Great post!

I disagree that this is MJ’s death or similar to the Obama craze. The Apollo/Saturn V programme was big by any metric – design, scope, execution, risks, what have you. It is the greatest achievement of our race. If we get hit by an asteroid tomorrow and our species is wiped out, we still managed, 40 years ago, to escape the incredible power of gravity and dream; reach for the moon and actually get there.

I’m motivated by projects like Apollo- it is a glimpse of what we are capable of, how far we’ve come, from very rudimentary tool users to people who can harness incredible power and direct it, control it, and use it to accomplish a task that people thought was impossible. If going to the moon was such a banal thing, something inconsequential, why is it that in 40 years we are still the only country ever to have succeeded, yet Russia, China, et al are still trying?

Wrapped up in Apollo’s success is the success of America; our republican government unfetters individuals while communism abuses and oppresses. Unlike their Soviet counterparts, who were fearful of a knock on their door to drag them to the gulag for some perceived slight, our brave men and women focused on building the most incredible and complex machine ever devised. Freedom is a fertilizer for man’s imagination, and no where is this more evident than in our success with the Apollo programme. We were driven by love of country, by the sheer challenge, not by the whip.

We’ve stopped dreaming, unfortunately. Stopped challenging ourselves. We’ve become complacent or jaded; perhaps a bit of both. We’re more concerned with the petty troubles of everyday life than of pushing ourselves into uncharted territory. We’re no longer Columbus, exploring, learning, risking; we’ve moved from becoming a smart nation to a lazy nation, a blind nation.

What do you look for inspiration if not stories of risk, great challenge and success? Is there anything more risky, more challenging than space exploration? But oh the possibilities! Resources, technology, a greater understanding of the cosmos, advantages over our nemeses…

We need to go back to space.

Sorry, but I refuse to let Debbie-Downer from WI have the last post on what was one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of mankind. The moon landing eclipses even the pyramids.

MechEng5by5 on July 17, 2009 at 10:37 AM

Sorry, I guess it’s an internal quirk. I just don’t get all warm and squishy over things like this, MJs death, or Obama.

I guess it’s hard for me to drink anyone’s Kool Aid.

MechEng5by5 on July 17, 2009 at 10:37 AM

Yea, feeding the trolls is like making eye contact with panhandlers…. just don’t do it.

Note to Jeff from WI: I was 10 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. American tax dollars have never been spent on a more grand cause. Box of rock, my ass. Box of wonder. Box of imagination. Box of exploration. Nothing we have done since holds a candle to it.

fleiter on July 16, 2009 at 5:45 PM

I was 15 in 1969, maybe that extra 5 years of maturity dampened my wonder and imagination. Sorry, but I’m a bit too practical to see anything but a huge national waste of money for a lousy box of rocks.
Billions for defense, but not one dime for wonder or imagination.

And to think where we would be if we had just spent all that money on welfare programs instead of the space pro…. oh… we are there aren’t we?

Welfare trumps exceptionalism. Entitlement over productivity. JFK reached for the moon, Obummer reaches for my wallet.

bloviator on July 17, 2009 at 9:14 AM

No, not welfare programs for lazy Americans. Feeding dying children in Africa and Asia due to wars, drought, famine.

JFK didn’t reach for the moon, he was wrestling Bobby for Marilyn.

I think everyone forgets too. Apollo was the greatest and most sucessful Public Private venture evah! Billions of dollars into the private sector, 960 companies (including a few “small local companies” like Grumman, Northrop, Boeing), 29 universities churning out engineers and scientists.

We need Constellation to do that.

Squid Shark on July 16, 2009 at 10:00 PM

It’s true that the govt spent billions, but it is not true that this led to a huge increase in anything other than the deficit.

The products that were used in Apollo were products that either already existed, or were already in development. The absolute best that can be said for the space program was that it sped up the development of these products by a few months, to (at best) a few years.

Welfare trumps exceptionalism. Entitlement over productivity. JFK reached for the moon, Obummer reaches for my wallet.

Note to Jeff from WI: I was 10 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. American tax dollars have never been spent on a more grand cause. Box of rock, my ass. Box of wonder. Box of imagination. Box of exploration. Nothing we have done since holds a candle to it.

fleiter on July 16, 2009 at 5:45 PM

Speaking as a “child of the 80s,” I have to very respectfully disagree. The shuttle, as envisioned and almost as built, was right up there with Apollo and the Saturns. What cheeses me off to no end though, is the amount of “spit-and-duct-tape” fixing that we’ve needed to do to the Shuttle just to get past the beancounter hurdles. And while I do think that makes a strong case for privatizing space (and let’s hear a big kudos to Elon Musk and SpaceX for putting the first privately-boosted-into-orbit satellite into orbit the other day!), I’ll concede that from about 1967 until about 1981, NASA were simply the best in the world at space engineering and exploration.

Please pardon me while I rant; this is a matter quite near and dear to my heart.

My God, what happened to us after 1972, when we pulled back from the Moon? We got lazy, and we got complacent, and nobody could challenge us up there, so we got sloppy. We started living off the credit our forbears stocked up for us, both in our methods and in our objectives. Of course it doesn’t help that after the physical-world engineers succeeded, the social engineers demanded their own shot at things (and in the failing, seem of late to have decreed that they’ll just ban engineering outright – try putting up a new oil refinery if you don’t believe me). But that’s still not a worthy excuse.

Earlier this evening, NASA announced that it has indefinitely grounded the Shuttle fleet. Due, once again, to issues with the foam on the external tank. Nevermind the fact that NO foam fell off the ET on STS-1 or -2, because the kludgy thing was painted (the paint served two purposes – white emits heat best so the liquids inside stay cool, and the paint layer sealed the foam under a “shell” to keep the foam from falling off!). Those extra handful of pounds of paint had to be sacrificed to meet the payload promises made to Congress and the USAF for carrying recon birds and next-gen interplanetary probes (which even w/o the paint were NEVER met).

Want a good cry over the state of our space program? Pick up any of the old technical books from the late-70s and early-80s (pre-Challenger). Heck, any children’s book on space written back then will do. We were supposed to have a permanent base on the Moon by 2000, several stations (made from discarded ETs, boosted the rest of the way to orbit by knockoff micro-engines at the tanks’ rear) by the mid-80s, even private space stations by the year 1990! But the Shuttles, bless those grand, crippled dames, came too late to save Skylab, were too kludged (and/or built in too few numbers) to serve as the “pickup to space,” and in the end nobody else picked up the ball. Liquid-filled boosters running on 4 SSMEs apiece? Projected in 1978 for use by the mid-80s. Would’ve saved Challenger, because the whole SRB issue would’ve been retired. Shuttle II? Projected for entry into service in 1995 (!) until Challenger, would have saved Columbia by both removing her from service, and presenting a smaller target for debris (assuming, of course, that the tanks weren’t sealed with paint). Some of those designs (including one prototyped for drop-tests by the guys who built SpaceShipOne) were small enough we could have bolted them to an EELV, and eliminated the whole foam issue outright – send up a second EELV with cargo if needed; it’d help with economies of scale, too. As for Endeavour, we’re awaiting word on her situation, pending an up-close inspection while she’s docked at the station. The very, as-yet-incomplete, station that NASA announced this week we’d be de-orbiting in 2016!

The questions we have to ask are, “Is space important to this nation? Is it important enough to invest large sums of government money on, or important enough to fill a field with private companies that can provide cheap and reliable access to orbit?” If the answers are no, then we can look back and “get inspired” by what our parents and grandparents did, while the monuments to their achievement crumble around us. If the answers are yes, though… then we can actually go out and do it. We do that, well, look out universe – ready or not, here we come!

The computer failed on the Apollo 11 landing and Neil Armstrong landed the LEM manually, doing it for the first time, having never done it before.

Actually he had done it before during training — with disastrous results. He was severely hurt when the simulator crashed — this was truly a scary moment for those on the ground when this happened. [I can't provide a link, I saw this several years ago on a program -- maybe Modern Marvels]

A great, great achievement, mankind’s finest hour.

itsspideyman on July 16, 2009 at 9:45 PM

Absolutely. I still remember sitting on the living room floor watching the launch and later the first moonwalk. Must have made an impression — I became an engineer with the desire to work in the aerospace industry.

If I remember correctly, the astronauts were put into quarantine as soon as they returned to earth, right? In case they brought back some moon germs?

KyMouse on July 16, 2009 at 9:33 PM

Yes, that is correct. They put on some sort of “radiation suits” in the helo right after they were plucked from the ocean, and when they landed on the carrier they marched into what looked like a highly modified Airstream trailer.

BTW that was one of the original President-landing-on-an-aircraft-carrier-to-make-political-hay episodes, as Dick Nixon was on board the flat-top when they splashed down, and then chatted with them in the Airstream. Mission Accomplished!

I am sure it drove the Democrats absolutely nuts that the ultimate result of a Kennedy brainstorm happened on a Rethuglican President’s watch.

We need Constellation to do that.

…. Where do you think the Russians were when this happened? Do you think they would have let us pull this off if it were not absolutely certain we landed? This is the stuff they would have shouted from the rooftops.

Apollo is still the greatest human achievement until we go to Mars. The most complex machine ever built at the time was engineered using slide rules!!!

The clamps holding the rockets down had to release within 80 miliseconds of each other or the rocket would fall over. The Apollo V had 2 billion parts, and in all the missions including Apollo 13 only six parts failed. That’s the equilivant to running a car constantly for 200 years. The Lunar Module was the most complex machine of the time and had sides that were thin enough to put your foot through (save weight). The computer failed on the Apollo 11 landing and Neil Armstrong landed the LEM manually, doing it for the first time, having never done it before.

A great, great achievement, mankind’s finest hour.

If I remember correctly, the astronauts were put into quarantine as soon as they returned to earth, right? In case they brought back some moon germs?

As far as pride, we’re smart enough to figure out how to go to the moon but the typical high school grad and a lot of college grads are morons.

I remember them and enjoyed them.
I also remember feeling so proud of this country
when we heard those famous words from the moon.
I will never forget that.

And Saturday we can celebrate the 40th anniversary of the night Ted Kennedy got away with leaving MaryJo Kopechne to drown. ‘Cuz he saw into the future of his political career, and rationalized that MaryJo would understand that he had to protect that.

Yeah.

disa on July 16, 2009 at 6:46 PM

The Kennedys think Mary Jos life was a small price to pay for Teds career.

All Algore’s fault.