I thought that the original Apollo missions *were* on steroids

    My bad, I guess they were on speed.

  9. Re:To the Moon, Alice! by maynard · · Score: 2, Funny
    First, because calculators and computers will take Garbage In and give Garbage Out, and engineers who don't have an intuitive understanding of the approximate answers they should get are much less likely to catch simple software errors and user mistakes.


    That's why runtime garbage collection is so important. I mean, do we honestly expect these young'uns to call free() for every malloc()? It's all too damn complex. And we've got astronauts' lives to worry about! I say we just forget these ancient languages and slide rules and have these NASA rocket scientists code everything up in LOGO. It's untyped, has automatic garbage collection, and the little turtle can teach them engineers Lunar Lander to learn the tricks of the rocket science trade!

    Damn, I'm good!