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

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

#81

Post by canadianfella » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 12:45 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #12

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 v…

The students were accomplishing more.

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

#82

Post by mannykannot » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 12:51 PM UTC

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…

You make a very valid point about casualty rates, though I am just about certain that Jim Lovell would have been eager to go regardless.

Getting back to casualty rates, I think you have to at least put them on a log scale to get a feel for their impact on society, at least as long as they are less than the survivorship rate.

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

#83

Post by codyb » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 12:52 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #77

JohnBooty wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't speak for the parent poster but it seems abundantly clear they're decrying the widening gap between those with access to good-paying jobs and those who are deprived of opportunity. Frankly, it seems like you're on the same side.

No, it’s the implication that without a college degree you have some shitty life deprived of opportunity. This is both paternalistic and condescending. There is nothing wrong with making 80k a year in Iowa as an electrician and paying down a mortgage on a 250k house. That’s not a deprivation of opportunity.

80k a year’s a pretty good salary almost anywhere. There’s plenty in NYC who live on less.

GP wasn’t saying everyone in Idaho is a crack head or heroin junkie due to the unfulfilled nature of their work, they were saying there’s too many jobs in America at below living wages and there’s this huge huge gap between the working poor and the white collar that’s only expanding.

Trade schools are great and put out talented professionals who earn decent salaries.

Many people outside of white collar positions and Yale alumni live very rewarding, cultured, and fulfilling lives.

But it doesn’t mean we can’t as a society do better for our lower classes, and a lot of parents are understandably concerned about their children graduating with a mountain of debt, getting a job that pays like shit, not having access to health care, and living an unfulfilling life.

If your life is rewarding in those conditions it is despite your circumstance which certainly does not optimize for a stress free, meaningful and rewarding existence.

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

#84

Post by bumby » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 1:00 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #29

hedora wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

I don't know if this dean's observation is about helicopter parenting or risk aversion as much as it's about how bifurcated and ultra-high stakes the university/credential-pedigree system has become, and how essential it is to optimize for a certain outcome at all costs. When I was high school age, the A students went to good universities and generally ended up with a good professional career, the B students went to…

>I don't know if this dean's observation is about helicopter parenting or risk aversion as much as it's about how bifurcated and ultra-high stakes

From my perspective, these go hand-in-hand. The Meritocracy Trap outlines how the ultra-competitiveness has led parents to invest more and earlier in preparation for college. Excellent Sheep described how many Ivy League bound have to essentially declare their intention in grade school to follow the templated path to reach that goal. This causes a formulaic existence, which is underscored by an increase in the number of young adults who look at college as vocational training rather than to build a life philosophy. Meaning there is very little questioning why and instead just following the inertia of a goal that was predetermined when one was in elementary school.

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

#85

Post by rozab » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 1:08 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #62

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…

There was a regulated way for astronauts to take personal stuff with them ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_preference_kitb http://spaceflownartifacts.com/flown_ppks.html . Note that these bags had a part number, showing how well planned this was). That likely was done because it helped, psychologically. What you put in those bags had to be approved, so things got smuggled in, too ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

Wow, today I learned that Neil Armstrong took bits of the Wright Flyer to the moon.

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

#86

Post by chokeartist » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #29

hedora wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

I don't know if this dean's observation is about helicopter parenting or risk aversion as much as it's about how bifurcated and ultra-high stakes the university/credential-pedigree system has become, and how essential it is to optimize for a certain outcome at all costs. When I was high school age, the A students went to good universities and generally ended up with a good professional career, the B students went to…

> Walmart/Meth if they're lucky, prison if they're not. Competition among students is a complete slug-fest and every parent is doing whatever they can to juice the metrics that universities demand, at the expense of every other part of the student's development/upbringing. You don't want your kid left behind in the dirt.

What a cute fucked up view of thew world you have. Let me in on a secret: This is merely a rat race and the quality of the students are not improving.

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

#87

Post by JohnBooty » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

schoen wrote: post #27

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…

> 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. This seems plausible, but I wonder if what you calculated is the best way to measure it. First, since you mentioned "Americans and the rest of the world", does the same trend hold for the people on the other side of these conflicts? At least in the past 20 years' examples, t…

    First, since you mentioned "Americans and the rest of the 
    world", does the same trend hold for the people on the other 
    side of these conflicts?

Yeah and no. It's so hard to measure the human cost of war because so many of the deaths are indirect.

Operation Rolling Thunder (50 years ago) was probably the last time the US took mass numbers of lives directly, with the high end of estimates approaching something like an average of 5,000/month.

Estimates of deaths from the Iraq War range from 150K "violent deaths" to 1mil "excess deaths" which would include all sorts of indirect causes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

Those are horrific levels of loss but nowhere near the toll of WWII.

    Second, the number of people who fought in each of these    
    wars is also pretty different. Isn't a more direct 
    comparison something more like "deaths per combatant per 
    month" rather than "deaths per month"?

It depends. Do we want to measure how risky it is to be a combatant, or how risky it is to be a human being on Earth?

If it's the former, then "deaths per combatant per month" is what we want. That would be interesting, though I question how broadly useful it would be. It would obviously be directly useful for combatants (or those considering becoming combatants) but is probably not useful as an overall indicator of "hey, how's the human race doing in general?"

If it's the latter, the stat we probably want is "war-related deaths per human being per month" or something like that. That would be a good indicator of overall levels of war and strife. It would take into account the increased population of the world as well.

Even if (heaven forbid) we had a conflict that results in WWII-like absolute levels of deaths today, that would represent a far lower number of deaths as a percentage of the human population lost.

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

#88

Post by pjc50 » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #69

simonh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a British children's adventure film called "Swallows and Amazons". A family of children want to go on a sailing trip without adult supervision to camp on an island. Their mother sends a telegram to her husband, who's an officer on a navy ship asking his advice (or permission, it was another time). He sends a telegram back "If not duffers won't drown, if duffers better drowned".

It was originally a book, or actually a series of books, written and set in the 1930s. Great reading as a child, but to have such permissive parents - they barely make an appearance while their kids as young as 7 spend days at a time boating and camping - seemed as fanciful to me as Harry Potter . I wonder if it was really like that in the 30s.

Apart from the magic, Harry Potter is just the well-worn genre of "school stories" and the social structure of the school is basically that of a select British private school, complete with boarders and "houses" and so on. It really was like that in the 30s (see Roald Dahl's Boy, for another example, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalky_%26_Co.).

I think Swallows and Amazons is a little stretched from what would have been normal levels of parental contact, but not beyond what a reader of the time would have considered normal or reasonable.

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

#89

Post by rjsw » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

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…

The risk isn't just from being a test pilot, there is a line in "The Right Stuff" pointing out that the chances of a Navy pilot being killed in peacetime was 1 in 4 over their career.

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

#90

Post by jonfw » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

akhilcacharya wrote: post #68

mmglr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little truth to what you wrote here. You can get into great universities with solid A’s. And you can certainly graduate from a state school with minimal to no debt.

I had pretty good grades but I couldn’t get into any great universities with my stats. Best I could do was UNC-CH. The bifurcation is extremely real in my experience, and I’m not in the charmed class.

Since when is UNC-CH not a great university?