Why NASA's First Landing On The Moon in 50 Years Matters - It's Commercial, Cryogenic & Confused

YouTube ^ | February 24, 2024 | Scott Manley (fly safe)

[Smittie]

Did they include a Life Alert button?

What a sad commentary on the state of our country...

[MikelTackNailer]

From your link:

On Apr. 20, 1962, Armstrong carried out the longest flight of the X-15 program, a duration of 12 minutes and 28 seconds. On this same flight, he achieved his highest altitude, 207,500 feet. On his return, Armstrong inadvertently pulled too high an angle of attack during pullout.

The flight path took a bounce in the atmosphere, and he overshot the Edwards Air Force Base, heading south at Mach 3 and at 100,000 feet. He was able to turn back while over the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Almost out of kinetic and potential energy, he was just barely able to reach the south end of Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards.

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And "cruising along at the rate of ten football fields a second". Mind-boggling.

That was my exact birthday so thank you very much for posting it!

[Reeses]

This lander was designed in the image of its creators: tall and thin. In hindsight, they should have gone for the Hillary design: short and fat, with the additional property of living far longer than anyone wants it to.

[SunkenCiv]

As he came down, he barely cleared surrounding crags. Afterward he said he had plenty of clearance, the spotter however said that he could almost have run his hand along the bottom of the fuselage. :^)

[MikelTackNailer]

People should know there was an supremely talented engineer fearless beyond sanity who used his pilot skills to confirm theory ending up far more brave and bad-ass than fictional Maverick of "Top Gun" humbly shunning fame, publicity and cash-in deals up to his passing.

We are desperately short of that type now when we need them most.

[Freedom4US]

I was looking at the 16 launch from the moon. I think I read there might have been a millisecond delay in one of the pyrotechnics.

This might have been the real showstopper- maybe they got close on that one. What had to happen, the umbilicals, electrical connections, and the hardware securing the ascent and descent stages together had to fire cleanly and within a split second of each other. Because once the rocket fuel starts mixing, it’s going somewhere, the question is where.

It gets “caught up” and hangs, they are fooked. Starts a flat spin or flipping end over end or remains partially attached and floppin’ like a catfish and the end up dirty side up stuck on the moon.

All of the thin panel covers were all pranged up to hell on 16, they think maybe the millisecond delay caused a backpressure “pop” on the ascent stage. Charlie Duke said the whole thing dropped about 2” and he had an “oh shit” moment in the split second it took for the engine to launch. I think they were a red nether hair to havin’ something real bad happen on that launch.

[BradyLS]

That’s amazing! Do we know if the astronauts were suited for that launch off the surface? (I can’t remember how the movie “First Man” treated the event.) Your story makes me wonder if the engineers knew there was a possibility of the ascender losing its pressure due to the explosive forces generated by the mixing of the materials.

[BradyLS]

I think you could make a comedy about how a film studio reuses the sets for faking a landing on an extraterrestrial body are re-used to make sci-fi TV shows...

“Criminy! We can’t use that camera angle and lighting! Everyone will recognize it as the landing site for [Capricorn I, for example]!”

“Can’t we just tell folks we were inspired by...the location?”

“It’d be _too_ good!”

[Rolling eyes] “What if we jumbled the rocks, knocked over part of that crater wall, and used a filter?”

[Sternly] “And what if someone superimposes photos from the landing and the show and points that out?”

[Getting angry] “And what if the producers were _serious_ enough about the show...and the rest...that they wouldn’t try to reuse _everything_ from the...previous production? Especially that [Jupiter II] lander!”

[Calming down] “Well...That’s the sort of _obvious_ cost saving-measure no one bats an eye at. Lander models are in all the stores.”

[x]

List of productions using the Vasquez Rocks as a filming location

[wgmalabama]

Why did the lander have a lateral velocity at all. Did I understand it correctly their own safety process doomed the mission? That’s safety for you. Failure in a safe manner.

[SunkenCiv]

Blah blah blah.

[wgmalabama]

Are you a safety engineer? Sound a bit bitter. Or was it the lateral velocity comment? Or do you just need a hug?

[BradyLS]

I don’t know why there would be lateral movement across the surface just before touchdown. But at a guess, maybe the landing radar/camera detected rocks and it was manuevering away? Or maybe residual momentum from the de-orbit? Or maybe if they use thrusters for maneuvering for the landing, there will always be some drift?

Personally, I think it appears a bit tall for its base. That must make setting it down more difficult. ...Though Space X has mastered that problem with their Falcon rockets.

[wgmalabama]

I thought the same thing about base vs the height. I wonder if they did dynamic analysis with moon gravity. I assume it was. I did have hope that it would go well. Maybe next time.

[BradyLS]

Holy cow! I knew there were some but not so many!

[BradyLS]

Wasn’t that their second attempt? The first (back in January) had a fuel leak and had to be ditched in the ocean, IIRC? I do hope they make another attempt.

[TauntedTiger]

Why isn’t Elon Musk in the latest NASA graduate class? Musk does not want to walk on the moon? Athletic bodies are not important anymore.

[Freedom4US]

Hmmm. Good question, I’ve no idea. At a guess I bet 11 was suited up, and by 14 or 15 they were probably in flight suits and margaritas. I could be wrong about the launch, it’s just a couple data points or whatever, but taken together point to something along those lines.

It’s pretty fun listening to the YouTube uploads of NASA 16mm film and video of Charlie Duke and John Young tooling around on the rover. Young is totally chill, at some point if he said “Hey Charlie, is there any beer left in the cooler?” it would not sound out of place. Hell maybe he brought one.

He smuggled a corned beef sandwich with him on one flight. “Where did you get that?” asks Gus.

[Freedom4US]

I don’t believe the premise.

More lefties, on balance, believe the whack job stuff. That just comes with the territory. Anti-vaccination has also been largely a left wing hippie “natural remedy” sort of affair.

And in some ways wasn’t a bad bet. If you’re living within a large population of vaccinated and “herd immunized” population, and borders are secure and all those things, it is a reasonable, if somewhat selfish position to take.

There isn’t a lot of outright hostility to vaccinations generally by any thinking person, albeit concern as any parent would. Complications are “rare” but that isn’t much consolation.

No, what’s happening here is classic leftist bullshit. Applying the general to the specific and the specific to the general.

They conflate legitimate concern to a single, specific inoculation - in this case an experimental emergency use authorized shot, and then falsely claim that declining this one automatically means a knuckle dragging troglodyte who wears onions on his belt and plants by the signs.

Total propaganda. “Non compliance” was large, and without regard to politics, truth be told. This is an example of “nudging” writ large.