121–130 of 190 posts
Always figured they used NASA, etc.
I am currently reading the gorgeous Folio Society edition of the A Man on the Moon The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin (worth a buy from https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/a-man-on-the-moon.html if you a) like the topic and b) have 235.00). I just finished the book 1 which ends with well known Apollo 13 disaster and the RCA of the explosion is that the liquid O2 tank for the fuel cell was intended fo…
Dropping it 5cm shifted the position of the tube assembly far enough to cause more problems? Why wouldn't that disqualify the part for flight?
German national/public broadcasting service ARD reported the lunar lander has successfully landed while they watched a rendered animation[0] (from the perspective of the surface of the moon!!). Can't make this shit up. 0. https://pr0gramm.com/top/5662958 (German)
So you’re saying the moon landing was faked?
It was heartbreaking to see the control room during the first few minutes after the landing. Imagine a project you've worked on for years going kaput and you won't even know why. None of these engineers will find sleep tonight. I hope some moon orbiter can take pics of the landing site soon.
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Because everyone assumes they'd be an explorer or visionary scientist when they'd most likely just be taking out the trash in a frozen desert.
The closest experience to what living in space that can be experienced on earth is living on a submarine. Working with advanced tech in an environment where everything is trying to kill you, logistics challenges to maintain operation, schedule completely dictated for you, etc. But ask many people who want to live on Mars if they would go on a long underway on a submarine, and they don't seem to excited by the idea. I…
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At least I would have a reasonable assumption of breathable air, a fresh water source, flora and fauna I can gather and hunt to eat, and likely arable land that I can use to grow additional food sources from. Space and planets we can visit has absolutely none of these things.
> Space and planets we can visit has absolutely none of these things. Because of that, you'll be carrying with you sources of better breathable air, fresher water, and food that's much less likely to kill you or escape you. At least early on, before the market pressure reduces aforementioned consumables to lowest possible quality still able to sustain some degree of life.
The most salient problem here, however, is that the quality of each resource is of little concern if I end up running out of it for whatever reason and there is only a limited exit strategy.
Earth is an island among a vast amount of inhospitable nothingness sprinkled with the occasional dead rock or gargantuan ball of toxic gas orbiting a fireball blasting out photons that degrade our materials and the DNA in our cells. Early earth-bound pioneers of “new” lands could be confident that they could at least breath the air, but this environment is confirmed only to exist on planet earth for now.
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Foot pound second is such a weird unit. How did that pass the quality controls? I also don’t understand how one team of educated engineers could decide to use imperial units instead of metric units.
Aerospace engineering is still a mix of both units. Especially on the aeronautics side, imperial is still widely used. Part of the reason for this is that past reference materials and tooling at many manufacturers still using imperial tooling. A team of good engineers is expected to be proficient with both unit systems --- its not really a big deal to use imperial on projects.
Three failed commercial landers now. Are the moon Nazis shooting them down on approach? /s
There is no moon, it is just a giant cardboard soundstage in orbit. The lander just felt behind it.