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Apollo 1

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apollo 1

#31

Post by robryk »

gvb wrote: post #30

Good information on the chain of decisions that set up Apollo 1 for the disaster: "Why Did NASA Still Use Pure Oxygen After the Apollo 1 Fire?" http://www.popsci.com/why-did-nasa-still-use-pure-oxygen-aft... (Warning: Horrible crap foisted on you via Javascript if you have that enabled.) tl;dr: 1. Designed Apollo to used a mixed gas (nitrogen/oxygen) atmosphere. 2. Needed weight savings. Mixed gas requires complicate…

Also, on the way down during landing, the capsule let in external air once external air pressure was larger than internal. This way they avoided having oxygen at atmospheric pressure inside at that time.

Re: Apollo 1

#32

Post by robryk »

akiselev wrote: post #11
jdavis703 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or is the problem that each incoming administration wants to rejigger the programs? If each president (thinking about Bush and Obama) would just hand the scientists and engineers a few billion dollars and tell them "go do something that'll make America proud," we'd have something to be proud of by now.

The Presidents don't have the final say in how much money each agency gets and how many Congressmen get a shiny new NASA facility or contract in their district. The slice of the budget that the executive branch has the authority to allocate is miniscule compared to debt payments, entitlements, and military spending. NASA's problem isn't really the money, it's the ridiculous bureaucracy and systemic inneficies that in…

The same systemic problems caused the loss of Challenger: the reason why SRBs were segmented was that they had to be transported over rail from another state, instead of over barge from a nearby factory.

Arguably the loss of Columbia was also partially caused by the same systemic problems: shuttle had wings (instead of a lifting body shape) due to Air Force's wishes. IIRC this necessitated the existence of the ET.

Re: Apollo 1

#33

Post by Lio »

pjmlp wrote: post #13
pogba101 wrote: post #12

The sheer bravery of the first men to sign up to go to the moon is outstanding. I remember listening to an interview where Buzz Aldrin said he estimated that there was a 60% chance of going to the moon and coming back home alive. He still decided to do it. They even wrote a speech for Nixon in case Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got stranded on the moon: Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore…

True, but not less brave than those that ventured into the endless oceans, when everything everyone knew was only Europe.

Or the 8 men on the K-19 Widowmaker submarine who had to repair their reactor knowing it meant certain death.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3136111.stm

Re: Apollo 1

#34

Post by samkite »

pjmlp wrote: post #13
pogba101 wrote: post #12

The sheer bravery of the first men to sign up to go to the moon is outstanding. I remember listening to an interview where Buzz Aldrin said he estimated that there was a 60% chance of going to the moon and coming back home alive. He still decided to do it. They even wrote a speech for Nixon in case Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got stranded on the moon: Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore…

True, but not less brave than those that ventured into the endless oceans, when everything everyone knew was only Europe.

Totally agree. Many of the first Portuguese and Spanish explorers didn't even know if they would ever come back. They were leaving home to go to distant lands at a time where people still believed in monsters, witches and mermaids.

Re: Apollo 1

#35

Post by robryk »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #24
colinbartlett wrote: post #20

> The risk, of course, is that pure oxygen under high pressure requires but a spark to ignite and rapidly burn. Frustrating to see even a technically-oriented publication report that oxygen burns.

I don't know, I think it kinda depends on how you look at it. Sure oxygen doesn't burn without a fuel source, but a fuel source won't burn without oxygen either; both are required in order to produce fire. Why do we then say the fuel is burning but not the oxygen? Just a thought...

Because oxygen is much more common than fuel on Earth's surface.

Re: Apollo 1

#36

Post by vermontdevil »

wazoox wrote: post #23
pjmorris wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chaikin is terrific on the astronauts. Kranz is staring at me from my bookshelf, but I've not yet opted to read him. Let me add 'Apollo' by Murray and Cox to your list. It's focused on the Apollo engineers and managers, including great discussions of how they re-engineered things after Apollo 1, and of the behind-the-scenes work on Apollo 13, as well as many other elements.

The Kranz book is really great. The LEM had its problems, too :)

Even though it had problems, the engine design was incorporated into Merlin engines under SpaceX later on.

Apollo technology - the gift that keeps on giving.

Re: Apollo 1

#37

Post by lutorm »

ahh wrote: post #3

But in less than 30 months following the Apollo 1 accident, NASA flew five Apollo missions. During the final one of those five, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the Moon. Much later, in the last decade of his life, Armstrong would reflect on what it took to reach the Moon. “The rate of progress is proportional to the risk encountered,” he said. “The public at large may well be more risk averse than the ind…

Without commenting on the relative merits of Apollo vs the Space Shuttle programs, it bears remembering that there were 11 Apollo flights and 135 Space Shuttle flights. There simply aren't enough statistics to know whether the Apollo flights were more risky than the Shuttle flights or not, and hence which program did the most to "limit progress in the name of eliminating risk".

One may criticize its progress for being slow, but what is beyond debate is that the Shuttle program did not anywhere near eliminate risk.

Re: Apollo 1

#38

Post by earthboundkid »

pjmlp wrote: post #13
pogba101 wrote: post #12

The sheer bravery of the first men to sign up to go to the moon is outstanding. I remember listening to an interview where Buzz Aldrin said he estimated that there was a 60% chance of going to the moon and coming back home alive. He still decided to do it. They even wrote a speech for Nixon in case Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got stranded on the moon: Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore…

True, but not less brave than those that ventured into the endless oceans, when everything everyone knew was only Europe.

Man, the Hawaiians got that beat for courage. They had smaller boats, no magnetic compasses, and they still managed to find some tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific by ~900CE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesia#History_of_the_Polyn...

Re: Apollo 1

#39

Post by js2 »

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #25
js2 wrote: post #8

Frank Borman, in his testimony before congress, referred to the accident being due to a failure of imagination. In searching for his full testimony, I found this: "Apollo 1-Challenger-Columbia Lessons Learned" - https://nsc.nasa.gov/sfcs/systemfailurecasestudyfile/downloa... I also found transcripts of his testimony, but they aren't searchable - http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo204/inv.html (I'll have…

The testimony is "barely searchable", the text seems to have been already OCRed in someway, but it's disconnected at parts (so a full search may fail, whereas a partial might succeed). It'd then be a problem of parsing and joining the parts in a coherent way... which may not be an easier problem than just re-OCRing everything.

Thanks. I can't find his "failure of imagination" response (I searched for "imag"). I think these transcripts may not be complete.

Re: Apollo 1

#40

Post by dr_zoidberg »

js2 wrote: post #39
dr_zoidberg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The testimony is "barely searchable", the text seems to have been already OCRed in someway, but it's disconnected at parts (so a full search may fail, whereas a partial might succeed). It'd then be a problem of parsing and joining the parts in a coherent way... which may not be an easier problem than just re-OCRing everything.

Thanks. I can't find his "failure of imagination" response (I searched for "imag"). I think these transcripts may not be complete.

Mmmm... I remember the scene in From The Earth to The Moon, if it was scripted "historically" then that might give a bit of context as to the previous parts of the testimony, right before the quote?

Edit: I did some more searching, and the best I've found is something that confirms your suspicions[0]: that the records are more extensive, and the PDFs available don't cover all of his testimony.

[0] http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/000779.html

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