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Elon Musk On Why First Moon Landing Was An 'Anomaly'
benzinga.com ^ | 11/27/2022 | Shivdeep Dhaliwal

Posted on 11/29/2022 7:29:23 PM PST by bitt

SpaceX and Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk said recently that the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon-landing mission was an “anomalous situation.”

What Happened: “The fact that we were able to go to the Moon in '69 was such an anomalous situation, it was like reaching into the future and bringing the technology forward,” said Musk on the "Full Send" podcast.

The landings, which saw Neil Armstrong become the first human to step on the lunar surface, were “not the natural pace of technology development,” according to the SpaceX founder.

“It’s just that the United States just collectively decided that this has got to be done,” Musk said, referring to the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Why It Matters: Musk agreed with the podcast hosts that it was “weird” that the U.S. had not returned to the Moon’s surface since 1972.

"We’ll go to the Moon, SpaceX has an asset contract to take astronauts to the Moon," Musk said, adding that SpaceX’s super-heavy-lift launch vehicle Starship is “gigantic compared to anything that’s been done before.”

“It’s capable of putting 100 tons of payload on the Moon. You could build a Moon base with a Starship.”

Musk said, “We could go way beyond what was done with the Apollo program, where they had a small lander.”

SpaceX would take astronauts to the Moon before it took them to Mars, the billionaire entrepreneur said.

"I think we should build a city on the Moon and on Mars."


TOPICS: Astronomy; Business/Economy; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: anomaly; apollo; astronomy; elonmusk; mars; moon; moonlanding; musk; science; spaceexploration; spacex; starlink; tesla; themoon
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To: rx

🙄


61 posted on 11/29/2022 10:06:50 PM PST by BiteYourSelf ( Earth first, we'll strip mine the other planets later.)
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To: OldMissileer

Well they weren’t running a Windows program, or it would have “crashed”, there was an error in the checklist, a switch in the wrong position, that confused the radar system or somesuch, that’s why the 1202 errors.

But the system just prioritized and kept on keeping on. We can talk about how primitive the hardware was, but the computer code they wrote to run was pretty tight. This was done under contract by MIT, at the Draper laboratory. Charles Draper was one of those once in a lifetime kind of special geniuses, he’d cut his teeth on sophisticated wartime aircraft navigational instruments so he was a natural to get heavily involved in Apollo.

Parts of the software program were actually hard wired into the spacecraft itself, as “core memory”, custom tailored and specifically wired for each unique mission. Tiny wire loops around an iron core, bazillions of them, each representing bits and bytes, 1s and 0s, made by the nice ladies at Raytheon or wherever. There’s a pretty good YouTube video transcription of period NASA films showing the process, it was amazingly labor intensive and time consuming.


62 posted on 11/29/2022 10:13:39 PM PST by Freedom4US
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To: Bubba_Leroy
Even harder to believe that we did it using slide rules when the most powerful supercomputers in existence had less computational power than a smartphone.

Smartphones need all that crunching power for the GUI and for multithreading numerous tasks simultaneously while running relatively inefficient code compiled or interpreted from human-friendly computer language. The pieces of critical code which actually interact with the hardware are mostly 'drivers', but in the spectrum of modern software drivers represent a relatively small patch. Most code is designed to interact with us rather our hardware.

In the days of Apollo virtually all the software interacted directly with the hardware, it was all drivers so to speak, and the very tight code was painstaking created manually by humans working at the machine language level. Tight code is almost magic.

63 posted on 11/29/2022 10:39:51 PM PST by JustaTech (A mind is a terrible thing)
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To: Scrambler Bob

With skies full of starlink satellites.


64 posted on 11/29/2022 10:45:56 PM PST by TheDon (Resist the usurpers)
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To: T.B. Yoits
Nothing like screwing with a celestial body that controls so much of our planet's systems.

Are you seriously suggesting that we might inadvertently "tip it over?!"

Nothing Man can do in or on or to the Moon would have any measurable effect upon Earth and its "systems."

Regards,

65 posted on 11/29/2022 11:14:00 PM PST by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: bitt

He should use his big rocket to create another skylab.


66 posted on 11/30/2022 1:31:35 AM PST by minnesota_bound (Need more money to buy everything now)
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To: poinq

There’s no question that it was a dangerous adventure. Musk makes a good point. We went to the moon in a ship made of tin foil, hardwired with cathode ray tubes and slide rules. It’s amazing what you can get done with a national focus and neverending truckloads of cash.


67 posted on 11/30/2022 3:31:05 AM PST by Samurai_Jack (This is not about hypocrisy, this is about hierarchy!)
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To: GOPJ

Truly amazing. I don’t remember the Mercury missions, but do remember Gemini and Apollo. We were stationed in Italy when Neil and Buzz walked on the moon. We watched it on Italian TV surrounded by Italians and other USAF families. I was so proud. The memory still makes my heart swell.

I am currently reading ‘Rocket Men’, a book about the Apollo 8 mission. The first time men went to, and orbited, the moon. They describe planning the mission - go to the moon, orbit 10 times at 69 miles altitude, then return to Earth - as throwing a dart at a peach from 28 feet away and grazing the fuzz but not touching the skin. To complicate things the moon is moving at 2300 MPH, so throw the peach up in the air - THEN throw the dart. Truly amazing.

I look around now and wonder WHY anyone would want to destroy that. The pride I felt in ‘69 has turned to a deep sadness.


68 posted on 11/30/2022 3:44:26 AM PST by Semper Vigilantis (The goal is total domination. The path is depopulation.)
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To: x

I have won many bets over this song
Ask them to listen and tell me what John is saying on this one line
Never lost
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone


69 posted on 11/30/2022 4:24:24 AM PST by blitz128
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To: Semper Vigilantis
They describe planning the mission - go to the moon, orbit 10 times at 69 miles altitude, then return to Earth - as throwing a dart at a peach from 28 feet away and grazing the fuzz but not touching the skin. To complicate things the moon is moving at 2300 MPH, so throw the peach up in the air - THEN throw the dart. Truly amazing.

The event has a myth quality to it. I remember it too - was living in Florida at the time. We were all blown away.

70 posted on 11/30/2022 5:03:33 AM PST by GOPJ (Unsolved crime? Jump to the conclusion the killer is a LGBTQIA2S+ (Turn about's fair play.))
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To: bitt

I never believed the moon landings were fake but after witnessing all the BS the government has served in the last 22 years, I have to wonder.


71 posted on 11/30/2022 5:06:14 AM PST by Wilderness Conservative (Nature is the ultimate conservative)
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To: bitt

Build a city on Mars. Not likely.


72 posted on 11/30/2022 5:18:27 AM PST by Freedom_Is_Not_Free (America -- July 4, 1776 to November 3, 2020 -- R.I.P.)
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To: Secret Agent Man

You’re right. Primitive tools, but lots of courage involved. What a different time.

Just flying around the moon and coming back would have been a great accomplishment.


73 posted on 11/30/2022 5:26:25 AM PST by GOPJ (Unsolved crime? Jump to the conclusion the killer is a LGBTQIA2S+ (Turn about's fair play.))
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To: BiteYourSelf

Reading this thread I am thinking we never really went to the moon. We have been lied to for so long.

Why haven’t we returned to the moon? Why would we bother because there was supposedly nothing there but a bunch of rocks?

I really wanna believe we did...but I don’t know. It sure looked like we did.


74 posted on 11/30/2022 5:34:40 AM PST by dforest (What are we sittin' around for? )
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To: bitt

Probably are everywhere or in our DNA


75 posted on 11/30/2022 6:01:25 AM PST by no-to-illegals (The enemy has US surrounded. May God have mercy on them.)
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To: bitt
Musk had a point there. During the decade of the 1960s, the "moon shot" became a national obsession. The end result being that we achieved our goal but aside from making a few bootprints, planting a flag, collecting a few rocks and driving a little buggy around (must have been fun), we didn't really do much there. Now it's a half century later and we haven't even gone back yet. We had to get there so the Russians wouldn't beat us to it and make us sleep under a Communist moon.

Still, it wasn't all a waste. A lot of great technologies (besides powdered orange drink) came from it.

76 posted on 11/30/2022 6:09:19 AM PST by SamAdams76 (4,667,328 | Truth Social | 87,777,919 | Twitter | Trump Followers)
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To: bitt

I think it would be a great goal for civilization to bring K-12 education to the new century. We’ve let it die on the vine with the current system we have. We should have dozens of different kinds of private schools that people can choose from and use the current dollars to follow the students.


77 posted on 11/30/2022 6:15:39 AM PST by 1Old Pro
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To: doorgunner69
Supporting generations of negro welfare left no money for anything else.

People who bitch about the cost of Apollo forget that "expensive" is relative. Apollo was cheap compared to the Welfare State.

We still have the Welfare State, which increases in cost every year.

Apollo is a distant memory.

78 posted on 11/30/2022 6:21:26 AM PST by NorthMountain (... the right of the peopIe to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: Fledermaus

Saturn V was not ICBM based.


79 posted on 11/30/2022 6:23:52 AM PST by NorthMountain (... the right of the peopIe to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: dforest
Why haven’t we returned to the moon?

It costs a lot of money which is much better spent on welfare, graft, and corruption. Instead of wasting our money on space travel, we have invested it in creating a permanent wealthy political class and a permanent indigent parasite class.

80 posted on 11/30/2022 6:30:09 AM PST by NorthMountain (... the right of the peopIe to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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