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Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died

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Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died

#11

Post by toomuchtodo »

minikites wrote: post #10
unchocked wrote: post #4

Clear skies and tailwinds. Can't get back to the Moon fast enough, while we still have living continuity to Apollo. Can't believe how low the low in our space program has been.

SpaceX is still blowing up rockets like it's 1950s NASA, maybe we should just fully fund the competent folks at 2020s NASA instead.

NASA seems confident enough in SpaceX's ability to award them a contract for Starship to take them back to the moon.

"This is but one of many genuinely shocking aspects of NASA's decision a week ago to award SpaceX—and only SpaceX—a contract to develop, test, and fly two missions to the lunar surface. The second flight, which will carry astronauts to the Moon, could launch as early as 2024."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/04/five-reasons-why-nas...

Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died

#12

Post by hinkley »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #7

Only four people are still alive that have walked on the moon and only 10 Apollo Moon mission people are still alive. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/890/who-has-walked-on-the-...

We are now in a race to see if the last people on the moon are still around to congratulate the next people to stand on the moon.

Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died

#14

Post by pjmorris »

Huge fan. "Carrying the Fire" was one of the greatest finds in my (rural Florida, 1970's) high school library. I'd never heard anyone say "I bore easily", let alone someone as responsible as an astronaut, I was awed by the vulnerability, and encouraged that boring easily wasn't necessarily debilitating. A great book, a great man.

Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died

#15

Post by thelean12 »

minikites wrote: post #10
unchocked wrote: post #4

Clear skies and tailwinds. Can't get back to the Moon fast enough, while we still have living continuity to Apollo. Can't believe how low the low in our space program has been.

SpaceX is still blowing up rockets like it's 1950s NASA, maybe we should just fully fund the competent folks at 2020s NASA instead.

SpaceX also blew up a huge amount of their Falcon rockets at the beginning too, and now they're consistently bringing astronauts to the ISS and payloads into orbit. So I'm not sure what your point is.

Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died

#16

Post by aplummer »

unchocked wrote: post #4

Clear skies and tailwinds. Can't get back to the Moon fast enough, while we still have living continuity to Apollo. Can't believe how low the low in our space program has been.

Pictures of Pluto, a helicopter on Mars, I’m more inspired than ever by nasa

Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died

#17

Post by vkou »

unchocked wrote: post #4

Clear skies and tailwinds. Can't get back to the Moon fast enough, while we still have living continuity to Apollo. Can't believe how low the low in our space program has been.

The reason the space program wound down was because the moon race was a vanity project. Once the vanity goal was achieved, nobody had any reason to go back there.

Meanwhile, people and groups with non-vanity goals are making extensive use of space in 2021, compared to 1969... But that's not very sexy, because things like weather satellites and imaging satellites, and communications satellites and the occasional telescope actually accomplish concrete, useful things, at a fraction of the Apollo budget.

Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died

#19

Post by derekp7 »

minikites wrote: post #10
unchocked wrote: post #4

Clear skies and tailwinds. Can't get back to the Moon fast enough, while we still have living continuity to Apollo. Can't believe how low the low in our space program has been.

SpaceX is still blowing up rockets like it's 1950s NASA, maybe we should just fully fund the competent folks at 2020s NASA instead.

I love how whenever SpaceX fails to land a booster that I see headlines of "SpaceX blows up another rocket", even if it still delivered its payload to orbit.

I do wonder, however, where NASA would be if they would have continued with the DC-X prototype instead of abandoning it when it had a landing leg failure causing it to topple over in an early test.

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