Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

fox13seattle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 264 posts

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

#201

Post by Thorrez »

Cerium wrote: post #100
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.

I have no idea how to calculate it, but I interpreted this to mean not that the earth rotated (which everyone is trying to calculate) but that the earth was crossing the horizon of the moon such that four miles of earth crosses the horizon during the shot causing earth blur for a moon-stable reference frame.

Revolved I think would be the correct term for that.

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

#202

Post by alextheterrible »

akavel wrote: post #124
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

"calm down, Lovell!"

That's a fun listen.

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

#203

Post by __m »

spoonfeeder006 wrote: post #129

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

Just because we can’t explain it yet doesn’t mean there is some voodoo involved

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

#204

Post by throwAGIway »

rizzom5000 wrote: post #199
jrootabega wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ageism is not inherently wrong. This also deals with a public space, where idealism and liberties are already restricted. If you make individual exceptions based on close examination, then fine. But I think it's fair for observers to assume that this individual flying was a mistake.

Using the same logic you might say that people shouldn't be allowed to drive until they are 24. Statistically far more lives would have been saved yesterday if we'd only simply restrict more liberties based on age alone.

The statistic would just move to 36 then. It's about experience with driving, not the age.

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

#205

Post by dev_tty01 »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #173
mycologos wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, he certainly would have known exactly what he was doing at some point in his life, but skills and judgement do degrade with age.

And the obvious degradation of the body's capabilities and its potential failure points (potentially increased by traveling 300mph at 10,000 ft). Commenter is right, 90 year olds shouldn't be driving cars let alone flying. Incredibly irresponsible. Also there's really nothing that cool or heroic about dedicating your life to testing and operating flying death machines on behalf of a military. Get a grip.

If you follow your argument to a logical conclusion it would require that we ban millions of people with mild impairments from operating machines. That is the worst kind of ageism, discrimination, and ableism.

Imagine that you studied and went through pilot training and got your license. Do you really believe that when you start solo flying that you, an inexperienced pilot, would be a safer pilot than someone like Bill Anders at 90? Experience, guile, and cunning count for far more than you can imagine.

When my mother was getting older I looked at age related accident data. I apologize that I don't have the reference handy, but it was quite striking that teenagers are far more likely to have an accident than an elderly driver. I guess we should ban teenagers from driving also? Experience matters a great deal.

How about if we find that recent immigrants are more likely to have an accident due to lack of familiarity with local driving regs? According to your logic we should make a law banning immigrants from driving. And on and on...

As far as your comments about military service, even if we are anti-war (who isn't?), it is still possible to admire the hero who is willing to put their life on the line to defend their community.

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

#207

Post by acheron »

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?

Should have picked a different name then, Washington DC had already been around for a century.

(Also, New York has to append “state” too.)

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

#209

Post by nytesky »

lukan wrote: post #151
krisoft wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would be a fitting way to go for a cook or an athlete then? Whatever they liked doing? Being an astronaut at that time implied that he was an aviator. Keeping his licence to fly into the old age of 90 means he most likely loved flying. That is why it is a “fitting way to die”. I don’t know the cook you mention. Maybe they loved cooking for loved ones. In that case a fitting way to die would be while they are d…

"Dying in an accident doing something you always hated is worse than dying in an accident doing something you loved." Dead is dead, though. I do not think the final moments matter as much as all the years before them. So even if I will one day die on the toilet being old, that would be way better, than me dying soon in an climbing accident, even though that sounds more dramatic and I am way more into climbing than to…

I do wonder if perception of time changes as you die — maybe those last moments feel oh so much longer, and you experience them as another lifetime (part of why afterlife descriptions of near death can be so rich). Like ST TNG The Inner Light episode.

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

#210

Post by jrootabega »

rizzom5000 wrote: post #199
jrootabega wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ageism is not inherently wrong. This also deals with a public space, where idealism and liberties are already restricted. If you make individual exceptions based on close examination, then fine. But I think it's fair for observers to assume that this individual flying was a mistake.

Using the same logic you might say that people shouldn't be allowed to drive until they are 24. Statistically far more lives would have been saved yesterday if we'd only simply restrict more liberties based on age alone.

Worth discussing! You might also suggest that driving tests should be harder/longer/repeated, specialized based on different types of driving, and license privileges restricted based on years/miles safely driven. We already do it to truck drivers. Remember, most societies have already crossed over into treating driving on public infrastructure as a privilege, not a right/liberty.
Post reply on HN