Slashdot Mirror
What If the Apollo Program Had Continued?
proslack writes "The die had been cast years before Apollo 11 had even reached the moon. In the late 1960s, the Vietnam war was straining US finances. A fatal fire on the Apollo launch pad in January 1967 had blotted NASA's copybook. The Soviet moon effort seemed to be going nowhere. In the budget debates during the summer of 1967, Congress refused NASA's request to fund an extended moon programme.
What if things had been different that summer? Suppose Congress had granted NASA's wish, then fast-forward 40-odd years..." A nice little what-if sort of story that makes sorta nostalgic for a non-existent present.
What if Kennedy had set a lesser goal, such as orbiting the moon?
The Russians quite probably could have achieved with with Soyuz-based technology. We "know" this, sorta, because recently someone proposed putting a Soyuz capsule around the moon for a rich billionaire with $100m to spare.
The Soviets did have the Luna programme - including Luna 10, the first artificial satellite of the moon. Interestingly, they focussed on robot exploration of the moon and remote collection of samples - probably closer in principle to the methods that will be used for future exploration of other planets in our solar system than manned flights.
Read up on the Revolt of the Admirals sometime. There's a good reason why we have cruise missiles and not nukes. It's not for want of orbital platforms.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
We still haven't established what happens long-term in low-gravity. We know that zero-g is not someplace you could live forever. Is lunar gravity sufficient? We don't actually know. And it's one thing to follow the science fiction cliche that the martians and moonies couldn't adapt to Earth gravity anymore.... it's another thing if the first moonie baby is horribly disfigured.
We don't even know if, were you to raise ten generations of rats in a 1-g centerfuge and ten generations on Earth if the centerfuge rats would be healthy by comparison.
Helium-3 is also present on Earth. You can buy it by the tank. If just getting access to Helium-3 was enough to make fusion possible, we'd at least have one pilot reactor that was able to produce a decent sized net energy gain.
There was a significant concern inside of NASA that our flawless luck of moon launches would run out. What if we had done a few more missions and 19 left us with dead astronauts on the moon when the LM couldn't lift off? Do you think we'd have continued at that point? Remember, there could have been one more moon landing with the hardware we had but NASA didn't want to launch it.
The problem is, cutting off the Apollo program in favor of the Space Shuttle made fairly good sense at the time and awful sense in retrospect. Even a fool can predict the past.
Gentoo Sucks
Kind silly spending $100B on something that only lasts 6 years.
You must be retarded. It is precisely because of MAD and *intellect* and communication (UN is the forum there) that nuclear war was averted. If all you do is rely on "god" and your animal instinct, then hell, this is exactly what is driving suicide bombers to blow themselves up. Their beliefs in afterlife and lack of consciousness and the entire thing about the-end-justifies-the-means that they are so reckless and dangerous. If USSR was anywhere as fanaticisized as Middle East, there would have been nuclear war in the 50s not to mention 70s.
The Cuban missile crisis averted war precisely because,
1. Kennedy agreed to remove missiles from border of USSR in Turkey - USSR got it a major concession for not deploying nukes in Cuba.
2. A political officer on board of a russian sub denied retaliation for US surface ship dropping depth charges at the blockade.
All this was precisely because of *intellect* and not stupid "animal instinct". Animal instinct is the retards on board of that US ship that started dropping depth charges. If it wasn't for the unnamed political officer to stop the "animal instinct" of captain to retaliate, the world today would most likely not include myself.
What? In 1969 Vietnam had been "won" already. If not for the US Congress deciding to pull the plug the whole fall of Saigon thing wouldn't have happened. But the most important thing is that the money for Vietnam was already spent. The remaining six years until the fall of Saigon was the US pulling out and telling the NVA to come back and be friends with their brothers in the South.
Too bad they didn't get the message amd decided that a brother that disagreed with them about politics was better off dead.
Soviet Russia was not just socialism. Limited socialism has been in place in much of Europe for years. And while I wouldn't trade our unemployment rate for theirs (even now), they are hardly in some kind of a Soviet-style decline.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
By artificial gravity, I assume you mean using rotation to produce centrifugal force? I just don't see that being likely until we have a more efficient way than rockets to get material into space, or possible until we have a way to mine and refine metal from space.
Human physiology limits you to 2 RPM, any higher than this and motion sickness becomes very common. That means that to get a full G of apparent gravity, you need a station with a radius of nearly 225 meters. Obviously, you could probably make do with less than a full G. How much less while still maintaining muscle mass and bone density is an unanswered question so far. If a half G is enough, you're in a much better situation, the radius would only have to be 110 meters. If you don't care about everyone not getting motion sickness you could probably up the RPMs to 4, getting the radius down to 28 meters. Of course, that means that your head will be under 10% less force than your feet, which I imagine might take some getting used to.
So is the earth (it is the 7th most abundant metal). Titanium is expensive because it is expensive to refine. Wikipedia indicates that more titanium dioxide is produced than titanium metal (the dioxide is used as a white pigment) and that current reserves are on the order of about 120 years of current production:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium#Occurrence
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
According to The New York Times .
The SRBs are actually shaped internally to REDUCE thrust during flight to prevent overstressing of the Shuttle hardware.
The Saturn V boosters were detuned as well.
IIRC, the Soviets did provide NK with MiG fighters and other military equipment. They didn't support them to the great extent that China did though.
...but this post requires a response.
First if you think that what we've had in the last 40 years even remotely resembles unchecked capitalism you should try starting your own business (as I have). And no, I don't mean IT consulting. I mean a business that actually makes a product. Government is everywhere. Regulations, taxes, insurance, audits, min wage, overtime, unemployment tax, etc. They interfere at every turn and have driven manufacturing away. What they haven't driven out, they are taking over. The USA could do with a few decades of unchecked capitalism. By unchecked I mean no interference & no bailouts.
You say the markets are not rationale? They are far more rationale than the state. The state that is now propping up a failed automobile industry that the market would have fixed or done away with years ago. Check your premises.
As for health care... You mention people in South America with better health care. Bunk. In 2006 alone, Bush signed a foreign aid bill that sent $20.6B to South America. TANSTAAFL.
You have no right to health care or a job or a living wage or a house. You have no right to the fruits of someone else's (doctors & nurses) labor. You have the right to your life, your liberty and to pursue happiness, not to actually be happy. That's up to you.
I can think of no one who said it better than Ayn Rand. Yes, Ayn Rand. People quote it because it's relevant. Criticize it when you've read it.
From Atlas Shrugged...
"I quit when medicine was placed under state control, some years ago," said Dr. Hendricks. "Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill?
That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun.
I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward.
I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything - except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the "welfare" of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only "to serve".
That a man who is willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards - never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy.
I have often wondered at the smugness with which they assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind - yet what is it they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?
Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors their system will now produce.
Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it - and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't."
Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Book 3, "A is A"