Slashdot Mirror
NASA Names Building For Neil Armstrong
An anonymous reader writes A building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where Apollo astronauts once trained, was named in honor of astronaut Neil Armstrong. Armstrong, who died in 2012, was remembered at a ceremony as not only an astronaut, but also as an aerospace engineer, test pilot, and university professor. NASA renamed the Operations and Checkout building, also known as the O&C, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. It has been the last stop for astronauts before their flights since 1965. It was also used to test and process Apollo spacecraft. Currently, it's where the Orion spacecraft is being assembled to send astronauts to an asteroid and later to Mars.
>> to enable human flight to the vicinities of the Moon and Mars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28spacecraft%29)
I hope someone realizes that there's an order of magnitude in there somewhere.
Like a Battleship or Airport?
He's not going to get a building named after him ever...
What a joke this nation has become
Indeed. Students aren't even taught basic critical thinking skills to be able to identify crackpot conspiracy theories. I hope you're joking. But in case you're not, please explain why the Soviet Union (and over 30 other countires) congratulated us after tracking us to the moon and back. Were they participating in a conspiracy to make themselves look bad?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Soviet Union congratulated US for obviating own staged moon landing and exposure of inferior cinematic technology.
Couldn't NASA find a generous corporate sponsor to shell out some $$$ to have their name on the side of a building or rocket ?
Stupid companies pay for namespace on sports facilities why not take advantage of the side of the gantry.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The real name of the building is M7-0355. This is most likely just going to involve a little sign in the lobby.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
What, NASA doesn't sell there building naming rights to the highest bidder?? that might be a few million towards a moon landing or another robot to mars.......or a CEO bonus....
Jack of all trades,master of none
Slow news day?
It wasn't even a new building, they just changed the name of an existing one.
Why doesn't NASA ignore the celebrity bullshit and name buildings after the people they did the real work of getting man into space and onto the moon, the Scientists and Engineers. NASA you want more scientists and engineers, than stop bloody giving them a back seat to the monkey in the cockpit, grrr ;).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Neil is dead, I don't think he wants you to name anything for him. You can, however, name something after him...
Renamed it to what? I'm having a hard time trying to find the new name of the building.
His biography First Man is a great read. Armstrong seemed like a classic "Right Stuff" guy; I'm sure the book paints him in a positive light but after reading it I couldn't think of anyone else I would want to be the first person to set foot on the moon in the name of humanity.
I think a better tribute from NASA would be to get us back to the moon. Maybe they could name the first permanent settlement there after him?
What part of "not only an astronaut, but also as an AEROSPACE ENGINEER, TEST PILOT, and UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR" did you not read in the summary? Nobody worked harder than the early astronauts to get man into space and they were all engineers or scientists. A test pilot is in reality a flying engineer.
The three Orion spacecraft are going to be called: God country and apple pie.
Foxconn named one of their factory buildings "Giant Leap" after some employees decided to skip the elevator.
Table-ized A.I.
Remembered for being a hero, an astronaut, a pioneer, but not, apparently, for the deeply humble and private man he was later in life.
Armstrong would NEVER have wanted a building named for him, never in a million years. He'd be absolutely furious. NASA knows this and this whole thing is a big fat stick in his eye for wanting his privacy. They never forgave him for that. This is their revenge: his name on a big, ostentatious building. The only thing worse than this would be naming something Armstrong Base.
Sig for hire.
Why do you Americans have such difficulty with prepositions?
The building was named AFTER Neil Armstrong.
I did not know Neil was dead :(
Yes... I live under a rock.
More importantly, the size and scale of the conspiracy would have to be massive. Tens of thousands of people worked on the program would have to be fooled. How many hundreds of thousands of people would have to work to keep ten thousand people fooled or not divulging? Neil deGrasse Tyson said it best in that only 3 people knew about Bill Clinton's sex scandal yet it got out. Also it would have cost the US government more money to create a hoax than it would to actually go to the moon. And they would have done such a piss poor job at it anyway.
Also they tend to fixate on a few things that seem to be the smoking gun; however, when looked in detail are not as definitive as they seem. For example photos from NASA show that shadows are not parallel. According to conspiracies, this must have been because more than one light source was present, ergo, it was staged. This however does not take into account that the surface of the moon is not flat. Mythbusters verified this.
Another one is the crosses (+) in the photos appear sometimes behind the subject instead of in front. This can only be because the crosses were added later to photos and not originally taken with the "moon" camera. Anyone with sufficient expertise photography knows that can be caused by overexposure. Overexposure was necessary for some photos in order to get a decent image. And the list goes on.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I can't speak for whether Armstrong would like seeing something named after him or not. However, I can say that the "Armstrong Base" exists, just not by that specific name. NASA officially renamed their Dryden Flight Research Center to the Armstrong Flight Research Center on March 1, 2014. See http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dr... for some info. The test range there will still be named after Dryden though.
NASA already renamed the Dryden Flight Research Facility (NASA's part of Edwards in California) after Armstrong
not sure why this was marked down (unless all of us tired of hearing same complaints). I remember the hoopla about renaming DFRC and politicians on the house floor giving glowing speeches of Armstrong, and then later that day they cut the NASA budget $600 million.
It seems to me Neil would want that NASA facility to remain under Hugh's name. Armstrong flew the X-15 but it was Dryden who was instrumental in creating the X-15 program.
Who Was Hugh Dryden and Why Should We Care? (page 163)
http://history.nasa.gov/sp4112...
I heard verbally from someone they renamed Lewis Research Center after Glenn to discourage politicians from closing down the center.
Rumor has it they want to rename Ames Research Center after Sally Ride. Of course Sally is a fine person and but consider Joe Ames was the first NACA administrator and later he kept the NACA alive when Herbert Hoover tried to eliminate it and transfer its duties to industry. And here's another from a NASA history page (I kept this but lost the url):
"Ames accepted a nomination by Air Minister Hermann Goring to the Deutsche Akademie der Luftfartforschung. Ames then considered it an honor, many Americans did, and was surprised to learn about the massive Nazi investment in aeronautical infrastructure, then six times larger than the NACA. Ames urged the funding for a second laboratory and expansion of the NACA facilities to prepare for war. " It was these facilities and infrastructure that helped allies win WWII, helped US aerospace industries, laid down the foundations for NASA able to make Neil the first man to step the moon.
mfwright@batnet.com
should read
"It has been the last, small, step for astronauts before their flights..."