RIP Neil Armstrong

Skitt knows!

Reply to
Graham.
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of which was not Apollo 11 related.

Notably the blast-off of the LM assent stage taken from the lunar buggy on Apollo 17

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remote camera-work considering the round-trip delay!

Reply to
Graham.

Reply to
ARWadsworth

One can only hope. I had a look at it (for about five minutes). I didn't see any "celebrities" or indeed anyone that I recognised from the media. That seems to repeat the experience of previous runs of the series. I can't see how anyone can sit and watch it.

Reply to
Steve Firth

It was always timed to the split second, but impressive, nonetheless.

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

To be fair (gawd knows why), they're picked for likely instability, to inject some interest for the morons watching.

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

Gay murderers or racial abuse?

Neither will sue me.

Reply to
ARWadsworth

more.

Disgraceful that someone wanted to make money out of the Space Race - unlike all those suppliers, eh?

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

Von Braun wanted a single piece rocket to land on the moon and return to earth. It couldn't be done. What makes you think he had a better approach to Mars? Or was this after the moon landings?

Reply to
dennis

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

(Tom Lehrer)

Reply to
Graham.

I refer you to "Man on the Moon", published 1953. Written by Werher von Braun, Fred L Whipple, Willy Ley.

In this book they explicitly say that a space station should be established in orbit first at 1000 miles up. They're talking about a doughnut shaped object 250ft in diameter. In its vicinity would be built the moonships, designed to land on the Moon and return to Earth orbit. Each would be built as an open structure so that items (such as empty fuel tanks) would be jettisoned after use.

On p.24 they state: "It is commonly believed that man will fly directly from Earth to Moon, but to do this would require a vehicle of such gigantic proportions that it would prove an economic impossibility. ... The figures speak for themselves; each rocket ship would be taller than the Empire State Building (1250ft) and weigh some 800,000 tons."

Reply to
Tim Streater

Oh, certainly. Several orders of magnitude. But I'm curious what it was about the technology - rather than financial or societal problems, say - which would have prevented it from happening. Granted, stuff would presumably have to be assembled in Earth orbit, which certainly would have made it *extremely* hard (it's not like it's easy now, and that's with experience developed over decades to draw on), but e.g. were there materials not discovered then which are absolutely necessary to get the job done, or was the level of on-board computational power needed simply beyond what could be done at the time etc.?

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules Richardson

I'm also wondering about the relative MTBF of the electronic assemblies.

Reply to
Bob Eager

Well, we've had 40 years of materials science since. Also, some new materials that might prove to be better - kevlar, carbon fibre, etc. Even the basics, such as the sealing materials back then - I wouldn't have trusted my life to them for months on end, or their ability to re-seal after opening. I've absolutely no doubt one of the long-term research programmes on the ISS is looking at that - and what was discovered on Mir.

The moon shots were a dash against failure rates, much of the time. Considering the likelihood of catastrophe, it's amazing so few deaths happened.

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

Because the publicity just hasn't happened?

The cost of the tickets for me would be far less than the cost of getting to Yorkshire, which is far enough away that I'd need a night in a local hotel - and that site is carefully designed so you can't tell if there will be any future events any closer to me.

Andy

Reply to
Andy Champ

I have made a start.

That is the idea of hotels..You use a local one.

Reply to
ARWadsworth

It's been utterly abysmal until now. I had no clue these guys were on a dinner/lecture circuit, else I'd likely have made an effort to go and see one or two of them by now. See, that's what happens when geeks do publicity - f*ck all.

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

Hmm, interesting point!

For the lunar flight, was the computer powered up all the time, or did it only come into play toward the end of the flight when alignment was most critical?

Keeping something running trouble-free, even with built-in redundancy, for the duration of a Mars trip might have been tricky - although I suppose if it were all core memory then there's some scope for fixing a fault (if possible) and then recovering (with assistance from the ground to punch in changed data) from where you left off.

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules Richardson

Probably because most of the time, geeks don't actually *want* publicity :)

Reply to
Jules Richardson

On Sun, 26 Aug 2012, "charles" writ:

Nope, Shepard (1st) and Grissom (2nd) flew sub-orbital ballistic flights. Glenn flew an orbital flight (3 orbits).

Reply to
Percy

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