Saturn V Apollo 11 launch

[Abletile]

I have just watched this fascinating video http://www.wimp.com/saturnlaunch/
I was only eleven years old when man landed on the moon. It still fills me with awe. (unless it was really a massive NASA hoax,  )

Now India is venturing into space, I think that the humanitarian aid that the UK gives India every year should cease and that the UK could use that money to further their space projects!  :D

[Art Blade]

ask Germany. I can't count them, so many countries are on our payroll, and we can't even support our own mandatory health insurance properly. :-D

[fragger]

I was only eleven years old when man landed on the moon. It still fills me with awe. (unless it was really a massive NASA hoax,  )

I was nine, and I agree, it was an awe-inspiring achievement. All considerations of social worth and practicality aside, I think the most impressive aspect of it all was the demonstration of determination of will and the fact that we as human beings can do whatever we set our minds to if we pull together as a species and try. Was it all worth it from an economic standpoint? No. Was it worth it as a demonstration of human potential? Yes.

At the close of the Apollo program, only twenty-four humans had ever seen Earth from deep space - that is, had seen the planet as one finite sphere from a great distance. Today, only twenty of those humans are still living, and they won't be around forever. Those humans were afforded a view of our planet that nobody since has been. Many more people have journeyed into space since the days of Apollo, but not from Skylab, the Space Shuttle or the ISS does anyone get to see the "big picture" - an entire planet hanging in an infinite nothingness. From a distance of "only" a few thousand miles, one doesn't get the same view as one would get from 250,000 miles away. In Earth orbit, only a fraction of the entire planet can be seen at any one time. Only from a lunar distance can one see the entire Earth at a single glance, and it's my belief that if everyone were afforded that view, even if only for a few moments, they would realise just how little politics, nationalities, borders, religious beliefs, money and economics matter. In the end, all that matters is us. We live on a miniscule bubble in an endless cosmic ocean, a planet that could be rendered lifeless at any moment by any number of relatively mundane cosmic events - nearby supernova, gamma-ray burst, cometary or asteroidal impact, all quite everyday occurrences in the universe at large. The men of Apollo saw that delicate fragility of our planet firsthand, and to date they are the only humans who have done so. And not one of those twenty-four who saw that view were unchanged by it.

The days of those witnesses to human transience are numbered. When they inevitably pass away, so will the only humans who have ever seen the big picture with their own eyes.

Abletile, you inadvertently hit a personal nerve of mine with this post :-D I think about this sort of thing a lot - witness my current avatar :) I have been accused by various folks - friends, coworkers, family members, girlfriends - of being a dreamer, of having my head in the clouds. As far as I'm concerned, I'm the realist and they are the dreamers. I know what the reality is. The universe isn't some imaginary construct dreamed up by science-fiction writers, and it's not all "out there" - it's here, we're in it, we're a part of it. There is hardly ever a day goes by that I don't remind myself of where I really am and what the nature of things really is, and it helps me to sort out what really is important and what isn't. I'd rather have my head in the clouds than have it stuck in the sand. And this mindset is all courtesy of Apollo. I belong to the generation that saw it all happen live on television, and I was never the same afterwards. Whenever I'm confronted with problems, I stop and think, "In the greater scheme of things, does this really matter?" and the answer, more often than not, is no, it's not worth worrying about :-D Apollo helped to liberate me from becoming fixated on the trivial and the "down to Earth".

So yeah, the moon landings filled me with awe too :)

Notice that I didn't touch on the hoax theory here. It's because such tall-poppy-felling generational angst-driven sour-grapes claptrap doesn't deserve a mention, so I won't mention it.

[mandru]

This NASA landing on a cratered and pockmarked surface devoid of intelligent life was almost as exciting.  Good old Buzz Aldrin.  A hero rooted in an age when men were men.

Spoiler

Unfortunately butt heads are eternal.

Buzz Aldrin Punch

Hit 'em again Buzz!  Give him one for the rest of us!  Bash him in the moosh!  \:/

I too because of the dreams and hopes that were born in me from NASA's early programs always looked up to something slightly above and far beyond the horizon.


It has occurred to me that even for an old out of shape geezer (like me  ::) ) the punishing G-forces of lift off could easily be negated by suspending a person in an envelope of water.  During liftoff the water would compress (as a diver would experience) but a person suspended in the water could wear an environment suit balanced for air tightness and positive buoyancy where they would always be lighter than the water surrounding them.

There would of course have to be some sort of acoustic insulating mechanics provided to isolate the fluid in the suspension tanks from the hull of the craft.  You would seriously need to keep the ear shattering noise of the rocket boosters during liftoff from being transmitted by sound induction via metal to metal contacts into the crew's suspension water.

While I've not seen specific study on the benefits of positive buoyancy during lift off I do know that there have been several successful Zero G experiments during various missions that have included shallow water tropical fish that appear to have survived liftoffs just fine.  ;)

[fragger]

Interesting, mandru. There was a sci-fi novel, I think it may have been The Forever War by Joe Halderman, in which water cushioning was employed for extremely high-G accelerations, in the very manner that you've speculated upon :-X So good thinking, old bean :-D

During the Apollo program, and a few years before that having seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, I remember thinking to myself that by the year 2000 I'd be able to save up and take a vacation on the moon. Talk about a pipe dream :-() But it could have happened. Arthur C. Clarke once commented during a promotional tour for 2001 that he expected to go to the moon around 1974 because "That's when they'll begin commercial service". So I wasn't the only one with a pipe.

At the time it seemed as though we'd be shooting for the stars in no time, but NASA didn't take into account humanity's propensity for becoming jaded with the extraordinary and cynical towards the noteworthy in such very short order. I'm sure that if an advanced alien race came to live among us, it would only be a matter of months before we'd have derisive nicknames for them and would be thinking up ways to rip them off :-()

I love that clip with Buzz (and your lead-up to it, mandru :-()) I've seen that clip before. The nitwit who was hassling Buzz had it coming to him. That very same twerp had earlier tried the same stunt with Charlie Duke by getting himself admitted to Duke's residence by pretending that he wanted to do a serious interview with the former astronaut about his Apollo experiences, but once inside Duke's place he tried on the same caper as he later did with Aldrin. Duke literally kicked him in the arse and threw him out :-() So about all that idiot has ever achieved is to become famous as a biff bag for Apollo guys ::)

After getting clouted by Aldrin he tried to sue the astronaut for assault, but after seeing the video the judge ruled that since Aldrin was clearly being stalked and harassed, he was within his rights to defend himself and so threw out the case.

[Art Blade]

for once an American judge who got something right.