Slashdot Mirror
Neil Armstrong Gives Rare Interview
pcritter writes "In a rare coup for accountants' association CPA Australia, CEO Alex Malley interviews Neil Armstrong, whose dad worked as an Auditor, bringing him back four decades to the pinnacle of the space race. Neil reveals, 'I thought we had a 90 per cent chance of getting back safely to Earth on that flight but only a 50-50 chance of making a landing on that first attempt.' The four-part video series is now posted on CPA Australia's website."
I still don't understand this. We have the technology to do it, we have the people wanting to do it, and we have another group of people wanting to live and work there. Why don't we build a base on moon?
There would be no insects (I really hate those, but at least geckos take a good care of them!), and it would be a good base for our future discovery of new planets and solar systems. There ARE more there, earth is nothing special.
Is the United States incapable to do this? Does it take Russians, Chinese or Japanese to get there? What the hell happened to America?
A certain group considers it a waste of money for the government. Ignoring the fact the NASA at it's peak allows billion in revenue to go back to the government. But some people don't want to understand anything about long term payoff, spin-off, and the fact that they create cutting edge industries.
This is what happens when non scientific and ignorant people get equal say how the government works.
And yes, I DO believe people without a fundamental understanding of science shouldn't be allowed to participate in the government.
Same with people who can't do intermediate algebra.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What the hell happened to America?
Too busy spending money on killing people and figuring out more efficient ways of killing people.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Or maybe because even most scientists (actual scientists, not armchair commentators on slashdot) can't find an actual utilitarian reason to build a moon base other than juvenile delight at living out their sci-fi fantasies?
Isn't that reason enough? What happened to ambition, curiosity, and doing things "because it's there?"
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I think this line of reasoning is very short-sighted. History is filled with examples of discoveries made by accident while trying to push the boundaries of a field. How do you know that a more permanent presence on the moon wouldn't lead to the next major breakthrough?
To think that we can learn everything that we need to by doing all of our experiments at the bottom of a gravity well in our own tiny little corner of the solar system is absurd.
Blog
Well, finite resources don't allow for infinite growth. See global warming / climate change
Isn't that reason enough? What happened to ambition, curiosity, and doing things "because it's there?"
It got buried under quarterly budget reports and two generations of short sighted politicians whose only motivation is to get themselves reelected and to push a hyperpartisan agenda.
Oh, and Democrats, who are generally worthless at any form of argument or debate.
Indeed. If Osama bin Laden hid on the Moon you would be there by now... for about the same money and with fewer people killed in the process.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
it died with the educational system. now the new mantra is -- whats the ROI ? and whats in it for me ?
What's to understand?
Read the responses by the overwhelming majority of posters here for almost any space-related article, for starters. They already have the answers, so why bother asking questions?
Consider, perhaps, the huge aversion to risk, personally and societally, and the lawyerly legions ready to pounce on any 20-20 hindsight "mistake." Toss in the long-term trend of disparagement of learning, of exploration and discovery; the notion that it's somehow cool to be jaded by everything but the getting of more money and having fun, often as not at the expense of others, while thoroughly ignoring larger issues or even personal growth, and the rigid resistance to any kind of personal involvement beyond one's comfort bubble of prejudice and appetite.
I found it telling that Cdr. Armstrong estimated a 1-in-10 chance he wouldn't return. He went. He went, not because he was ordered to go, but because of whatever blend of desire, ambition, duty, honor, competitiveness, what have you. He damned sure didn't go for fame and riches.
All the astronauts at the time were pilots and aviators. All had degrees, many had advanced degrees, mostly in engineering. Many had been in combat. Most had done flight test. Every one believed, _knew_, that he was the best.
So, find that blend, those skills, that education, that dedication. Put behind them an infrastructure built to get things done and a public will to see it happen. I suggest you look elsewhere than the United States.
It's an urban legend.
HAND.
We've spent well over $100 billion on a foray somewhat out of the bottom of a gravity well. So far it has produced almost nothing, its called ISS.
Chances are a base on the moon would be only slightly more productive than ISS.
The moon might be worthwhile for mining water or Helium isotopes though this has not yet been well established. The far side might be a good place for some observatories. It might be a place to train for a base on Mars. Then the use cases starts trailing off pretty quickly
Its pretty simple, you need to build a strong, well thought out, case that there is something on the Moon worth doing that would actually justify the significant expense of returning and building a base. This is the step that was completely missed in the Apollo program which is why everyone stopped caring around Apollo 12 and the program ended at Apollo 17. An emotional case about the coolness factor, and pointless space races with other countries, doesn't really cut it.
The spinoffs from Apollo did end up making it worthwhile but its not really clear you would get anything close to the same spinoffs going back. Apollo had to actually invent a lot of things to pull it off. If you go back to the moon you would mostly be revisiting technologies that have already been developed so the spinoffs would almost certainly be much less.
Mars would be a much harder destination but it would be substantially more worthwhile since it is an almost colonizable planet. A case can be made for the that though it wouldn't be easy. It might also produce some new spinoffs since it would be a much harder journey and much more challenging to do.
@de_machina
The spinoffs from Apollo did end up making it worthwhile but its not really clear you would get anything close to the same spinoffs going back. Apollo had to actually invent a lot of things to pull it off. If you go back to the moon you would mostly be revisiting technologies that have already been developed so the spinoffs would almost certainly be much less.
Yeah, but you wouldn't just be "going back". Building a long-term habitat on the moon is likely to bring about just as many - if not more - useful spinoffs. In fact, since the challenges that need to be met are largely centred around making a limited-resource environment friendly and liveable, I'd think their application would be even more direct, since we're all into the whole sustainable living/climate change/peak oil thing these days.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
" All countries should be working together on this."
Excepting that multinational consortiums tend to turn in to bureaucratic quagmires. Haggling over who does what, who pays for what, whose astornauts get what rides. Some countries fall short on their commitments, others have to pick up the slack, schedules slip, budget soars. Just look at the history of the ISS.
If you want to do things fast, cheap and well a Kelly Johnson Skunkworks model is probably a much better choice than a bureaucratic quagmire. Find very talented engineers and program managers, give them a very precise goal and sufficient funds to do it, and keep the politicians as far away from it as possible.
Ones of NASA's now fatal flaws is politicians change the goal and the plan about every four years right before anything is actually done. They also dictate where and how things are done, not for engineering reasons but to insure they get pork in their states and districts. For example, every recent NASA proposed launcher has Shuttle SRB's in it just to insure Orrin Hatch wont try to kill it. That's why Ares I turned in to the monstrosity it was, and why Allient and Astrium have resuscitated the design that will not die as their proposed Liberty launcher.
@de_machina
Or farsighted politicians who don't want to have a multi hundred billion dollar base on the moon sucking up cash for no reason 10 years from now in circumstances they can't predict.
When you have money to burn a lot of things look like ideas you can fling money at, including tax cuts for people who don't need tax cuts, bridges to nowhere etc. The problem is that when the economy takes a negative dip (as it always does) you need to cut things which aren't necessary so you can focus resources on something that really needs it.
Any sort of adventure like a moon base needs to be as part of an investment into something. Maybe that's as a jumping off point to Mars, maybe that's for mining asteroids, or maybe it's just because we desperately need living space and it looks like it might be viable. But right now, it's none of those things.
National prestige is worth something, as is general investment in scientific curiosity. So you pay a bunch of scientists to figure out what is a good use of scientific money, and if they tell you 'not a moon base' then you should probably follow that. There are lots of other problems to be solved that look far more likely to be successful at this point.
juvenile delight at living out their sci-fi fantasies
What's wrong with that? What do YOU live for? We have a lot of other things needing, but fulfilling my childhood fantasies is the long-term end goal, even if it doesn't happen in my lifetime.
They didn't democratize education in Europe with any of that 'no child left behind' and 'let's teach them to embrace their diversity and acknowledge their uniqueness' bullshit. In Europe, they actually (gasp) try to make the kids read, write, do basic math up to elementary mathmatical analysis, speak at least 2 languages, learn their own and world histories, and more. Google up the stats on how the schools of the various countries are rated. Do it. I dare ya.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Watching and listening to the lunar landing sends shivers down my spine. For all our cool tech these days, nothing compares to that moment, and I can't help but wonder if our generation will have such a defining moment. Right now the world seems too obsessed with "safe" and "profit", and appears to have lost the vision and drive to push our boundaries.
I wish we would have some leaders who would follow in the footsteps of "we do these things not because they're easy, but because they're hard."
You need to work on your tail-recursion.
I'll get on that as soon as I finish working on my tail-recursion.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Do have any idea of the logistical and industrial "tail" that's necessary to sustain a modern army in the field? And bear in mind we're talking about a situation where the society behind that has collapsed.
To quote from Zulu Dawn: "Bullets run out, them bloody spears don't!".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
1) No insects -> no pollination -> no fruit or vegetables - unless you want to go around with a paint brush, busy like a bee pollinating your rock garden.
2) Also, but probably not as relevant, no insects -> no insectivores. No chicken for you, buddy. Might as well become a vegetarian. See 1 for your daily schedule.
3) And why do you think there won't be any insects? It only takes a few stowaways for all your base to belong to them...
--frank[at]unternet.org
Also fine, don't force me to spend my money on failed military adventures into the Mountains of Afghanistan. The Russians weren't inept or weak, and after nine years trying, they just recently proved that there's nothing to gain from a military occupation there, do we really need to repeat their mistake, but more expensively?
If you really want to impress the world with your military might, a precision guided asteroid strike on a nuclear weapons production bunker would probably do the trick. Think long and hard enough and you might even come up with a "peaceful, scientific" pretext for the practice/demonstration (smaller) asteroid diversions.