40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

Yeah, the current space program plans make me weep sometimes. Been to KSC a bunch of times since moving to FL. Even got a Commander's card yearly membership (nerd alert!). Learn something new everytime I go and I'm always inspired. We ARE capable of great things.

The Appollo mission/Saturn rocket part of the tour is probably my favorite area. The recreation of the firing room countdown, the inspirational film beforehand...

Good year for Sam Rockwell's flick to debut, no?

The unreleased audio is pretty good.

I ranted about this in my blog today. I think it's nothing short of a crime against progress to have settled for simply landing on the moon as being enough. Apollo should have whetted our thirst, not quenched it.

But wasn't/isn't that about the limit with current resources? Don't we need some game-changing revolution in energy or propulsion or time warp to go any further into space? And that doesn't factor in the health problems of long-term space travel we haven't cracked yet.

This was on local radio this morning and they were taking calls from people who were saying the landing was faked. What was worse was there was a guy in the studio who was supposed to be the first UK astronaught but his flight got cancelled due to the Challanger accident and they were asking this guy if he thought it was faked.

I bet he wanted to punch the radio host even more than I did.

Everything I've read said the Apollo methodology would have worked for going to Mars, the big issue was sufficient fuel supply and the effects on humans being in space that long. I would like to think had Apollo continued and space funding remained consistent, those issues would have been tackled by now. Hell, we went from never having put a man in orbit to landing on the moon in ten years. Who knows how far we could have gone in the forty years after that if we'd just kept at it?

Except for the problems of fuel and effects of human beings in space for so long...

We need a Muslim country to announce they're sending a man to Mars. That might be the only thing that spurs us on nowadays. Americans, in general, don't seem to care much about space exploration anymore, which sucks.

Well, to play devil's advocate, it is mighty expensive, and we still don't have universal healthcare...

Hey now kids, I guess no one here has ventured over to the Flat Earth Theory webpage? Their forums are filled with a crack squad of believers that the earth is flat, there's no such thing as earth orbit and that NASA is part of a global conspiracy to bilk your taxpayin' dollars. Oh and there's a giant ice wall encircling the flat disk that is patrolled by army boats.

Something tells me that douche Aldrin punched out was probably a member. I'm sure they are celebrating the anniversary with class.

I'm more surprised at the fact that we haven't sent anyone to Mars yet.

Yeah. I was a massive astronomy nerd as a kid, but with all due respect: Fuck space. We can't even handle our own business on one planet at the moment.

Once we get all of this ironed out and have some extra funds, let's go for it.

Which, if you don't have an active mission(s) planned that need these problems solved then you won't ever see movement on those problems.

Yeah, and like I said, do you honestly think a motivated and funded NASA couldn't have solved those problems in forty years?

Didn't you see the one-two punch of Red Planet and Mission to Mars? I think the public got turned off of the idea real quick, what with all the bearded Cheadle's and Kilmer-killing robots on the prowl.

I'm sure Helium 3 will be all the rage when we run out of black gold. Until the major energy corporations have the tech in place to make money off mining the Moon, very little true effort is going to be put into going back.

A friend of mine says wait until the Chinese land on the moon and we'll be back there the next day, if not sooner.

No. You need to REINVENT propulsion to get to Mars in anything approaching a reasonable amount of time for humans. You need to cure depression and radiation poisoning, as well as other medical complications they don't even fully understand yet.

Hopping around the moon for a couple of days is child's play next to a multi-year, manned mission to Mars; cost and prioritization aside, it would require certain game changing discoveries in physics and medicine, ones that wouldn't have been ironed out whether NASA was sitting on their hands or not.

See my response Phil. Those problems aren't going to get ironed out unless there is a reason to iron them out. No mission, then why bother on theoretical advances in travel?

Yeah, my intellect agrees with you, but I grew up in Cape Canaveral, so my heart beats to a more romantic drum, I'm afraid.

I was using "ironed out" in a very sarcastic manner.

I always thought the radiation risk was from the Van Allen belt, which the Apollo astronauts traveled through numerous times?

I think that the prevalence of space travel in TV, movies and literature has stolen some of the wonder from actual space flight. When you watch Capt Kirk et al zoom around the galaxy in minutes, taking months or years to reach other parts of our Solar System just seems meh.

There was a short story in Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions which predicted this by the way. It portrayed SF novels as a kind of intellectual pornography. In the story the protaganist is traveling via faster than light craft, but prefers reading crap 1940's vintage science fiction magazines!

I think it is a shame that the US has seemingly turned it's back on space, as well as science and technology in general. The government is no longer funding science anywhere near the levels that it sued to. You know, when R&D resulted in such useless acheivements as the Internet and PCs.

Menawhile the EU, Russia, China and soon India are picking up the torch and planning or condcutting space flights now.

America. Content To Be Second Best!

I've been reading a lot about the moon missions this month -- Rocket Men is filled with some pretty awesome anecdotes -- and rewatching "From the Earth to The Moon" that always gets me verklempt. My grandfather, who I never really knew, was with NASA from right after WWII, when it was called NACA. He was one of your classic "white-shirts" and if I remember right, a lot of his work was on the heat shields. He later worked extensively on the Space Shuttle, and there's a flag from the first Shuttle mission in my grandma's house.

And because a post from me wouldn't be complete without a West Wing quote, here you go.

This has always been a problem since the dawn of man, but it can't be allowed to restrain us. Didn't the first explorations of the New World, hell, didn't even Columbus' first journey nearly bankrupt Spain?

wechoosethemoon.com

From the JFK Library. I'm not ashamed to say I teared up a little after the landing and having clicked 'return to Earth'.

I'm British, born after the landing, and I think that the whole Moon mission represents something about the best of America that I can love. The Moon mission and breaking the sound barrier.

I think we need to get this built before we go back to the moon or go to mars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

Sorry but that's the wrong way of thinking. There's always going to be other stuff going on which may seem more urgent. To my knowledge there wasn't some kind of social services meltdown in the US while the space program was going on. In fact during the sixties the US went through the biggest social change in their history and a war.

The attitude of having to tie up every loose end before moving on is a very big reason why you don't have universal health care by now. Or why there are no universal environmental laws that make sense. Or why there's no serious program dedicated to combating world hunger. You can't wait for the pieces to fall into place by themselves, or you'll never do anything.

Exactly. The pioneering pilgrims that settled this country were a people who left bad shit behind.

In all seriousness... The U.S. of A. is founded on pressing onward! I'm not advocating leaving our problems in the dust, but continuing forward in the face of strife. Cowboy up for crying out loud! Plus, who knows what kind of energy and food technology would be developed (possibly world-crisis-averting) in the long run. The world has benefitted from NASA developed tech for years, from child safety seats to artificial hearts.

And if you'd like more reasons as to why we should expand off this rock, Jupiter just got smacked by a rogue comet.

"You're the one who said you walked on the moon when you didn't ..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ez-NpFVwQw

It's been an interesting few days with the anniversary of the moon landing and all. It seems that more interest has been shown in the state of our Space program the past week than at any time (outside of tragic accidents) in the past two decades. And there have been some interesting opinions shared about the moon landing and space travel here and abroad.

One thing I found interesting was that Russian media has, over the years, played up the suspicions of those who believe we faked the moon landing, yet Russian Cosmonauts have generally bristled at these conspiracy theories. I think this is a prime example of the fraternal bond between astronauts that supercedes political ideology. It makes me wonder how far towards the goal of reaching Mars we could have ventured if there were more cooperation between NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency. It's a shame that the impetus for the explosion in our investment in space exploration in the 20th century was due to our desire to outdo the Soviet Union, capped by Reagan's ludiscrous Star Wars plan to militarize space.

Since the collapse of the USSR, I feel our space program has lost its drive and any sense of direction. I'm not blaming NASA, as I believe they probably feel abandoned by government (decreased funding) and the populace at large. When W claimed the next great step in space travel was to return to the Moon(!), I sighed in disbelief. What surprised me even more was how quickly NASA seemed to capitulate to this directive; they've been put in such a crappy position that they felt a ridiculous directive from someone who obviously has no idea of the value of space exploration was better than the status quo.

I do feel a bit guilty regarding my hopes for a more concerted effort to get to Mars in the face of so many financial difficulties, but I also agree with those people who have illustrated how this wouldn't be the first time we've subsidized research and development - and hopefully travel in the not too distant future - while "bigger" problems persist here on Earth. There has to be a point at which we realize shit is always going to happen, money is always going to be tight, yet we're always going to want to find out what exactly is out there. And maybe, just maybe, stepping foot on Mars would make us realize how stupid some of the shit we're fighting over down here really is (Or maybe people just need to rewatch Wall-E).

I guess the most optimistic thing I can say about our inevitable mission to Mars is that China and Russia both seem to want to accelerate their space programs, with the Russian Space Agency pretty much stating openly that they feel their loss in the race to the Moon can only be redeemed by being the first to walk on Mars. Whether they can wrangle up financing is unknown. And this isn't even to mention India's sudden focus on space flight, continuing Japanese research, and the European Agency's partnership with Russia. Hopefully we can be forward thinking enough to begin solving the obstacles to getting to Mars and leave this returning to the Moon to set up a permanent base shit behind.

Great post.

I don't want to be the guy who advocates for privatizing space, but I do think that you could see a lot of advancements made in the private sector as well. Obviously, the billions of dollars needed for space flight can only come from government, or someone with deep pockets. I like what I've read about Virgin Galactic, although it seems to be only orbital flight, but I can certainly see a future where both governmental and private advances in space flight are operating side by side.

And I'm actually encouraged by the efforts of Russia, China, India, etc. to go into space -- I just wish we'd realize it's not a contest, and we should probably try to work together on this.

You have to figure there's got to be some kind of resources we can use on other planets. What with all the shortages here on earth (eg. I remember being told we'll run out of aluminum in 75 or so years, 12 years ago), I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a push for expansion of the space program, just from a purely exploitative, capitalist point of view.

To what end?

I'd love to see the moon and Mars colonized, but the actual sending of people is one of the last steps. Sending people for the sake of doing so serves little purpose. Possibly as an economic and educational booster shot, but there are other large-scale projects that can do that; a serious orbital solar power array and the means to beam that power down to earth and collect it efficiently comes to mind, but you could brainstorm stuff like this all day.

Find water, and the back side of the moon becomes the place to build really, really big telescopes. That's about the only current reason to permanently colonize the moon. I'd be for that, but it will still take a lot of research and money before anyone lives on the moon for any reason.

Want to do something interesting? Build a series of probes culminating in a reasonably intelligent submersible, if one is warranted, and explore Europa. Or pour some serious effort into planetfinding. Robots and telescopes are both cheaper than moon landings.

Oh, you watched the History Channel today, too?

Anyway, I think the last few posts are all close. When it becomes worthwhile to mine/colonize space, then we won't have to rely on NASA do it, because private firms will be making their own progress. Until then, the best we can reasonably get out of space are the small-scale scientific benefits and the "shining example of human potential" value, plus a bump in demand in certain tech fields. Those are nice, but they may not be worth the money.

Europa could be the closet we could have to there being other "life" in this solar system..



At least having a base of operations on the Moon could give us a good starting point for any trips to Mars or any other plant for that matter....

So, Nick, how are things up on the Moon Base?

No, why?

You'd think so but it's pretty much all just dead rock, right? I mean we can be inspired by landing on the moon and Mars and shit all day but in the end it doesn't give us a lot....unless you really wanted to know exactly how far away Mars is or something.

If it takes NASA 24 hours to move a Mars Rover's arm 18 inches and then it breaks after 3 weeks... good luck doing Europa.

I actually think the work being done by Virgin, and potentially other private companies, to make low orbit trips accessible to civilians (albeit very wealthy civilians) is some of the best advertising that can be done for space exploration right now. Words are one thing, but getting people into space is a whole different monster that will hopefully reignite our passion.

I'd love it if NASA were to align with Russia and others in a meaningful way, but the cynic in me says that governmental interference will scuttle those ideas indefinitely. With all the tension regarding Georgia, the Ukraine, Arctic Oil Drilling, etc, the US probably won't consider going any further than our plans to hitch rides on Russian rockets until our new rockets or shuttles are developed.

As for the merits of landing astronauts on Mars, I think the value would be exponentially higher than landing rovers. Rovers have extremely limited mobility, can dig but so far beneath the surface, and can carry out but so many analyses on site (not to mention the first words beamed back from a manned mission could be "We've gotten our asses to Mars" or something of the sort). This is not to say that there aren't many potentially important steps we can take in establishing a base on the moon, including a telescope that wouldn't have to deal with the minor inconvenience of an atmosphere (but would, unfortunately, have to deal with the hazard of asteroid strikes).

One thing that has impressed me is how rugged the Nasa probes are. The last Mars rover was supposed to last a few months (I think) and instead lasted years.

As for what will really get us off this rock, it's got to be a major economic benefit. Space Tourism is not going to cut it.

There have been many attempts to find "space industries"..like using a zero G environment to create ultra pure alloys (turns out a really fast centrifuge can achieve the same thing on Earth)

But mining...going out, snagging an asteroid then mining the hell out of it could be the ticket. Huge Solar panels to generate and beam electricity to Earth is another good one (though there are a lot of political and military implications that need to be dealt with)

You won't believe the view!