Apollo 13

[Haggis@wk]

The end of the space race:

“There is almost no doubt that the Chinese will be on the moon within a decade, while we will still be earthbound and potentially bankrupt as a nation with our economy, our technology, and our industrial might in ruins because of uncontrolled government spending, borrowing, and taxing. I had an exciting childhood living in the midst of the space race, but it saddens me to think that time, 40 years ago, may end up being the historical high point of our going out into space, the final frontier.”

I remember teaching a class of 10-year-old kids in the 80’s and remembered being stunned when every one of them (including my own sons) said that they didn’t want to be astronauts because space travel was too dangerous.

We didn’t go into space because seven men were willing to try and we didn’t go to the moon because 10 guys volunteered. We did those things because the nation wanted to. Somehow in the intervening 40 + years our heroes have gone from Neil Armstrong to Michael Jackson.

We’re too timid.

[Shapley]

I've said as much before. "The pioneers take the arrows", that is to say, they take the risk. Our current mindset is such that no pioneering is possible, because the pioneers can't set out until we've 'guaranteed' their safety. And, if that 'guarantee' should fail, we have to stop all pioneering until we've had commission after commission to look into the matter.

Magellan could never have left shore if the U.S. Congress had been in charge of his expedition, or had any say over it.

[dai bread]

I've often wondered why the Polynesians stopped voyaging. Maybe the same thing happened to them as appears to have happened to those 10-year-olds.

[barfle]

I've often noted that the reason we're not on the moon today is because the Apollo program was nothing more than a stunt to show we could beat the Soviets there. Kennedy inspired us to achieve something that we didn't know what to do with when we did it. Perhaps he would have realized that and come up with a more permanent and useful program, had he lived. Johnson was far too simple to figure out that Kennedy's challenge was a dead-end. Once we Apollo 11 met Kennedy's challenge, the American taxpayer didn't see the value in what seemed to be just doing what we'd already done.

I don't know if there's commercial value to be had on the moon. I certainly hope so, but Apollo didn't give us the information we needed.

I heard that forty years after the first transcontinental railroad was built, we had railroads getting people and goods virtually all over the country. Forty years after we landed on the moon, we forgot how to get there.

[analog]

Commercial value on the moon?

SSSHHHHHHHH!!!! -- they'll make it into a Viagra billboard.

a.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

...they'll make it into a Viagra billboard...

:SNORF:!!!
Dude, I needed a Class I Beverage Alert on that one!

[Haggis@wk]

This is just too cool

[jamiebk]

I've often noted that the reason we're not on the moon today is because the Apollo program was nothing more than a stunt to show we could beat the Soviets there. Kennedy inspired us to achieve something that we didn't know what to do with when we did it. Perhaps he would have realized that and come up with a more permanent and useful program, had he lived. Johnson was far too simple to figure out that Kennedy's challenge was a dead-end. Once we Apollo 11 met Kennedy's challenge, the American taxpayer didn't see the value in what seemed to be just doing what we'd already done.

I don't know if there's commercial value to be had on the moon. I certainly hope so, but Apollo didn't give us the information we needed.

I heard that forty years after the first transcontinental railroad was built, we had railroads getting people and goods virtually all over the country. Forty years after we landed on the moon, we forgot how to get there.

One word................Velcro.

[piqaboo]

This is just too cool

Incredible!

[Giant Communist Robot]

From Bob Park's Whats New

2. POLITICAL SCIENCE: WHY THE USSR LOST THE SPACE RACE.
Launched on 4 Oct 1957, Sputnik carried no instruments. It just beeped as it passed overhead to taunt Americans. But a month later, Sputnik 2 carried a Geiger tube and a radio transmitter to relay the Geiger output back to Earth. It also carried a tape recorder to store data when the satellite is over the horizon, but it wasn't working on launch day. Soviet scientists placed a call directly to Premier Nikita Khrushchev requesting permission to delay the launch for a day, but Khrushchev refused; he wanted to announce another successful launch at a meeting of heads-of-state the next day. At the very dawn of the space age, politics was already getting in the way of scientific discovery. Thus it was that the Soviet Union failed to make the first important discovery in space science,as we see below.
3. VAN ALLEN BELTS: THE FIRST IMPORTANT DISCOVERY IN SPACE.
On 31 Jan 1958, only four months after Sputnik, the US launched Explorer 1 carrying an experiment designed by James Van Allen, Physics Chair at the University of Iowa. It was just a Geiger tube, a radio transmitter, and a recorder -- but the recorder worked. Data from a full orbit confirmed the existence of charged particle bands around Earth, now known as the Van Allen belts. It was the first major discovery from beyond the ionosphere. Soviet scientists were crushed; only four months after Sputnik the US had taken the lead in space science and has never relinquished it. Manned space flight remains a sideshow. In the end, all that will endure is the science. James Van Allen was the true American space hero. During a long talk with Jim a year before his death in 2006, he summed-up manned space flight: "It's so old-fashioned."

[DavidS]

During a long talk with Jim a year before his death in 2006, he summed-up manned space flight: "It's so old-fashioned".

So true - it makes much more environmental and economic sense to work from home...

[dai bread]

True enough, but those of us whose ancestors felt the need to migrate in sailing ships to some place on the far side of the world still have a hankering for the far side of at least the moon.

[piqaboo]

Manned space flight might be oldfashioned, but so is commuting.
I wonder how long before we have commuting (perhaps monthly not daily) between earth and moon?
Donald Kingsbury's book was fun with that. (The Moon Goddess and the Son).

[Giant Communist Robot]

Commuting is old fashioned for some, others need to.

And about the moon...

What will we do there? Science? Colonize? Economically exploit?

[Giant Communist Robot]

I've often wondered why the Polynesians stopped voyaging.

Interesting question. After having discovered so much of the Pacific, how did they miss continents? What was the engine behind their voyages?

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

...And about the moon...

What will we do there? Science? Colonize? Economically exploit?

Green cheese mines. There will be green cheese mines. It will be neatly packaged in vacuum cans and shipped back to earth on the flung shuttles (See Heinlein) and will become more prized than fungus and goose liver and rotten fish eggs.

[dai bread]

I've often wondered why the Polynesians stopped voyaging.

Interesting question. After having discovered so much of the Pacific, how did they miss continents? What was the engine behind their voyages?

I've always thought that Polynesians explored the Pacific for the same reason Caucasians did later, namely, it was there. They didn't miss South America. The kumara (sweet potato) is native to South America and is found throughout Polynesia. Therefore someone brought it back from a voyage. Thor Heyerdahl's thesis may have something to do with it, but I think it more likely that Polynesians reached South America and explored enough of it to find the sweet potato. They would have been looking for supplies. The locals wouldn't have allowed settlement, so the Polynesians came home. I suspect that the first human sacrifice they witnessed would have had them in their canoes in minutes.

[Giant Communist Robot]

BBC's Mystery of the Sweet Potato here

[dai bread]

As a resident of Hawaii, GCR, you'll be familiar with Polynesian voyaging, but this may refresh your memory. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~adamson/vol43a1.html

The BBC link was a good summary. As Adamson shows in the article in the link above, a voyage of 8000 km is not impossible, especially bearing in mind that the point of sailing against the wind when you're exploring is to have a fair wind home when you're tired and need to get home quickly.

Contact with South America may well have been via Easter Island. Sail east, get into the Peru Current, and there you are.

[Shapley]

They didn't miss South America. The kumara (sweet potato) is native to South America and is found throughout Polynesia. Therefore someone brought it back from a voyage. Thor Heyerdahl's thesis may have something to do with it, but I think it more likely that Polynesians reached South America and explored enough of it to find the sweet potato. They would have been looking for supplies. The locals wouldn't have allowed settlement, so the Polynesians came home. I suspect that the first human sacrifice they witnessed would have had them in their canoes in minutes.

If I remember my sailing books correctly, the prevailing winds and currents in the South Pacific carry one Westward, to New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, etc. To find suitable wind and currents Eastward, you have to travel South, into the 'roaring forties' and below. The weather there is not very hospitable, and land is rare to non-existent. Long-distance travel was possible long ago, but not common. Like the Greeks, Egyptians, etc., early sailors preferred to stay where the weather was a known entity and harbours could be found. All but the determined explorer would have avoided the riskier aspects of such travel.