Lotsa links for Moon Landing Anniversary Week

[thatcrazycajun]

Four decades ago this week, Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin were headed for a rendezvous with history...and you can relive it in multi-media glory through We Choose The Moon, a website put up by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. The site is recreating the entire Apollo XI mission from start to finish on the corresponding dates, using archival footage, audio and photos, and computer-created simulations of the spacecraft, plus a whole lot more. (Would you believe a gallon of gas cost 35 cents that week in 1969? Ah, those were the days...) Thanks to sffilk for the tip.

Thanks also to filkertom for this one: Given that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration hasn't even been able to track down the original blueprints for its Saturn V rockets, you can't be terribly surprised that they also can't produce the original Apollo XI film and videotape they recorded at the time. (Apparently, the reason is the same reason the BBC no longer have tapes of many early Doctor Who episodes: short-sighted media recycling.) Luckily, with some help from Hollywood, what footage has been located is now being magnificently restored; Yahoo! News reports on the story here.

Or if you're more interested in current space exploration, you can just tune in to the Space Shuttle Endeavour's progress via NASA's mission website as they assess the damage, if any, caused to the shuttle by debris that came loose in its launch two days ago. Between this and all the special TV and print-media coverage of the anniversary, space is bound to be on everybody's mind for the next week or so.

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Current music = "We're Going Back" by Duane Elms. Prior current music = "Witnesses' Waltz" by Leslie Fish. For a few else. Your choice is pretty okay, too. :-D

[davidkevin.livejournal.com]

"We choose to go to the moon.
"We choose to go to the moon.
"We choose to go to the moon, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Easily one of the greatest speeches ever given by anyone, anytime, anywhere, equaled only by the Ich bin ein Berliner! speech. Neither ever fails to make my spine shiver.

One thing, though: that the Saturn V blueprints are missing, I have been told by Tim Kyger, is an Urban Myth: he says they exist, and we know where they are.

The problem is not the lack of plans, the problem is that the tooling to create the parts is long ago destroyed, and the work force who built those engines and knew enough to do it again most easily and economically is long ago retired or deceased. A certain amount of unfortunate inefficiency would exist from wheel-reinventing, plus corporate and bureaucratic inertia would have to be overcome -- but building Saturn Vs again is not impossible, just difficult and expensive, and there is no National Will forcing the issue as there was then.

Also: in September 1973, four months before the first of the shortages, lines, and giant (for the time) price increases of January 1974, leaded premium gasoline at my neighborhood Clark station in south St. Louis County, Missouri was 22.9 cents per gallon, with 11.9 cents of that being federal excise tax. (Part of that may have been due to one of the two Clark refineries being just on the opposite side of the greater St. Louis area from where I lived, in Wood River, Illinois.)

[bobmage.livejournal.com]

I think the "tooling" is a red herring. This is the 21st century - we have CNC machines now. We also have actual samples of some of the parts, because they turned at least one flight-capable Saturn V into a freaking "monument" down at Johnson Space Center.
And the workforce that built them "easily and economically" didn't build all that many of them - 13 launches including Skylab, plus a few "test stages". That's enough experience to work the kinks out of the process, but not enough to really get the economies of scale that are possible with mass production.

[davidkevin.livejournal.com]

I meant "easily and economically" in a relative way -- I never meant to imply economies of scale of the sort one would find on an automotive assembly line, just compared to a brand-new-to-the-design work force which had never built something like an F-1 engine, for example.

And yes, I knew of the formerly flight-capable S-V at JSC; there's one in Huntsville, too, isn't there?

I seem to recall that the Skylab on display at the Nat'l Air & Space Museum was the never-flown backup to the one which orbited. It was a great thing that Pete Conrad and Joe Kerwin were able to make repairs to the damaged lab which flew ("I gave a heave, and the Science Pilot gave a mighty heave...."), as I don't think there was another rocket not already museum-donated away which could have launched the backup lab.

[bobmage.livejournal.com]

Not sure about Huntsville, I think the first stage at least is a "Test Stage".

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

Just found this on CNN.com about a 10-year-old who helped save the Apollo 11 mission.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Sometime in spproximately, oh, eighty hours from now, perhaps? :-) (I know, that's Monday -- but still...)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

Ah. It looks like I hooked you real bad on We Choose the Moon.

[filkferengi]

My favorite follower to your musical selection is always Urban Tapestry's "Starsoul" [currently playing].