So what's the HN consensus - were there landings to begin with or was it all staged? :)
XKCD said it all: http://xkcd.com/202/
Did you mean this one? http://xkcd.com/1074/
Men Walk On Moon - July 20th 1969
71–80 of 95 posts
Re: Men Walk On Moon - July 20th 1969
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Men" as in mankind. It's just the way that word is used. I'm pretty sure Armstrong wasn't trying to be misogynistic there.
I know. But since I know that that kind of language is not ok my appreciation circuits are fried.
How do you "know" that kind of language is not OK?
Re: Men Walk On Moon - July 20th 1969
#73Re: Men Walk On Moon - July 20th 1969
#74For me at least, I hope man goes back to the moon in my lifetime. Dad has always talked about his memories of 1969 (he would have been a teenager at the time) and the excitement of it. I feel like going back after so long will feel almost as momentous for some of my generation. Although possibly not the the majority, which is a little sad.
Emotionally, it would be great to see a return to manned space exploration, but the intellectual side of me has to ask 1) why return to the moon? and 2) how practical is it to send humans when robots can achieve 80% of the objectives at 20% of the cost, and so much of what is worth visiting is out of reach until we figure out how to dramatically increase the speed of space travel? Note that the 80% and 20% are sheer…
There aren't any legitimate scientific objectives (meaning we're excluding things like "studying sex at 1/6 G") people can accomplish on the moon that robots can't. And manned spaceflight is about a x20 multiplier, not x5.
So it should really be "100% of the objectives for 5% of the cost". Which, in a nutshell, is why we stopped sending people to the moon.
Re: Men Walk On Moon - July 20th 1969
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even the cool look holds a fatal flaw....never again will we design rockets where the cargo rides adjacent to the fuel, rather than on top.
It wouldn't be so bad if the orbiter didn't have such big wings (due to a military requirement for a large cross-range flight ability that was never actually used). Big wings means a more difficult reentry scenario, which means exotic, and brittle, thermal protection systems on the wing leading edges, which means a much larger area of highly vulnerable thermal protection materials on the orbiter. And it wouldn't be s…
Yeah, the shuttles were designed as nuclear, space bombers.
Re: Men Walk On Moon - July 20th 1969
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wouldn't be so bad if the orbiter didn't have such big wings (due to a military requirement for a large cross-range flight ability that was never actually used). Big wings means a more difficult reentry scenario, which means exotic, and brittle, thermal protection systems on the wing leading edges, which means a much larger area of highly vulnerable thermal protection materials on the orbiter. And it wouldn't be s…
Yeah, the shuttles were designed as nuclear, space bombers.
The wings WERE a military requirement but nothing quite that silly.
It was to enable a launch from Edwards AFB in California, insert or extract a polar orbit payload and land on US soil.
Importantly it allowed them to choose the orbital insert point while they were over US territory where nobody was watching precisely where it went.
Re: Men Walk On Moon - July 20th 1969
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd be a Russian TV crew filming an empty spot that was supposed to be that of an Apollo landing :)
Why aren't there any pictures of the landing zones from orbit? Interesting.
So you're implying that the Americans could fake several entire moon landing missions (to the satisfaction even of their bitter rivals the Soviets), but couldn't make some fake images from lunar orbit?
Re: Men Walk On Moon - July 20th 1969
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not really a question of wings so much as weight. The wings - because they were wings - were vulnerable to debris strikes during launch. Which wasn't important during _launch_ but was sure a problem during re-entry.
Again, the thermal protection system was delicate because of weight issues. If the shuttles design goal was to get 20 people to LEO safely and they had anywhere close to the same budget to work with they could have used a few inches of titanium as part of the thermal protection system vs just glued on tiles that are less dense than Styrofoam. PS: The surface area to weight is directly related to reentry heating. A pe…
Again, the thermal protection system was delicate because of weight issues.
I was not disagreeing with you.
* A person can do reentry in little more than one of those old style space suits and a parachute,*
Are you sure? If one is in orbit, one will re-enter hypersonic. This implies a whole lotta friction as you careen through the atmosphere.
Re: Men Walk On Moon - July 20th 1969
#79We need to be reminded that once we did great things. I worked at MIT Instrumentation Lab on a compiler for the guidance software for the moon missions. My contribution was insignificant, but I am still proud to have been part of it. My only regret was that I never made it to Florida to watch a Saturn V take off.
Russell as in Steve Russell? Because, if so, I think you've done things much more significant than land men on the moon.
Looks like it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3519747 and other comments verify.
Re: Men Walk On Moon - July 20th 1969
#80Unfortunately they weren't there. Only the Soviet robots had really been on the Moon.