"The Apollo 12 crew that managed to land the eagle"
It was the Apollo 11 crew (Armstrong/Aldrin) that managed to land the Eagle with less than a minute of fuel remaining.
The Apollo 12 LEM was called Intrepid. It was quite a feat that Conrad & Bean set it down so close to the Surveyor probe. (Not to mention the amazing job done by the mission planners to place them so close to the target!)
You're forgetting the NASA mantra during the Apollo era -- Waste anything but time They threw a lot of money at the problem of putting a man on the moon.
Would you rather NASA spent hours and hours filling out paper saying how many pins they heard drop this week and how many screws they may have put in the test models or would you rather they spent that time improve technology so we can all bugger off this planet?
I suppose it's a matter of perspective. If I'm strapped to the top of a rocket, I want to be sure that every seemingly trivial detail has been documented and double-checked.
By the way, one of the reasons that NASA was able to return to flight so quickly after the Apollo 13 incident was that they were able to go back and determine exactly what had caused the oxygen tank in the SM to explode. In looking back through the "paperwork", they were able to determine that there were two separate events (tank dropped two inches, and relays not updated to new pad voltage reqirements) that contributed to the explosion. By the way, the tank dropping incident happened two years before the crew was named!
In the Apollo days, they used to joke that they weren't ready to launch until the pile of paperwork matched the height of the rocket. (363 feet)
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Thanks for spoiling the ending of the movie for those of us that haven't had a chance to see it yet.
It was the Apollo 11 crew (Armstrong/Aldrin) that managed to land the Eagle with less than a minute of fuel remaining.
The Apollo 12 LEM was called Intrepid. It was quite a feat that Conrad & Bean set it down so close to the Surveyor probe. (Not to mention the amazing job done by the mission planners to place them so close to the target!)
You're forgetting the NASA mantra during the Apollo era -- Waste anything but time They threw a lot of money at the problem of putting a man on the moon.
I suppose it's a matter of perspective. If I'm strapped to the top of a rocket, I want to be sure that every seemingly trivial detail has been documented and double-checked.
By the way, one of the reasons that NASA was able to return to flight so quickly after the Apollo 13 incident was that they were able to go back and determine exactly what had caused the oxygen tank in the SM to explode. In looking back through the "paperwork", they were able to determine that there were two separate events (tank dropped two inches, and relays not updated to new pad voltage reqirements) that contributed to the explosion. By the way, the tank dropping incident happened two years before the crew was named!
In the Apollo days, they used to joke that they weren't ready to launch until the pile of paperwork matched the height of the rocket. (363 feet)
Makes finding files or email messages a breeze.
+1 "Tying the movie The Jerk to the jerk that makes movies" Well done ackthpt!