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Apollo 14 50th anniversary images find Alan Shepard's ball and how far he hit it

bbc.com

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Re: Apollo 14 50th anniversary images find Alan Shepard's ball and how far he hit it

#11

Post by willcipriano »

sebmellen wrote: post #2

For those who want the TLDR: > "We can now fairly accurately determine that ball number one travelled 24 yards, and ball number two travelled 40 yards," says Cheshire-based Saunders, who has been working with the United States Golf Association (USGA) to mark the anniversary. > "Unfortunately, even the impressive second shot could hardly be described as 'miles and miles and miles', but of course this has only ever bee…

If the golf ball only traveled 40 yards, using motorised conveyance to chase after it would look rather silly.

Re: Apollo 14 50th anniversary images find Alan Shepard's ball and how far he hit it

#12

Post by hedora »

jamestimmins wrote: post #9

I wonder if things like this would ever happen now. The original Mercury and Apollo astronauts were Air Force test pilots, a group known for picking and choosing which rules they wanted to follow. Sneaking a golf club aboard, not to mention the possibility of falling and tearing his suit, is a non-trivial risk. It's hard to imagine that culture of risk taking still exists, but at the same time, that culture may be wh…

Your comment reminds me of this book:

https://time.com/3910020/the-over-parenting-trap-how-to-avoi...

> So imagine how surprised I was to discover among my more affluent, well-connected students a growing number who seemed to be lacking the ability to make their way independently in the world, as, frankly, 18-22 year olds always had been able to do and just as crucially, used to desire to do. I’m deliberately being vague about what exactly was missing in so many students because frankly I couldn’t quite tell at first. Something was just off. Odd. It took most of my ten years as dean before I figured out what exactly the problem was.

For starters, each year my students were more and more and more and more accomplished. The grades, but not just the grades: the scores. And not just the grades and the scores but the awards, and the accolades, and the activities, and community service, and leadership, and, and, and, and, and, every other prospect for perfection. Yet each year I noticed that more and more could tell you what they’d done but not so much why they’d done it.

I’m old enough that helicopter parenting wasn’t a thing when I was a kid. I find the whole phenomenon incomprehensible.

But, yeah, I imagine people used to accomplish more before everyone got so damned risk adverse.

Re: Apollo 14 50th anniversary images find Alan Shepard's ball and how far he hit it

#13

Post by maxerickson »

yannk wrote: post #10

video of the shots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_jYOubJmfM

Funny that the video contradicts the article, showing him hitting 3 shots.

He also has little trouble with the mechanics of the shot that he is able to take with the suit on.

Re: Apollo 14 50th anniversary images find Alan Shepard's ball and how far he hit it

#14

Post by [deleted] »

jamestimmins wrote: post #9

I wonder if things like this would ever happen now. The original Mercury and Apollo astronauts were Air Force test pilots, a group known for picking and choosing which rules they wanted to follow. Sneaking a golf club aboard, not to mention the possibility of falling and tearing his suit, is a non-trivial risk. It's hard to imagine that culture of risk taking still exists, but at the same time, that culture may be wh…

[deleted]

Re: Apollo 14 50th anniversary images find Alan Shepard's ball and how far he hit it

#15

Post by bpodgursky »

jamestimmins wrote: post #9

I wonder if things like this would ever happen now. The original Mercury and Apollo astronauts were Air Force test pilots, a group known for picking and choosing which rules they wanted to follow. Sneaking a golf club aboard, not to mention the possibility of falling and tearing his suit, is a non-trivial risk. It's hard to imagine that culture of risk taking still exists, but at the same time, that culture may be wh…

It's also important to note how much a bit of goofing around got the public engaged in the missions. It wasn't a dry, clinical, scientific expedition — real humans were on the moon, and took the opportunity to... be actual humans. Hitting golf balls. Jumping around.

Those antics, even if they had nominal risk, are part of what got millions of people (especially young people) excited about manned spaceflight.

Re: Apollo 14 50th anniversary images find Alan Shepard's ball and how far he hit it

#16

Post by mandevil »

jamestimmins wrote: post #9

I wonder if things like this would ever happen now. The original Mercury and Apollo astronauts were Air Force test pilots, a group known for picking and choosing which rules they wanted to follow. Sneaking a golf club aboard, not to mention the possibility of falling and tearing his suit, is a non-trivial risk. It's hard to imagine that culture of risk taking still exists, but at the same time, that culture may be wh…

I suspect that it's more a generational thing than an occupational one. I've met a couple of test pilots from the '90's and '00's and they were the some of the most by-the-book people I've ever met, they were meticulous and followed their steps precisely, even for quotidian things like making breakfast or pitching a tent.

As for risk, Jim Lovell was asked, before he left for his second trip to the moon (Apollo 13), if he worried about the risk. His response was if wasn't an astronaut heading for the moon, he'd be back to his original job as a navy fighter pilot flying missions over North Vietnam, and he'd rather everybody be working to keep him alive than trying to kill him. And war (for Americans and the rest of the world) is a lot less deadly than it used to be, in large part because it got more professionalized. If you add KIA+MIA (after this long a time, those are dead bodies that were never recovered), in World War One average US monthly losses were 6260/month, World War Two was 9865/month, Korea was 1116/month, Vietnam was 589/month, and the total combined dead from September 11th attacks, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and the operations against ISIS come out to 9766 (all numbers from Wikipedia). So the past 20 years of fairly continuous war comes out to about the dead from a single month of World War Two, for the US. That's in lockstep with the rest of the culture, we simply are much safer in every dimension.

Re: Apollo 14 50th anniversary images find Alan Shepard's ball and how far he hit it

#17

Post by throwaway0a5e »

mandevil wrote: post #16
jamestimmins wrote: post #9

I wonder if things like this would ever happen now. The original Mercury and Apollo astronauts were Air Force test pilots, a group known for picking and choosing which rules they wanted to follow. Sneaking a golf club aboard, not to mention the possibility of falling and tearing his suit, is a non-trivial risk. It's hard to imagine that culture of risk taking still exists, but at the same time, that culture may be wh…

I suspect that it's more a generational thing than an occupational one. I've met a couple of test pilots from the '90's and '00's and they were the some of the most by-the-book people I've ever met, they were meticulous and followed their steps precisely, even for quotidian things like making breakfast or pitching a tent. As for risk, Jim Lovell was asked, before he left for his second trip to the moon (Apollo 13), i…

>I suspect that it's more a generational thing than an occupational one. I've met a couple of test pilots from the '90's and '00's and they were the some of the most by-the-book people I've ever met, they were meticulous and followed their steps precisely, even for quotidian things like making breakfast or pitching a tent.

The people who were test pilots in the 90s were people who succeeded under a system of massive "by the book"-ness.

The cowboys of the 60s don't wind up being successful test pilots in that kind of system.

The organizations changed so the people who succeed in them changed.

Re: Apollo 14 50th anniversary images find Alan Shepard's ball and how far he hit it

#18

Post by Judgmentality »

mandevil wrote: post #16
jamestimmins wrote: post #9

I wonder if things like this would ever happen now. The original Mercury and Apollo astronauts were Air Force test pilots, a group known for picking and choosing which rules they wanted to follow. Sneaking a golf club aboard, not to mention the possibility of falling and tearing his suit, is a non-trivial risk. It's hard to imagine that culture of risk taking still exists, but at the same time, that culture may be wh…

I suspect that it's more a generational thing than an occupational one. I've met a couple of test pilots from the '90's and '00's and they were the some of the most by-the-book people I've ever met, they were meticulous and followed their steps precisely, even for quotidian things like making breakfast or pitching a tent. As for risk, Jim Lovell was asked, before he left for his second trip to the moon (Apollo 13), i…

> And war (for Americans and the rest of the world) is a lot less deadly than it used to be

My hunch for wars getting less deadly is because of nuclear weapons. There hasn't been a direct war between superpowers for the better part of a century. This sounds good, except it's possible we'll essentially wipe out the planet overnight because of a technical error.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...

I think we need a longer timespan to say whether or not wars are getting deadlier.

Re: Apollo 14 50th anniversary images find Alan Shepard's ball and how far he hit it

#19

Post by mandevil »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #17
mandevil wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that it's more a generational thing than an occupational one. I've met a couple of test pilots from the '90's and '00's and they were the some of the most by-the-book people I've ever met, they were meticulous and followed their steps precisely, even for quotidian things like making breakfast or pitching a tent. As for risk, Jim Lovell was asked, before he left for his second trip to the moon (Apollo 13), i…

>I suspect that it's more a generational thing than an occupational one. I've met a couple of test pilots from the '90's and '00's and they were the some of the most by-the-book people I've ever met, they were meticulous and followed their steps precisely, even for quotidian things like making breakfast or pitching a tent. The people who were test pilots in the 90s were people who succeeded under a system of massive…

And test pilots regularly died in the old system, and come home to their children in the current one, so I prefer the current one.

The point is that it isn't "they were test pilots, so crazy" it is "in the 1950's and 1960's a lot more death was accepted and because of that, the standards were lower."

Re: Apollo 14 50th anniversary images find Alan Shepard's ball and how far he hit it

#20

Post by oh_sigh »

jamestimmins wrote: post #9

I wonder if things like this would ever happen now. The original Mercury and Apollo astronauts were Air Force test pilots, a group known for picking and choosing which rules they wanted to follow. Sneaking a golf club aboard, not to mention the possibility of falling and tearing his suit, is a non-trivial risk. It's hard to imagine that culture of risk taking still exists, but at the same time, that culture may be wh…

To be fair, he only snuck a golf club head aboard. He used the lunar soil sampler as the makeshift club.
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