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John Glenn has died

dispatch.com

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Re: John Glenn has died

#81

Post by bpodgursky »

noonespecial wrote: post #67
rmason wrote: post #14

John Glenn was one of my boyhood heroes. I remember as a young boy listening to reports of him taking off and making those three orbits of the earth. My uncle gave me a crystal radio shaped like Glenn's Friendship 7 capsule that ignited a fierce passion into radio that led to a ham radio license and a lifelong interest in science. It was a time in America when the future seemed endless, anything was possible. A lot h…

>It was a time in America when the future seemed endless, anything was possible. Somewhere between "We choose to go to the moon" and "if you see something, say something" we traded all of our hope and optimism for fear and suspicion. I'm just hoping for hope again.

That's a really simplistic way of thinking about it.

The red scare continued through the late 1950s (and the cold war continued for decades -- there was no lack of fear and suspicion).

John Glen orbited the earth in 1962, in the middle of all this.

The nation doesn't wake up, flip and coin and decide it's either optimistic or fearful one day. You can be scared of some things and optimistic about others. Or both at the same time. Or some people are optimistic, and others have more fears.

It's complicated, but pithy quotes ("I'm just hoping for hope again") are stupid.

Re: John Glenn has died

#83

Post by vkou »

andars wrote: post #70
vkou wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't entirely count as a space disaster as it was in training. More importantly, everyone of them expected 'You're going to burn-up and die in launch/re-entry/all your air vents in space/your engines will misfire, and you won't return home' as big, serious risks of their work. Nobody expected 'You're going to burn-up and die as a result of getting into a closed room, and pushing a few buttons', to be in their…

Important to note that the "closed room" was the Command Module on top of a Saturn launch vehicle.

Yes, but AFAIK, the Saturn V was not full of fuel. Given that, the fact that the module was on top of the rocket didn't change the risk profile much. The fire could have happened, even if the command module was in a garage.

Re: John Glenn has died

#84

Post by Waterluvian »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #60

This deserves a black bar (IMO) John Glenn was very influential on me as a student. He gave a talk at my high school about how learning as much as you could prepared you for the unexpected. He certainly put that to the test (as all of the astronauts then and now) do. The stakes are high, the resources limited, and time for a solution is finite. God speed John Glenn.

What's a black bar?

Re: John Glenn has died

#85

Post by freehunter »

Waterluvian wrote: post #84
ChuckMcM wrote: post #60

This deserves a black bar (IMO) John Glenn was very influential on me as a student. He gave a talk at my high school about how learning as much as you could prepared you for the unexpected. He certainly put that to the test (as all of the astronauts then and now) do. The stakes are high, the resources limited, and time for a solution is finite. God speed John Glenn.

What's a black bar?

Blacking out the orange bar at the top of the site. Traditionally done in mourning.

Re: John Glenn has died

#87

Post by sailfast »

andars wrote: post #61
photogrammetry wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title, it should be disclaimed, is not what the astronauts or flight controllers believed. It's a poor abbreviation of the following: "No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz#.22Failure_is_not_a...

I've read the book, and Kranz definitely says at least once that the phrase "failure is not an option" is a good summary of what the flight controllers believed. Could you perhaps elaborate on what you mean by your comment?

As Kranz lays out in the book (and as indicated in the wiki) "Failure is not an option" was written by the Apollo 13 screenwriters. The original quote was by the FIDO at the time which was adapted for the movie. Kranz has since started using it as it summarizes the idea more succinctly.

Re: John Glenn has died

#88

Post by andars »

vkou wrote: post #83
andars wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important to note that the "closed room" was the Command Module on top of a Saturn launch vehicle.

Yes, but AFAIK, the Saturn V was not full of fuel. Given that, the fact that the module was on top of the rocket didn't change the risk profile much. The fire could have happened, even if the command module was in a garage.

Sure, but it wasn't just any room.

As a sidenote, it wasn't a Saturn V.

Re: John Glenn has died

#89

Post by Gnewt »

photogrammetry wrote: post #40
viewer5 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind talking about your passion for radio? It's not something I've really thought about (beyond a general, taking-it-for-granted "hey this is handy, I'm glad we have this in our repertoire of technology"), so I'd love to hear about your love.

Kind of a weird comment. Is this a writing prompt, or do you really talk to people in the "I'd love to hear about your love" manner? Radio is awesome because of how awesome it is. Check out the new startup, google.com, if you want to find some more material about why.

For me, it's a joy to hear people talk about the things they are passionate about. I go out of my way to ask people to just talk about the things that interest them. I would be surprised if a majority of HN users did not have similar feelings.

Re: John Glenn has died

#90

Post by vkou »

jdavis703 wrote: post #52
jason_slack wrote: post #7

RIP. I have to wonder, these first missions, did the astronauts have any assurance they would make it back to earth? What was it like to say goodbye to family, not knowing if you would return or not. Am I way off here? Was this mission uncertain or did NASA have reasonable assurances?

There are rumors that the Soviet space program actually sent several humans to space before Yuri Gagarin became the first man to be sent into space and make it back alive ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts ). The USSR was known to send cosmonauts on known doomed missions, for instance Gagarin tried to volunteer for one mission knowing the government wouldn't risk killing a national -- and world -- hero a…

As per the article, these rumours are unsubstantiated. There are also rumours that America never landed on the moon.

The USSR was not making a habit of mindlessly sending cosmonauts on certain-to-be-doomed missions. They did have immense political pressure to make a launch on time, and hope for the best. Note that of the many design defects Soyuz-1 had, only one of them killed Komarov. Almost everything else worked out 'fine'. They wouldn't have sent him if he had no chance of returning alive.

Soyuz-1 was a wake-up call that this culture wasn't good enough.

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