NASA Learns Anew From the Apollo Program

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.'"

Comments

To the Moon, Alice!

[ackthpt]

"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."

What they can find is what was done, but only with the old Apollo engineers can they get some insight into the minds that worked out novel solutions where no obvious ones existed.

I've been hearing a few times over the past weeks how school children can't esitmate. Every mathematical problem has a definite answer presented by a calculator. Ask me what's 250 * 7 and I don't sit down and do math, I figure the first four 250's are 1,000 and the rest are 750. Ask me what's the square root of 27 and I'll say 5 and a bit, because the number squared closest I know is 5. Some kids today couldn't do that. Can today's engineers think on their feet?

In fact, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has described the new program as 'Apollo on steroids.'"

Uh. Don't mention steroids to Congress. They've already got the bee for baseball.

Re:Boy I hope so....

[StressGuy]

First off, obtaining a consistent result via two independant methods is an excellent way to cross-check your work.

Secondly, testing is a good way, but the only way. At some point, you have to make you best accessment without the benefit of testing.

Finally, you have no idea what specific analysis I was doing so have no basis to say it was too complex to do by hand.

I suggest you research the origin of the term "back of the envelope calculation", you will learn the story of one "Sir Geoffrey Taylor". Then come back and tell me again what is too complex to do by hand.

You are a perfect example of the problem I was trying to present. No ingenuity, just reliance on machines....pity you don't seem to understand how dangerous that can be.

Re:Space Cowboys, Feasible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apollo went to the moon. If I wanted to learn how to go to the moon, I'd look at Apollo, even if I thought I had something better or perfect.

The biggest thing about this is that some things that made Apollo successful aren't common knowledge, or worse, they aren't written down anywhere. Some of the guys that did Apollo are dead, and there's a chance they carried unique knowledge to the grave with them. New engineers and scientists really should be taking this opportunity to refresh that knowledge and store it, now that we have computer technology to store it with.

We don't need to wake up 50 years from now and wonder why a support bar on the lunar lander that should've been perfectly straight has a slight bend to it, especially if the design documents and blueprints all specify a straight bar.

Read some of the stories about the nuclear doorstop, especially one quote from here:

The United States has not built a nuclear warhead since 1991. The government spends about $5 billion a year maintaining the weapons, and engineers have patched problems by opening up warheads that were never meant to be opened. The accumulation of tiny engineering changes meant the bombs moved incrementally away from their original designs, with unknown effects.

Anytime humanity loses knowledge, it's a bad thing.