Re: Light Ping GA

Grizzlie Antagonist (lloydsofhanford@xxxxxxxxx) writes:
On May 3, 9:45 pm, d...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Andre Lieven) wrote:
Grizzlie Antagonist (lloydsofhanf...@xxxxxxxxx) writes:

Hey, Griz, any thoughts on my rather longish missive on Apollo, et al ?

:-)

Andre

Andre, you've overwhelmed me with your knowledge.

I am but a force for good in my time... <g>

Just one thing -- the argument that flights to the moon haven't become
more frequent over the years because Congress lost interest in them
after the Cold War ended is still unsatisfying.

I agree, I am not happy that that is what happened. But, it is.
If you look at NASA's budgets of the time, you will find that
the cuts started in FY 1967. Thats before the first manned Apollo
flight, never mind the first landing.

The film of Apollo 13 was quite accurate in portraying a total
lack on interest in the flight by the networks, until it became a
made for TV life and death drama. Congresscritters could read what
that meant to them.

The Internet was also a Cold War invention, but it flourished
obviously in the aftermath of the Cold War. I'm not intimately
acquainted with its history, but as I understand it, private
entrepreneurs took DOD technology and made it into a consumer
product. That's probably a gross oversimplification of what actually
happened, but that's my imperfect understanding of it.

Its close enough to be fine. The thing is that, thirty plus years
after Apollo, the only area of space where the private sector does
well enough is comsat operations and technology. Because the money
that is made there isbig enough to pay for the expenses of the
satellites and their still fairly expensive expendable launchers.

Notwithstanding your observations about space travel being cutting
edge technology, the same thing would have been said about the
Internet not all that long ago. Obviously, the development of
technology has been going on at a breathtaking pace. I remember being
utterly fascinated in 1995 at being able to access the world at 3000
bps.

Indeed. Note what I said about the environments of space operations.
Those are major points, and they utterly don't apply to anything
Internet.

One small point on this, is to note that spaceworthy computers tend
to be several generations behind Earthbound ones, because, while
spacebound computers fly inside of spacecraft, so do not have to
deal with 4000 degree temperatures, they do have to be hardened
against high G loads on launch, and higher than on Earth radiation
environments. More so on unmanned probes, but still relevent to
computers flown on the Space Shuttle.

Surely, there's also enough private money out there and enough
consumer interest to fund the advancement of space travel.

No. not yet. Because the returns on it are, at this point, several
orders of magnitude below the threshold costs of entry, which are
freakin' *huge*. NASA spends some 15-16 *billion* a year now.
Next to that, Paul Allen's or Bill Gates' fortunes are chump
change.

So if DOD
technology leading to the creation of the World Wide Web was made
available to the public in the aftermath of the Cold War -- when? In
the late 80's/early 90's? - why isn't space age technology also being
made available and where are the Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs of the
travel industry to harness it?

Because their technology could be begun in a garage. Spaceworthy gear
cannot be. Period.

Also, what's the real story with the lady in Australia who is supposed
to have seen the astronauts kicking a Coke bottle across what was
portrayed as the surface of the moon? I know that you disagree with
the notion that the "moon hoax" conspiracy stories are "fun", but I
always enjoyed that story.

There are a lot of such stories, but they are all utterly fiction.

I know that that's one of the urban legends of the "moon hoax"
theory. I assume that you are familiar with it. What's your
understanding of the real story?

Someone flat out made it up out of nothing.

The sad thing about all this, to me, is that the true stories of
the First Space Age are plentiful and interesting enough, without
any need for kludgy fictional crap tales. Who could make up Al
Shepard hitting golf balls on the Moon ?

I'll give you an early one. You might know, or recall, that the
six Mercury one man flights each had an actual name, and not just
a flight number. John Glenn's was Friendship Seven, for example.

Now, Gus Grissom's ship sank, after splashdown, and he came
uncomfortably close to drowning, before he was fished out of the
Atlantic. When he was named the Commander of the first manned
two man Gemini flight, Gemini 3, he informed NASA that he was
planning to name it " The Unsinkable Molly Brown ". When NASA
balked at that name, and asked for another choice, he offered
" Titanic ".

They went with " Molly Brown ". But, the rest of the Gemini
program, astronauts were not given leave to personally name
their ships, and that stuck until necessity during Apollo, when
there would be two different mnned craft per flght ( Command
Module, and Lunar Module ) required them to have two separate
names.

They started whimsically, with Apollo 9's being " Gumdrop "
and " Spider ", as thats what the craft each looked like.
Apollo 10, " Snoopy " and " Charlie Brown ". And, so on.

Read the books I mentioned, and the Chaikin one will give
you plenty of true tales of brave and great men. Watch the
HBO miniseries, and I think that you will appreciate the
camraderie among the astronauts, especially the Apollo 12
crew, who were such good buddies that they even went out and
got three mtching Corvettes, all in gold colour, and each
one had stenciled on the driver's door the abbreviation for
their respective crew positions on the flight. Pete Conrad's
( The not that long ago biography of his would also make
fine reading, Pete was cool. ) was CDR., for commander.

The real history is so much better than the made up crap.
And, the really relatively unknown history is from the
Soviet side. They did try, but they failed. Theres a neat
book about that, that I believe is now available as a PDF.
( Type the title into Google, and it should turn up. )
" Challenge To Apollo ", by Asif Siddiqi, originally
published by NASA. I have a hardcover copy, of course. <g>

Andre

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