Reply to: Moon Landings

[DoctorStrangelove]

Not forgetting, of course, the ladies who sewed the space suits together.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Aye, and once you'd written & assembled your code, little old ladies had to knit it into core rope memory.

At 1:01.

[Paddy]

Interview with Margaret Hamilton, the woman in charge of the Apollo software: Margaret Hamilton: ‘They worried that the men might rebel. They didn’t’ | Technology | The Guardian

The Appollo software worked so well because they had to work with very tight constraints in program space. There was no room for bloatware in those days.

[Big Blue Plymouth]

Fantastic stuff, hats off to Buzz. ISTR the original vid featured Magnus Pike.

[darmstadt]

[NickFitz]

Interview with Margaret Hamilton, the woman in charge of the Apollo software: Margaret Hamilton: ‘They worried that the men might rebel. They didn’t’ | Technology | The Guardian

[DoctorStrangelove]

You forgot Lemmy

He's flying sideways through time:

[OwlHoot]

Perhaps you're thinking of Project Orion.

Ship diameter (meters): 100 m
Mass of empty ship (tonnes): 100,000 (incl. 50,000 structure+payload)
+Number of bombs = total bomb mass (each 1 Mt bomb weighs 1 tonne): 300,000
=Departure mass (tonnes): 400,000 t
Maximum velocity (kilometers per second): 10,000 km/s (=3.3% of the speed of light)
Mean acceleration (Earth gravities): 1 g (accelerate for 10 days)
Time to Alpha Centauri (one way, no slow down): 133 years
Estimated cost: 0.1 year of U.S. GNP(1968) which is about $500 billion today.

So it could be done technically. But not 20%c.

Arthur C Clarke, who had a pretty good record of predicting things (such as artificial satellites) long before they materialised, reckoned there would be a hiatus of several centuries before any manned interstellar flights were attempted, for the simple reason that there's very little point in heading off at, say, 0.2 c (as in your example) if 30 years later a more advanced craft could attain speeds of 0.5 c and shoot past the first one en route!

In other words, interstellar propulsion technology would have to reach a stable plateau, with little prospect of much improvement, before anyone bothered committing themselves.

Seems pretty reasonable, but I don't think it takes into account the sheer number of possible destinations the further you are willing to go (e.g. hundreds of solar systems even at modest distances such as within a dozen or so light years) and the competition to reach the best ones first or perhaps to escape from some stifling or oppressive regime(s) within the Solar System.

[clearedforlanding]

We've lost:
Western Black Rhino, Northern White Rhino, Northern Sumatran Rhino, Alaotra Grebe, Japanese River Otter, Formosan Clouded Leopard, Bermuda Saw-whet Owl, Golden Toad, Hawaiian Crow, Pyrenean Ibex, Spix Macaw, Liverpool Pigeon, Black Faced Honeycreeper, Yangtze River dolphin, Holdridge Toad, ...I could go on, and there's more that are only "Possibly extinct"... Table 9

You forgot Lemmy

[JohntheBike]

Yes.

And stayed up until 04:00 watching the "One small step for Man".

Next.

me too!

[AtW]

Moon the tedious sockie -

[NotAllThere]

I am sure I read in new scientist a while ago about tentative plans for a craft that could travel at 20% the speed of light?

Perhaps you're thinking of Project Orion.

Ship diameter (meters): 100 m
Mass of empty ship (tonnes): 100,000 (incl. 50,000 structure+payload)
+Number of bombs = total bomb mass (each 1 Mt bomb weighs 1 tonne): 300,000
=Departure mass (tonnes): 400,000 t
Maximum velocity (kilometers per second): 10,000 km/s (=3.3% of the speed of light)
Mean acceleration (Earth gravities): 1 g (accelerate for 10 days)
Time to Alpha Centauri (one way, no slow down): 133 years
Estimated cost: 0.1 year of U.S. GNP(1968) which is about $500 billion today.

So it could be done technically. But not 20%c.

[BolshieBastard]

Followed all the Moon Landings, within the constraints of school attendance. Fortunately, there was no school as 21 July was start of the summer hols so was allowed to stay up and watch the whole EVA. Depending where in the world you were, the official landing date for Apollo 11 is 20 July EDT or 21 July BST.

It was kind of disappointing because the picture quality wasnt very good plus with it being a static camera, Armstrong and Aldrin were out of shot a lot!

Subsequent investigation shows this poor picture quality down to slow scan 10 FPS camera and the picture being split off once on Earth, one to a data recorder with the other to a then 'high' resolution monitor from which a tv camera was plonked in front of to beam around the world.

Drives me nuts all these Moon Landing deniers, they are every bit as bad as flattards. Saw a YT vid the other day, some guy giving a talk at a conference claimed it wasnt possible to beam live pictures 'from the Moon around the world' because of the lack of power available on the Moon.

It's typical of the misinformation and downright lies the deniers spout. The pictures were not beamed 'live around the world from the Moon.' They were beamed to Parkes and Goldridge(?) then sent around the world from here on Earth.

D'oh!

[malvolio]

We were living in Paris at the time and had a family friend who was actually called Neil Armstrong so had to go around to his to watch it

Let me guess. He wasn't in...

[darmstadt]

It was faked, everyone knows that it was filmed at Pinewood studios

We were living in Paris at the time and had a family friend who was actually called Neil Armstrong so had to go around to his to watch it