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Today Marks 50th Anniversary of Fatal Apollo 1 Disaster (nasaspaceflight.com)
schwit1 writes: NASASpaceFlight.com reports: "Fifty years ago Friday, the first -- but sadly not the last -- fatal spaceflight accident struck NASA when a fire claimed the lives of Virgil 'Gus' Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White during a training exercise at Launch Complex 34. The accident, a major setback for the struggling Apollo program, ushered in the first understanding of the 'bad day' effects of schedule pressure for spaceflight and brought with it words and reminders that still echo today." The article provides a very detailed and accurate look at the history and causes of the accident, as well as its consequences, which even today influence American space engineering. Are there any Slashdotters who were old enough to remember the incident? If so, we'd love to hear your take on the disaster. Where were you when the news broke and how did it affect you and the country at that time...?
How old am I? Why isn't this thing answering my question? I tried talking to it. My son keeps telling me to type google or something.
I remember bits of it. I was in 3rd grade at the time. We had been talking about it at school in science class all week. It was late in the week, Thursday or Friday. We had no tv in the school, but we had radio. I don't recall which class I was in at the time, but I remember listening to early parts of the countdown on a radio the teacher brought to the classroom. After school, I had finished my homework and was watching something on tv before supper. A reporter broke in with a special announcement that the astronauts had burned to death. (They didn't really, they were asphyxiated inside their suits.) Mom heard that from the kitchen and came in and listened and then shut the tv off. The next day at school the morning prayer (Catholic school) was announced for the three astronauts' souls and their families left behind. That Sunday's mass was also dedicated to the tragedy. Up to that point, my friends and I used to talk about being astronauts, and who would get to go first. Several of them were no longer so excited about it within a few days. A few years later I was glued to the tv watching Apollo 11. Of that group of friends, I'm the only one that actually went into an aerospace field.
To be fair, everyone in Germany in those days was a nazi. I've even known a few hitler youths. It was just the in thing at the time. An example of groupthink that seems so prevalent today.
There were probably large numbers of people that weren't nazis at all but didn't want to stand out
Yes, along with already smelly street shitting indo-chimps.
It was a REQUIREMENT for males over a certain age to join the Nazi party, just as it was a requirement to join the communist party after a certain age in Eastern Bloc countries, or the Ba'ath party in Iraq/Seria, or the Juice(sp?) party in North Korea.
You don't have *choice* in these regimes. You either join when they tell you to or you get the firing squad/gulag prison - no ifs, ands or buts. You do what they you, or else!
First, wow, so many trolls... can't we get rid of some of this garbage?
There's a lesson to be learned here. In a lot of fields, scientific research isn't safe. It's for the advancement of science and hopefully the betterment of the world that we put our lives at risk. I see people calling for SpaceX to be grounded and ridiculing them for their failed launch. These are complex systems, and sometimes things go wrong that have unexpected consequences. It's unfortunate, but it's a risk we take, and without the early attempts at spaceflight, there is no Apollo 11, shuttle, or ISS.
This sort of thing happens in other branches of science, too. I am a meteorologist and I study tornadoes. That means chasing storms and, sometimes, getting close to the business end of a supercell thunderstorm to collect data. And yes, researchers occasionally do get killed, as unfortunately happened to Tim Samaras a few years ago. It's not safe out there, but it's because of research like that, that we're quickly moving toward a dramatic shift and perhaps a large improvement in how we issue severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings. Look up warn-on-forecasting if you're curious. We need the data to better understand the processes involved with tornado formation and what distinguishes tornadic supercells from non-tornadic ones. People have called for bans on storm chasing and ridicule the type of research meteorologists do as fringe science, but it may well save a large number of lives in the coming decades. It's not safe out there, but it doesn't mean we should walk away, give up, or ban the scientific research.
Should we have banned chemistry and research on radioactive elements because it led to the deaths of many scientists? We're better off that we didn't do that. Would we be better off giving up on tornado research and not trying to improve warning lead times? I think not. And we shouldn't try to put an end to the work SpaceX is doing, despite an accident and some noisy critics.
I was 13 in 1967. Try to think about news media, newspapers and TV. If it bleeds, it leads. Generally the headlines are about teenage car crashes, families burnt out of their houses, various murders. Dozens were killed in riots somewhat recently in 1965; the Viet Nam war was being broadcast nightly on TV news, dozens of Americans and Vietnamese killed EVERY DAY. Three astronauts died at NASA; seemed like a fuck up, they weren't even being shot into space, but numerically not such a big deal. The reputation of the Russian space program was that THEY were losers, they had all these orbiting dead astronauts, or other fatalities. Now the US space program had some fatalities, WHILE STILL ON THE GROUND. Unfortunate, but so were a lot of things.
I first became aware of humans in space when I saw a Time magazine with a picture of John Glenn in Time magazine cover in hour house. While I was too young to appreciate the functional evolution of the US space program (suborbital to orbital flight, single-seat to multi-seat capsules, increasing task complexity --including EVAs--, docking with other craft), I did realize the goal of the Apollo program was to carry astronauts to the moon.
I didn't understand the baby steps needed to get there. As a kid, I'd imagine mission control with a surprise announcement to the crew: "Good news; we're moving up the schedule and sending you guys TODAY instead of evolving and learning for two more years".
The coverage of the Apollo 1 disaster that I remember focused on the explosion resulting from the choice of 100% oxygen for the capsule environment.
Sometime during the frenzy of the Gemini/Apollo era, some the elementary schools where we lived then were named after astronauts. To my surprise, these schools (in Old Bridge, NJ) still carry these names 50 years later: Carpenter, Copper, Grissom, McDivitt. Schirra, Shephard.
A few years ago, I took one of the tours of Kennedy that includes access to the historic Mercury and Apollo launch sites, including the pad where the Apollo 1 crew had died. Very sobering.
I was in my teens, living with my foster family in California. We were returning from a grocery shopping trip when the news broke on the radio. My foster father, who personally knew Gus Grissom and Ed White, broke into tears and had to pull over and stop the car.
Despite his earlier warnings to his supervisors about the hazards of testing with atmospheric pressure pure oxygen environments, the tests continued - as he was 'only' a field engineer for NASA.
Was really a sad day, with many tears and spiteful comments about the lack of real leadership qualities in the top bureaucracy of NASA at that time.
Sadly, even though there were SOME changes, and even some GOOD changes, they didn't last long, and we were soon back in the same 'good old boy' network of leadership that does nothing for the program unless it pins a feather on the cap of a supervisor somewhere in the bureaucratic hierarchy.
Continuing this sad tale, we saw the loss of a launch because of faulty O-ring design caused by small, but significant, warpage from the weight of the vehicle resting on its side during the O-ring installation. This issue had already been seen to be marginal - with one after-launch diagnostic showing that the booster was within seconds of burning through - with the tragic results that happened when a later booster DID burn through.
And then, there was the loss during re-entry from another vehicle because of icing issues - even though NASA had a waiver to continue using freon for de-icing which would have eliminated this problem, but changed to a different, less effective, but MORE Politically Correct compound. Granted, the actual icing issue didn't cause the loss, but the ice build-up and the impact of the ice-chunk DID result in another senseless, tragic loss.
Really gotta' love the bureaucrats, since they prove that normal humans can overcome even the worst of humanities faults and self-centered stupidity, and STILL succeed in the efforts to expand our frontiers.
Kinda' reminds me of the 'PC correct' idiot in purchasing that order bio-friendly cat litter for the packing of nuclear material - that caused the loss of the only long-term storage facility in the US because it ruptured - which WOULDN'T have happened if the idiot had just continued to use plain clay litter.
redneck geek
To receive credit for this, you're required to do it under your username, and as a first post.
You're just a wannabe who's full of fail and AIDS.
Now get back in your mother's basement.
Actually, yesterday (1/27) was the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire. Today (1/28) is the 31st anniversary of the Challenger disaster. I know the story was probably posted yesterday and took a few hours to get through the queue, but BeauHD should have edited the headline to reflect that.
RIP to the men and women of both tragic missions.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Juche
I was 20 and in college, and I did not think too much on it. I regretted Gus Grissom, he was kind of a hero, before he got immolated. At the time -- and I still do -- that going to space was very dangerous, risky and absolutely romantic. Look what it did to NASA: they have become a do-nothing bureacracy that have put so many safety rules and protocols that nothing gets done. They were absolutely astounded when so many people applied for the one-way trip to Mars.
I was 4 years old at the time. I remember hearing the astronauts died during "training exercises." I pictured them jumping rope and jogging in place inside the Apollo capsule. I thought that was a strange thing to do and didn't understand why they would be exercising on top of a rocket.
Rather disingenuous of the article to fail to mention that the Russians actually put a man into orbit first. Can't wait until Donald J. "Comrade" Trump cuts the budget of these ahistorical jingoists.
I've meet many people involved in getting men to the moon.
One was in charge of life support for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. Shortly before he died we had a long talk about Apollo 1. He was convinced that it was his fault that he didn't know that high O2 environment would have been highly flammable. There are likely a thousand guys who thought the same thing.
He also pointed out that USAF has a museum inside the Cape grounds and I should go see it.
Mexicans are God's children? Anyway, half of the people who flipped a coin predicted that.
Ezekiel 23:20
Continuing this sad tale, we saw the loss of a launch because of faulty O-ring design caused by small, but significant, warpage from the weight of the vehicle resting on its side during the O-ring installation.
That's not what caused the O-ring failure, and the vehicle was attached vertically in the VAB, well after the SRBs were fully assembled and mated to the tank. The temperature at launch was below freezing, and about 25 degrees lower than any previous launch. The O-rings lost most of their flexibility due to the cold and failed to seal the joint as a result.
And then, there was the loss during re-entry from another vehicle because of icing issues - even though NASA had a waiver to continue using freon for de-icing which would have eliminated this problem, but changed to a different, less effective, but MORE Politically Correct compound. Granted, the actual icing issue didn't cause the loss, but the ice build-up and the impact of the ice-chunk DID result in another senseless, tragic loss.
The Columbia accident wasn't caused by ice either - it was a block of insulating foam that broke off from the tank and struck the orbiter. Very little ice ever formed on the external tank due to the insulation.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I was teaching and doing research at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. My first contract work back in 1970 was concerned with the shuttle. All of us as well as our neighbors at AEDC were alarmed by the event. I remember receiving a telephone call from one of the authorities asking how I might help in determining the causes. I knew little that could help; I suspect that virtually the whole scientific community was called. The event scared the whole space community badly. It's distressing that the later accident took place for similar reasons as regards management of the great risks involved.
I read the article but still I don't get why pure oxygen. While nitrogen narcosis is always a risk it's something that's easy to manage so it seems insane to try to avoid that with a pure oxygen environment which is an almost unmanageable risk.. The story says the danger of oxygen was not appreciated. Huh????? no way is that true. So I repeat why did they use pure oxygen??? makes no sense.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Yes, I remember. I was working for RCA downrange on a missile tracking ship. We were in Dakar, Senegal. Although I don't remember how I found out (since it was difficult to get news back in those days), I recall reading a book about the entire Apollo program (from and engineer's point of view) many years later and when I came to that part of the book - it brought tears to my eyes. The ship I was on spent a lot of time in port at Cape Canaveral and although I never actually saw any of the astronauts I heard about their exploits by locals. I hung out in a bar where Gus Grissom was reported to have hung out although I never saw him there. It was just off A1A on the turnoff that took one to Cape Canaveral.
Digging a little I googled up this explanation of why they did something seemingly insane with pure oxygen.
there were two reasons given:
1. Weight. having a mixed gas system required added pounds.
2. they planned to run it at 5 PSI in space, which was considered a safe level of oxygen. 5PSI would be the equivalent partial pressure as 33% oxygen at sea level. So perhaps not that much more than normal.
However, in the test run they ran it at 16PSI oxygen. They needed to have positive pressure inside relative to the outside (so the doors would be shut).
I still don't get it. Surely this would always be true. Regardless of the pressure used in space, they would need to start at sea level and need a high pressure of oxygen,
I find this puzzling. I'm guessing there's more to this story and on the face of it, it seems insane to run pure oxygen at 16 PSI.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You are also wrong about the kitty litter too. While reported in the press the way you describe, the actual investigation report shows this is Not what happened.
So the Waffen SS was the safe safe space or BLM of its day ?
I can see that, right up to the don't call us haters and we can't be racist.
The 1st Monday after 28th January should be designated as "astronauts day" to remember the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia
(and any future fatalities we may have in our exploration of space.
Citation please? I'm unaware of another explanation.
This is an interesting read - lots of creativity, but this is warped and sick and demented.
Yes and no - the insulating foam was iced over. A coating of ice at low enough temperatures is as hard as steel.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
SRB warpage was a dangerous issue though. The SRBs were made in sections and set sideways on train cars for shipping long distances, just so they could be made in the right senator's state. That's a problem with leadership above the NASA level, though.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I once had a conversation with someone who worked there when this happened.
NASA still gloss' over the circumstances of the men's death. Usually in a fire, the smoke or super-heated air causes you to lose conscientiousness pretty quickly. But these guys had their helmets on, which supplied fresh air. Grissom's open microphone picked up their screams as they were burned. Death didn't come quickly for them.
Yes, I remember it, and time has not mellowed my wishes for rolling heads. I did not understand the why until Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog magazine explained why it was so dangerous on the ground, but would have been a non-event in flight. A tripped circuit breaker at worst
The difference was gravity, without out it the fire had no convection driven air movements to carry in fresh oxygen. With gravity, and a positive pressure in the capsule, instant conflagration. And both no way out due to the positive pressure holding the hatch closed, they were doomed with the next breath they took. I still think that those who wanted to do that test should have been prosecuted for criminal negligence. They were supposed to be familiar with the physics involved, and it never crossed their mind that on the ground with gravity to stir in fresh oxygen, any spark from any source was going to be a disaster. That idiocy cost 3 men their lives, and there should have been consequences.
This was only 5 years before I was born yet all i remember are the shuttles. Then I look at wikipedia and it went for 10years and thats it. Then only low earth orbit. Its like sea travel started with a big push to go into the deep ocean then fell back to following coastlines. I mean columbus was the 1400's and it seemed there where constant colony stuff until the 13 in the 1600's. The end of this program seems to nicely coincide with the period where wages where no longer linked to productivity.
I was 14 years old at the time, and I remember being surprised that there hadn't been more accidents already. We all knew, or should have known, that spaceflight was a risky business.
And then, there was the loss during re-entry from another vehicle because of icing issues - even though NASA had a waiver to continue using freon for de-icing which would have eliminated this problem, but changed to a different, less effective, but MORE Politically Correct compound. Granted, the actual icing issue didn't cause the loss, but the ice build-up and the impact of the ice-chunk DID result in another senseless, tragic loss.
Yeah, this is where you go off on your on ranting, you start chasing the "Politically Correct" issue, when even if it was the cause, the more likely explanation would be that some other compound was cheaper to drop in, and the whole problem was one they'd been ignoring for years anyway. But you, you have to believe somebody was being "Politically Correct" which translates into "Somebody who cares about something that makes me feel bad about myself for not caring" instead of any real meaning.
Really gotta' love the bureaucrats, since they prove that normal humans can overcome even the worst of humanities faults and self-centered stupidity, and STILL succeed in the efforts to expand our frontiers.
Kinda' reminds me of the 'PC correct' idiot in purchasing that order bio-friendly cat litter for the packing of nuclear material - that caused the loss of the only long-term storage facility in the US because it ruptured - which WOULDN'T have happened if the idiot had just continued to use plain clay litter.
Wrong again, it wasn't political correctness, though it is telling that you attribute the problem to that, even though more likely, it was simple technical ignorance AND cost efficiency, and no different than when they reused decades old bombs in Vietnam, or decades old gunpowder on the Iowa.
Man, scapegoating "political correctness" IS the new "politically correct" way to do things, or is it the old way? I can't remember.
You also blame the bureaucrats, when actual and proper bureaucratic regulations would have lead to examining the choices and not randomly filling the waste casks with what fit the ostensible requirements. Much like proper regulations would have prevented the 16-inch guns on the Iowa from being improperly fired.
I suppose it's better than blaming the nearest black guy or homosexual. Or homosexual Jewish black guy.
Why does slashdot just leave this kind of completely off-topic racist stupid trolling comment instead of deleting the nonsense garbage?
I worked with a technician who said he worked at the site and the capsule door had been red-tagged as not safe, and that Grissom ripped the tag off and had the test proceed. -- My father was a chemical engineer who worked on the capsule heat shield. For the post-mortem he and coworkers were supposed to turn over project notes. In those notes were comments on bad placement of the oxygen lines. They tried to snow under the investigators with piles of irrelevant notes but were questioned within days about the oxygen line.
Better question: why does /. now attract this type of visitor? It used to be for technical nerds.
Yes, I'm old enough to actually remember this. :(
I think it's safe to say that at the time we all felt a collective sense of horror at how they died, and at the loss of three brave men who lost their lives for no good reason. They were willing to take extraordinary risks as astronauts, but to burn to death due to a series of egregiously bad engineering decisions made it even sadder.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I remember it well. I was 18, an EE freshman at Northeastern at the time. I also remember Shepard's Freedom 7, the first suborbital manned rocket flight in 1961, I was in junior high school. And I remember seeing reports on the Korean war in the newspapers (I remember lots of things from kindergarten and first grade). And I vividly remember at age 10 breaking my piggy bank and having my dad take me to Radio Shack on Commonwealth Avenue so I could buy a CK-722 germanium transistor and some other components at the will-call counter. It was a pretty big (by later standards) silver-colored prismatically-shaped plastic package. I made a single-transistor radio from it using a schematic from Popular Electronics. I twisted the wires together because I didn't have a soldering iron.
If you want censorship, go somewhere else! Asshole!
I had just turned 18. I was self-absorbed with all the issues of the last year of high school, I was not much for reading newspapers, and for reasons I don't now recall I had very limited access to TV news.
My initial reaction was that this had been just another worksite accident, not that much different than when a construction trench collapsed and killed three guys laying pipe. Except that this fire happened to celebrity astronauts and a high profile NASA program and a microphone recorded their final moments. It was only later, as news from the investigation became available, that I learned about the insane level of stupidity that created the fire.
I did not know, until I read this TFA, that the capsule had been mated to the rocket: early reports gave me the impression that the tragedy had occurred in a testing room. Nor did I know that the pure oxygen was at higher than atmospheric pressure. My recollection is that the reports of that time said that Apollo 1 was using pure oxygen at low PSI. It was not reported that flammables that had been declared too dangerous for the Apollo program had been reinstalled for the test. I would have remembered that. Early reports suggested that the fire had started by a static electricity spark as the astronauts moved about in the cabin.
I recall that NASA had originally rejected the N + O2 environment for some good reason (too heavy? I don't remember). And that NASA had considered using He + O2, which was being used by Cousteau in his deep sea environments, but rejected that because the astronauts would sound like the cartoon characters. So NASA went with the low pressure pure O2 because the astronauts would sound like manly men in the news reports.
The death of these astronauts was the culmination of a comedy of errors, where several different safety measures were relaxed because each group responsible for the safety of one aspect of the problem was confident that everyone else's safety protocols were sufficient.
I was in college at the time and frankly, don't remember it in much detail. (If you remember the 60s, you weren't living in the 60s). I didn't watch television, so I must have learned of it by word of mouth or the press. I thought it was sad, but also probably an inevitable consequence of pushing the limits. The shuttle losses had a greater impact on me personally. I suspect that's because the videos of the events made them seem more immediate. Maybe also because by the time they happened success had made us jaded about the risks.
I was 11 when this happened and living in New Orleans where they built the Saturn V. I remember that this devastating for all the people working at Michoud Assembly, Stennis Test Center and KSC/Cape Canaveral. It was a horrible way to die and it was most gruesome things to see pictures of. From 1995-1999, I had the privilege of working at Cape Canaveral Air Station supporting the Atlas, Titan and Delta SLC's. One day I drove out to SLC 34 on what I called "history row". It was quite sad seeing "Abandon in Place" stenciled on the platform and the small lonely little kiosk at the site. Thank you schwit1 and BeauHD for posting this.
My wife and I were in middle school / junior high. I was in Germany. People from all over the village came up and offered condolences, then expressed hope that this would not end the program. Later, they invited us to watch the launches from their televisions in their living rooms, as a triumph for the world. I did not learn what contributed to the fire for decades. Once I did learn (pure oxygen atmosphere), I was horrified. But, we always learn from previous mistakes. Our hearts now go out to their families. Let us raise a toast: "To Those who have Gone Before..."
There is a difference between being a supporter of the Nazi party and being an enrolled member of the Nazi party. At its peak, only about 10% of Germany's population were members of the Nazi party. (8 millihttps://science.slashdot.org/story/17/01/27/2120247/today-marks-50th-anniversary-of-fatal-apollo-1-disaster#on Nazis out of 80 million German population).
I've been on Slashdot for approaching fifteen years, and it's had racist trolling for pretty much all that time.
Continuing this sad tale, we saw the loss of a launch because of faulty O-ring design caused by small, but significant, warpage from the weight of the vehicle resting on its side during the O-ring installation.
That's not what caused the O-ring failure, and the vehicle was attached vertically in the VAB, well after the SRBs were fully assembled and mated to the tank. The temperature at launch was below freezing, and about 25 degrees lower than any previous launch. The O-rings lost most of their flexibility due to the cold and failed to seal the joint as a result.
Sort of both and then some more.
The O-rings did fail due to loss of flexibility, but root problem was that the design of the joint was defective.
The joint design parameter was that the O-rings should not come into use - the joint should close and keep the gases from the O-rings. After all, they are "rubber" and rubber does not live long when exposed to hot high pressure gas.
The O-rings were to be backup, and in a perfect design backup doesn't come into play. There was also putty in the gap that should prevent the combustion gases from reaching the O-rings, but maybe failed as well.
When the joint was designed, it was believed that combustion pressure would cause the joint to close and form a tighter seal, but static pressure-testing showed that pressure caused the joint to rotate open and expose the O-ring to combustion gases. O-ring erosion was seen from the very beginning of the flights due to this flaw, (not all flights)
Low temperatures exacerbated the problem, the O-ring worked so long as the gap in the joint was NOT too narrow. Too narrow a gap and the O-rings can't move freely as the SRB and joints are flexing, and with the cold making the O-rings stiff, they failed to move and close in the place where the gap was most narrow.
As rickyslashdot pointed out, the motors were out of round due to shipping constraints, and it by coincidence happened that the place most narrow pointed at the hydrogen external tank. Also, when the main engines are lit before takeoff, the shuttle tilts forward and bends the solid rocket boosters. the assembly then bends backwards and oscillates at 3 cps. Oddly enough, this is when the SRB experiences the greatest mechanical stress. The puff of smoke seen on the pad at ignition happen at 3cps, so there's another factor in stressing the joints and requiring the O-rings to be flexible.
Thiokol began redesigning the joint in 1985, but didn't get it into production in time to prevent the Challenger disaster.
Here's a link to the commission's report. It has much detail and pictures, and fills in the gaps in my over-simplified exposition.
https://history.nasa.gov/roger...
Here's the conclusion from the report:
"In view of the findings, the Commission concluded that the cause of the Challenger accident was the failure of the pressure seal in the aft field joint of the right Solid Rocket Motor. The failure was due to a faulty design unacceptably sensitive to a number of factors. These factors were the effects of temperature, physical dimensions, the character of materials, the effects of reusability, processing, and the reaction of the joint to dynamic loading. "
I was 15 years old, watching TV (I think it happened on a weekend day) when they "interrupted this program." I remember it was just a typed graphic saying that an an astronaut had been injured in a fire. I am pretty sure they first announcement didn't say they had died. Shortly after that there was actual new reporting and we found out the 3 had died. It was very sad, because the astronauts were well known (Grissom was the bad luck astronaut who had lost his Mercury capsule when it sank into the ocean, and White had done the first space walk, which I listened to on the radio live. Chaffee was the rookie). Yet somehow, since it didn't occur in space, and given the enthusiasm for the space program at the time, it didn't seem to slow things down that much. If the astronauts had died in space, like with Challenger, I get the feeling we would not have made the decade-deadline to the moon that Kennedy promised. Overall, when you look at the decade of the 60s, when we went from suborbital flight to landing on the moon, all without the benefit of the computation power we have today, it is just astonishing what was accomplished. To wax a little poetic, back then we walked around looking up at the stars. Today we walk around bent over our cell phones. Oh well.
Sig expected Real Soon Now.