"As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come (but we believe not too long into the future), I'd like to just say what I believe history will record: That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return: with peace and hope for all mankind."

His real last words uttered on the moon, just before hitting the button that would launch the "Challenger" Lunar Module carrying him and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt back to the orbiting Command Module "America" were more apt for a card-carrying member of the "Right Stuff Club".

"Okay, Jack, let's get this mutha outta here," said Cernan.

Cernan's autobiography "The Last Man on the Moon" is a great read. Among the things you might find surprising: Cernan crashed a Bell B-13 (M*A*S*H) helicopter into still water at Cape Canaveral in January of 1971 nearly killing himself.

He admits he was showboating for people on the beach. Chief Astronaut Deke Slayton covered for him, saying it was a mechanical malfunction. Had the real story come to the attention of Flight Director Chris Kraft, the last man on the moon might very well have been backup commander John Young.

Much to Cernan's chagrin, to this day he still holds that unique title. Why we have not returned is a long, complicated tale of politics and puny thinking.

Will we ever become a truly spacefaring nation? Hard to imagine as our "leaders" march us off the fiscal cliff. Maybe space is the answer. A cliff is meaningless in the absence of gravity.

My good friend Andrew Chaikin wrote the definitive historical account of the Apollo Missions, "A Man on the Moon". It is a must read for anyone interested in space.

Andy, who was there when Apollo 17 launched, has produced a nice video that offers a compelling argument for returning to the moon today. It makes me sad to watch it. But those of us who care about space exploration need to keep reminding the world why this is important.

"Plans have probably already been cleared with the Obama Administration but have been kept under wraps in case Republican candidate Mitt Romney won," according to Space.com.

As the Independent notes, these comments sync with remarks by NASA deputy chief Lori Garver at a conference in September. (via Jenny Winder)
]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/11/09/report-now-that-elections-d.html/feed 29 http://boingboing.net/2012/07/21/how-the-eagle-landed-the-grum.html http://boingboing.net/2012/07/21/how-the-eagle-landed-the-grum.html#comments Sat, 21 Jul 2012 15:01:12 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=172451

On the anniversary of Apollo 11, Steve Jurvetson posted an amazing, never-before-seen series of space artifacts. He writes:

On July 20, 1969, Eagle landed on the moon. These are the handwritten notes from the Grumman engineers as they pushed to complete Lunar Module LM-5 in 1968. On the last page, they learn than this particular Lunar Module would be the one to bring the first humans to the moon.

The Grumman Engineering Log served not only as an engineering notebook but also as an intercom between the day and night shift – separate teams that needed to push the ball forward from where the other left off. So we are offered a rare peek into the concerns, uncertainties and conversations that might have otherwise been quietly undocumented.

This log has informed the writing of Pellegrino’s book Chariots for Apollo, but only a few scholars have had access to these pages to date. Heritage reported that this original document is the only one in existence, with no copy on file anywhere. So I thought it would be good to make a color scan of the entire book, and make it available to all. So, here is the PDF file (8MB).

My hope is that we can collectively decode some of its mysteries, or better yet, find some of the engineers to see if it jogs their memories. There is a list of all of the engineers on p.2. We only have first initial and last names. So any insights to the full names or their whereabouts would be appreciated.

I am also hoping that space historians who come across interesting passages can share what they know in the comments below (with reference to date or page number). Are any of the part numbers significant, especially those swapped between the Apollo 9,11,12 and 13 Lunar Modules? I will also add a glossary of acronyms below as we decode them. Also, if anyone can OCR the hybrid handwriting, please do. Our attempts with free OCR tools have failed so far.

Here's the Flickr page, with lots more details, and lots more links.

At left, Steve with a prototype build of the first flagpole assembly on the moon.

"I brought it to Buzz Aldrin, and his eyes went wide," he says. "But from what I learned, there probably is no Apollo 11 flag on the moon today."

How exciting. Happy space-a-versary, everyone!

And here's another amazing artifact photographed by Steve, below: a silicon disc, FROM PLANET EARTH.

On the Flickr page for this photo, Steve writes:

On this day in 1969, Apollo 11 took flight to the moon. In the days that preceded the launch, the U.S. scrambled to pull together the messages from Earth that would be left behind on the moon. This is the Apollo Goodwill Disc, and it was engineered to last long after the U.S. flag was destroyed."

This silicon disc contains etched letters (scanned and reduced 200x) from the leaders of the world’s nations. This is one of the discs produced by Sprague and retained by a Sprague manager; a second resides in the Smithsonian, and a third rests on the Moon's Sea of Tranquility, deposited there by Buzz Aldrin.

(Does anyone know if other builds remain intact? A Sprague press release says that of the handful of discs made, one was given to President Nixon and one to President Johnson).

It is a tricky subject matter for photography. I wanted to capture the angle-dependendent iridescence of the semiconductor thin films. The overhead light source reflects off the leather seat cushion, revealing the shift from green to purple that occurs at oblique angles.

This comes from the early days of the semiconductor industry, when Apollo consumed 50% of global production, and wafers were just 2” wide (the ultimate disc was cropped around the 1.5” metallized ring and placed in a aluminum case).

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/07/21/how-the-eagle-landed-the-grum.html/feed 32 http://boingboing.net/2012/07/21/we-are-on-the-fucking-moon.html http://boingboing.net/2012/07/21/we-are-on-the-fucking-moon.html#comments Sat, 21 Jul 2012 14:54:15 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=172447

[Video Link] Yesterday was the anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon in 1969, the first time humans ever set foot on another world. Today, we discover this long-lost footage and audio from that historic moment. (thanks, inkfumes!)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/07/21/we-are-on-the-fucking-moon.html/feed 67 http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/the-eagle-has-landed-reme.html http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/the-eagle-has-landed-reme.html#comments Fri, 20 Jul 2012 19:53:06 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=172366

Left to right: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin, the crew of Apollo 11. Photo: NASA.

On this day in 1969, humans walked on the moon for the first time. The Apollo 11 spaceflight brought Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, at 20:18 UTC.

Michael Collins, the mission's third member, remained in lunar orbit. All three men returned safely to Earth after an 8-day mission that began with a Saturn V rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida on July 16.

This was the fifth manned mission of NASA's Apollo program, which ran from 1963 to 1972 and included 6 missions that landed on the moon. These were the first and last times human beings set foot on another world.

NASA has a collection of restored HD videos well worth watching on this historic day.

Above: Side by side view of Apollo 11's descent on July 20, 1969, showing the view out of the lunar module's window side by side with the broader panorama reconstructed from LRO data. (via NASA.gov, Courtesy of GoneToPlaid)

And below, restored footage of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the lunar surface.

Also worth visiting today: Google Moon.

(thanks, Miles O'Brien!)

[video link]

This data visualization of the Apollo 11 moon mission gathers social and technical data from the 1969 lunar landing in video form. The horizontal axis is an interactive timeline.

The horizontal axis is an interactive timeline. The vertical axis is divided into several sections, each corresponding to a data source. At the top, commentators are present in narratives from Digital Apollo and NASA technical debriefings. Just below are the members of ground control. The middle section is a log-scale graph stretching from Earth (~10E9 ft. away) to the Moon. Utterances from the landing CAPCOM, Duke, the command module pilot, Collins, the mission commander, Armstrong, and the lunar module pilot, Aldrin, are plotted on this graph. The graph is partially overlaid on a composite image of the lunar surface.

More about the data presented, and the story told, at the project's Vimeo page. The project comes from the MIT Laboratory for Automation, Robotics, and Society, and was directed by David Mindell. Via Maria Popova. As noted on Flowing Data, my only disappointment is that they didn't get to the "One small step for [a] man" part!

Additional credits: Visualization Design by Yanni Loukissas, and Francisco Alonso served as Research Assistant. ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/01/09/the-story-of-the-apollo-11-moo.html/feed 3 http://boingboing.net/2011/07/29/the-moon-buggy-mission-apollo-15.html http://boingboing.net/2011/07/29/the-moon-buggy-mission-apollo-15.html#comments Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:13:53 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=111467

This week marks the 40th anniversary for Apollo 15, the less famous of manned lunar missions including Apollo 11, Apollo 13 ("NASA's finest hour"), and Apollo 14 (the one where Alan Shepard played golf on the moon). Ben Cosgrove of LIFE points us to a related gallery of classic images, and explains:

While Armstrong and Aldrin walking on the lunar surface was mind-blowing, the idea of Irwin and Scott cruising around on a 450-pound moon buggy that they'd carted a quarter-million miles from Earth -- during a basically flawless mission when Scott and Irwin spent three full days on the moon's surface -- makes XV the coolest of all the Apollo missions.