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Space Team Reunites For John Glenn's Friendship 7
Hugh Pickens writes "An era begins to pass as only about 25 percent of today's American population were at least 5 years old when John Glenn climbed into the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule on Feb. 20, 1962 and became the first American to orbit the earth. This weekend John Glenn joined the proud, surviving veterans of NASA's Project Mercury to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his historic orbital flight as Glenn and Scott Carpenter, the two surviving members of the original astronaut corps, thanked the retired Mercury workers, now in their 70s and 80s, who gathered with their spouses at the Kennedy Space Center to swap stories, pose for pictures and take a bow. 'There are a lot more bald heads and gray heads in that group than others, but those are the people who did lay the foundation,' said 90-year-old Glenn. Norm Beckel Jr., a retired engineer who also was in the blockhouse that historic morning, said almost all the workers back then were in their 20s and fresh out of college. The managers were in their 30s. 'I don't know if I'd trust a 20-year-old today.' Bob Schepp, 77, was reminded by the old launch equipment of how rudimentary everything was back then. 'I wonder how we ever managed to launch anything in space with that kind of stuff,' said Schepp. 'Everything is so digital now. But we were pioneers, and we made it all work.'"
'I don't know if I'd trust a 20-year-old today.'
Since when was ageism okay?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Then there's the hippie quote about not trusting anybody over 30.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
And the other 'private' space companies.
Seems like it's the 1960's all over again. Small groups of engineers trying to do something cool. Maybe that's what we need to bootstrap things up again. Of course, they're essentially trying to do the same thing as NASA was trying to do in the 1960's minus the unknown factor.
But I bet it's fun to work in an environment where you have a small group of intelligent people.
(Sighs and and tries to focus enough on federal compliance regulations long enough to get ready for tomorrow's administration meeting.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I can only hope we can revigorate ourselves to reach even further in the years ahead of us.
As for the 20 year old quip, the young are not burdened with what the older think is impossible. Conversely, the older have learned that ;->
it is probably not a good idea to juggle bottles of nitro glycerin. Though, sometimes, we will stand back a ways and watch the youngin try.
Sometimes, we're surprised!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Sorry to set the bar high (or to remind that it's not high enough) but am I the only one that sees this as a reminder of what more could had been done during those 50 years?
Orbit the Earth, then walk on the moon, then take cars on the moon with you, then play golf on the moon, then -for some reason- abstain from going anywhere higher than low Earth orbit indefinetely?
Sure, there has been a great deal of progress in automation and exploration, but in terms of human presense in space the situation seems a bit pathetic.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
So do I. It really is astonishing when you consider all NASA was able to accomplish in about a decade at a time a digital calculator was the size of a dictionary (or something like that, I'm not actually old enough to be the get-off-my-lawn group). Check out the documentary The NASA Missions: When We Left Earth, it really gives you an appreciation for this.
:P)
And, frankly, I can't blame Glenn for "[not trusting] a 20-year-old today" and I don't think it's age-discrimination either. Would you trust some gizmo-reliant "adult teenager" of today to put you in into LEO? NASA was using slide-rules, hard science and critical thinking. Today, some "20-year-old" will probably just take a computed message at its word without a second thought.
(it's not ageist for me to say of any of this, I'm in my 20's
Up until 1958, the US military was formally forbidden to put a rocket into space. Not quite the career path for an engineer who was married with children.
Then the soviets put Sputnik onto space in the fall of 57, and the gloves came off. That would have been when NASA went to all of the colleges and hunted down the brightest young minds to do the real work of the space program. There were still a few 'old fogies' in the upper echelons, but the bulk of the crew was green under the collar.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
- a very interesting comment by one of the 77 year old engineers who was at the event. Is this old age making a man more conservative and risk-averse? Would today's engineers in their 20s be able to devise a space program if they had to? would they get a chance to with the baby boomers still holding on to the positions of authority? I'm often amazed at how young pioneers tend to be, but perhaps it's just a statement about cutting edge fields and risk takers, I suppose the silicon valley folks in the 90s were in their 20s.
Would society trust engineers in their 20s with cutting edge high budget work these days?
When I was in the business of making things leave the atmosphere, IMUs were big, heavy boxes with lots of Cannon connectors. Solid-state devices were discrete transistors soldered to boards. The idea that a full three-axis accelerometer/gyro could fit in a 1-mm cube wasn't even dreamed of by science fiction authors. Live video from the bird? - You've been drinking, right? Nevertheless, we flew.
When I look at the technology and experience base that is available to companies like SpaceX, it's clear that the level of development risk in space launch systems is now low enough that commercial entities are likely to succeed. I think this wasn't the case earlier on.
One can argue that NASA was hopelessly inefficient, and there's some truth in that. But when using the retrospectoscope, do try to remember how much was unknown, which had to be learned, and which was learned by noncommercial organizations that could entertain risks no commercial entity would have dared.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/yuri-gagarin-the-man-who-fell-to-earth-2257505.html
Best thing that ever happened to American science education.
To me what's amazing is a little more than SEVEN years after the first American orbited the earth, Americans walked on the moon, with all that entailed. Heck, less than a decade after Glenn's flight they were driving a little car around on the moon! Incredible.
http://xkcd.com/893/
An interesting comment on yahoo article by 7againstThebes, "When he didn't launch the first time...or the second...or the third...etc., he didn't blame politicians, he didn't blame the NASA staff, he didn't blame his fellow astronauts. He's a real pro in every sense of the word. Kids, watch him and learn."
Most are too young to remember, and many old timers have forgot, it was scrub after scrub after scrub after scrub after scrub... till they ***finally*** got that can off the ground. Getting off the ground is hard, really hard, and it ain't cheap.
mfwright@batnet.com
Even 50 years later, I still remember it as if it were yesterday, along with the Apollo 1 fire, landing on the moon etc. It was a really exciting time, in the 60's as we were taking steps to explore outside the earth, then, after we beat the Russians to the moon, everything pretty much stopped. We build that stupid shuttle, instead of continuing to explore the moon. We stopped "exploring", and just were content to spend taxpayer money circling the earth in a reusable dump truck.
Viajar en el espacio es como estar a gusto en una sala de Fukushima durante una semana de vacaciones, sí, respirando aire puro y radioactivo.
Y nos habían estado engañando porque con la calefacción convencional en el espacio, son economicamente mucho mas caro y costoso que con una calefacción nuclear.
Y esto no es un sueño de aventura, esto es la dura realidad de viajarse en el espacio, ! como en el interior de Fukushima que casi nadie quiere irse allí dentro !
JCPM: los que habían confirmado que habían recibido dosis de rayos cósmicos son de tonterías, son dosis de la sala de aire neutrónico del reactor radioactivo.
In May of 1962 a brash young Irish President John F. Kennedy stood before congress and delivered his state of the union:
"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."
We don't have a single politician with the necessary testicular tissue to do the same thing with regards of going to Mars. We didn't have the money back then, but you know sometimes you have to put goals ahead of what you have and figure it out on the way.
"Let it be clear--and this is a judgment which the Members of the Congress must finally make--let it be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a firm commitment to a new course of action, a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs: 531 million dollars in fiscal '62--an estimated seven to nine billion dollars additional over the next five years. If we are to go only half way, or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty, in my judgment it would be better not to go at all."
Remember this, we put Shepherd in space, Glenn in orbit and men on the moon with pencils, paper and slide rules. It's the intestinal fortitude that makes things happen. The choice is do we want to or do we want the status quo?
"This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, materiel and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel."
You know what? President Kennedy was right. And now, we need to make up our minds to put a man on Mars and return him safely to earth by the end of this decade. Kennedy proposed in May of 1962, I watched in awe as Neil Armstrong took "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind", on the moon and forever changed humanity in July of 1969. Just over 7 years. Have our kids and grandkids lost it? Have we?
Look, there has to be a compelling reason for space exploration. In the 1960s, the reason was to beat the Soviets to the moon to avoid falling behind in the space race. Fast-forward 50 years, and there's no space race, nor have we made any amazing discoveries on the moon or Mars that would encourage a government to spend trillions of $€ to get there. You can rest assured that things would be different if we found something of great value that could be mined on the moon, or some alien life. But as it is, we're just blundering around aimlessly in LEO with vague plans to revisit the moon, visit mars or perhaps drill a hole in an asteroid. If it doesn't inspire the public, it most likely won't inspire the cranky old lawmakers who are key to the funding.
Back then the USA had a lot more family farms, or kids whose relatives or grandparents were famers. From what I've heard, growing up on a family farm tends to make people used to hard work, independently solving problems, working with both your hands and your mind, and also often provides a familiarity with dangerous chemicals and even explosives of some sort or other (like to dynamite big rocks out of a field). Hard to compare that to what most kids these days experience growing up where they can't even get near a decent chemistry set...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Help spread the word about the great man who revived America and defeated Soviet Communism:
Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation
Americans Say Reagan Is the Greatest U.S. President
How Great was Ronald Reagan? Our 40th President's Place in History
Why Was Ronald Reagan the Greatest President of the 20th Century?
President Reagan will be remembered in glory long after you are in the ground.
Hate Vs Happy and Its Affect on Your Health
From the article: There is an old saying that goes. "He who can anger you conquers you."
Lots of people seem to be in love with Reagan today. Maybe he was a really great guy. Thing is, I was really only a kid when he was President of the US, and it was still completely obvious to me at the time that he had some kind of dementia. It seems plain now that, for pretty much his entire second term, and probably a good chunk of his first, that Alzheimer's had left him medically unfit to actually be President. It says something very, very disturbing about how the US is governed if many people consider him the "greatest Us President"
Mathematics. In my school district the math requirements
were lowered during the 70's. By the time I graduated
one merely needed ALgebra 1 and Geometry 1 to get
a free pass to graduation. Pretty sad as prior generations, particularly early 60's era and before had MUCH more
math required under their belts prior to thinking of going
to college.
I graduated a small Texas high school in 1980 also only had Algebra and Geometry, with an intro to Trigonometry as my "advanced placement" senior math class. I sailed thru these with straight As and 100's on all tests. I thought I was king daddy at math. Then I started my freshman year at UTA as an EE major. My math and science professors were flabbergasted that the incoming batch of new students that year, with the exception of a few who graduated from private schools and the ultra-rich schools like Highland Park, had not yet already become thoroughly well-versed at Trig and Calc-I level math before they ever graduated high school.