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RIP Neil Armstrong

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Starman, Aug 25, 2012.

  1. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    The Lunar Module's computer had only 36K of ROM and only 2K of RAM. At the time of the Apollo 11 landing, NASA had used about half of the integrated circuits that had ever been produced. Unbelievable* stuff when you think about it.


    *And I mean that in the normal, non-whack-job way.
     
  2. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Well, it should be remembered that "FTETTM" was a fictionalized adaptation of the historical material.

    Although it is great.
     
  3. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    Did Armstrong want a state funeral? My sense says he wouldn't have.
     
  4. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    I'm thinking the Obama administration has already consulted the Armstrong family and they declined any public honor - including the flag at half mast gesture.
     
  5. Shoeless Joe

    Shoeless Joe Active Member

    If it was declined, OK, but in another sense, even if it was Armstrong's desire not to have one, he really shouldn't have that option. Whether the man wanted it or not, "Neil Armstrong the astronaut" was more than the average individual.
     
  6. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    My guess is Armstrong's wishes on a state funeral (or lack of one) were spelled out to his family years ago.

    Not lowering the flags to half-mast is strange. Not sure you'd need to consult the family on something like that. Armstrong was without a doubt the greatest living American at the time of his death.
     
  7. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Eventually, perhaps. But he did suffer quite the bout with alcoholism and depression following the landing. NASA's view of Buzz was "you never know what you're gonna get" --- and that was before his personal problems --- which was one of the many reasons he didn't get to go first.

    One thing that always bothered me was how the other astronauts took little shots at Buzz in their autobiographies. And it was never because of his qualifications or competence --- he just didn't fit in with the hotshot fighter-pilot mentality, wasn't one of the boys.
     
  8. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    The prep missions were also put on an accelerated timeline once the Russians made some progress in their moon program. IIRC, Apollo 8 wasn't supposed to orbit the moon, but NASA needed to do something to show they were ahead of the Russians so they went for it.
    The pace of the whole Apollo program boggles the mind. Not only did they do it with 1960s tech, not only did they go from zero to the moon in less than a decade, but they completely redesigned most of the Apollo craft -- essentially starting from scratch AGAIN -- and got to the moon just 2 1/2 years after the Apollo I fire. That is flippin' astounding.
     
  9. Shoeless Joe

    Shoeless Joe Active Member

    You are correct. I honestly don't know how long it would take us today if we started right now to land on the moon. Today's technology is far advanced, but the people/mindset is so different. In the 60s, we just decided to go and did it. End of story. That would never past muster today for countless reasons.

    It's almost like a story I read once where we couldn't build the Iowa class battleships of WWII today because we have lost the technology. Seriously? We have LOST the technology of 70 years ago.

    Both of those scenarios make my soul cringe.
     
  10. SockPuppet

    SockPuppet Active Member

    Pardon the Will McAvoy moment, but the space program and the moon landing might have been the last great thing we've done as a country.
     
  11. 3OctaveFart

    3OctaveFart Guest

    What he said.
    At least one of the last things that truly stimulated the imagination.
     
  12. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    There was a History Channel miniseries on the history of NASA a few years back, and they said essentially the same thing about the technology to go to the moon. The entire U.S. space program of the 1960s was geared toward eventually reaching the moon. Each mission -- Mercury, Gemini, the early Apollo missions -- were building blocks toward that. With each one, we mastered a different technique or technology that eventually was used on the moon missions.
    Then, once the Apollo program was finished, we shifted to Skylab and the Shuttle. It was boring as hell for the engineers, and different technology for a far different mission. Eventually, the NASA engineers of the 1960s moved on or passed away, the technology changed and all of the lessons learned during the space race was lost. Nowadays, we could probably still prep a shuttle to launch in a few months but going to the moon would take at least another decade.
    It's one of the really frightening things about all the recent cuts to NASA and the end of the Shuttle program. As long as you're still sending stuff into space, you know how to do it. You can build and upgrade, instead of starting from scratch. If we go five years, 10 years without a manned space program it'll take at least that long to get it back up and running. Before long, you have an entire generation to whom Americans in space is a foreign concept. Hell, there's already teenagers who can't conceive of a world without the Internet. Give it another 10 years, and they might not even know what a space shuttle was.
     
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