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Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash

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Re: Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash

#121

Post by accrual »

tzfld wrote: post #110
bicx wrote: post #5

I saw the headline earlier, and my first thought was "I hope he was the pilot, because that would be a fitting way to go for a legend." Not only was he the pilot, but he was flying solo at 90 years old.

I hate this reasoning. Why is this a fitting way to die? What would be a fitting way to go for a cook or an athlete then?

My take is that he passed doing what he clearly loved: flying. He made some of his greatest achievements in life while in flight and was still flying during his final moments.

Re: Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash

#122

Post by lamontcg »

jvm___ wrote: post #61
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Anders He took the Earthrise photo, which Nature photographer Galen Rowell described as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise https://www.abc.net.au/science/moon/earthrise.htm

The shutter speed was 1/250th of a second, so the earth rotated about 4 miles or 6 kms while the shutter was open. Not enough to blur the photo obviously, but crazy to think about.

If the orbital period was 80 minutes then that is 1/1,200,000th of a period and with Earth's circumference being ~25,000 miles that should only be about 0.02 miles.

Or if the orbital velocity was 17,000 mph and neglecting the height of the orbit, 17000 / 3600 / 250 = 0.018 miles.

So either way, about 100 feet.

Re: Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash

#123

Post by lamontcg »

rconti wrote: post #117
TMWNN wrote: post #2

I learned about this from Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1daolaw/rip_bill_and... >. Title edited by me from "WA" to "Washington State". Besides making history as the first human expedition to the Moon, Apollo 8 produced not one, but two future CEOs of Fortune 500 companies: Anders (General Dynamics) and Frank Borman (Eastern Airlines). Jim Lovell "merely" survived Apollo 13.

As a WA native: happy for the edit of the ambiguous and US-centric acronym WA -> Washington. Also as a WA native: screw those DC assholes, why are we the only state that have to append "state" to our name?

Then sometimes Western Australia pops up randomly.

Re: Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash

#124

Post by akavel »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Anders He took the Earthrise photo, which Nature photographer Galen Rowell described as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise https://www.abc.net.au/science/moon/earthrise.htm

Wikipedia links to a nice visualization on youtube of the moments when the photo was taken, synced with the recording of the actual conversation of the Astronauts as recorded by the Apollo 8 equipment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-vOscpiNc

Re: Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash

#125

Post by adastra22 »

lamontcg wrote: post #122
jvm___ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shutter speed was 1/250th of a second, so the earth rotated about 4 miles or 6 kms while the shutter was open. Not enough to blur the photo obviously, but crazy to think about.

If the orbital period was 80 minutes then that is 1/1,200,000th of a period and with Earth's circumference being ~25,000 miles that should only be about 0.02 miles. Or if the orbital velocity was 17,000 mph and neglecting the height of the orbit, 17000 / 3600 / 250 = 0.018 miles. So either way, about 100 feet.

It was taken from the moon, not low earth orbit.

Re: Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash

#126

Post by adastra22 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #118

An absolute legend going out like a total badass. I know people will disagree but there is much to be said for living your life on your own terms and accepting the potential consequences without reservation. He was clearly one of those guys. He probably did not expect to die that day, but he knew he would die some day and he wasn’t going to nerf his life to buy a few more years.

But would you "net your life" to buy a billion years?

Re: Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash

#127

Post by filleduchaos »

subhro wrote: post #77
avalys wrote: post #53

Since there’s a lot of commenting about his age, I’ll remark (as a 36-year-old private pilot) that in my opinion an elderly man flying recreationally is actually much less hazardous to the general public than an elderly man driving a car. Flying is a specialized skill, but once you learn it it’s not especially difficult and requires less sustained focus, reflexes and reaction time than driving. It’s not as if there’s…

> Flying is a specialized skill, but once you learn it it’s not especially difficult and requires less sustained focus, reflexes and reaction time than driving. Respectfully disagree (as a 40-something year old aerobatic pilot) with the less sustained focus part, not the specialized skill part.

I'm not a pilot, but I have a bit of a morbid fascination with aviation incidents, and I think I agree with both of you somewhat?

The average flight deck is a hell of a lot more complicated than the average driver's seat in terms of things the operator needs to pay attention to, so I'd definitely say that flying requires more sustained focus. However, during routine flight (not counting taking off and landing, because I know those are very high workload periods?) pilots have a lot more time and space than drivers do to recover from a situation before it becomes a catastrophic failure, especially when it comes to danger to others outside the vehicle. So I'd also say that driving on average requires better reflexes and reaction times to prevent accidents.

Take collisions for example; as GP alluded to, a driver's window to recognise and start responding to a developing problem is often mentioned in fractions of a second or a few whole seconds at best, because they can come out of practically nowhere. On the other hand, my impression of warning systems like TCAS and EGPWS is that the pilot has several seconds or more to start responding to the initial warning and still safely execute an avoidance/escape manoeuvre.

Re: Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash

#128

Post by defrost »

lamontcg wrote: post #123
rconti wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a WA native: happy for the edit of the ambiguous and US-centric acronym WA -> Washington. Also as a WA native: screw those DC assholes, why are we the only state that have to append "state" to our name?

Then sometimes Western Australia pops up randomly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6kTOVW7CXk

Re: Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash

#129

Post by spoonfeeder006 »

This is a Baha'i Prayer I like to say for people who pass on to the next life

Its hard to describe how I feel about it, its just so deep and profound...

Consciousness itself, as apart from the behavior and computation that goes on in the brain, is a mystery of neuroscience. So maybe somehow it persists after we die? NDEs kinda shed light on that

RIP up in the stars man

https://www.bahaiprayers.io/prayer?id=204020

Re: Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash

#130

Post by cjk2 »

tzfld wrote: post #110
bicx wrote: post #5

I saw the headline earlier, and my first thought was "I hope he was the pilot, because that would be a fitting way to go for a legend." Not only was he the pilot, but he was flying solo at 90 years old.

I hate this reasoning. Why is this a fitting way to die? What would be a fitting way to go for a cook or an athlete then?

As a mathematician I'm going to fall on a slide rule and poke my brain through an eye socket.

Yeah doesn't work does it.

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