By request, a thread in celebration of the historic achievement of the more than 400,000 men and women who supported the US space exploration program over the last 50 years, on the 40th anniversary of the first man to set foot on the moon.
Many of you know I took the boys to see the Shuttle launch last week, and we’re still in awe from the miracle of manned space flight. Even 40 years later it’s a wonder to behold.
And this is quite fun:
Real time replay of Apollo 11 as it happened 40 years ago this moment
{ 64 comments }
Could be done by the private sector FAR cheaper without government regulations.
Though I DO hold out some promise for some tech that seems to be on the horizon, at least per Dale Brown. (His ‘Black Stallion’ space craft primarily. Takes off like a jet, climbs to around 50k feet, refuels, blasts into space from there. He uses it to insert SpecOps teams from the US into Iran in less than 8 hrs, and have them back at their US base after the completion of their mission that same day. The guy tries to write about things that are roughly 5-10 years off and has been proven accurate with at least one of his systems, his ‘Wolverine’ cruise missile that debuted in his books a decade ago – and debuted as ‘Sensor Fused Weapons’ in Iraq in 2003, 4 years later.
“Could be done by the private sector FAR cheaper without government regulations.”
Sorry but there is no way you can prove that.
And IBM was designing and operating much of the space race’s technology.
Don’t private companies shoot their own rockets into space now? What is their cost vs NASA/other govt agencies’?
Not sure but it also isn’t a fair comparison as they aren’t the same rockets, they don’t have the same missions etc.
There’s a difference between an NOAA weather satellite and a weather satellite launched by say the Weather Channel? (I don’t know that the Weather Channel has launched one, just using them as an example.)
There’s a difference between a communications satellite launched by DoD and one launched by Verizon? (MIGHT give you the encryption of the DoD one on this one, but even then if you’re talking a difference of several million dollars I’m going to be asking questions here.)
Heck, the Russians have already started the space tourism thing, can you imagine what that industry could be like with a viable space station and planes like Brown’s Black Stallion? It wouldn’t exactly be PCB, but I’m sure the cost would come down enough to bring it within range of the clients of the fancier cruise lines, among other elite terrestrial vacations.
The point isn’t necessarily a difference in satellite technology (also, not a fair comparison if you think cell phones require the same technology as a military operation).
But hey, you’re right, just because you’ve latched on to cute and easy phrases to describe how government works, you can’t ever be wrong.
Rugby apparently works for a guvment operation.
Not at all. Not anywhere close at all.
More brilliant, spot on reasoning from Bill Simon!
50 years later and with government fronting all the R&D, a private company has yet to put a person in orbit.
Don’t think so, Jeff. This is where the libertarian ideal grinds against reality.
Government also has all kinds of rules and regulations regarding the materials needed to do it, and puts up unnecessary regulatory burden in procuring and using said materials.
Sorry. For a second there I actually forgot I was having a discussion with someone who thinks space research should be based on a science fiction novel.
Carry on.
If that were the case, I think Zebulon Pike would already have met the Vulcans.
Actually, Brown bases MOST (certainly not all) of his ideas on things that he hears are about 5/10/15 years down the road. And even I had heard of designs similar to his Black Stallion before reading about them in his books, I just didn’t know anyone was actively working on that technology. (SCRAM-Jet engines are one of the first pieces of it, and those have been in development for the better part of 15 yrs or so, at least. Popular Science/ Popular Mechanics has had several articles on these and similar technologies over the years.)
And heck, as ‘science fiction’ as Brown’s micro-hydraulic missile skins and Combat Infantry Device (basically a more real-world mech armor suit) sound, I saw something on Military Channel just a few weeks ago where evidently the Army is, in fact, working on a system that once mastered and miniaturized could actually become pretty close to a real world CID.
Much of the guy’s stuff is, admittedly, clearly fiction. The problem is, as with any really good author IMHO, there’s enough in there that’s scarily plausible that it really does make you think.
And interestingly enough, you can go to places like Kazakhstan and China where the government will let you go near willy nilly and still–no one in orbit.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155145
yes but the mexicans put a whale on the moon…
Would you care to give an example of these regulations that are keeping the private sector from successfully competing in this arena?
USC Title 13, Section QQQ, Subsection 69
limits on the quantities of hydrogen, oxygen, and other necessary chemicals for one.
Admittedly, I’m not a space expert, but I do know that you need quite a bit of stuff that goes ‘boom’, and that our dear old Uncle Sam gets kinda paranoid when you start trying to get access to that amount of that stuff.
Effective April 1998, smoking is banned by the United States Department of Transportation on all commercial passenger flights in the United States, and/or by American air carriers… Public Law 101-164
Look at the claims Andy Beal made when he started Beal Aerospace in the late 1990′s and then closed their doors a few years later.
Romegaguy is a man?
I thought we went over this before… I’m apparently a man except when in drag performing Toby Keith songs
What’s that got to do with the Georgia Gang?
You’d be surprised.
i don’t think there is any prohibition on private space firms and many have launched satellites and such–i don’t think any have the expertise or assets to try a moon launch–it was important (esp. during the cold war) for nasa to be a gov’t agency–and the astronauts to be mostly military men–maybe it’s not as critical today but nasa is probably one of the gov’t agencies i would be least irritated about…
I no more believe man has walked on lunar soil than I believe that Obama was born on American soil.
That’s right, Dash! There was that movie Capricorn One…
It’s my favorite documentary.
Building a low cost surface to orbit platform would go a long way to making space exploration feasible.
One of the ideas, which still has technical issues to work out, is a space elevator, which could theoretically put payload in space at about 1% of the cost that a rocket could.
The last report I read priced a space elevator at $20 Billion, with a marginal to geo orbit cost of $220/kg, compared with a marginal rocket to geo cost of $20,000/kg. Thus, sending a 10,000 kg sattelite into orbit would save about $200 Million. This means the space elevator pays for itself with about 100 of these missions.
How many people on here has had a manned mission to the moon occur during their lifetime? The last mission to the moon left the lunar surface on Dec. 19, 1972, slightly less than 3 years before I was born.
Apollo landed just 5 months before I was born.
I was seven years old and watched the first moon landing/walk live on a 13 inch black and white set.
You kids get off my lawn.
That puts it roughly 133 months before I was born. My parents were 12 yrs old at the time the last lunar mission lifted off from the moon.
Mars or Bust!
We’ve seen gray space dirt, we want RED space dirt!
So you want the next sound stage to be in Georgia?
Of course! They’ll need our red clay to pull it off convincingly!
I was less than a month old. Yet a fully mature adult, like I’ve always been.
Thanks for this post! I remember so clearly watching Apollo 11. I was in the 3rd grade and watching Neil walk down the ladder on our cumbersome Zenith color TV. What a heady time of American accomplishment. I had the opportunity to see 11 or 12 of the Apollo astronauts this past weekend at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton. Listening to their stories of their missions was amazing. Even as these guys are in their mid 70′s there was still that competitiveness and spirit that has made America the envy of the world.
Can someone tell me who “Clayton” is and why he gets to post a thread on here?
He’s just the guy who pays the bills.
There are bills for this??? Someone is getting ripped off.
lol
They were all in my lifetime (barely) although the first one I remember was actually the Apollo-Soyuz project.
grift-
Everytime I see you you’re holding up a beer so I’m suprised you can remember way back then.
Some good reading about getting to Mars for those who are interested:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/how-to-go-to-marsright-now
It’s going to be a tremendous feat. Also notice the related articles linked at the bottom right of the page. India or China may beat us to the red planet.
Born in 1957- it was great to listen to the first 10 verses of Genesis being read on Christmas Eve from a moon orbit as with the Earth was framed on my TV screen.
…with the Earth framed
More here:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight
All should read!
The 10-year-old who helped Apollo 11, 40 years later
CNN) — On July 23, 1969, as Apollo 11 hurtled back towards Earth, there was a problem — a problem only a kid could solve.
sounds like something out of a movie, but that’s what it came down to as Apollo 11 sped back towards Earth after landing on the moon in 1969.
It was around 10:00 at night on July 23, and 10-year-old Greg Force was at home with his mom and three brothers. His father, Charles Force, was at work. Charles Force was the director of the NASA tracking station in Guam, where the family was living.
The Guam tracking station was to play a critical role in the return of Apollo 11 to Earth. A powerful antenna there connected NASA communications with Apollo 11, and the antenna was the only way for NASA to make its last communications with the astronauts before splashdown. But at the last minute on that night, a bearing in the antenna failed, rendering it nearly useless.
To properly replace the bearing would have required dismantling the entire antenna, and there was simply no time. So Charles Force thought of a creative solution: If he could get more grease around the failed bearing, it would probably be fine. The only problem was, nobody at the station had an arm small enough to actually reach in through the two-and-a-half inch opening and pack grease around the bearing.
more
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/07/20/apollo11.irpt/index.html
Doug Deal-
There are those conspiracy theorists who say that Apollo 11 and all of NASA’s endeavors is a hoax. That propaganda is spread to believe that billions are being spent on aerospace engineering, when it is really being put into the Rockefellers Swiss Bank Acct.
Black helicopters are flying over Nancy Schaeffers house too! And that used to get the votes in her North GA mountains.
I’m not a John Bircher, and I don’t think that the US Navy has technology that controls the weather.
But I do have a question about heliocentric theories.
While the earth is not flat or round, it is actually more like an oval, what are the scientific facts that a gas (the sun) has any kind of gravity requiring the earth to revolve around it?
Is there any chance that we live in a geocentric universe?
In a sense we do. From any observer’s point of view, they are as far as they can tell, the center, and all the rest of the universe is moving away from them.
Look at that photo. Do you think it shows a “real” moon landing?
WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Statements are so much more convincing with mutliple exclamation marks and all caps.
So how do we get some of those Rockafeller
MBillions?You MEAN the BAIN BILLIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I mean WHAtever getS me free CASH!!!!!
WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
Let me add some more…
!!!1!!!1!!!one!!!
I heard that Nasa recorded over the original taping of the moon landing.
Looks like they are covering their tracks!!!!!!!!!!!!
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
I just want to know if activist bloggers or the lib’ral AJC did it.
Maybe the TMC?
There’s a difference?
Wait a second–you mean they are all intertwined? Where does BAIN CAPITAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fit in?
This is bigger and deeper than I ever imagined!
Bain Capital forged the birth certificate.
(It’s now on the internets, so it must be true.)
And I bet the printer was located on a grassy knoll!
Although if there was just one printer involved, I’d have to think that is one magic printer!
And that’s not an attack on the Ox.
Comments on this entry are closed.