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Moon Landing CTers

Name another example of what we could do then, but cant do now.
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While I'm on a roll. From the 21st January 1976 until the 26th November 2003 it was possible to flight on a passanger jet that flew faster than sound. This is no longer possible to do. Since Concorde's maiden flight was the 2nd of March, 1969, thus predating Apollo 11, that is another thing they could do back then that we can't do today. That's two, need more?
 
That's two, need more?
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Actually, why not I'm having fun...

From the 22nd of December, 1964, until the 9th of October, 1999, it was possible to fly faster then Mach 3 in a jet aircraft. This is not possible today as the last of the SR-71 Blackbirds was retired and none are able to fly today.

eta: Someone here is likely to point out the the Mig-25 (Foxbat) can exceed Mach 3, however this was done in a specially modified Mig-25 and standard combat 25's can only achieve Mach 2.8 without damage to their engines, usually staying around the 2.5 region for safety reasons.
 
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Frankly, anybody who thinks technology, or lack thereof, is the reason we never went back to the moon is so out of touch with reality and history as to not even qualify to debate the subject.
 
twinstead said:
Frankly, anybody who thinks technology, or lack thereof, is the reason we never went back to the moon is so out of touch with reality and history as to not even qualify to debate the subject.
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But the problem is that they don't know it. Most HBs are under 30 (yeah there are a few older ones, but most are young) and have no idea of the politics of the time. Many of them weren't even around for the first Shuttle launches of the Challenger disaster. They don't understand the technology of the day or how it came to be, some of them even seem to think that Apollo 11 was the first US space flight after Mercury and that it was the only moon mission. Why? Because all their knowledge of Apollo they got from YouTube and fleeting references on the TV. To actually get off their hinies and do something approaching real research is an anathma to them.

While in a way it is fun to watch them as they come up against people that have read the ALSJ back to front, have endless copies of Apollo trivia books and all the mission footage sitting in their DVD collection, it's also sad that so many young people are growing up so darn ignorant of important history. Now there is something we can all blame out respective governments for.
 
PhantomWolf said:
But the problem is that they don't know it. Most HBs are under 30 (yeah there are a few older ones, but most are young) and have no idea of the politics of the time. Many of them weren't even around for the first Shuttle launches of the Challenger disaster. They don't understand the technology of the day or how it came to be, some of them even seem to think that Apollo 11 was the first US space flight after Mercury and that it was the only moon mission. Why? Because all their knowledge of Apollo they got from YouTube and fleeting references on the TV. To actually get off their hinies and do something approaching real research is an anathma to them.

While in a way it is fun to watch them as they come up against people that have read the ALSJ back to front, have endless copies of Apollo trivia books and all the mission footage sitting in their DVD collection, it's also sad that so many young people are growing up so darn ignorant of important history. Now there is something we can all blame out respective governments for.
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It is amazing that we are approaching the point, if we haven't already reached it, where most of the people in the world were born AFTER the last moon landing in 1972.

The youngest moon walker (Charlie Duke, Apollo 16) is now 72. The oldest is Buzz Aldrin at 77. Three of them are already dead and by the time we get back to the moon there's a good chance all of them will be gone.

The Apollo 11 moon landing is one of those events where everyone knows where they were. It is different from other such "I know where I was" events in that nobody died. I was only 8 but I remember getting to stay up late to watch.

It is disheartening to see the youth of today ignorant of Apollo and even downright dismissive that it even happened.

In the humor section they had a thread on bar bets. Want to win a bar bet? Ask someone how many people landed on the moon or to name three moonwalkers.
 
In the humor section they had a thread on bar bets. Want to win a bar bet? Ask someone how many people landed on the moon or to name three moonwalkers.
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It's very sad, but true. How many people today know who Dr Harrison Schmitt is?

HBO's From the Earth to the Moon, Ron Howard's Apollo 13, and Tom Hank's Magnificent Desolation, along with the more recent In the Shadow of the Moon by David Sington have certainly raised the profile of Apollo in the modern era, but still these are few and far between, and often really only of interest to us Apollo Nuts (Shadows didn't even come to my local theatre so I'm left hoping that it will be released on DVD in Zone 4. I had to wait for the special edition release of Earth to the Moon before that was released on Zone 4 so I'm not holding my breath over it.)

The thing that saddens me most is that Apollo is a symbol of what mankind can achieve if they put their mind and determination to it. It was a climbing of Everest, a reaching the North Pole. Imagine if Hillary and Tensings announcement of their reaching the summit had been called a hoax (incidently they came back with just 1 photo, not several hundred). Imagine if Robert Peary had been called a fraud a lair and thief for claiming to have reached the North Pole. It is to degrade mankind to ingore the evidence without even bothering to study it, it is to set us back and say we can't do great things. That is the true sadness, that people would wish to believe against all the evidence that mankind is so much smaller and less able that they really are.
 
PhantomWolf said:
It's very sad, but true. How many people today know who Dr Harrison Schmitt is?
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Ooo, Oooo, I know! Didn't cheat either :)

Harrison Schmidt was the only scientist to fly on Apollo. All the other astronauts were former military pilots. They taught Schmidt to fly while he and Lee Silver taught them geology.

One other excellent special was the NOVA production "To The Moon". It is available on DVD. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tothemoon/
 
Interesting bit of trivia.

The First LMP to fly, and the first to fly in the LM, the First Man to step onto the Moon, and the last of the 12 to step onto the moon were all civilians (though 2 of them had had miliary careers from which they had retired. Schweickart, the LMP on 9, like Schmitt, was a scientist, not military.) Apollo 13 actually had two civilians onboard, Swigert and Haise. Armstrong was the only Civilian Commander, while more Civilians were LMPs than any other position.

More trivia. Apollo 12 was the only all Navy Crew while Apollo 15 was the only all Airforce crew.
 
mrwronggt13 said:
Anyone know where to get high quality NASA moon photos and videos? Aren't they like public domain or something?
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Phantom Wolf gave a site where you had to enter the roll and frame number, but this one has thumbnails and you can click on the high-res button and get great big images like this one. I don't think Buzz could carry that heavy equipment so casually in Earth's gravity!
 
WildCat said:
Phantom Wolf gave a site where you had to enter the roll and frame number, but this one has thumbnails and you can click on the high-res button and get great big images like this one. I don't think Buzz could carry that heavy equipment so casually in Earth's gravity!
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The Apollo Archive links to the High Res scans on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal which is why I didn't include it, it would have been sort of doubling up. The Apollo Image Atlas at the Lunar and Planetary Institute is the best way of doing a quick review of which image you want and for getting the Magazine and frame number for each mission. (eta: but of course aren't Hi Res Scans so I didn't include them either.)
 
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Tweeter said:
You guys sure do some critical thinking.
If we did go 39 years ago, what would be so hard now?
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It's not a question of hard, it's a question of making the funds available.

The Apollo Program cost approx. $23 billion in 1960s dollars. If you convert that to today's dollars, that is the equivalent of $136 billion (using the CPI, which is probably not a good measure in this case) to as much as $380 billion (using percentage of GDP, which is probably a better measure for something like Apollo).

NASA's current budget is only about $15 billion. And there are some folks who say even that is too much.
 
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NASA's current budget is only about $15 billion. And there are some folks who say even that is too much.
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Interestingly the USAF's is about $350 Billion, if we could swap their budgets for a year we'd be back on the moon in 2010. ;)
 
Tweeter said:
You guys sure do some critical thinking.
If we did go 39 years ago, what would be so hard now?
Name another example of what we could do then, but cant do now.
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PhantomWolf said:
Explore the Challenger Deep.

This has only ever been done twice, the first time in 1960 by the manned submersible, the Trieste, and later by an Japanese unmanned sub, the Kaiko. Neither ship now exists and no current submersible can get anywhere close to the depths required to explore there.
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How's your critical thinking skills holding up, Tweeter? Are you prepared to start being critical of the claims made by the 'truth' movement?
 
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