51–60 of 191 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/JPL have an ample history of blowing up experimental rockets. Same as the Russians. The Germans had it hard with the V2s as well I'd recommend people to look up into those previous failures (and SpaceX is finding "new ways" to fail)
Collins' role in Apollo 11 is often minimized in the public conciseness, but I find it particularly fascinating from a human perspective. In certain ways it seems even scarier than Armstrong's and Aldrin's jobs. They at least had more direct control over their success in landing on the moon. Collins was largely powerless to help if something went wrong. If that did happen, he would have been faced with the choice of…
Xkcd has a good fact check on this: it's just about plausible that some Polynesian or Antarctic explorer, the last survivor of a doomed expedition, was the furthest from any other human. But more likely it is the CSM commanders.
I note you say "other life" rather than "other humans", which would make it more clear cut in favour of Collins if we don't count whatever microorganisms travelled in Collins' gut and on every surface of Apollo.
RIP Michael Collins. Jethro Tull has a song about Michael Collins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU7BYLmAiV8 "For Michael Collins, Jeffery and Me" I'm with you L.E.M Though it's a shame that it had to be you The mother ship Is just a blip from your trip made for two I'm with you boys So please employ just a little extra care It's on my mind I'm left behind when I should have been there Walking with you
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And I love them for it. But I want humans on the Moon again.
To be fair, the pure scientific impact of the robotic missions is probably much higher than human ones (besides advances in medical/bioscience). But, placing people on the moon probably brings more funding for NASA than robots. Edit: Both are still extremely cool though
Now, the Apollo program also cost much more than the robotic missions. If you are willing to invest enough (e.g. Apollo was >1% of US GDP/year for most of the 60's) you can get an enormous amount of scientific return from a manned mission, but robots are useful for budgets that can't cover a manned mission.
Collins' role in Apollo 11 is often minimized in the public conciseness, but I find it particularly fascinating from a human perspective. In certain ways it seems even scarier than Armstrong's and Aldrin's jobs. They at least had more direct control over their success in landing on the moon. Collins was largely powerless to help if something went wrong. If that did happen, he would have been faced with the choice of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
NASA/JPL have an ample history of blowing up experimental rockets. Same as the Russians. The Germans had it hard with the V2s as well I'd recommend people to look up into those previous failures (and SpaceX is finding "new ways" to fail)
lol. I rarely test my code, but when I do, I test it on prod.
Collins' role in Apollo 11 is often minimized in the public conciseness, but I find it particularly fascinating from a human perspective. In certain ways it seems even scarier than Armstrong's and Aldrin's jobs. They at least had more direct control over their success in landing on the moon. Collins was largely powerless to help if something went wrong. If that did happen, he would have been faced with the choice of…
> Meanwhile no one had ever been as far from other life as he was on that flight. Xkcd has a good fact check on this: it's just about plausible that some Polynesian or Antarctic explorer, the last survivor of a doomed expedition, was the furthest from any other human. But more likely it is the CSM commanders. I note you say "other life" rather than "other humans", which would make it more clear cut in favour of Colli…
Collins' role in Apollo 11 is often minimized in the public conciseness, but I find it particularly fascinating from a human perspective. In certain ways it seems even scarier than Armstrong's and Aldrin's jobs. They at least had more direct control over their success in landing on the moon. Collins was largely powerless to help if something went wrong. If that did happen, he would have been faced with the choice of…
I mean, a few guys stayed in orbit on subsequent lunar missions, but you're right, Collins was the first.
The "had" there was meant to imply it was true up until that point in history. Other people have either nearly matched or slightly exceeded him depending on the specific details of the later Apollo mission lunar orbits. However it is mentally easier to be the second person to do something dangerous once you see the first person succeed safely. There is a reason everyone knows Armstrong and Aldrin, but Conrad and Bean don't have much notoriety today in the general population.
Collins' role in Apollo 11 is often minimized in the public conciseness, but I find it particularly fascinating from a human perspective. In certain ways it seems even scarier than Armstrong's and Aldrin's jobs. They at least had more direct control over their success in landing on the moon. Collins was largely powerless to help if something went wrong. If that did happen, he would have been faced with the choice of…
I remembered it something like this (but see soarfourmore's reply for a correction): what if the command module pilot became incapacitated but was still alive?
The lunar module could still dock with the command module, but the astronauts would not be able to get into the command module because the the CM pilot could not open the hatch on that side.
So their only option would be to do a spacewalk over to the command module and open an external hatch to get in.
The would not know at that point whether the CM pilot had his spacesuit helmet on or not, so they wouldn't know until they opened the hatch whether they had just killed him.