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NASA Was Prepared to Silence Stranded Moon Astronauts
LarsWestergren writes "The BBC has an interesting article about some NASA documents which have been secret for 30 years, which reveal that if the astronauts of the first moon landing had been stranded because of some technical problem, communications would have been cut and they would have been left to die in silence. Richard Nixon even had a patriotic speech prepared for the possibility. The astronauts, however, did not know about this. "
One of the stories I heard has it that the re-entry capsule skipped off the atmosphere because the angle of entry was miscalculated (a very real danger, I'm told). Russian Space Command had contact with them for two days while they fell towards the sun, until they ran out of oxygen. The plan in that case was for them to crack their suits and the pod and go out quick, but they didn't.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
First of all, NASA had a plan for everything. They tested every possible failure they could think of. If you look over all the Apollo flights, you'll see that they recovered quite nicely from all sorts of problems - some, like Apollo 13, quite major. Not once did they accept failure or abandon anyone. Even during/after the Apollo 1 fire, rescue workers continued to do everything possible to pull the men from the command module - even though they knew the odds of their surviving the fire were practically zero.
Had NASA planned to just "switch off" the signal from a failed mission, why work around-the-clock to rescue Apollo 13? At the time, many - if not most - of the engineers working on saving the flight believed the three men aboard were as good as dead.
As for the quote about NASA not knowing if the LM's ascent module would be able to return from the surface, it was extensively tested - as were all the other parts of the Apollo spacecraft - before being used for it's intended purpose. If you get right down to it, sure, they didn't know for sure if it would work. However, they (the engineers) had a pretty damn good idea or they (the astronauts - most also engineers) weren't about to try it.
There were no "suicide pills" or other precautions for total failure. Total failure simply wasn't an option.
I can go on and on, but for those who really want the truth and an excellent "behind-the-scenes" look at NASA during Apollo should read Andrew Chaikin's book "A Man On the Moon" (which, by the way, is what Tom Hank's based the HBO special "From the Earth to the Moon" on - also excellent).
I'm surprised by how many Slashdot readers are quick to jump on the cover-up bandwagon and post replies when they clearly don't have a clue what they're talking about. Come on folks, Slashdot is supposed to be for _smart_ people!
Scott
While it is true that Nasa would be unable to launch a rescue party in time to save their lives, I seriously doubt that nasa would have just cut communications and left them to die out there.
I am certain that in the event of a failure, nasa would have stayed online til the bitter end helping the astronauts try to fix the problems. Leaving them stranded goes against every philosophy that Nasa and the United States stand for. Certainly there were risks, and the astronauts were well aware of those risks, but they were also aware that if a problem developed, and it was unlikely there would be no problems at all, that Nasa would spend every last moment of those astronaut's lives trying to come up with a solution.
Certainly, Nasa would take a big hit if such a catastophic problem occurred, but I think that the citizens of the united states would be much more willing to support Nasa in the future if they saw a group of thousands that went days without sleeping in an attempt, however futile, to save those astronauts lives. It would not be possible to avoid news leaks with that many people involved who were completely aware of the issue.
I'm not saying that nobody ever considered this plan. Anytime there's a crisis, or even a potential crisis, people get paid to present potential solutions, no matter how off the wall, or how politically damaging those solutions may be. Someone might very well have presented the idea that if something went wrong, we cut communications and leave them to die. But just because that plan was presented, along with thousands of much better ones, doesn't mean that it was ever seriously considered a valid option.
And even if they DID decide to cut communications, Michael Collins (I think that's his name) was still in orbit around the moon and would have been unaffected by this problem, so he'd still have to return to Earth. He would be VERY aware of what was happening, and Nasa certainly wouldn't leave HIM to die out there, considering he was still able to return.
I'm also not positive that the two men dying on the moon would have caused the end of the space program. 3 astronauts had died already before that, and it didn't kill the space program. Perhaps all the ciitizens of the US witnessing their death would have brought endless critism, but those men would have been martyrs, and people having witnessed these men dying to advance the space program, and therefore the country they loved, would in retrospect have probably brought more support for the program.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Is there any reason to believe that Houston could remotely deactivate the transmitter on the lunar lander? It sounds kind of strange. These transmissions, IIRC were not encrypted, nor was there anything particularly special about them. An avid HAM radio operator should have been able to pick up all the signals.
It makes me rather wonder that if there is a grain of truth, it is that the astronauts were trained to turn their radio off and accept the failure of their mission; rather than screaming quite futily for their lives. The astronauts knew that a rescue mission was quite impossible, and they knew that the space program was reliant on public image. Why would these trained and diciplined specialists be screaming into the radio that they were dying?
It's just a thought.
>Three astronauts died in a fire in the Apollo 1 capsule, during an unfueled test on the launch pad. Their deaths were not a secret, and was much publicised at the time.
>Seven more astronauts died during launch of the SST Challenger, and that was also highly publicised.
If you go to the tours at KSC in Florida, you are told that either 15 or 16 astronauts - I can't remember which - "gave their lives" to the US Space program.... Who are the remaining 5 or 6 unaccounted for astronauts?
Anyone know if the European Space (Association?) has ever sent up a manned mission?
OFTC: By the community, for the community
Remember, according to the BBC, the astronauts had no knowledge of this plan. So, we are supposed to take the one confirmed fact-that Nixon had a speech ready in case the LEM didn't make the ascent, and blow in up into a conspiracy. This is worse than the shuttle. For all of this be true, we have to assume that.
1) The LEM was equipped with a remote kill on the transmitter. Note that the crew had a full set of schematics on board. If it was in the schematics, they'd find it. If it wasn't, they wonder what the hell that thing in the transmitter was.
2) That Collins was either in on it, or could be browbeaten into submission. He'd worked with Armstrong and Aldrin for years. I seriously doubt that he'd abandon them to silence if something happened. Of course, the conspiracy buffs will say "Collins would die too..."- but that assumes that we're willing to accept that the LEM and the CSM, currently seperated by about 50-100 miles, would fail at the same time.
I can belive that NASA did have a plan for a failed LEM ascent, and it most likely was "Bring Collins home, mourn Armstrong and Aldrin"-there wasn't much choice if the LEM didn't work-it would be months before another Saturn V/Apollo CSM/LEM would be ready to launch. And I can believe Nixon had a speech prepared for the event. He probably had one read for a failure at launch, a failure at recovery, ect. ect. ect.
Furthermore, a failed ascent would have involved one of four scenarios.
1) The engine didn't fire. NASA wouldn't cut off communcations-they'd pull late nighters to fix the damn thing. Witness Apollo 13. They might have failed, and died-but we'd have heard it live. If they did die, you could bet that Apollo 12's sole mission, if it flew, would be to bring Armstrong's and Aldrin's bodies back home. Medals of Honor, Arlington Cemetary, the whole shebang.
2) The engine fires, but without enough power to put the LEM into an orbit. Armstrong and Aldrin get a few minutes to say goodbye, then suffer an "Uncontrolled Flight into Lunar Terrain". Apollo 12 get to do the science jobs that 11 missed, and lays a wreath. If there was enough left over, see 1) above.
3) The engine blows up. Two smears on the landscape. Communications do get cut off, and Nixon makes his speach, but for obvious reasons. Wreath time again-maybe a return of remains, but not likely to be very much to return.
4) The engine fires enough to put the LEM into an orbit, but not the correct one. Here, it depends on food/air/fuel states aboard the LEM and CSM. Co mputers churn, and either they dock and rescue, or they fail and Collins comes home. Apollo 12 goes and get the remains later.
Occam's razor, gentleman.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
(For the vast majority of time in orbit, the CSM/SM would be beneath the LM's horizon.)
"President Nixon's disaster speech has remained secret for 30 years since the two astronauts first set foot on the moon on 20 July 1969. " -- BBC article.
Actually, the speech itself was not a secret. If memory serves correctly, Bill Safire wrote about the speech many years ago. Safire was a speechwriter for Nixon during the first moon landing, and actually drafted the given speech. In his column, he discussed the speech and mentioned the most moving line - that men who had come to explore in peace were now to rest in peace. That line stuck in my head, and when I saw the text of the speech given on the BBC site, I immediately recognized it.
At least, this is how I remember it -- can anyone confirm this?
If I'm not mistaken the USA has a monument which lists about 50.000 names of US soldiers who died in Vietnam. I wouldn't call that a "few," even if I'm not an American.
This is simply false. When the orbiter failed structurally, there were no reactant tanks to feed the fuel cells that power the orbiter. No power, and there's no way that Challenger could have sent back anything. (As it was, the final frames of telemetry were not send back via radio, but instead extracted directly from the magnetic core memories used by the computers.)
Yes, of course it would have been a public relations nightmare. So what? I am deeply offended that our government would have cut the only link to home of stranded and dying heroes of that very same government and its people. This is a shameful revelation of our government in particular and bureaucratic behavior and "pragmatic" politics in general.
It is fitting with the lack of character displayed here that it took the BBC to bring it to our attention. (Thanks, BBC. It's a dirty job but at least someone, somewhere still has the guts to do it.)
What can you call the risk-averse bureaucrats and slimy polititions who conspired to hide a possible disaster while setting themselves up to bask in the glory of the possible success of these brave men?
These people are cowards. I am ashamed to have had them represent me.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Perhaps that's true, but a space shuttle reentering the atmosphere has a downward motion of 3 _kilometres_ per second....not to mention the forward motion of 40,000 kilometres per hour (11.111 kilometres per second). I suspect that that speed - mach 25 - is plenty enough to make a decent sonic boom.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
I think you got that reversed. It would be zero G's while in free fall and ~1 G as they reached terminal velocity. But I can't quibble with your main point. The big peak of G's would indeed be impact.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Am I the only one who finds this darkly humorous?
The impact speed was closer to 200 MPH, not 600. That's still far faster than a free-falling human, and fast enough to instantly dismember everyone upon impact.
Also, the reputable sources I've read said that the crew would have lost consciousness immediately due to high accelerations as the shuttle broke up, then remained unconscious due to the lack of oxygen. (They were not wearing full spacesuits, and their oxygen supply was (allegedly) cut off by the explosion). They *might* have regained consciousness as the flight deck reached lower altitudes, but humans aren't light bulbs and it would take them a moment to remember where they were. By this point they would have also reached terminal velocity, so it would feel like they were sitting on the ground at a very odd angle, adding to their initial confusion.
I don't think it's impossible that some of the crew might have been conscious *and* aware of their situation at the time of impact, but this is a situation where I don't think anyone could have done anything about it, even if the tools were available. The ultimate responsibility lies with the bureaucrats who ordered the launch despite clear danger, and to a lesser extent with the bureaucrats and engineers who didn't add air brakes (streamers, parachutes) to the flight deck module.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The operations recorders are powered by the shuttle's main power system, connect to, IIRC, bus MNA. You can read about the power system here.
Note that all the power comes from the fuel cells under the payload bay. Note that the cabin was seperated from the orbiter at the moment of the expolsion. Note no batteries on the shuttle. The AC inverters were located forward-but AC would have dried up the moment DC died. So...
The power was disconnect at the moment of explosion.
The operations recorders require power to operate, therefore:
There was no voice recording following the explosion. QED
The last recorded clear voice record from the Challenger was "Rodger, go at throttle up" - this is when the shuttle is through the densest part of the atmosphere, and can push the engines back to full throttle. There is another word/sound shortlu, which in buried in static, but all you can hear are the vowels. They do sound alot like "UhOh", but with the static, there's no sure way to tell.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
(first time i've gotten first post! tee hee!)
Check out "Phatoms of Space" (Scroll down a bit) in the Encyclopedia Astronautica
so perhaps then, there should never have been any shuttle launches, if what he says is true, that there are valid technical reasons against each and every launch which are overridden by managerial pressure. It would be interesting to see the content of other technical objections to shuttle launches and see if they have similar merit to the Boisjoly presentations.
This would have been too bad but it's something that would have had to happen. Long, sad transcripts of the dying days of two heroes would have filled the newspapers everyday and it probably would have been the death of the space program.
The story refers to a previous one in the Los Angeles Times.
<sarcasm>
What, you mean John Glenn wasn't the first human in space, as several major news organizations misreported during his recent shuttle flight?!
</sarcasm>
BTW, do you recall why the USSR sent up *two* women before Sally Ride's mission? Could the stories about Valentia's mission be true after all?...
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
They were pioneers of a new land and new, untested technology. Physicists and aeronautical engineers can only do so much with the information given, and it's up to testing and fate to decide the outcome. The chance of failure on the mission was astronomical, and it is only natural that the government was prepared for the worst.
The men had to know, deep down, that, in the event of technological failure and complete radio silence, there would be absolutely no way NASA could scrape together the resources required to save them before their all too short air supply ran out.
Either in failure or victory, the men would have been heroes, daring to explore new worlds with shaky means of exploring it. They knew in their hearts that the rest of their lives would not amount to that experience, and I believe they would have done it again, even if they knew they could have been stranded.
A reporter asked him what he'd be doing if the LM Ascent Engine failed to ignite and he had a half hour of oxygen remaining. He replied that he'd be spending the time trying to fix the engine.
Anyway, I notice the BBC article cut the speech, so I thought I'd post the full version from the LA times here.
I believe the article was talking about Neil and Buzz because Collins would have been able to return to Earth. Although you're right, he would have suffered the same fate if he was also stranded.
Boy, that would've made Apollo 13 (the movie) very short..
Houston: "Well guys, we're ceasing all communications. Houston out."
Apollo 13: "BUT HOUSTON! IT'S JUST AN EXPLOSION!!"
The End
-- Does Rain Man use the Autistic License for his software?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
If they'd been conspiring to make the mission fail, that'd've been 'creepy', but contingency planning is not 'creepy' at all, in fact it's quite responsible and proper. The fact is that if the astronauts had been stranded and yet been allowed to continue communicating with the world, the space program would've been killed.
(Instead, the space program is _de facto_ dead, killed by budget constraints. Put that in your conspiracy pipe and smoke it.)
Look closer, that word goes away as technology advances, and it becomes 'science' instead of 'science fiction'. A lot of the things we take for granted now were 'science fiction' at one point in time.
Shoot lasers at a metal and plastic disk to make music? Nah. Robots the size of ants? Nah. Growing hands/ears on lab rats? Nah. It's all science fiction until it happens. Haven't you been paying attention?
Yes, but unfortunitally, those 7 died not only after nasa had faded from the spotlight, but in a way that didnt inspire. It was a mistake that nasa made.. a screw up in the system, rather than a noble way to die. i'm not saying they were any less than the other astronauts, but it wasnt an event that inspired the public.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
Contrary to numerous cheesy Hollywood movies, people do not explode in a vacuum.
I saw an interview with Chris Hadwell (sp?), a Canadian astronaut, where they asked him what does happen when an astronaut is exposed to a vacuum. (This was in the context of a space suit leaking on a space walk) He described that all of those wonderful dissolved gases we have in our blood would come out of solution like opening a bottle of soda and you would foam to death.
ICK!!!!
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
Which is more sickening: that people know some of the horror that could result from a ahuttle accident? Or that this be sanitized and "heroified" to protect NASA?
... what, exactly? Why must many miilions of confiscated money support the meanderings of the space program?
Does no one besides me have problems with the mindless pushing of a government-run space program that seems based more on propaganda than any rational justification? Like government-run and -funded education, pervasive welfarism both corporate and personal and increasing restrictions of privacy, the idea that we ought to send folks out of Earth's atmosphere on a monthly basis is one that since the 60s has gone from lunacy to obvious.
The Space Shuttle is a royal bauble of the US govt, circus center ring. No doubt there is a lot of neat collateral technology, but all in the pursuit of
I'm all for space exporation, actually. But if there are economic benefits to be had from going into space, why do we need to pay truckloads of tax money to fund R&D? Wouldn't it make more sense for Morton-Thiokol, or any other company which thinks they can make space profitable, to pay their own start-up costs?
Dying screams are not pleasant, but they illustrate that the pursuit of space is an endeavor with possible grave consequences, and that is a valuable thing to know. Astronauts are much sexier than unmanned explorers, maybe, but that's not how I want my money to be played with. Obscuring the consequences of failure is unfair to those who might want to be astronauts, and to the people who fund the fireworks.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Those same paper pushers ...
According to Samuel Florman in The Civilized Engineer, all of the managers at MT who told NASA what they wanted to hear the night before the launch had a technical background of some sort. I thnk at least one was an engineer. They were told directly to take off their engineer hats and put on their management hats and make the decision.
I find it utterly disgusting when an engineer cuts the legs out from under what should be a technical decision in the name of management.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
Yeah and it was set to music...
4, 3, 2, 1... Earth below us, drifting, falling, floating weightless, calling, calling home...
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
In one particular mission, a cosmonaut was unable to reenter the Earth's atrmosphere. His wife was brought to Mission Control where they talked until he ran out of oxygen.
I say sic 10,000 trekkies and star whores freaks on them. Let them be pelted with non-functioning scale-model phasers and bludgeoned with non-functioning lightbeam sabre toys.
I had heard (more unsubstantiated rumors again, danger Will Robinson!) that it was because the thinking pre-Challenger was that if anything went wrong, there would be no crew left to escape. The Challenger incident demonstrated conclusively that such an assumption was incorrect.
>re-entry heat is pretty high, right?
Yes but they never left the atmosphere did they, they were no higher then a commercial airliner when the accident happened.
>into 207 MPH wind is pretty unpleasant.
Very true, but i`d would have liked to have a choice between that and certain death if I was one of them.
Sure, and I'm sure all the space-geek HAMs just weren't paying attention to their radios during the launch. Radio is a broadcast, anyone with a reciever on the right frequencies (which are published by NASA) can listen in! NASA does NOT encrypt their transmissions, for obvious reasons.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
This discussion about BBC's story has been one of the greatest I ever seen on Slashdot. We have been talking a lot. However things seem to turn to "I believe, I don't believe".
Is BBC's story true? Well I have some scheptics on this simplistic "solution" they write about. It is not NASA's nature. At least then. However some of it is true.
There is one fact discussed many times by several people, and experts included: the lift-off. NASA was not absolutely sure that the charges of the lander would work on the Moon. There was some notes that they had failed sometimes during testing. At least there was some rumour, that they retested the damn thing as far as they could, but still the chance remained that they could not fire up on the Moon. Fortunately they did.
There was also several other problems on Apollo 11's mission not less creepy. Unfortunately it passed some good years since I heards about them. It seems that the hatch either on the Moon or when they were on orbit gave some serious problems. There was also another problem that they could not be sure about the landing site. And that Armstrong had the seconds of his life on trying to do a successful landing. Any small doubt during these seconds and either the lander would crash or fly away from the Moon's surface. And then Collins would not have the bitter chance to get them back.
Yes, the fact about "silencing" the crew sounds rather extraordinary. At least I know that Mission Control would go into the Hell to get them back. But I would not be surprised that some kind of "contingency plan" of this sort would be put in place by any of those media-paranoids that started to roam the agency by then.
The fact that this plan sounds quite dumb ("Truth is *always* out there"), but I also wouldn't be very admired that someone would try to put it into action. Well the fact is that NASA, by then, had some level of IQ bigger than now. So probably such plan would be shot down together with its creator. But who knows? The fact is that historically NASA has become a big and HUGE liar.
The Space Shuttle program was/is a whole pack of lies, damn lies, statistics and NASA. Since the beginning a lot of people warned about the "suicide ship". And even after Challenger's accident it seems that NASA kept lying about Shuttle's real world.
The Shuttle is probably much more reliable now. But not long ago there was a near miss that almost repeated Challenger. What seemed to save the situation is that the boosters had already separated. A few seconds before and a few more astronauts would be making one more historical dive into the Ocean.
I later got to thinking about this and talked about it with some friends.
We decided that the liftoff from the moon was fairly uncertain for a couple reasons. First, the fuel they had to use to escape the moon's gravity and get into orbit again was the same fuel they'd used in trying to land. As I recall, they were running fairly low on fuel durin landing, which is why it was almost aborted, since they almost wouldn't have enough to get back. Second, the rocket engines had been completely turned off for several hours. Getting them re-ignited was probably a little tricky piece of engineering, since most rocket engines are made to turn on, burn and turn off, without consideration for re-ignition. I seem to recall once seeing a TV documentary about the moon landing where Buzz or Neil was saying how relieved he was when the engines started again. So apparantly they had a twinge of doubt as well.
Hummm... I wonder if they dusted off this speach in case Nixon had to go on TV during the Apollo 13 incident.
As you say, those astronauts were air force test pilots and the like. You know, brave. Not trusting them not to say something embarrassing in the face of imminent death is a terrible thing. It's a pretty poor way to repay people who have just given you their lives in service. Of course they weren't told about these plans, they would have been insulted.
Of course, it's a little uncertain what would have _really_ happened if the lunar lander had not been able to relaunch. As others have pointed out, a lot of ham radio operaters were listening in on the communications. Perhaps NASA had some way of shutting off the astronauts radios from Houston, but I doubt it. It's not as if they had very advanced computers to handle that sort of thing automatically. Maybe they could have scrambled the signal somehow. But, anyway, I have to hope that if it had really happened that there would have been people who would have taken a stand and said "I'm not going to do this."
But if you have a crew who has several hours of oxygen and no way to get back, that's a different matter. And it really doesn't matter if the crew is stranded because of a bad landing or because of a system malfunction.
I suppose the contingeny plan for a re-entry/splashdown accident would be to try to rescue survivors because, well, they'd be on this planet, so that would be an option. They rescued Grissom before his capsule sank. And if there were no survivors -- but wait, Challenger seems to demonstrate this contingency plan.
Were there contingency plans for other stranding scenerios? Probably. The thrusters on the command/service module could malfunction leaving the astronauts orbiting the moon. But this really isn't any different from being stranded on the surface of the moon, is it? You're going to run out of oxygen and die and nobody can do anything to change that if you can't fix the problem yourself.
Is there something inherent to the design of the lander that raised some uncertainty about its abiliy to lift off from the moon? It would be the first time human beings would actually depend on the lunar module to return them from the surface of the moon. This was the real alpha test. If there was something wrong, despite all of the previous testing, this was the mission that would find out. Preceding Apollo missions had already tested the rest of the system. And I seem to recall that the lunar module was a particularly delicate piece of engineering with thin margins (which is why Armstrong came within a minute of aborting the landing or stranding the lander).
JADBP
- I've heard a totally unsubtantiated assertion that it took Challenger's flight deck upwards of nine minutes to reach the surface after the breakup of the orbiter.
- As to whether the crew were alive, or conscious, or whether NASA knows either fact--consider this and draw your own conclusions: The crew escape system, which is specifically designed to allow the crew to exit the orbiter without hitting any flight-control surfaces and parachute to safety, was first installed on the flight after Challenger.
A-coding we will go, hi ho the derry-o.The ESA has no manned rockets. The rockets in use are all different types of Ariane and unmanned. There were plans for an European space shuttle ("Hermes", IIRC) but it got discontinued.
This does not mean that the ESA has no manned space program at all, they just send their astronauts up in cooperation with Russia (to MIR) and with NASA (e.g. the Spacelab module was an European project and twice in space with the Space Shuttle). They also contribute one module to the ISS.
The Sovjets did most of their early space missions (or, better, attempts) in secret and never told the public about failures and deaths. But they had it a lot easier in hiding rocket starts / explosions with their vast uninhabited lands. Censoring took care of the rest. For them dying in an attempt to reach space was obviously not a heroic thing.
The other way round: the speed of sound in thin air is slower. It nature it is fastest at sea level and a hell of a lot faster in solid objects. Think of it this way: in low density the molecules have to travel a long way to hit the next molecules in order to transfer sound.
It's winter down there. Dark, bad weather, is the risk to the aircraft crew and to the woman justified? vs. waiting until flying conditions are safer? There is a difference between a serious situation and an emergency situation.
Not true. NASA had one man accidentally exposed to near vacuum on earth during a space suit test (he is fine). They also have a web page on medical implications of vacuum exposure (sorry, don't have the URL handy right now).
Actually, for foaming to occur this would require extreme loss of pressure *inside* your body. This would require that your body increases its volume quite much. We know our bodies aren't inflatable balloons, they would explode and we know they don't explode.
Not because governments are too nice to do that kind of thing. It's a matter of how they're going to keep a lid on it. Everyone at Mission Control would know immediately that there was a problem. There would be a number of radio exchanges before it was determined that the problem was insoluble. The Soviets, at least, and probably most of the industrial nations of the would would have been monitoring voice and telemetry to the best of their ability. Ditto for amateur radio operators, and probably some observatories.
Pulling this stunt and not keeping a lid on it would have been a PR disaster beyond imagining, and I can't imagine that they would be able to keep a lid on it.
But then again maybe Tricky Dick habitually overestimated his skill at coverups...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> (Armstrong was dangerously low on fuel when he landed; Another minute more, and he would have had to abort the landing)
They actually landed 20 seconds before they had to abort.
This sounds a bit stupid to me (or maybe it is just misreported). But how the hell can someone fall towards the sun just by skipping off the atmosphere? It takes one hell of energy to get to escape velocity, that sure doesn't happen to you by accident.
A shuttle doesn't reach "our part" of the atmosphere until it's going much slower than mach 25. And when it is going mach 25, the waves don't reach the ground with significant energy.
-Imperator
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Yeah. However Russians had the first robot systems roaming in a foreign planet. Also don't forget that they made a lot more in Space than Americans. Besides until recently they were the only nation having a space station.
On Moon race what was creepy is that both Americans and Russians were running over the weels. Each one tried to overcome the other. In this race Americans had three astronauts cooked inside of the capsule. Also Russians had almost 100 guys vaporized by the blast of a rocket.
That's what's creepy. Telling about who's best on space technology is quite hard. Both nations have a lot of things that overcome each other. But making races in behalf of "I'm better than you" is what lead to most of the mistakes and tragedies.
On Apollo 1 tragedy many talk aboutthe speeding up of the work. On the Russian moon rocket's blast many talk about exactly the same thing.
Please remind that Moon race was a political game. That's why Russians didn't go to the Moon. That's why the Congress cut the program after a few missions. And that's why all the Space race is turned to a swamp. Do you want to get to Mars? Forget it! Until some dirty politicians don't start fighting on "I'm better than you, you bastard!" we will have to contempt ourselves with a few automatic stations, some popcorn, Coca-Cola and StarWars...
and while on the island they find a small bottle with Barbra Eden in it; they let her out and call her 'Genie' and she calls them 'Master' - "But Major Heely..."
...
Nice movie plot, with maybe an American Prez who will sacrifice anyone or anything to maintain a + public relations image
But, as mentioned, Apollo 13 was a 'successful failure' - don't think a mission can realistically return from lunar orbit w/o ground control assistance.
Also, there was in the news recently a blurb about a downed commercial aircraft w/ black box recordings of the last minutes/seconds of the cockpit crew that was not going to be released to the public out of respect for the crew, it was just too personal.
Chuck
This is tranquility base last transmission, over and out, earth.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Well, they do now....
When I was watching the John Glen launch, they showed the guys waring them, and said they always did now, after chalenger. They didn't wear them in '85
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I wasn't aware (or at least don't remember) any Russian cosmonauts dying in space. There were at least one instance of cosmonauts being killed during their return. Remember that the Russians didn't have access to any large bodies of water -- at least none that weren't filled with nasty ice floes -- and landed on land. Now that's an engineering feat I'm not sure I'd like to experience.
BTW, that's STS Challenger, not SST. The STS carries astronauts into space; the SST carries rich people between New York and Paris.
From all the accounts I've read, a Saturn rocket launch sounded something like a volcanic eruption what with the noise and the ground shaking. I doubt any clandestine launches would be possible.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
What the hell are you doing? Don't you know you can't have a spelling flame that doesn't have a spelling eror in it?
--
This is not my sandwich.
My understanding of the situation is that it is not dangerous or risky, but flat out impossible to land an aircraft this time of year at the South Pole.
I'm dead certain the USAF would fly a mission for this if it were remotely possible - but to send multi-million airchine and crew to certain doom? Please.
>I wonder if the HAM operators
would have been able to talk to them.
I remeber speaking to a HAM operator years ago and he claimed to have heard something like this that had happened to the russians. Stranded in orbit due to a malfuntion.
Just a small point, JFK wasn`t assasinated on live TV because they didn`t know he was going to be shot (Or did they };-).
LHO was the first person killed on live TV.
Looks like someone at the BBC decided that there is enough secrecy (or just aging memories) shrouding the details of the lunar mission (contingency plans and such), then they watched Armageddon (which would've been much more tolerable without the sap angle), and decided to have some fun.
Some types of research are still simply to costly to be done for profit, even though it will give tremendous benefits in the long run.
I think his point was who gets to reap the benefits? Answer: The company that is in a position to take the quickest advantage of the information that comes out of the space program. So, we taxpayers are funding major research that will be used by corporations to create stuff that we will have to pay for again. What did they put up? What did they risk? Nada. Where is the payback for us? What do we get out of our tax dollars?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
But they wouldn't reach escape velocity by accident. Sure they skipped off but earth's gravity would pull them back eventually, letting them burn up in an uncontrolled fall into the atmosphere (in the worst case).
The flight recorder was retrieved and had recordings of them screaming after the explosion - pretty conclusive evidence they were alive I'd say.
This is all commmon knowledge. A book was released in the late eighties called "Challenger: A major malfunction". Even more interesting in the book is the fact that NASA had a safety meeting about the effect of the frost on the O rings, they knew that this might happen!
I read in Challenger:A major malfunction that some of the emergency oxygen cylinders were used which suggests that some were conscious.
I guess the problem is that there was very little for them to do but wait for the inevitable. Even if they opened the hatch they didnt have a parachute so they could not escape.
Hmm.
I'm not arguing that this is supersoinc, but realize that the speed of sound varies with air pressure.
At 100,000 feet elevation, the air is so thin that if you were to jump out of your (whatever goes this high.. I dunno), and fall, (you'd need a pressure suit to keep from freezing...), your shirt wouldn't even flutter in the wind, and you would very quickly attain speeds of over 600MPH.
The speed of sound in rarified air is very fast, afiak.
And the space program would be killed not because of mission failure and lost life, but because of NASA's cold-hearted attitude
Either that, or, the goverment would argue with the masses that it was in the best interest of the astronauts, as they would be proud to have served their country with honor and died in valor for the cause of furthering the human race (which would have been the biggest piece of crap). I'll bet they'd have even invented some kind of fancy medal to give them too... while the rest of us were tortured by the horrors of the poor men, the government would have continued research, hoping to develop a working lunar module (which they would test with more helpless human subjects!)
Insert mind here.
Yeah, but if Huston turned off the astronauts' radio...
> I was under tremendous pressure and eventually I > did what I was told. I am ashamed.
You are not ashamed enough. You should be thinking about this in a prison cell, between shifts at hard labor, staring at your supervisor
in his cell.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
For goodness' sake, it was a failure plan! When they have no more to say, close down communications.
Some people see conspiracies everywhere...
(Next thing people are going to start claiming Yuriy Alexeievich Gagarin wasn't the first man into space.)
-- Hi! I'm the "Good Times" signature virus. Copy me into your Sig!
An interesting question for any physics geeks here: how fast would the capsule have to skip for escape velocity from the sun?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
'the astronauts were not aware'
So what were they going to do if they got stranded? slowly freeze and/or suffocate while mission control simply turns off the radio?
The movie Contact gave me the impression that astronauts had a secret suicide pill just in case. Of course, you can't believe the movies. Suicide sort of goes against 'the american way' though, so I'd imagine the government would
A: tell an outright lie about a glorious, quick and violent death,
or B: romanticize the sacrifice while glazing over the details
And if in fact the stranded astronauts did NOT have suicide pills, what might they have done? Going for a moonwalk without a spacesuit comes to mind...
Why was this post (whic you probably can't see) moderated down? The poster has a valid point in regard to the thread at hand.
Please moderate it back up to at least "0".
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
O.J. Simpson starred as an astronaut. Its subject was a faked Mars mission, not a moon mission.
Lansdowne
There is a supposed transcript of the tape at:
http://www.blurofinsanity.com/challeng er.html
There is absolutely no way I can confirm the truth of this, maybe someone else can?
There probably were many astronauts who died in space whose deaths were never revealed to the public. Who knows how many astronauts/cosmonauts died prior to the first _televised_ landing?
The people probably would not stand for sending men to perish on the moon on the taxpayers' bill - it's not good public relations. Nixon's speech would have been the best propaganda to ensure NASA's bloated budget had the mission failed.
Anonymous Bovine
true liberty - http://www.lp.org
real public policy - http://www.cato.org
The Avro Arrow was the number one military aircraft of the time - but our very own John Deifenbaker (responsible for the Deifenbunker and the Deifendollar in Canada) said "we don't need that! that's too expensive!" and all 10 Arrow's built were cut up for scrap and the instructions and documents on building it were destroyed. If you are looking for a conspiracy theory grab this and run with it.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
I'm reading into this that NASA and Nixon
were planning to lie to the world and say
that communications had been cut due to
a technical failure; they wouldn't have
been able to defend just turning off the
radio.
Does this mean that the astronauts would
have been denied a chance to say goodbye
to their families, or be comforted while they died?
That's positively inhuman.
Whatever you say about a loss of privacy,
at least the information age has brought
about greater government accountability.
----
Hey, wait a second. Back then they were
probably using ordinary, unscrambled radio
to communicate. I wonder if the HAM operators
would have been able to talk to them.
-Loopy
Why cut off communications? I mean, it seems cruel and almost evil to not let the guys talk to their families or to any human beings in the last moments of their lives.
Also, almost exactly 30 years from when the landing happened. Is the reason they know about this that the gov't has to release secret stuff after 30 years(I know there's some type of time period after which the gov't declassifies documents).
Thats the funniest comment I've read all day. You almost made me spray coke all over the keyboard (again).
The really funny thing is that you were probably serious. (and before you flame, yeah i read the arthur c clarke book too)
after the crash and they retrieved the bodies from the crew compartment, they were put into blue plastic garbage cans, loaded onto a flatbed truck, and covered with a tarp. Some grainy news photo at the time seem to support this is what happened. Another story goes further and has them being taken away under the cover of darkness. Does anyone remember seeing any hearsts???
Werner Von Braun was a former Nazi, for cryin' out loud, and had been in charge of slave labor while in charge of the V2 rocket program. You really think he spent too much time worrying about the feelings of his astronauts?
On the other hand, he was just the man to get the U.S. to the moon. Think about it. When you want something done, do you want Mr. Rogers to be in charge? The job required somebody ruthless, and Werner was the man for the job.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Who is to say astronauts didn't get stranded on the moon? NASA could :)
have made up the rest of several of the voyages in a studio. For all
you know, NASA established a permanent base and left astronauts behind
on purpose!
All my life, the moon shots have been the subject of television
commercials. I appreciate the enormity of these events, but when I
see an astronaut bounding along to surface of the moon, luxury cars
and life insurance spring to mind.
Look, what the hell would you expect NASA to do in such a situation?
Stranded astronauts begging for help which would never arrive while
they run out of air is not how you, me or any of the thousands of
people involved in those projects would want them to be remembered.
Frankly, I am forever amazed by the fact that no one did die on the
moon. Fretting over NASA's contingency plans for the very likely
possibility of someone being stranded on the moon is the sort of naive
ignorance that provides millions of lawyers with gainful employment.
Perhaps it provides an incite into the reasons why, after thirty some
odd years, we haven't made it any further.
In short, those of you who feel a chill crawl up your spine when you
consider these matters; grow up. Sometimes people in hopeless
situations have to be left behind or put down. I am certain that if
NASA's horrible plot was known to the astronauts before hand not one
would have hesitated to go anyhow.
TopSpin
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
NOVA on PBS had a show on what the Russian moon landing plans was. They had video of the prototype moon lander. There are steam trains that looked more modern. That's what is creepy. I am glad that their program was iced. It would have been bad to see something like that fly. I could be wrong on it's space worthiness, but it looked scary to me.
You're overreacting. Sure the BBC will put a little spin on the "ha ha" human interest stories but for unbiased serious news coverage they can't be beat. Remember, they are an independent body paid out of public funds and do not rtake any advertising revenue; and they have a charter which enforces their impartiality. Several times they have even stood up to the UK government when the latter has tried to bring them under political control.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I would imagine that there is MORE of this going on then the BBC article suggests, especially the high profiles stuff like "first American in Space", "First American in Orbit", "First Man on the Moon", "First Manned Mission to Mars", and eventually "First Manned Mission out of the gravitational dominance of the Sun."
And believe me, those brave souls MUST be thinking, or even knowing, that they might not come back.
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
. . .from several years back. I believe it first appeared in one of the tabs! The Weekly World News or The Star, I can't remember which one, but that's where *I* first saw it. It struck me then and still does as Grade A Phonus Bolonus, but you never know. . . --------------------------------------------------
The fact that this story is from a foreign news agency not an american one doesn't really suprise me.. anyone else?
-neil
This could have saved the space program.. not killed it. Think about it. Just reading nixon's prepared speech even gave me a little patriotic twinge. Sure, there'd be alot of furor about it at first, but those 3 men would have become symbols of human bravery.. giving their lives for the country and their race to the spirit of exploration. It's a morbid thought, but had it happened we'd probably have landed on mars by now.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
The astronauts of Apollo 11 circle the moon once, twice, then the lunar module implodes. No one was in it yet, they could still abort the landing, fire the rockets and head home. But Houston says ditch them. They cut the communications.
... but the crew burns anyway. They fly towards Earth, splash into the Pacific, wash onto the shores of a small island. After convincing the locals what they're up to, they gain return flights to the United States where the government has told everyone they're dead.
Talk about being abandoned by your country.
During the early 80's that community was a tight family. There was excitement and pride. The piggybacked shuttle would do a victory lap around Clear Lake on its treck back from Edwards AFB to Kenedy Space Center. All the local schools would have televisions in classrooms and common areas so that students from that NASA community could watch that month's launch. Everything was becoming routine.
Students watched the Challenger launch from hallways and classrooms at Clear Lake Highschool. There was a sudden explosion. The entire school went deadly quiet. A few seconds passed. The shocked silence was broken by the wails of students who realized they had just watched their parents die on national television.
The torment was just beginning.
Clear Lake was beseiged by reporters. The local police force was mobilized to try and provide some privacy to horrified family members of the astronauts who had just died. But the reporters were tenacious; they were caught climbing into windows and even taking pictures into bathrooms. Clear Lake Highschool was forced to close for a week because of the disruptions caused by the press. And when it did re-open, the children of the slain astronauts fled there; the press didn't allow them the privacy to greive at home.
The press learned that NASA had copies of supposed transmissions from the shuttle during the incident. NASA had found the wreckage of the crew compartment. There were also body parts found by the disaster recovery crew. But the recordings, the wreckage, and the associated carnage were closed off to the media. The media howled. They would have their sound bites and shocking pictures! But NASA insisted on the dignity of the deceased and weathered all complaints. The press were denied.
How dare you call this a case of government coverup! This was a case of people trying to preserve the dignity of their friends, family, and the familys of those people who died.
You want something to get upset about? There's plenty of real issues involved with the Challenger incident.
Go after the media hounds who's appetite for sound bites drove them to invade grieving family members' privacy. Criticize inaccurate reporting as media organizations fumbled facts in an attempt to scoop competitors.
Criticize the American public's shock when they realized space travel, at least with current technology, is anything but a safe, routine function.
But mostly... go after the administration of NASA. Be critical of the leadership that very possibly squandered the entire future of a program that strove towards mankind's next great exploration endeavor.
Dig into why warnings were ignored. How politics played a more important role than technical considerations. And look very hard at the internal "machine" that was generated to keep this status quo functional.
Finally, and most importantly, ask... does that machine still exist today?
The deceased don't have the answers to these questions. Raising their spector does not serve the interest of truth.
Of course the reports eventually give a fuller account, but what people remember (a.k.a. "The Truth" or "Reality") is the made-for-TV solemn announcements.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
However, the power and meaning of an outcome does not always come from its reason for obtaining it. It's the end of the 1960's; not merely a decade was it but a cultural revolution. America seemed to have been attacked from everywhere: the Vietnam war, the Soviet Union and it's allies threatening the US with nuclear technology, China - against us but not quite with our enemies, and all the way down to the youth who discarded their parents' ways. When masses huddled around their bright TV screens, what do you think they were thinking? Do you think they were thinking about how the Vietnam war was proceeding? Or whether or not they would soon meet their nuclear destruction? Perhaps about how wicked and defiant their children were? I'm sure all of these in addition to the fact that we were "beating" the Russians came into mind, but for a few brief moments, the gathered held their breaths as the men landed and stepped on the moon, with Neil Armstrong poorly uttering obviously rehearsed words. It was magical and inspiring. What was in peoples' minds was the fact that mankind had stepped beyond his creation and ventured into another world. We took something that was infinitely beyond our reach, and shared the experience with the world. The government got what they wanted, but the people got something amazing and priceless. No matter the reason, the experience changed the world forever.
Perhaps in their last hours they would have liked to speak to their families, or their families to them, before they got to the point of their last breaths.
Relativity's acting up again: We're both right. In free fall, both they and their surroundings accelerate at ~1 G, which means they have 0 G relative to the cabin. On terminal velocity, their surroundings stop accelerating (0 G), while they're still subjected to the ~1 G.
LIKE>>> SPACE MADNESS!!!!!
I don't think it's justified to assume that the
plan was to cut communications at the first hint
of trouble.
Most likely they would have been allowed to say
their goodbyes to their families, in as much
privacy as could be afforded with the comm loops
they had at the time (probably the surgeon's
channel). But only after all efforts at
troubleshooting and repairing the problem had
been exhausted. It's probable that these efforts
would continue until the last possible window for
rendezvous with the command module.
At that point, of course, they would terminate
communications and allow the crew to die in peace.
What you wouldn't have would be a bunch of
reporters trying to ask them inane questions
about what it feels like to die a quarter-million
miles from home.
Personally, if I were stranded in the LM with only
a couple hours of O2 left, I'd see how far I could
hike on what was left in my suit...
I advise everybody to take information from the BBC with a grain of salt.
While the BBC used to enjoy a good reputation when it came to news, it looks like it's now drifting the way of the British paper press, that is, to tabloid-like "information".
For a precise example: the BBC had a story, linked here on Slashdot, saying that the French Government, disapproving of the use of the Greenwich meridian instead of the Paris one as reference, was organizing the plantation of olive groves and a mass picnic along the meridian. This was bogus. This nevertheless generated 200 comments here.
So, until some serious press gives an independent report on this, I'd not believe in this too much.
And if nasa had decided to try to rescue the astronauts:
So I hope that now we are realizeing how INCREDIBLY impossible it would be for nasa go on a rescue mission.
So what does nasa do? Like i said in the begining. The astronauts "disappear". Nasa whips up some story about the eagle getting off the surface of the moon and being hit by a piece of rock just before it docs up with the rest of the space ship.
Now don't tell me this has never been thought up before. Have you ever seen "CONTACT" the movie? In the movie (and maybe the book, i never read it) the female astronaut who is traveling through the galaxy is givin a suicide pill, so that she can kill herself if worst comes to worst.
Now don't make me seem anal but I'm sure this is the policy with russia. As most of us have figured out by now, more cosmonauts go into space than come back. Well, I'm sure your're asking, where do these cosomonauts go?
They disappear!!!!!
(it is not a new idea, most of us have know this for years, it's just now that the government tells us.)
Sorry, even kevlar doesn't have the strength to weight ratio needed. I've seen some estimates that some REALLY exotic materials could be used, namely Buckytubes, but those materials are only available in really good labs. It will be a LONG time before a space elevator is technically feasible, but the shear monetary boom one would allow should help funding along nicely.
One of their three-manners got stranded up in orbit and they didn't tell anyone. It's a bit morbid, but I wonder if they're still up there, and if it wouldn't be worth it eventually to retrieve them for a proper burial? (Not that anyone can afford that now... certainly not Russia.)
-Imperator
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
I read a Sci-Fi short story many years ago set in :)
the days of the space age's infancy. An astronaut
was trapped in orbit and the whole world was following
his plight. Listening to his broadcasts from
orbit and hanging on his ever word. The public
sentiment is so strong that government decides, "screw it - we must rescue that man at any cost or be flayed alive by the people"
So it's all hands on deck - and new space ships
are built. Bigger and better and faster than was
ever possible before. Resources are suddenly no obstical and the space program races ahead. The man is rescued and the space program is on a firm footing to explore the solar system.
The stinger - there was never any man trapped in space. Just a recording on a satalite put there by a struggling space agency to whip up support for a fledging space program that would have otherwise been killed off. I wish I could remember the name of the story.
... with eskimo chains i tatto my brain all the way...
This has already been done with the Challenger disaster. Despite the impressive pictures of the explosion, most of the "smoke" was water vapor. The crew of the Challenger were not killed in the explosion. The shuttle remained largely intact and only broke apart on impact of falling into the ocean. The crew were conscious until they hit the water. Radio communication was ongoing for several seconds after the explosion and NASA has refused to release the tapes. The screams of terror they hold are said to be horrifying. And NASA has refused to show photographs of the remains that were recovered because they are too horrific. From the start, NASA tried to cover up. And remember it was NASA who demanded that the launch go ahead despite the advice by lower level MT engineers.
It's consistent with the official statements about the Apollo 204 pad fire - it sounds much more heroic and clean to hear that Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom and Ed White were "killed instantly" rather than struggled for a minute to open the hatch before the hull ruptured.
Or Challenger - it's more heroic to think that they went up with a flame than to know the truth - the damaged orbiter, passenger compartment virtually intact flew for a few more minutes in a ballistic trajectory until it crashed into the water. The astronauts died on impact.
This patronizing attitude from governments officials who think they know better about what we should or shouldn't be allowed to know about what is being done with our money is certainly not as strong as it was 30 years ago, but it's still with us.
In a way, I can understand them, tough. They were trying to protect their budgets which depended on public image. And these budgets did send my childhood heroes into orbit and to the moon...
P.S. NASA's budget, adjusted for inflation, is almost at big as it was at the peak of the Apollo program.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Let me cite:
Plot Outline: A NASA Mars mission won't work, and its funding is endangered, so they decide to fake it just this once. But then they have to keep the secret..
One of my all-time favourites.
And it got even more weird after the OJ Simpson trial (OJ played one the astronauts).
Do you really want to hear their screams of terror? Or see their remains, that hit the water at some incredible force? Why do you want to see this stuff? Do you think there's some big conspiracy, that they really revealed government secrets right after the explosion? Have some respect for these people and their families. This is not entertainment.
-Imperator
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
'These radio waves were picked up by HAM radio operators, who I guess used to listen in regularly.'
Oh, yes. The electronics magazines were full of stuff on what bands were used for which parts of a mission, how to build and aim your antenna, etc. (That is, for U.S. missions. I dunno how much was known about the Soviet comm.s.)
IIRC they used something slightly odd, like Double SideBand, for the moon voice link, but there were plenty of amateurs who worked hard to pick it up and make sense of it, and I think quite a number succeeded.
I think the most NASA could have done would be to cut off the direct feeds to the news agencies, so that the story would trickle out slowly and could be managed somewhat.
Now that I think about it, it would've looked odd to say "we came in peace for all Mankind" and then scramble the voice channel.
Better to take a look at some requirements and specifications for new technologies and weaponry. StarWars was not BS. It was madness. Not the first and not the last I may say.
You know there are some people wishing to hunt for the "ultimate weapon". It may look crazy but these guys seem to have some good positions over power positions in some countries.
If you read the story on how F-111 was created you may see that StarWars is just one more step of this madness
One thing I found offensive about that article is the bit at the end where they refer to Michael Collins as "the crew member that did not take part in the lunar landing".
Shee-it, that bugs me for some reason. If he didn't take part in it, how the heck did Neil and Buzz get back?
In my view, Michael Collins deserves as much respect as Neil and Buzz, and its truly a shame that future generations will not be educated in the skill, professionalism, patience and understanding it took for him to be able to look down on the moon, oh so close, and do his job so that Neil and Buzz could do theirs too.
This is a perfect opportunity for media to teach humility and respect for true professionalism, yet it's missed every time.
Shee-it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
ORGANIZATIONS/PEOPLE INVOLVED
Larry Mulloy - challenged the engineers' decision not to launch
Morton Thiokol - Contracted by NASA to build the Solid Rocket Booster
Alan McDonald - Director of the Solid Rocket Motors Project
Bob Lund - Engineering Vice President
Robert Ebeling - Engineer who worked under McDonald
Roger Boisjoly - Engineer who worked under McDonald
Joe Kilminster - Engineer in a management position
Jerald Mason - Senior executive who encouraged Lund to reassess his decision not to launch.
KEY DATES
1974 - Morton-Thiokol awarded contract to build solid rocket boosters.
1976 - NASA accepts Morton-Thiokol's booster design.
1977 - Morton-Thiokol discovers joint rotation problem.
November 1981 - O-ring erosion discovered after second shuttle flight.
January 24, 1985 - shuttle flight that exhibited the worst O-ring blowby.
July 1985 - Thiokol orders new steel billets for new field joint design.
August 19, 1985 - NASA Level I management briefed on booster problem.
January 27, 1986 - night teleconference to discuss effects of cold temperature on booster performance.
January 28, 1986 - Challenger explodes 72 seconds after liftoff.
Perhaps you're thinking of the F-117? The F-111 is a pretty standard fighter/bomber, carries a decent payload but isn't widely used because it doesn't have carrier deck landing capability. I remember Tom "Read a Jane's Guide and I'm an Expert" Clancy's _Red Storm Rising_ mentioning the bogus F-19, as well as the original F-19 stealth fighter game (which was actually kind of fun) before it was patched to be the F-117.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
It's rather hard to hide a rocket launch.
(btw, there were some Russian deaths on rentry,
but they are well documented.)
John
Arthur Clarke, meet Larry Niven. Larry has this Sinclair Monofilament that would be great for a sequel to _The Fountains of Paradise_....
I don't see what the problem is with this. Everyone seems to be saying "It's so unfair" and the like. Surely if *you* were going on the *first* flight to the moon, you would realise that if something went wrong, not a lot could be done for you. Common sense, surely.
Just because it isn't nice doesn't make it wrong.
By the way, does anyone have the URL of the original memo ?
I remember hearing a CBC radio program about the Cosmonauts unlucky enough to die slowly in space. These radio waves were picked up by HAM radio operators, who I guess used to listen in regularly. On the CBC program they played one of these recordings, a russian voice. It was incredibly creepy to listen to the recordings of someone dying in space. I am thinking NASA knew all about how well something like this would play with THEIR astronauts.
left-handed, albino, stenographers
IIRC
chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
Sorry, but in so technical a project, pressure is not a valid excuse for ignoring technical issues.
It's precisely that sort of muddled thinking that places managers above engineers in our society, as if somehow their "ability" to ignore facts were a positive thing instead of an ineptitude.
Whether they be in Morton Thiokol, in NASA, in MacDonalds or in the Whitehouse, managers that override solid technical advice for social, political or economic reasons are basically inept, not skilled, and the less impact they have on the rest of us the better. People shouldn't have to die to hammer this lesson home.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Hearing this doesnt surprise me, our government is likely to cover up just about anything that would make them look bad or make them go out of their way.
However, although highly unlikely, it would have been cool to see how long they could survive out there.
- "My name is Legion, for we are many" -Mark 5:9
What was the alternative? A rescue mission? The technology wasn't up to it. But dwelling on it would have led to pressure to mount such a mission --- which wouldn't have been possible. It would have been a disaster, and not just a PR disaster.
Yes, it sounds cold and callous. But read "The Cold Equations" to find out why it had to be that way. (Quick summary: the universe doesn't give a flying fart about human sensibilities, and cares even less about breast-beating over the unfairness of it all.)
NB: that doesn't mean we should give up on human sensibilities. It *does* mean that sometimes we lose, and there isn't anything to be done about it.
-- brandon s. allbery, sysadmin @ cmu electrical & computer engineering "Think, youth, THINK!"
Nobody has said they would have been denied a chance to say good-bye to their families. Don't read into this more than is in the article.
The mission controllers in Houston worked with the astronauts for months/years before the mission took place. _Nobody_ was going to just "turn-off the radio" before they had exhausted _every_ possible alternative.
This was an _absolute_, _final_, _last-resort_, _contingency_ plan.
Just because you make a will doesn't mean you intend to kill yourself.
I remember reading a while back (20 yrs?) that Russia's first astronauts were convicts with death sentences: the space program offered them a pardon if they returned safely to earth..
Also, there was this movie called "The Capricorn (Factor?)" where NASA plans a manned landing on MARS, broadcasts doctored images on TV, keeps the austronauts locked up, and "kills" them in a "sad accident" on live TV as the landing module takes off from Mars. Of course, they had to kill the austronauts on Earth to hush this up as well, but they get out and reach Arlington Cemetary as the President was giving his sad speech.
I wonder what Nasa people thought who knew about the Lunar landing contigency plan and saw this movie?
Having said all that, it actually makes sense, and I am sure Armstrong & Aldrin knew about this. I don't know what the lunar launch window is, but I am sure a new one would not have come up before the air ran out.
Following on from the link given above,
http://onlineethics.org/moral/ boisjoly/RB-intro.html
it would be good to know the names of the Morton Thiokol managers that repeatedly overrode Roger Boisjoly's detailed technical presentations on the flaws in the O-rings and decided to launch Challanger despite overwhelming reasons not to do so. In a sane world, those managers would be criminals.
Those same paper pushers are now probably making equally clueless judgements in other major corporations. Should we not be told their names so that we can stay clear of their next disaster?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The White House insisted the shuttle go up because President Reagan was to deliver his "State of the Union" speach. Ronnie would have had to ad-lib the script if Challenger hadn't launched. That was too much trouble for the old geezer.
:)
That's the media...
Poor Collins is a "minor part" of the mission. He worked like Hell during the whole thing but that does not matter for these people. Not him nor Mission Control nor all the people that made it reality.
They didn't leave their footprints on the Moon so they mean "nothing". It's the typical media stereotype. The Hero made it. And it seems this the reason why Neil Armstrong hates journalists. He just does not want them to turn him into another "media star". Apollo's team was not there filming Holywood footage.
What i took from it is that Neil/Buzz didn't know the EXACT plan. But be assured they were prepared not to return home.
Nope. The F-111. I'll try to make a resume of what Pentagon wished it to be. Remember it was 1958:
All weather
Vertical or short lift-off
Landing at maximum speed!!!! (Yeah higher than sound barrier)
The first two could be called "challenging". But the third one...
When (nobel prize winning physicist, the discoverer of QCD amongst other things) Richard Feynman investigated the challenger explosion, he found that very specifically it was known inside NASA that the O-ring seals were not functional at too low a temperature.
:)
The engineers specified the lowest temperature the shuttle should fly at as being 53'F. On the day the challenger crew died, the temperature was 29'F. At his report to the commission, Feynman's rather low-tech demonstration of the O-ring material's behaviour was to put a piece of it into a glass of ice water, and show how it would not spring back to shape when deformed - as a seal should do.
Anyone interested in a very detailed story of what NASA knew should read Feynman's book: "What Do You Care What Other Poeple Think?". Feynman was one of the most brilliant people to live this century, as well as being a very interesting individual
Why did NASA prepare specifically for the event that the lander module might not lift off from the moon?
Were there reasons to believe that it might not function as planned, any more than other components of the entire mission? It seems to me that a more likely event would have been a malfunction during landing causing a crash, or a re-entry/spashdown accident of some sort. If one is going go to the trouble of preparing for a specific disaster scenario, one is usually going to prepare for the most likely disaster.
Is there something inherent to the design of the lander that raised some uncertainty about its abiliy to lift off from the moon?
What about all the amateur radio operators. Tens of thousands where picking up the astronots on their own equipment.
There are 10 type of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
i found another one but its not completely on line...
o cs/rogers-commission/table-of-contents.htm l
http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/d
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