We put a man on the moon?

Sky King · 19-03-2012 11:29pm

At night though. Obv.

Overheal wrote: »

Yeah, at best it was an exercise to see if it was even possible. Now, they have to find actual reasons to go up there, that aren't just for collecting moon dust, having moon picnics, or playing moon golf on national television.

Would be deadly to have spent that money on a project to see if there's life on Europa or Enceladus

Carter P Fly · 19-03-2012 11:31pm

Ah yes, the moon landing. Like peoples belief in God, no matter how completely and utterly against all reason and sense, an incredible amount of people talk about it as if it were real with perfectly straight faces.

cml387 · 19-03-2012 11:35pm

I know we are a cynical bunch on AH but this photograph taken by the crew of Apollo 8 makes one think.

Sky King · 19-03-2012 11:36pm

Carter P Fly wrote: »

Ah yes, the moon landing. Like peoples belief in God, no matter how completely and utterly against all reason and sense, an incredible amount of people talk about it as if it were real with perfectly straight faces.

I was very interested in this fake moon landing debate when I first became aware of it so I read all the conspiracy theories and watched the youtube docs and I am now wholly satisfied that the conspiracy theorists are a shower of handicaps.

cml387 · 19-03-2012 11:37pm

Sky King wrote: »

I was very interested in this fake moon landing debate when I first became aware of it so I read all the conspiracy theories and watched the youtube docs and I am now wholly satisfied that the conspiracy theorists are a shower of handicaps.

..and that would be an insult to handicaps.

Sky King · 19-03-2012 11:40pm

cml387 wrote: »

I know we are a cynical bunch on AH but this photograph taken by the crew of Apollo 8 makes one think.

Lovely. Reminds me of Sagan's pale blue dot clip.

shizz · 19-03-2012 11:47pm

Sky King wrote: »

At night though. Obv.

Would be deadly to have spent that money on a project to see if there's life on Europa or Enceladus

Yeah cause the sun disappears from existence when Ireland is facing away from it. :v

Yeah I agree about Europa and Encleadus but getting something to Europa today that's able to drill through its crust or land safely on its extremely uneven landscape is pretty incredibly hard to do today never mind back then.

As for Encleadus, I would love if they sent a return satellite that swept through its ice volcanic eruptions to collect some particles.

3ndahalfof6 · 20-03-2012 12:01am

KeithAFC wrote: »

Bear Grylls knows what he is doing too, his shows are just designed to be entertaining.

ray myers is so much better, he has a lot more skills and can ad lib to boot.

saa · 20-03-2012 12:03am

ForeverYoung90 wrote: »

Just makes you feel good to be honest and believe you can do and achieve anything and nothing is impossible.

I put a pebble up my arse.

BBDBB · 20-03-2012 3:59pm

saa wrote: »

I put a pebble up my arse.

we're talking about the moon, not Uranus

JohnMarston · 20-03-2012 4:05pm

ForeverYoung90 wrote: »

Just makes you feel good to be honest and believe you can do and achieve anything and nothing is impossible.

With the right amount of money and research yes, you can achieve great things

AeoNGriM · 20-03-2012 4:14pm

chin_grin wrote: »

And why hasn't it been done again eh? They just keep sending all these "unmanned" satellites up there to spy on us. The mind boggles.

CeilingNasa is watching you masturbate!

foxyboxer · 20-03-2012 4:38pm

No amount of explaining the finer points of freefall, launch windows, inertia, delta v, spheres of influence, landing radar or rendezvous can convince someone whose made their mind up it was a hoax because of some pictures on the internet.

foxyboxer · 20-03-2012 4:44pm

Pottler wrote: »

I brought the kids to an "Apollo" touring museum thingy in London where they had a full sized replica of the lunar module. As a fairly competent type when it comes to building stuff, I left thinking "feck off lads, ye did in yer shyte". 1.it was tiny - where'd ya keep the lunar rover lads, on the roof-rack? 2. It costs an arm and a leg to send 1kg into space - that "lunar rover" looked like a two post lift would struggle to lift it. 3.The "capsule" looked like somthing my kids would build in the kitchen to act the bollix in, re-entry me hole, ye'd a fried lads, come on, pull the other one. It's a bit like your small, scrawny mate with the dodgy moustache telling you he pulled Maria Sharapova last night at the local flea-pit,... you just kinda take a look and go "ye did yeah...."

I presume you're referring to the Lunar Module here.
If so then you're aware that re-entry was performed using the command module?

44leto · 20-03-2012 4:47pm

Moon Machines was probably one of the greatest doco series on Nat geog i ever seen. It was about the design of certain parts of the machine that got man to the moon. The first contract given out was for the navigation equipment. You think it would be easy, just there is the moon, point the craft towards it and fire the rockets. But it was incredibly problem-matic 1 fraction of a millimetre out and because of the distances involved they would miss the moon by 100s of miles and be lost in space forever.

So it was quickly decided they needed a computer, but computers back then were the size of gyms, so from scratch they designed a micro computer, which later was also used to land the craft. It was so technically difficult that in 1967 the company informed NASA they will not have the machine ready by the end of the decade. But they did with innovation, geeks and work days lasting from 8 in the morning to 12 at night. An amazing achievement.

The other was the humble space suit, a very problematic project it was actually Playtex a hosiery Bra company that finally completed a suit that was maneuverable, supple, tough, air-conditioned and have a life support unit (which was designed by another company). Then the gloves had to be dexterous very tough and have a full range of movement while maintaining air pressure in the suit, which proved the most expensive part of the suit.

Then NASA wanted the suit fire proof, thats easy now, but there was no fire proof material back then, but they made some from scratch. The suits worked flawlessly.

foxyboxer · 20-03-2012 5:08pm

44leto wrote: »

Moon Machines was probably one of the greatest doco series on Nat geog i ever seen. It was about the design of certain parts of the machine that got man to the moon. The first contract given out was for the navigation equipment. You think it would be easy, just there is the moon, point the craft towards it and fire the rockets. But it was incredibly problem-matic 1 fraction of a millimetre out and because of the distances involved they would miss the moon by 100s of miles and be lost in space forever.

So it was quickly decided they needed a computer, but computers back then were the size of gyms, so from scratch they designed a micro computer, which later was also used to land the craft. It was so technically difficult that in 1967 the company informed NASA they will not have the machine ready by the end of the decade. But they did with innovation, geeks and work days lasting from 8 in the morning to 12 at night. An amazing achievement.

The other was the humble space suit, a very problematic project it was actually Playtex a hosiery Bra company that finally completed a suit that was maneuverable, supple, tough, air-conditioned and have a life support unit (which was designed by another company). Then the gloves had to be dexterous very tough and have a full range of movement while maintaining air pressure in the suit, which proved the most expensive part of the suit.

Then NASA wanted the suit fire proof, thats easy now, but there was no fire proof material back then, but they made some from scratch. The suits worked flawlessly.

Have a look for "How Apollo flew to the Moon" by David Woods, an Apollo/NASA geeks wet dream.

44leto · 20-03-2012 5:12pm

foxyboxer wrote: »

Have a look for "How Apollo flew to the Moon" by David Woods, an Apollo/NASA geeks wet dream.

24 pounds sterling in amazon:eek:

Time to visit the library

Cheers that would be my type of book alright.

shizz · 20-03-2012 5:28pm

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Apollo-Springer-Praxis-Books-Exploration/dp/0387716750

ehh no it's cheaper than that?

44leto · 20-03-2012 5:35pm

shizz wrote: »

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Apollo-Springer-Praxis-Books-Exploration/dp/0387716750

ehh no it's cheaper than that?

Ohh right I think I may have been at the USA amazon.

CrazyRabbit · 20-03-2012 6:21pm

Mars within 20 years. Now that will be amazing. Our first trip to another planet.

44leto · 20-03-2012 6:31pm

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

Mars within 20 years. Now that will be amazing. Our first trip to another planet.

I don't think so, it needs a serious tech leap, the moon was with-in the technology of the 60s, Mars is not, besides no-one has the resources at present.

Capt'n Midnight · 20-03-2012 6:40pm

44leto wrote: »

I don't think so, it needs a serious tech leap, the moon was with-in the technology of the 60s, Mars is not, besides no-one has the resources at present.

Moon is like swimming underwater across a swimming pool, take a deep breath and dive in.

Mars is like doing 20 lengths, you can't hold your breath that long.

We have the resources for a one way trip to mars.

shizz · 20-03-2012 6:45pm

We have the resources for a quick trip a la the apollo program but no reason and that's not what we should aim for. We need to build up technology to live off the land and test our capabilities on the moon again before we even think about going to Mars. The margin for error to get to the moon may be slim but there is no margin for going to Mars.

foxyboxer · 20-03-2012 6:49pm

shizz wrote: »

We have the resources for a quick trip a la the apollo program but no reason and that's not what we should aim for. We need to build up technology to live off the land and test our capabilities on the moon again before we even think about going to Mars. The margin for error to get to the moon may be slim but there is no margin for going to Mars.

We will eventually look to start terraforming Mars but this would take a millenium at a conservative guess. Even at that stage we'd still need a breathing apparatus.

Capt'n Midnight · 20-03-2012 6:50pm

Pottler wrote: »

I brought the kids to an "Apollo" touring museum thingy in London where they had a full sized replica of the lunar module. As a fairly competent type when it comes to building stuff, I left thinking "feck off lads, ye did in yer shyte". 1.it was tiny - where'd ya keep the lunar rover lads, on the roof-rack? 2. It costs an arm and a leg to send 1kg into space - that "lunar rover" looked like a two post lift would struggle to lift it. 3.The "capsule" looked like somthing my kids would build in the kitchen to act the bollix in, re-entry me hole, ye'd a fried lads, come on, pull the other one. It's a bit like your small, scrawny mate with the dodgy moustache telling you he pulled Maria Sharapova last night at the local flea-pit,... you just kinda take a look and go "ye did yeah...."

The rover folded up and was stored outside the LM
The Ascent module is about 2.3 tonnes, remember it has to withstand the pressure inside against the vacuum of space

you are seeing the capsule after re-entry when it's been burned up a bit , again it's got to have a bit of strength, Apollo 16 hit 7.19g on reentry

the trick is to save as much weight as possible but if you save too much the system is less reliable so no savings.

love the story about the reason the LM has 4 legs
one set of engineers wanted 5 legs for redundancy in case a leg breaks
the other set wanted 3 legs to reduce weight ( Russian LM did this)

management compromised on 4 legs , which doesn't give redundancy or reduce weight

also all this stuff was built in the 1960's

and Russian space hardware is even chunkier and more agricultural

KilOit · 20-03-2012 6:52pm

Waste of time even going to space till we come up with new ways of propulsion and forget about ever seeing anything outside our solar system till ships can do FTL travel so maybe after World War 4 when you've been dead 500 years

Capt'n Midnight · 20-03-2012 6:58pm

KilOit wrote: »

Waste of time even going to space till we come up with new ways of propulsion and forget about ever seeing anything outside our solar system till ships can do FTL travel so maybe after World War 4 when you've been dead 500 years

Actually we could easily colonise the galaxy with generation ships. All it would take is a religion or dictatorship or similar movement.

And we'll probably make advances in hibernation too.

Planets are gravity wells so might be better living out among the asteroids, when we start to spot extraterresterial ice moons and stuff we'll know it's doable

Border-Rat · 20-03-2012 6:58pm

So how exactly did the astronauts survive the exposure to radiation?

44leto · 20-03-2012 7:00pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Moon is like swimming underwater across a swimming pool, take a deep breath and dive in.

Mars is like doing 20 lengths, you can't hold your breath that long.

We have the resources for a one way trip to mars.

Its fraught with difficulties and the main one is speed, once you get outside the Earths magnetosphere space is very radio active, a long journey would kill any Astronauts, so you would need shielding but that is heavy. But if you had faster crafts you could cut that risk. Also you would have to land a whole rocket on Mars, a module would not have enough power to get off Mars, you could imagine how technically difficult and dangerous that would be, impossible to be honest.

BUT I was watching one of those area 51 programmes (I Know) and I remember 2 guys admitting they were working on gravity drives. If that is true (a big if) that maybe the tech leap, that would solve the weigh problems, speed problems and getting on and off Mars.

But I would say not in my life time:(:(:(:(:(:(:(

44leto · 20-03-2012 7:01pm

Border-Rat wrote: »

So how exactly did the astronauts survive the exposure to radiation?

Time spent outside the magnetosphere, they were not out there long enough.

We put a man on the moon?

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