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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.'"
From the description, it's more like "Apollo on Viagra."
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"learning from past experience" - that has a nice ring to it.
What?!? And break with tradition?
Honestly, when I was a lot younger I thought only new stuff was good, decent quality, reliable, etc. Eventually I learned, after wasting a lot of money, some new stuff is utter crap and some things build in the distant past were done with real craftsmanship and quality.
On another note, there was this great show on Discovery or History Channel or sommat, some years back. Engineers had struggled to figure out how three large stone slabs and been lowered into place in a crypt. No trace of ropes left pinched by the massive slabs, no pole holes, no marks of any kind. How did the bronze age engineers do it, that engineers from the 20th century were left so puzzled by?
Eventually a team of japanese engineering students realised the crypt had been filled with sand and the slabs place upon the top and gently lowered into place as the sand was removed from below.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A few months ago, one of the old Apollo monitoring stations went on sale and we went to look at this unique property. A building in the middle of nowhere up on a mountain, with a six-story-high satellite dish. It was amazing and awe-inspiring to crawl through this rusted dinosaur skeleton of a bygone era. There wasn't much left of the place when I visited, but I felt proud just to be standing on the hallowed ground where great minds plotted of men flying through space and landing on the moon. Now on this site, sits a big obnoxious cell tower. It's kind of sad that kids today don't look up at the stars.
I cannot imagine America having the resources to land on the moon successfully now. Our society was different back then. Science was something to revere. Now we are more concerned with American Idol.