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Looking Back At Apollo 17, and Why We Stopped Going To the Moon (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: The 43rd anniversary of the mission of Apollo 17, the last time men walked on the moon, has elicited a strange kind of nostalgia, and no little melancholia in some parts of the media. These qualities are captured in a story in IO9 that purports to tell us why no one has been back to the moon in over four decades and why we might soon return at last. Deadline Hollywood informs us that "The Last Man on the Moon," a documentary on Apollo moonwalker Gene Cernan, is set for a release to both theaters and video on demand in February, having been shown at film festivals for the past year or so,
Ther worst thing about the moon is all the damned Nazis.
Why spend money on peace when war pays off now.
having been shown at film festivals for the past year or so,
Do you intend to complete the summary later ?
Why We Stopped Going To the Moon
NASA and White House shifting priorities. More demand for a space station (Skylab).
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
You are all cows, living on the back side of the moooooon. You are a secret organisation, preventing pesky humans with their pesky rockets to come to Mooooooon and slaughter all COWS!!! Cows say moooo. Moooo! Moooo! Moooooo say the Cows. YOU UNDISCOVERED COWS!!!
I'm in my 50's and remember the moon shots. They were awe inspiring at first but they became more routine (for the public) over time. I believe NASA and the public were ready for the next big thing. The shuttles were exciting at first too and it seemed we were on a track that could lead to ordinary people getting into space. Of course the shuttle program ended and manned space flight hasn't really broken any new ground for awhile.
43 years ago, we quit going to the moon and it didn't seem like a bad decision given the expense and that we'd already been there several times. But I don't think anyone believed that it would be 50 years or more before a person would set foot on another planetary body.
Too the moon, Alice! Too the moon!
I was a teen then, and recall all the stories, the promises in the popular press about how we'd be sending men to Mars by the 1980's and have a permanent base there by 2000. It seemed like a time of unbounded, and in hindsight naive optimism.
Since I was not very old at the time I was not able to rationally evaluate those claims on my own, so I bought into them. It was the popular consensus, and I had no basis to reject it.
Now, as someone much older, I believe there is a place for manned space exploration, and we should do both things, but that our science return per dollar is far larger from unmanned missions around the solar system. We should be spending 5X NASA's current budget on that. It would still be a drop in the bucket, easily paid for by stopping the War on Drugs say, but in return we would dream, we would explore, and we would learn.
I want to see a pluto probe every other year. A dozen rovers on Mars. Another half dozen on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. We have the ability. We have the technology. We have the budget. We waste more money than that would cost.
We could. But we don't.
I thought it was because the aliens told us to keep off their lawn.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Vietnam War.
I'm in my 50's and remember the moon shots. They were awe inspiring at first but they became more routine (for the public) over time.
I'm also in my 50s, and remember those Moon shots vividly. They were awe-inspiring from first to last. They NEVER became routine. I even got up at weird hours to watch them (in a different time zone).
I believe NASA and the public were ready for the next big thing.
The next big thing, in addition to continuing the Moon shots. Unfortunately, the Vietnam war and its aftermath bled the USA until there was nothing left.
"They were awe-inspiring from first to last. They NEVER became routine. "
Because you were 8. At 8, the fire truck going by never gets boring either.
They were awe inspiring at first but they became more routine (for the public) over time
I think that's understating it. They were becoming routine for the public by the second mission. The third wasn't only because of the near disaster. But after that, the general public stopped paying any attention.
Unfortunately, the Vietnam war and its aftermath bled the USA until there was nothing left.
The Vietnam War didn't bleed the USA. It drove the wrong group into power: The feel-good, anti-science hippies got their representatives to cut back on everything that didn't produce immediate self-satisfaction. That meant no nuclear power, no space program, little basic science. Only when scientists managed to convince the military that something could be a good weapon did anything get done: ARPANET, GPS, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Did you see the Apollo 13 film (1995)? Part of the setup was that the moon missions were already old hat to Americans, who had mostly stopped paying attention after Apollo 11 had achieved the big goal.
I'm confident that the screenwriters had pretty good access to institutional memory at NASA re events that occurred 25 years earlier, there would've been a lot of old hands still around.
It's also the only planet with a basement for you to dwell in. And the planet where she lives. With her husband. And their three kids. Whom she will never, ever leave. Especially not for you.
The spinoffs are a myth.[Federation of Ameican Scientists]
Good thing there's 3.5 billion women on this planet. Who all ignore you.
Kennedy sent us to the moon for prestige. "Look at America, aren't we wonderful!"
Where's the incentive now. It's a huge expense for little reward. Any mistakes cost billions, lives and ... prestige. Compare the costs and benefits and there is no logical reason to go. Some country more desperate for prestige will go next.
...omphaloskepsis often...
It is depressing to me just how few people admit haw mind bendingly awful it is that we have not been back for what used to be a lifetime.
As to why, I can think of several reasons that nobody from earth has been back in this time...
1. Lack of political leadership globally.
2. There are easier ways to fill pork barrels.
3. The press in the developed world is in the hands of an ever smaller bunch of sociopaths who take pride in being unscientific.
4. The world is too comfortable for the 1%
5. There is a myth that if we don't spend it on progress, the money will be used to feed/house the poor and hungry.
6. Fear by the powerful that once people are off earth, they will become "global citizens", not just good Americans, Russians, Brits or whatever.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
It's simple to prove they are a myth. The Russians beat America into space. They had Sputnik, the first man in space, the first woman in space, etc...
Where are their spinoffs and benefits?
Now the Space Nutters will.....
I presume by that description, you are referring to people who can do better mathematics than 10 year olds, know some history and perhaps basic sociology?
No. They will mostly ignore you. I just felt like a bit of troll feeding before I went to bed.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Did you actually go to bed with a smug feeling of self-satisfaction? Because your argument, as near as I can tell, doesn't even exist.
Being good at math somehow magically tells me that I have a home away from home somewhere in space?
Being good at math tells me that despite the overwhelming crippling poverty I see all around me alongside this failing ecosystem, that a bit more money on sending more rich successful people into space will be just the ticket to turn humanity toward the positive?
LOL get a clue, man.
Ehm... the Moon has gravity on it's own, you know. Even though it's about 1/6th of Earth's surface gravity. And the Moon's total mass makes for an escape velocity of 2.38 kilometer per second.
So how exactly you suppose that [large enough chunk to do global damage to Earth] would be separated from the Moon, and brought above that escape velocity? Bring a Tsar Bomba there, bury deep under the surface and detonate? Fire a 50m+ diameter rock out of a city-sized gun? All under the radar of other space-faring nations?
And the Moon's total mass makes for an escape velocity of 2.38 kilometer per second.
"That's about 5200 mph to you and me, Russ."
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
It's a space station...
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
They don't need to because it was all fake, fake landings, fake Moon, and the Earth is flat. People don't want to pay for all this fakery, explained to be true.
By the way: rockets don't work in space.
Or :
7. Putting humans on the moon is pointless. Robots, maybe, as the soviet did : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1
Here's some math for you:
www.distancetomars.com
PS: Math provides no thrust, doesn't move mass, you can't eat it, you can't breathe it.
People who say they never became somewhat routine may be looking back through time-tinted lenses. They never became quite as routine as the space shuttle though. During the 80s-90s, they shot off so frequently that often they'd get just a 5 second blurb on the nightly news, or not even that if something more important was going on.
There are obviously benefits to manned spaceflight with regard to public awareness. Whether those benefits outweight the per diem science cost might be up for debate. Publicity equals funding. As we've seen with the Mars rovers and New Horizons, it doesn't always take an astronaut to do the trick.
I don't need 3.5 billions of them. As for ignoring... Do not project your inadequacy and lack of social skills upon others. You're only showing how angry and desperate you are. Are you about to pull off an Elliot Rodger?
4. The world is too comfortable for the 1%
Compared to the Moon, the Earth is too comfortable for the 100%. Oxygen, water.. we got it!
(A comment I made over at io9 as well.)
As someone who lived through the ‘false dawn of space travel’ (to use Heinlein’s phrase), who grew up intensely following the space program, and who actually worked at NASA/JSC on the Space Shuttle flight simulators back in 1979-80, I can give you my observation: the American people got bored with space. Seriously. No one (outside of a small group of space enthusiasts, such as myself) was clamoring for yet more Apollo missions. TV ratings of flight and moonwalk coverage sank to the basement. It was all just more men in space suits skipping around in a black-and-white environment.
With no public demand or support, neither Congress nor the White House had much stomach for pushing things forward, not when the funds had other uses. The NASA manned flight division evolved into a jobs program, which is why NASA fought against privatization of space flight for so long. (The NASA unmanned space exploration division continued to work miracles, even as it does to this day.)
Of course, the real root problem was that the Apollo approach was fundamentally flawed in the first place; as some wag put it decades ago, it was like building a cruise liner for a single crossing of the Atlantic and sinking everything but one lifeboat at the end of the trip. Prior to Kennedy’s challenge, the US was working on an incremental approach: SSTO (single stage to orbit), gliding re-entry, and a space station. We basically lost half a century due to the Apollo approach (and the horribly expensive, horribly fragile kludge that was the Space Shuttle). Frankly, NASA’s current Orion effort is a repeat of just about all the mistakes we made with Apollo and threatens to soak up NASA’s budget for years to come, even as goal dates keep getting pushed back more and more.
The night that Apollo 11 landed, I was part of a group of friends (we were all high school students) who stayed up all night to watch the coverage. When I heard the words, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”, I felt the future had begun. I was sure I would live long enough to visit LEO myself and to see humans colonize the moon and land on Mars. If you had described to me back in 1969 what the state of space exploration (and, in particular, US space exploration) would be in 2015, I would not have believed you. And yet here we are.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
" the Moon has gravity on it's own, you know"
What's the gravity of an extra apostrophe?
Why is the loss of life in going into space always seen as such a big, scary risk with ruinous repercussions?
You want safe? Stay home and play in the back yard.
Pretty much any human exploration endeavor worth a damn risks life and limb -- exploring the poles, sailing to "the new world", etc.
Limiting space travel because somebody might die? That's lame.
Primary objective was to beat the Reds to the stars, back then it was them or us. When Apollo program started, USSR scored a number of firsts in the Space Race that demonstrated the superiority of Communism (not really but there's extensive discussions on all that). Whatever, Hugh Dryden suggested putting a man on the moon and there was already the Saturn rocket and F1 engine in development. Kennedy used his great oral skills, Johnson used his huge political power, James Webb used his knowledge on how to work the system to maintain budgets over a multi-year period.
Once we achieved a manned landing the race was over. What's even interesting is Bob Gilruth suggested no more Apollo flights as each one had so many opportunities for things to go wrong and lose a crew (and almost did with 13). Apollo 18, 19, 20 were cancelled to save money (wouldn't have saved much as hardware ready to go, crews pretty much fully trained).
There is the "What If" Gargarin never made the first space flight? Would we have worked on economic development of space like we are trying to do now? Dennis Wingo has some articles including past studies from those years after Sputnik but before Gargarin's flight. https://denniswingo.wordpress....
mfwright@batnet.com
Space exploration is for the patient. Science fiction is for phonies.
The popular science fiction (always endemic on this board) with its fantasy physics always ignores immense distances, energies, time, politics and money.
Most importantly money.
During the last 43 years we have probed the entire solar system and are currently roving the sands of Mars as we peck away at our keyboards at a safe distance and for costs that do not over burden society. Space exploration is a constant source of scientific achievement and with advanced directives and equipment (Kepler, Webb) we are going to explore the galaxy in the comfort of our sofas without breaking the bank
Because that's the trick, our robotics can pave the way for us because Space is a harsh place.
Now the next step, and it could take 50 years, is the when we land a lathe and a robot to operate it on the Moon. Soon after there will be an image of a dome and behind it the earth and in the dome there will be a bunch of green leafy things curling up from the lunar soil to reach for the sun. And then things will probably go a lot faster.
The shuttles were exciting at first too and it seemed we were on a track that could lead to ordinary people getting into space.
The shuttle program was designed to appear like an airplane with booster was able to reach high orbit. The image was more important than the reality.
Learn to love Alaska
Sure, sure... let's just count the money.
That way most people's lives aren't worth the sweat off a donkey's balls.
And shit like those eggheads playing god with their giant electricity spending machines is beyond waste.
On the other hand... counting technological spinoffs...
Spinoff is a NASA publication featuring technology made available to the public.
Since 1976, NASA has featured an average of 50 technologies each year in the annual publication, and Spinoff maintains a searchable database of these technologies.
When products first spun off from space research, NASA presented a black and white report in 1973, titled the "Technology Utilization Program Report". Because of interest in the reports, NASA decided to create the annual publications in color.
Spinoff was first published in 1976,[14] and since then, NASA has distributed free copies to universities, the media, inventors, and the general public.
Spinoff describes how NASA works with various industries and small businesses to bring new technology to the public.
As of 2015, there were over 1,800 Spinoff products in the database dating back to 1976.[37]
http://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinof...
But the part I love the most is how that "spinoff is a myth" text, though it ignores the fact that those spinoffs are a BYPRODUCT of research for actual completed scientific projects and NOT of direct research with the goal of return on investment - still can't hide the fact, however it may try, that money invested in "NASA activities" RETURNED PROFIT aaaaand accomplished the missions.
Missions whose goal was NOT making profit.
Science, space capabilities AND free money.
A total of over $21 billion in sales and savings benefits were identified as resulting from NASA activities.
However, the report conceded that only about $5 billion of this total was due to actual spinoff, that is "instances in which a product, process, or even an entire company would not have come into existence had it not been for the NASA furnished technology."
Most notable among these is the $1.6 billion in medical instruments, frequently cited as a major NASA spinoff.
The remaining $16 billion in benefits were in areas where "the NASA technology contributed to the sales, but that contribution can vary widely, from a relatively small percentage of the total sales or savings..."
And in this area, additional sales of commercial aircraft accounted for over $10 billion.
Just imagine all the money NASA could have made if they were honesttogod genuine Scotsmen...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I've never seen any evidence that the same left wing groups who opposed nuclear power opposed landing people on the moon. Those two issues seem very unrelated to me in fact.
Meanwhile, fiscal conservatism has always been the reason for NASA budget cuts in my experience. With a shrinking budget should NASA have kept landing people on the moon or invested its limited resources in other less understood aspects of our universe?
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Since the missions are independent of each other the sixth mission can have the same chance (50%) of success than the first one.
That's exactly what the GP is assuming! If each mission independently has 50% odds of success, then the probably of all of the succeeding is (0.5)^2=0.001953125, which is about 0.2%.
The Gambler's fallacy is something else entirely. In this case, the Gambler's fallacy would be: since we had such a long string of successes, we must be due for a failure. I.e. assuming that the true success rate is 50%, which is ridiculous, the probability for later mission must be less than 50% because the earlier missions had an above average success rate.
How on earth did this comment get modded +4 insightful?
I'm 40 and always stop and watch the fire truck going by.
Lunokhod automatic vehicle was the actual victor of the Luna race: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This approach was copied for Mars exploration, and will be used in many other expeditions. Not an Apollo type approach.
Oh it's a very thoroughly protected secret. Using advanced methods of steganography known only to elite cryptographers, the message "To the moon, Alice! To the moon!" is cunningly hidden within the nonsense string "Too the moon, Alice! Too the moon!".
There's no way that evil Eve will ever detect it!
"Do not project your inadequacy and lack of social skills upon others. "
Wow, ultra-black pot, meet perfect black-body kettle.
"They NEVER became routine."
By Apollo 13 it was already down to "in other news" levels.
In fact the story of the Apollo 13 accident was broken by som local newsie, because the national TV and news opganisations did not bother to have anyone present.
The press center was completely empty until the accident, then the vultures descended and tv interest picked up.
Apollo 14 had decent interest initially, but when there was no drama interest quickly faded.
We now have much more advanced robots. And robots just need energy, which can be collected from sunlight. No water, food, air. If we go back we would first do it with non-humanoid remote controlled robots. I see that leading on to humanoid telepresence systems with humanoid devices remote controlled from earth. Sure its a time lag, but it would give long term presence at a lot lower cost.
Here's an excellent article called Moondoggle (after a 1964 book condemning the space program) that summarizes many of the complaints.
Despite modern perception, the Apollo program never had majority support - instead, 50-60% of people felt that the space program was OVERfunded. Most social activists felt that this money would have been better spent helping people on Earth. The Civil Rights movement and Black leadership were very outspoken about this. One prominent speaker stated that whites were willing to let "thousands starve on Earth" so they could "ruin the pristine splendor" of the Moon with their flags.
There was a great deal more about this back in 2009, for the 40th anniversary of the landing. It was pretty unpopular, and it was due entirely to US social program's greed for the funding that so much of the space program was adjusted, scaled back, or just plain cut. It wasn't just the Left, or fiscal conservatives - it was the people, and both parties played to the people.
So don't just blame the politicians, all you young folks - blame your parents too.
https://youtu.be/cOdzhQS_MMw
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
Maybe you should try reading some history. Eventually Americans got tired of seeing their children killed fighting an absolutely worthless war halfway around the world. That had zero to do with nuclear power or the lunar program, other than making people stop believing that "Daddy knows best".
Arthur C. Clarke in his autobiography wrote that it would be a tragedy if the solar system was lost in the paddy fields of Vietnam. I can't remember the exact quote right now but he wrote words to that effect in the 70s and it seems he may have had a point.
To those of you who are uninspired by exploration and who don't get a lump in your throats when humans take flight for space I can only say I'm very sorry for you.
Well, let's see. There's no beer, no women, no football, (though shotgunning a beer on the moon would be more fun, women wouldn't need bras, their tits would be naturally perky under such weak gravity,) and you wouldn't believe how big a football field would have to be to make a field goal anything more than trivial, which means larger teams, and much greater entertainment value watching them try to crash into each other.
There's no arable, fertile land, there's no oil, there are no diamonds as far as we know, no gold (or so little it wouldn't be worth the trip, or maybe there's lots but it's buried deep inside where we'll never find it,) etc.
There are no interesting cultural artifacts, no ancient ruins to study.
Face it. It's a boring fucking rock. THAT'S why we've not gone back.
Doom and bellbottoms!! to go to yahoo.
true story
Of course I was talking about the left wing anti nuclear camp and made zero mention of social welfair advocates so your post is completely irrelevant. Furthermore your statisitics for and against the space program make zero differentiation between the ideologies involved in opposing the moon landings and are therefore useless in proving your (what seems to be) the Left is bad agenda.
So in summary, your post is both irrelevant and pointless.
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USA could effectively print its Space Program...just print a trillion dollars, and make it available to NASA, to create the most amazing spaceship yet built, which will carry humans to every corner of the Solar system.
Not only will there be a worldwide economy boost, and a huge one in the US, but in the end you will have an actual spaceship.
And this program will accelerate all sciences and education in US, due to the tremendous demand for scientists and science-aware personnel.
trillions of tax dollars and funds funneled through the illegal drug trade, like CIA cocaine and Afghan opium/herion have funded a covert secret space program in which there is actually an active space command and fleet.
you can't know about this because the highest levels of military industrial complex and bankers have created this covert breakaway branch of the military
anti gravity is has been an old problem for a while now
So why spend government money? Politicians only care about themselves and their cronies.
I never said you had to be particularly good at anything. Just possessing a basic grounding - hence the expression about 10 year old. That will not make you into a "space nutter". Education into some of the basics, not just mathematics, of being an adult will help you to make more informed decisions and statements.
A simple grasp of arithmetic would show you that spending less money on exploring space will not put any more money into the hands of the poor. A little background in human behaviour will explain the reason has something to do with the greed of the powerful. A little knowledge of history would show you what happens to groups, societies and empires that stop looking outwards and just try and concentrate on internals.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I believe Armstrong said that Apollo 11's first manned moon landing was a 50% chance of success. He believed that the chance of survival was higher. Additionally, after the first landing succeeded there was learning. With that learning the chances of success for subsequent missions improved. There have been six such moon landings. Any model that assumes 50% for all six is flawed on its face. Also note that Apollo 13 was an aborted moon landing. So that makes it 6/7.
... Maths provides no thrust, doesn't move mass, you can't eat it, you can't breathe it.
It does move mass. Without a lot of serious number crunching, we wouldn't have any modern cars, planes or anything else.Anything more complicated than a dugout canoe needs calculations.
You can't eat it, sure but without it millions would not eat.
If the world keeps trundling along without a few more sums, everyone will have as much fun breathing as people in Beijing
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Stanley Kubrick Died.
Unfortunately, the Vietnam war and its aftermath bled the USA until there was nothing left.
The Vietnam War didn't bleed the USA. It drove the wrong group into power: The feel-good, anti-science hippies got their representatives to cut back on everything that didn't produce immediate self-satisfaction. That meant no nuclear power, no space program, little basic science. Only when scientists managed to convince the military that something could be a good weapon did anything get done: ARPANET, GPS, etc.
Utter nonsense.
There were at most 5 feel-good anti science hippies elected to congress and zero such elected as president.
Private enterprise, esp. Bigelow , wants to go to the moon because so many nations will be happy to pay to go. Few have the resources to really go to space, let alone the moon. But if bigelow and other companies create a low cost path to the moon, then nearly every nation will happily pay to put at least 1 person there, to search for anything interesting.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Seriously, if the GOP would quit trying to kill new space, we will get to the moon sooner. The fact is, that bigelow wants to put a base on the moon around 2020. At this point, it will likely be 2022 since the GOP continues to hold back human launchers. For bigelow to send up a station, they need at least 2 reliable western launchers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
While destroying America's economy as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
about the LAST people to do it.. just the first
What about the environmental groups that decried that rocket launches destroyed the ozone layer? I remember those.
If you are a supporter of "small government", congratulations, you helped end the space program.
And I'm not being facetious. There are a lot of people who thought it was a waste of money and they successfully destroyed the space program using "small government" as the talking point. I'm not on their political team, but I congratulate their success.
Apollo 18.
Bad movie but I couldn't resist.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I do too. That was awfully fringe though.
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