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We chose to go to the moon

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Starman, Jul 16, 2019.

  1. maumann

    maumann Well-Known Member

    Gene Kranz was 35 during Apollo 11. The flat top haircut always made him seem older.
     
  2. maumann

    maumann Well-Known Member

    Liut and Batman like this.
  3. maumann

    maumann Well-Known Member

    Dad still gets together with a number of retired Space Coast engineers every Thursday for breakfast. One guy was in charge of the tracking antenna downrange on Aruba. That would have been a pretty interesting job, although quite remote.
     
    Donny in his element and Liut like this.
  4. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    We have a government engineering lab in our town that did some important work on the Apollo program. Specifically the rover for the later missions (they helped design the tires) and the pavement for the road that led to the launch pad. The crawler that they moved the Saturn V on was so heavy that normal pavement wouldn't hold up under the weight, so they had to design a new form of pavement that would.

    All of that stuff -- not even the rocket, but the things you need to invent and build to make and handle the things that make and handle the rocket -- always fascinates me. It's not glamorous, and it's so far down the line of problem solving you wonder how and when they realized they needed it. And yet, without something seemingly inconsequential like that, the astronauts never get off the ground.
     
    Donny in his element and maumann like this.
  5. maumann

    maumann Well-Known Member

    Back in the heady "go-go" days of the mid-'60s, every major contractor and subcontractor had offices between Cocoa Beach, Port Canaveral and Titusville on either A1A or US 1. Lockheed, Boeing, PanAm, Rockwell. The old PanAm building was converted into lofts, from what my parents tell me. Harris still has a major presence in Melbourne and Palm Bay.

    It's fun to think back on those days, but glad that the Cape is still a place for engineers with vision. There's something comforting about having the Sands Space History Center on the same property as SpaceX, just a couple hundred yards from one of prime public viewing areas for Complex 39.
     
    Donny in his element likes this.
  6. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Did your dad curse at Al Bean for frying the lens on the TV camera by accidentally pointing it at the sun and sticking us with animations for the Apollo 12 moonwalks?
     
    maumann likes this.
  7. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

  8. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Mission Accomplished, July 24, 1969.

     
  9. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    They had an airstream on the Hornet when I visited, but it wasn't the one from Apollo 11. If you're in the Bay Area looking for something to do - you should check it out.

    Weird seeing Nixon like this.
     
  10. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    Former NASA intern buys a bunch of old used videotape reels from a government surplus auction, intending to resell to TV stations as they were reusable. He noticed that three reels were marked "Apollo 11 moonwalk". Turns out that they were lost 1st generation tapes of the moonwalk. He kept them, and recently sold them at auction for $1.8m.

    Apollo 11 Moon Memorabilia Sells for Millions in 50th Anniversary Auctions
     
  11. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Nixon didn't mention the JFK commitment (although the chaplain reading the invocation did).

    Unlike some current politicians, Nixon knew certain statements or actions could make him look like an asshole. It would have made Nixon look like a complete asshole trying to steal credit for JFK's crowning legacy, if he (Nixon) had made explicit reference to the JFK promise. Instead Nixon stuck with praising the astronauts and the Apollo civilian workforce, which he figured (correctly) would be offensive to almost no one.
    Of course, in the back of his mind he was already planning to gear the program back in a big way, but he wasn't gonna talk about that.
     
  12. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

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