Space and Space Travel News

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- Video: Memories of Apollo 11

Related Websites in German: http://dokujunkies.org/tag/neil-armstrong
- http://www.webguru.at/blog/2009/07/vor- ... -dem-mond/
- Apollo 11 The First Lunar Landing: http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.landing.html - Photos

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Apollo 11 comander Neil Armstrong descended as first one the ladder upon the Moon. Here he fotographes Buzz Aldrin who stepped down the ladder after him.

Watch NASA Videos: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/moon-video/



Buzz Aldrin backing out as second one of the hatch of the Lunar Module. (Apollo 11 Mission)


- Photo

Telegraph: Moon landing anniversary: 10 reasons the Apollo landings were 'faked' - Newsuncensored.blog: The Moon Landing Hoax (?)

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- “I got the Earth coming up... it’s fantastic,” shouted Collins as he grabbed his camera to get the Moon, Earth, and
returning Ascent Stage of the Lunar Moduls approaching him, all in one picture. Photo courtesy of the Project Apollo Archive. (more)




- The view through the LM’s window as they were coming in to land at Tranquillity Base. (more)

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The Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment from the Apollo 11 mission. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lase ... Experiment

The first lunar laser ranging station was operated from McDonald Observatory, which works closely with the astronomy department of the University of Texas at Austin.

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Moon landing tape. (Photos)

Encyclopedia: Apollo Moon Landing hoax accusations - Moon Landings: Discussion Forum

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- Did humans really go to the moon?



Neil Armstrong on the Moon

- After a debate on which flags to use it ended up as the Stars and Stripes as the Congress of the USA financed the whole project. It was not a territorial claim but was seen as a symbol of freedom and to identify the nation that achieved the first landing.

Due to temperatures expected to rise to 1,000°C during the lunar landing the flag assembly was stowed in a shroud clamped to side of the ladder on the morning of departure from Earth. Aldrin felt the $US5.50 flag symbolised an “almost mystical unification of all people in the world at that moment,” though he was dreading the possibility of the flag collapsing into the dust in front of the millions of viewers. More: Description of Apollo 11 mission


Buzz Aldrin working at the MESA.

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The N.Y.Times

Apollo 11 astronauts back to Earth


To the Moon, Buzz! Apollo 11 at 40
- My fundamental memory of watching the Apollo missions — not just No. 11, which put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon 40 years
ago Monday, but also the equally nail-biting Nos. 8 and 13 — is of fear. I recall being balled up on the couch in front of the television,
clutching a pillow, convinced that there was no way this could work. Watching them now, with the knowledge that everyone made it home, I
find my fear replaced by fascination. How did that work? As the 40th-anniversary hoopla for Apollo 11 peaks on Monday, television offers
a variety of programs explaining how it happened (or questioning whether it happened at all). (more)

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- NASA Langley Research Center's Contributions to the Apollo Program

Honeysuckle Creek, Monday 21 July 1969. Hamish Lindsay, who took this photo, writes – “This picture was taken of the HSK antenna tracking the Apollo 11 Lunar Module just before Armstrong took his first step onto the lunar surface.

Answering President Kennedy's challenge and landing men on the moon by 1969 required the most sudden burst of technological creativity, and the largest commitment of resources ($24 billion), ever made by any nation in peacetime. At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 Americans and required the support of over 20,000 industrial firms and universities. This NASA Fact sheet pays tribute to the contributions NASA Langley Research Center made to the first manned lunar landing, made July 20, 1969, by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, commander; Michael Collins, Command Module pilot; and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Lunar Module pilot. (more)


http://io9.com/5302657/13-ways-of-looking-at-apollo

Battles recently published "13 Ways of Looking at Apollo" in the new online journal Hilobrow (edited by io9 contributor Joshua Glenn). The name is a tip of the hat to a Wallace Stevens poem called "13 Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird," and it is a poetic meditation on how humans use technology to change themselves. Battles begins by talking about the construction of the Apollo spacecraft, and its relationship to other amazing vessels that took people on adventures during classical antiquity.

He manages to tie this historical meditation into a fascinating discussion of how people in the 1960s talked about the spacecraft. And more a specially, how they talked about the astronauts. The spacecraft, both a high-tech marvel and a low tech bolted-together tin can, was in some sense the unsung hero of the Moon landing. But the astronauts became the true heroes. Still, Battles notes, over time technology is taking on its own heroic role in our lives. Especially when it comes to space travel, where robots are making all the important discoveries that people analyze back home on earth.

In a graceful conclusion, battles writes:

Once we sent humans into space to give a focus to our imagination; we needed heroes to embody our passions and our frailties. It's by virtue of machines, however, that we have reached beyond the moon. Machines can compute but cannot feel; they express our intentions but cannot share our passions. Such has been the understanding, and the dilemma, of modern times. But perhaps we've underestimated the machine - which is only another way of saying that we've underestimated ourselves. Dimly, we've begun to realize that as we extend ourselves with tools, we inhabit them with our dreams and desires as well. Perhaps as we probe the reaches of interstellar space, we'll feel more keenly the extension of our senses by even such abstract and remote tools as these. We're coming to the point where machines may become not only tools and extensions of our senses, but our heroes, too. (more)

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The Telegraph

Apollo 11 Moon landing: how it happened
By Heidi Blake, Telegraph, July 20, 2009


The Apollo 11 Moon voyage began in 1961 with a bold promise from US President John F. Kennedy and ended eight years later when Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after journeying 500,000 miles through space.


- Video: Apollo 11 moonwalk (1969)


On May 25, 1961 President Kennedy announced, before a joint session of Congress, his goal of landing a man on the Moon and safely returning him to Earth "before this decade is out".

But the 35th president of the United States was assassinated on November 22 1963, six years before his dream became a reality. Instead it was President Richard Nixon who watched from the Oval Office as the Apollo 11 was launched from the Kennedy Space Centre on Merritt Island, Florida at 9.37 a.m. on July 16 1969. On board were Commander Neil Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins. All three had made a spaceflight before Apollo 11, making it the second all-veteran crew in manned spaceflight history.

Millions of people around the world watched the event on television, with Nasa's Chief of Public Information, Jack King, providing commentary. The spacecraft was launched on a Saturn V rocket which orbited the Earth one-and-a-half times before propelling the Apollo 11 onto its trajectory towards the Moon. Three days after the launch, on July 19, Apollo 11 passed beyond the Moon and fired its propulsion engine to enter the lunar orbit. In the 30 orbits that followed, the crew saw passing views of their landing site in the southern Sea of Tranquility, which had been selected for its relatively smooth topography identified by previous automated spacecraft.


http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/11jul_lroc.htm

- The Apollo 17 moon buggy, circled, waits to film the departure of its mothership, Challenger.


On July 20, four days after launch, the lunar module Eagle separated from the command module Columbia carrying Armstrong and Aldrin and began its descent towards the Moon. Collins, left in solitary orbit aboard Columbia, inspected the Eagle for damage as it pirouetted before him in space. As they descended towards the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin were alarmed to note they were passing landmarks on the lunar surface four seconds early. They reported the Mission Control Centre in Houston, Texas that they were "long" and would land miles west of their target point in a boulder-strewn area just north-east of a 400 meter crater. A series of unusual alarms and low fuel warnings heightened their alarm, and Armstrong took semi-automatic control of the lunar module, successfully landing it at 8.17pm with about 25 seconds of fuel remaining. Aldrin spoke the first words from the lunar surface, calling out "Contact light! Okay, engine stop. ACA - out of detent" as the Eagle landed.

Armstrong then uttered the famous words: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." His heart was pounding at 156 beats per minute. Capsule Communicator Charles Duke replied: "Roger, Twank...Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue here. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot!" Shortly after landing, as preparations for the first ever Moonwalk began, Aldrin broadcast: "This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." He then took a private communion prepared by the pastor of his local Presbyterian church in Webster, Texas.


- Log of Apollo 11: http://history.nasa.gov/log.htm


At 2.56am Armstrong alighted the Eagle and stepped onto the surface of the Moon, uttering his famous line: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin then joined him, describing the view as one of "magnificent desolation"before testing methods of moving around including two-footed kangaroo hops. After planting a US flag on the Moon's surface, the astronauts spoke to President Nixon through a telephone-radio transmission. Nixon described the conversation as "the most historic phonecall ever made".

The two men collected surface samples and took photographs during almost three hours on the moon's surface, before returning to the Eagle carrying two boxes full of 22kg of surface material. As well as the US flag, they left behind scientific instruments, an Apollo 1 mission patch and a plaque bearing two drawings of Earth. An inscription read: "Here Men From The Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We Came in Peace For All Mankind." Once aboard the Eagle, the astronauts tossed out out their backpacks, lunar overshoes, a camera and other equipment to lighten the vehicle before repressuring it and settling down to around seven hours' rest. Armstrong later reported that he was kept awake by the pumps and warning lights within the Eagle.

They were woken by Mission Control at around 4pm to prepare for the return flight and lifted off two-and-a-half hours later to rejoin Collins aboard Columbia and begin the journey back to earth. On July 23, the night before splashdown, the three astronauts made a television broadcast. Armstrong concluded the message with the words: "We would like to give special thanks to all those Americans who built the spacecraft; who did the construction, design, the tests, and put their hearts and all their abilities into those craft. To those people tonight, we give a special thank you, and to all the other people that are listening and watching tonight, God bless you. Good night from Apollo 11."


- Photo Gallery: Apollo 11 Moon landing


The following day, July 24, the astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean and were recovered by helicopter an hour later. President Nixon was aboard the recovery vehicle to welcome the three men back to planet earth.

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- Earthrise from Apollo 11


Worldview Apollo 11


Thesoundsofhistory.com/apollo11


Neil Armstrong - Video: Memories of Apollo 11

The Washington Times


Return to the moon - 2020 goal set as next step into the beyond
By Katherine Timpf and Jessica Lipowski, W.Times, July 20, 2009


- Apollo astronauts relive their moonshots


On the 40th anniversary of the first man on the moon, NASA is looking 11 years into the future to the next men -- and women -- on the moon. Since initiating its Constellation program in 2005, the space agency has planned to return to the moon in 2020, in part, to prepare for future manned missions to other parts of our solar system, such as Mars, said NASA spokeswoman Lynette Madison.

A key element is developing the technology to help people to work and live on the moon for up to 180 days -- an ongoing effort that had its genesis in the Apollo program that put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969 and has continued through the space shuttle program and the International Space Station project. "Before you can go someplace like Mars, you really need to be able to establish an understanding of how to live off the planet, and this is the next step," Ms. Madison said of the 2020 moon mission. She noted that a mission to Mars would be lengthy: six months to get there, a year on the Red Planet and then six months to return to Earth.

Consequently, the moon will become a steppingstone to the rest of the solar system, a proving ground for new technologies and a training facility for a new generation of space explorers, NASA officials said. "What we envision is having a ... sustained U.S. presence on the moon ... being able to live off the land, to get oxygen for lunar regulators," said John Olson, a manager in NASA's Office of Safety and Mission Assurance. "We will explore to see if there's water, ice at the poles. We can use the sunlight to power our systems." In every way the Apollo program's methods and machinery will be eclipsed by Orion -- the heavenly name given to the crew exploration vehicle that will investigate the moon's surface. On the first return trip to the moon, astronauts will stay seven days -- more than twice the Apollo astronauts' three-day record.





What's more, Orion is considerably bigger than Apollo's modules to accommodate a larger crew, with three- or four-man teams replacing the two-man groups that explored the moon's surface in the 1960s and early '70s. "When it comes time for a Mars mission, we will look at increasing the seats," said John Connolly, a vehicle engineering manager in NASA's Constellation program. However, Mr. Olson said NASA's plan for a "sustained U.S. presence on the moon" does not exclude international partners in the mission. The U.S. will build the transportation system that will transport the astronauts from Earth to the moon and back, but other countries are open to help in other ways, Mr. Olson said, adding that NASA always has intended to have international involvement in the project. "It will be an international effort," Ms. Madison said. "We have no firm commitments, but we are beginning to work with them. ... It will take an international effort to do something as large as this project is."


- Moonwalker astronaut Dr. Buzz Aldrin

- Kennedy Space Center marks 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 launch to the moon


The sharing of resources, data and technology will be important to the next moon mission's success, officials said. In fact, much of the technology that NASA has developed to help moon explorers live and work on the lunar surface already has been tested, approved and shared -- in various commercial markets. "NASA technology is really ubiquitous in everyday life, but most people don't know it," said Doug Comstock, director of NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program. For example, the space agency's water recycling and purification technology, which resulted from NASA's space shuttle program, has been used for humanitarian relief in remote regions and impoverished areas of Earth, said Robert Bagdigian, project manager at Marshall Space Flight Center. The water-purification system relies on iodine, instead of chlorine, to kill bacteria. "When NASA started anticipating a permanent space station in orbit, they began looking at developing technologies that would allow waste water [such as urine and sweat], rather than being thrown away, to be generated and purified to the point where it could be reused over and over again," Mr. Bagdigian said.

Sometimes NASA finds its technology being used in new and unexpected ways. Mr. Comstock said the know-how that helped pump propellant into space shuttle rocket engines is the same as that being used to pump blood during heart transplants. Licensed by the medical research and supply firm MicroMed Inc. in 1996, the left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, is based on NASA's fuel-pump technology. "Because the original technology was owned by NASA, it was in their best interest and therefore the best interest of all the United States citizens to commercialize this technology," said Bob Benkowski, MicroMed's chief operating officer. Other NASA-based innovations include "memory" foam, which retains the shape of objects placed on it; various materials used in sports equipment; scratch-resistant and UV blocking lens; carbon-monoxide detectors; freeze-dried food and imaging technology used to examine clotted arteries.

- An astronaut colecting moon rocks. Photos / 2


When NASA was established in 1958 by the National Aeronautics and Space Act, it was mandated that its technology would be transferred into the commercial sector to meet medical, industrial and social needs when possible. Still, some of NASA's technology is nontransferable, such as its rocket systems. For its next lunar mission, NASA is developing the Ares V cargo launch vehicle to deliver vital supplies, such as food and water, to the moon base. This CLV can carry almost 414,000 pounds of goods into low-Earth orbit and almost 157,000 pounds 240,000 miles to the moon. Mr. Connolly, the vehicle engineering manager, said the Ares V will be the largest launch vehicle ever created, 10 metric tons larger than Apollo's Saturn V.

"The Saturn V must have been quite a sight when it left the launch pad in the '60s and '70s," he said. "[Ares V] is a bigger, more capable vehicle than the Saturn V, so the day we launch that, I want to be in Florida to watch it because it ought to be spectacular." But Mr. Connolly said the missions planned by the Constellation program will be more than just spectacular sights to him and those co-workers who remember July 16, 1969, when Apollo 11 took off for the moon. "I think those of us that were children of Apollo, watching the guys walk on the moon, what drew many of us to the space program was to follow in the footsteps of our fathers, to continue this voyage that started at the moon and to keep pushing out further into space."


http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstate ... 11/lem.jpg



AP




NY lunar module builders remember 1969 landing
By Frank Eltman, AP, July 19, 2009

Bethpage, N.Y. (AP) — The 40th anniversary of the first moon landing is a moment of particular pride for current and former employees who contributed to the effort at a Long Island defense plant.

Thousands of Grumman employees designed and built the spidery looking lunar module that carried Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin to the moon on July 20, 1969. Six lunar modules in all carried 12 astronauts to the surface of the moon and back to Earth. A seventh played a critical part in helping return three Apollo 13 astronauts after an oxygen tank overheated and exploded.

Some believe Grumman, now a part of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Industries, was chosen to build the lunar module because of its expertise making planes to land on aircraft carriers. The F-14 of "Top Gun" movie fame was a Grumman aircraft.



- Global Media Goverage: Apollo 11 moon-landing anniversary





http://www.enterprisemission.com/NPC-Russia.htm


Earthrise photo from Apollo 8

Apollo 8: 40 years ago (Dec. 26, 2008)

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BBC

Rendezvous around the Moon
By BBC News, 19 May 2009


- The moonshot architecture took a while to emerge


Exactly 40 years ago, Apollo 10 blasted off Earth; its mission in the words of Commander Tom Stafford "to sort out the unknowns and pave the way for a lunar landing". Continuing his series of essays marking the 40th anniversary of the moonshots, Dr Christopher Riley reflects on Nasa's method for landing on the Moon and the Apollo legacy of space rendezvous.

"In May 1969, with only seven months to go before the end of the decade, the first Lunar Module to fly in orbit around the Moon was powered up and readied for undocking from the Command Module. Astronauts Tom Stafford, John Young and Gene Cernan were about to test out a technique for lunar landing which had first been proposed in 1916 by a Russian mechanic called Yuri Kondratyuk. Kondratyuk's thesis described how a small landing craft could leave a mothership in lunar orbit to ferry its crew to the surface and back - a technique later referred to as Lunar Orbit Rendezvous or LOR.

Forty years after Apollo it's easy to see this method of landing a man on the Moon as the only way it could have been done. But the idea of bringing two vehicles together in space above the Moon had originally been rejected outright by Nasa as simply too difficult. In 1961, with Kennedy's challenge still ringing in their ears, the agency had favoured a far simpler approach.

From the 1950s, the principal concept for a flight to the Moon involved a streamlined rocket blasting vertically off the Earth, flying straight there and then landing vertically tail first on a column of rocket thrust. After lunar exploration was completed, it would then perform a similar vertical launch from the Moon and a final vertical landing back on Earth. Popular in both science fiction and with military feasibility studies at the time, this "Direct Ascent", as it was dubbed, also seemed an obvious solution for Apollo.




- John C Houbolt explains his space rendezvous concept for lunar landings


But Direct Ascent was not as straight forward as it first appeared. It would need a completely new and truly immense rocket called the Nova to do the job; four times more powerful than the Saturn V and perhaps as tall as the Empire State Building. Secondly, no-one really knew how the astronauts, sitting near the top, could land this "flying skyscraper" on the lunar surface tail first. Rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun had been championing an alternative concept called Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) since his US Army days in the late 1950s.

His method would eliminate the need for one giant rocket, requiring instead a number of relatively smaller Juno V booster rockets, later to be known as Saturn Vs. These would launch into orbit the collective hardware necessary to assemble a giant vehicle to travel on to the Moon and return to Earth. But whilst EOR solved the problem of building a giant rocket on Earth, the difficulty of landing it on the surface of the Moon remained.

In addition, multiple Saturn V rocket launches would be needed for each Moon shot and so EOR would be expensive. What von Braun and the others had missed was that it was not necessary for the entire spacecraft to land on the Moon. This had been Kondratyuk's breakthrough thought.




- The ascent stage of the Apollo 10 Lunar Module just prior to docking


He realised that a smaller landing craft could be used to ferry the crew from the mothership in lunar orbit to the surface and back. This landing craft could then be discarded, leaving a much smaller and lighter craft to be propelled back to Earth. Kondratyuk died in 1942, a generation before Apollo. But at least two space scientists, Herman Oberth and an Englishman named Harry E Ross, had kept Kondratyuk's ideas alive in the intervening years.

Then in 1958 an American called Thomas Dolan of the Vought Astronautics Division, doing some speculative work on lunar landing concepts, also resurrected it as a highly efficient-energy saving moonshot concept. Whilst Dolan's company failed to win over Nasa, a young engineer called John Houbolt, working out of the Langley Space Flight Center, took up the baton in late 1960 - lobbying Nasa's top brass to adopt Lunar Orbit Rendezvous as the only realistic way of getting to the Moon by the end of the decade. LOR had clear appeal - requiring only one Saturn V rocket per mission - but the rendezvous of two spacecraft had yet to be achieved in Earth orbit, let alone around the Moon.

And it took until June 1962, over a year after Kennedy's challenge had first been announced, before Nasa was persuaded that the challenge of a lunar orbit rendezvous was going to be easier than the alternative methods. A new manned programme called Gemini was immediately announced to work out how to rendezvous in Earth orbit, but the first real proof of the LOR concept would have to wait for Apollo 10 in the spring of 1969. A Lunar Module - nicknamed "Snoopy" would descend to about 50,000ft above the surface, scouting out the primary landing site for Apollo 11, before returning to the Command Module, "Charlie Brown", above.

The simplicity of this mission statement and the informal call signs for the spacecraft understated the complexity of such a flight. No one had ever attempted to rendezvous two spacecraft around another world; with its different gravity field and less familiar landmarks. To undertake this challenge, Nasa had sent the most experienced crew ever to fly in space. Between them Stafford, Young and Cernan had flown on four different Gemini missions and together they had helped to pioneer the mechanics of orbital rendezvous flight above the Earth.




- The space station owes a debt to the pioneers of space rendezvous


Now in lunar orbit and coasting along the trajectory it was designed for, Snoopy "buzzed" the Moon's mountain tops. Stafford and Cernan standing shoulder to shoulder inside felt as if they were flying a nimble, responsive jet fighter. The Lunar Module's unique, throttle-able descent engine gave the pilots unprecedented control over their wingless and airless flight. And with sixteen smaller engines to orientate themselves precisely in any direction, Snoopy was precisely crafted for its LOR mission. As they came round for their final orbit, the astronauts prepared to return to Charlie Brown. Then, suddenly, without warning, Snoopy began to roll unexpectedly.

The incident, captured on 16mm film by a camera looking out of the window, startled the crew but Stafford quickly jettisoned the heavy descent stage and used his hand controllers to stabilise the tumble. Back in control, Stafford and Cernan headed back up towards a radar-assisted rendezvous with Young inside the Command Module. The docking and transfer accomplished, they jettisoned Snoopy's ascent stage, and headed for home. Apollo's path to the Lunar surface was clear. Even before Stafford, Young and Cernan were back on Earth the next Moon ship was rolling out towards pad 39A; its destination - the Sea of Tranquility.

Befittingly for the craft which had flown such a historic and often overlooked mission, Snoopy's upper-stage still survives today in orbit around the Sun. It drifts as an unseen monument to space rendezvous; the technique which not only made the Moon landings possible, but has permitted everything from the construction of our space stations to the latest Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. The gifts of Apollo are greater than we think."

- Dr Christopher Riley produced and directed on the documentary feature film In the Shadow of the Moon and curates the online Apollo film archive project Footagevault. His book, Apollo 11 - An Owner's Workshop Manual


- Photos

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8056443.stm

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L.A.Times

OPINION

Was 'one small step for man' worth it?
By L.A.Times, July 22, 2009


- Photo Galery: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/0 ... d_pas.html

- Bill Nye and Michael Potter discuss the symbolic and practical significance of the Apollo 11 lunar landing 40 years ago and the future of space exploration.

» Discuss Article
Today's topic: Many regard the Apollo program as the high watermark of American space exploration. Are they correct? Was sending a man to the moon mostly about national pride, or were there more practical purposes?

The real 'moon hoax'

Point: Michael Potter

I argue the position of the "great moon hoax," even though we know that the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon was probably the greatest triumph in human history. And certainly, by extension, Apollo 11 was the pinnacle moment for the United States and NASA in the area of space exploration. It is important, though, that the moon landings are understood in the context of the "space race," which was driven by the Cold War and ideological rivalries between the superpowers.

Even today, space programs around the world are fueled by national pride and perceived strategic necessity. When we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Americans landing on the moon, what are we celebrating? Despite the great successes of Apollo, I would argue that our sentiments of adulation for the Moon landings are misplaced, hollow and insincere. The truth is that, after the moon landings, the U.S. shamelessly surrendered its leadership in the pursuit of mankind's expansion into the heavens.


Of course, we can point to a number of impressive U.S. space accomplishments, both manned and robotic, since Apollo. But can we point to many transformational moments in space since humans first walked on the moon four decades ago? The U.S. has had a number of important accomplishments, including many high-profile rover missions. But shockingly, today we are talking about the possibility of going back to the Moon -- and in more than a decade's time.

Yes, the U.S. won the space sprint, but why is Russia leading in the space marathon? In 2010, the U.S. will be retiring the space shuttle, NASA's only manned space vehicle. Our space agency will be paying the Russians $55 million a seat for each American astronaut that flies after 2010 on their rockets. So what are we celebrating when we commemorate the moon landing? Are we celebrating that the U.S. has gone very far down the road of forfeiting its space and moon leadership to the Russians, Chinese and Indians? These do not strike me as reasons to celebrate or even to project an exuberance of optimism.

To continue the inventory of humiliation in U.S. space activities, the U.S. has recently started talking about de-orbiting the $100-billion space station in 2016. One cannot make any sense of either the sketchy plans or the sketchy funding for new NASA launch vehicles, space station and possible plans to return to moon and go on to Mars. Current U.S. plans and funding for space exploration simply do not add up.

NASA has recently received $1 billion in federal stimulus funding, but spending this much money on government bureaucracy is guaranteed to produce negative returns. By contrast, $1 billion invested in small and medium-sized space technology companies has the compelling potential to generate exponential technological and financial returns for taxpayers and for the space program.

Perhaps the greatest part of the moon hoax is to believe that the past moon landings were part of a rational, sustainable strategy for the permanent habitation of humans in the heavens. If we are not honest and serious about our challenges to conquer the heavens, then I believe we should consider more subdued celebrations. The greatest challenges to U.S. space activities can be traced to political and congressional dysfunction more than the engineering and technological challenges.

On the other hand, if we collectively take our "small step" and can be honest about the current problems and challenges we face, and if we are willing to aggressively enter into a results-oriented mode, we have much to celebrate about the future.

When we return to the lunar surface under the banner of Moon 2.0, let's go there with the intention to make our efforts both practical and sustainable. Less of our efforts should be driven by national pride and more of our efforts should be driven by international cooperation and commercial logic. We need to find the most efficient balance between manned space operations, low-cost module platforms and robotic solutions. But when we do venture back into space, let's stay this time.

- Michael Potter is director of the award-winning documentary film, "Orphans of Apollo.”


NASA does far more science today than it did during Apollo
Counterpoint: Bill Nye

Landing men on Earth's moon was a high point for the U.S. space program and for humankind, but it was part of the Cold War. The Soviet Union built and flew the first probe that impacted the moon, the first lunar-orbiting spacecraft, the first soft-landing probe and delivered the first pictures of the far side of the moon. The Soviet Union did nearly every first when it comes to rocket science and the moon except one -- putting people there. In the end, that was what mattered. The Soviet Union, unable to keep up with U.S. production and astronauts, went out of business about 20 years later.

For those who are disappointed that the United States, specifically NASA, has made human spaceflight almost routine (although costly), I remind you: One of the astronauts currently orbiting the Earth on the space shuttle Endeavor became the 500th person to fly in space. Not the fifth or the 50th -- the 500th! No hoax, that's a milestone. But how many among us can name the shuttle's commander or a mission specialist? These people may be extraordinary, but we no longer acknowledge their days at their office as such. I don't see that as a bad thing.

Michael, you point out that U.S. and European astronauts use Russian rockets to get to the International Space Station. Those are good rockets (vehicles, as we scientists like to say). They ferry people and material routinely. This is not a new situation. The U.S. had no shuttles flying in the years following the wrecks of both the Challenger and Columbia shuttles, and the world of human spaceflight, if I may, continued to spin.

The China National Space Administration is going to send people to the moon; so is the Indian Space Research Organization. Their efforts are a matter of national pride and development of their countries' space expertise. NASA doesn't need to duplicate what it accomplished 40 years ago. Instead, the U.S. should work with these emerging space-faring nations: Have taikonauts hang out, or "float out," with astronauts and cosmonauts. By doing so, we'll all learn a great deal more about humans' place in space.

NASA still publishes a book every year about the spin-offs (also known as ancillary technologies) that come from its fine work. Well, the spinoff of the space program is science. Nowadays, NASA does more robotic space science exploring stars and planets in a single afternoon than the moon-seeking astronauts did in 12 years. We went to the moon largely to demoralize an enemy. We explore our neighboring worlds and distant stars for the joy of discovery and the deep impact of understanding.

Let's encourage astronaut hall-of-famer Charles Bolden, NASA's new administrator, to keep the robots flying and get the U.S. human spaceflight program flying higher. We must achieve remarkable new efficient trajectories that take advantage of low-gravity points between and behind the Earth and moon, in new metric-system rockets that will one day take people to other worlds, like Mars, to have a good look around and change this world.

- Bill Nye hosted the Emmy-winning series "Bill Nye the Science Guy" on PBS from 1992 to 1998.
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Related Articles:

The Moon Landing at 40|corner.nationalreview.com
Apollo astronauts bemoan state of U.S. space program|reuters.com
Russians Still Skeptical About U.S. Moon Landing|huffingtonpost.com
Apollo 11 Moon landing: astronauts urge Mars mission
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Global Media Coverage: Race to the Moon - Photos - (more)


Impact Sites of Apollo LM Ascent and SIVB Stages: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov//lunar/apollo
Articles related to NASA, Apollo: http://search.virginmedia.com/results/i ... =S-IVB&cr=

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- Solar eclipse, Indonesia, Jan. 2009