Comments on: Steve Jurvetson, on the recurring nightmare Neil Armstrong had for two years leading up to Apollo 11

By: Dan Hibiki

Dan Hibiki — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 02:42:00 +0000

You’d like to thanks so, but they were under a very tight deadline and it was just quicker to train a pilot to steer an unbalanced lunar module off the moon then it would have been to re-engineer it or to design a working automatic system.

By: Sparg

Sparg — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 21:05:00 +0000

Yep, that magical thinking makes me reach for my Golden Bough.

By: Jim Kelly

Jim Kelly — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:47:00 +0000

Think about doing that *in spacesuit gloves*. I assume the cable was pretty thick…

One more thing to add to the Ultimate Resume: “If necessary, can hotwire a lunar module.”

By: the damned fool

the damned fool — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:16:00 +0000

Ladies and Gentlemen, please! There’s no fighting in the War Room.

By: ocker3

ocker3 — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:36:00 +0000

Modern Science might say that if people hadn’t eaten all of that crap, and breathed all of that shitty, polluted air, 1 in 2 people might not get cancer in their lifetimes

By: Michael Smith

Michael Smith — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:39:00 +0000

Apollo crews did have access to a procedure which could be used to "hot wire" the ascent stage pyros if the batteries were unable to fire them and get fuel flowing to the engines. I believe it involved running a two conductor cable from a battery in the descent stage to the back of a circuit breaker in the ascent stage. It would have to be done in vacuum because the cable would have come in through the door. As soon as the pyros fired the ascent stage would launch so the cable would be pulled out of the astronauts hand at that point.

[Schmitt - "There was also a plan for using one of the OPSs if we had to hot-wire the LM. This last-ditch procedure was to take a line out to the batteries in the Descent Stage to Gene's circuit breaker panel to open the propellant valves. You didn't make the connection to the circuit breaker panel right away; because, as soon as you did, he valves would open and you'd be on your way. So you'd come back in (after connecting the wire to the batteries) and then, when you were finally ready to go, you'd touch the circuit breakers and hot-wire the hypergolic valves in the Ascent Stage. I think we went through hat drill once to know where the batteries were."]

Link to the ALSJ

By: Henry Pootel

Henry Pootel — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:00:00 +0000

“Here’s me staring at camera with big smile next to person who doesn’t care!”

Seriously?

I’d rather see the, “Here I am with famous person talking in a picture someone took without me being aware of it” or “Here’s me actually being more interested in that person next to me than the fact I’m mugging with this Tang!”

The guy appears to take more value out of having brought the Tang thinking it was funny than meeting the man.

By: t3kna2007

t3kna2007 — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 03:23:00 +0000

I see that Space Food Sticks are not unknown in these parts.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/29/space-food-sticks.html

By: The Gray Adder

The Gray Adder — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 02:53:00 +0000

Ovaltine is actually good for you. Tang I’m not so sure about

By: petegadget

petegadget — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 01:32:00 +0000

My dad died of cancer at 61. My mom died of cancer at 65. I have had cancer. Not sure all’s so well myself

By: Jake0748

Jake0748 — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 00:58:00 +0000

Yer link is busted there, BrandB. Dang, I wanted to see that!

By: BrandB

BrandB — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 00:31:00 +0000

Check out this panorama of the Lunar Module interior http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/cchoice/lm2/images/lmpan/lmpansp.jpg See that circular thing in the back? That’s the engine cover for the ascent engine. Astronauts sat, slept and stored gear on it.

By: Jim Kelly

Jim Kelly — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 23:35:00 +0000

One other thing about the ascent engine: I seem to remember Aldrin once saying that if it *hadn’t* lit, he would have started banging on it with a hammer – its housing projected up into the cabin of the LEM.

By: Jim Kelly

Jim Kelly — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 22:59:00 +0000

Dunno about “farting off the moon” – although it is a great image. Here’s Armstrong explaining the LEM’s motion in an oral history interview with Stephen Ambrose and Douglas Brinkley:

“The thing that surprised me—and we knew this ahead of time—the attitude control in space, to pitch the craft you use a—say you wanted to pitch up, you would use a down-pointing rocket in the front and an up-pointing rocket in the back. That would pitch the craft up. But we didn’t want any rockets firing up when we’re accelerating away from the Moon, because that would be wasting fuel. So we would only use the down-pointing rockets because they would be adding to our velocity, would be fuel-efficient.

But the result of that is that there’s a substantial rocking motion. As you pitch forward, the pitch-up thruster fires, lifts your nose up, then it stops, then the nose falls down again and the rocket fires as though you’re in a rocking chair.”

By: Grant Bernstein

Grant Bernstein — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 22:20:00 +0000

No need to fret. While Armstrong was right in that it wasn’t used on the Apollo missions, it was used on the John Glenn’s Mercury mission and subsequent Gemini missions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_(drink)

By: Nick Carter

Nick Carter — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 22:16:00 +0000

Perfectly stated sentiment, here here!

By: Ito Kagehisa

Ito Kagehisa — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 21:52:00 +0000

Well, anybody who’d ever heard of the Messerschmidt ME-163 would have nightmares about riding a hypergolic rocket. I can’t fault him for that, I’d want a manual lockout too.

By: karlfrankjr

karlfrankjr — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 21:27:00 +0000

Xeni, I attempted to email you as well. In honor of Neil Armstrong’s accomplishments and inspired by his recent passing, I am part of a group petitioning the White House to rededicate Columbus Day to Exploration Day.

We are hoping to get you on board. For more information, visit
http://www.facebook.com/ExplorationDayUSA or
http://explorationdayusa.org/

By: danegeld

danegeld — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 21:26:00 +0000

I don’t want no dirty commie preverts messing with the purity of my bodily fluids. They’ll answer to the Coca Cola company, Mandrake.

By: NoneofYourPenguins

NoneofYourPenguins — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 21:06:00 +0000

Speaking for the less-than-alluent kids, we’d take Wonder Bread and squeeze it into pills and called it “Space Food.” Nothing like the transformative power of the imagination to make the world a better place.

By: cjporkchop

cjporkchop — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 19:46:00 +0000

Those are again available for purchase. (Check Amazon.) The peanut butter flavor are one my husband’s favorite treats.

I don’t get it, either.

By: Richard Colletta

Richard Colletta — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 19:18:00 +0000

Oh…god…barf. —_________—

By: Marja Erwin

Marja Erwin — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 19:09:00 +0000

I stick to 100% natural Slurm.

By: Dean Putney

Dean Putney — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 19:05:00 +0000

Bah, what doesn’t dye your insides some strange color these days anyway?

By: Ken Breadner

Ken Breadner — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 18:41:00 +0000

Sometimes, in my more philosophical moments, I wonder if this stuff is so bad for us because we say it is. I mean, if you were to take every study at its word, you would be left with a bread and water diet…minus the bread, of course.

By: z7q2

z7q2 — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 18:35:00 +0000

I remember the ice cream being not that bad. Kind of like those cornstarch-based packing peanuts (which are not too shabby in milk, try ‘em) but ice-cream flavored.

By: pizzicato

pizzicato — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 18:21:00 +0000

I really like to believe it wobble and farted off the moon because it was how best to do it… Engineers engineering for a reason, there are often loads of quirky stuff engineers dig, e.g. fudge factors.

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 18:19:00 +0000

Woops.

>.>

<.<

By: awjt

awjt — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 18:18:00 +0000

What’s even worse than all that jell-o and kool-aid and crap sugar was all the HOT DOGS and processed meat. We used to eat ‘em out of the freezer, like meatsicles. JEEZUS

By: xzzy

xzzy — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 18:18:00 +0000

But the fact that it was crap didn’t register on our collective consciousness until relatively recently.. long after all of us who grew up on that stuff became adults. Once upon a time people were convinced that food that could sit in the pantry for ten years and remain edible was the best possible future.

To me, the interesting point to me is the proportion of kids that grew up in the 60′s to the 80′s with no long term health problems. Modern thinking would have us believe we should all be dead or infertile.