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New satellite images of lunar landing sites.

Every time I read LRV (Lunar Rover) it makes me lol.

You took a car to the moon! You crazy bastards!

I think that's the best way to describe in one sentance why America is so cool.

"Yeah, we went to the moon. Yeah, we took a car. What's it too ya?"

Hardcore.

LOL.
 
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HeavyD said:
We leave trash everywhere we go.
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Those images are photoshoped, everyone knows the lunar landing was faked.

I do not understand why we stopped going to the moon. Its like we stopped a program that could have taken mankind further then we have ever gone.
 
Texashiker said:
I do not understand why we stopped going to the moon. Its like we stopped a program that could have taken mankind further then we have ever gone.
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Cost, and the near certainty that if we kept flying Apollo-type missions there would have eventually been a fatal accident that would cancel out the propaganda value of beating the Soviets to the moon.
 
ichy said:
Cost,
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All advances in technology have cost.


ichy said:
and the near certainty that if we kept flying Apollo-type missions there would have eventually been a fatal accident that would cancel out the propaganda value of beating the Soviets to the moon.
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I can understand people saying the shuttle mission is just too dangerous, but everything has risk.

Do people not understand that advances in technology come with some kind of risk. How many early test pilots died before the airplane was made safe. How many test pilots for jets died.

The people that volunteer for those missions do so freely. Nobody is "making" them get in the shuttle and get launched into space.

Lose of life is terrible, regardless of what the people are doing. But given the choice, would you rather die in a space shuttle and history record your name, or die of cancer and nobody remember your name.

If the space missions would have continued from the 1960s and 1970s, I figure we would have been on mars years ago.
 
Texashiker:

I'm as pro-space exploration as you can be, the reasons I gave were the ones that policymakers followed.

The death of Apollo began with the decision to shut down Saturn V production after the initial run of 15 rockets was complete. That choice meant that there was no way NASA could've gone beyond Apollo 20, or Apollo 19 once the decision was made to use a Saturn V to launch Skylab. When Apollo 18 and 19 were canceled it was supposedly to save money, however a big reason the politicians did it was because two more moon landings wouldn't have made the US look much better whereas if one of those flights had failed it would've been a huge PR black eye. The amount of money saved was fairly small because all of the hardware for those flights had already been built. After the spectacular success of Apollo 15 (in terms of scientific return it was probably NASA's most successful manned mission ever) there was even talk of canceling Apollo 16 and 17, but thank god that didn't happen.

What really slays me is that although Apollo was spectacularly expensive a huge part of that cost was R&D and infrastructure construction. Once the Saturn V was designed and the launch pads, VAB and other structures were built the cost of additional moon missions would've been much lower. It would have never been cheap, but IMO a great nation such as ours can and should devote a small part of its national budget to great endeavors such as the human exploration of space.

The money that was eventually spent on the shuttle could've been put to much better use building a second batch of Saturn Vs. Those rockets could've used the more powerful F-1A engines, which in turn would've meant carrying more weight to the moon and more ambitious mission possibilities. Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin did a paper a while back where he showed that if we hadn't bothered with the shuttle we could've spent the 1970s launching a couple of lunar missions per year AND maintaining a Skylab type program, while at the same time working on the technology that would've made interplanetary missions possible in the future.

Edit: While I think that the lunar program was worth the risk, Apollo was insanely dangerous for those involved. Of all the missions they did Apollo 8 still boggles my mind. It was only the third flight of the Saturn V (and the first time they'd put people on one!) and only the second manned flight of the Command & Service Module, and they took that think all the way to the moon! People talk about how NASA had an unsafe culture during the shuttle program, but the way they bent mission rules and took chances to get to the moon before 1970 makes the dangers of the shuttle pale in comparison. Then again they were honest with themselves about it being a high-risk, experimental program. There was never this nonsense of spaceflight being "routine" the way it was supposed to be with the shuttle.
 
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ichy said:
Texashiker:

I'm as pro-space exploration as you can be, the reasons I gave were the ones that policymakers followed.

The death of Apollo began with the decision to shut down Saturn V production after the initial run of 15 rockets was complete. That choice meant that there was no way NASA could've gone beyond Apollo 20, or Apollo 19 once the decision was made to use a Saturn V to launch Skylab. When Apollo 18 and 19 were canceled it was supposedly to save money, however a big reason the politicians did it was because two more moon landings wouldn't have made the US look much better whereas if one of those flights had failed it would've been a huge PR black eye. The amount of money saved was fairly small because all of the hardware for those flights had already been built. After the spectacular success of Apollo 15 (in terms of scientific return it was probably NASA's most successful manned mission ever) there was even talk of canceling Apollo 16 and 17, but thank god that didn't happen.

What really slays me is that although Apollo was spectacularly expensive a huge part of that cost was R&D and infrastructure construction. Once the Saturn V was designed and the launch pads, VAB and other structures were built the cost of additional moon missions would've been much lower. It would have never been cheap, but IMO a great nation such as ours can and should devote a small part of its national budget to great endeavors such as the human exploration of space.

The money that was eventually spent on the shuttle could've been put to much better use building a second batch of Saturn Vs. Those rockets could've used the more powerful F-1A engines, which in turn would've meant carrying more weight to the moon and more ambitious mission possibilities. Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin did a paper a while back where he showed that if we hadn't bothered with the shuttle we could've spent the 1970s launching a couple of lunar missions per year AND maintaining a Skylab type program, while at the same time working on the technology that would've made interplanetary missions possible in the future.

Edit: While I think that the lunar program was worth the risk, Apollo was insanely dangerous for those involved. Of all the missions they did Apollo 8 still boggles my mind. It was only the third flight of the Saturn V (and the first time they'd put people on one!) and only the second manned flight of the Command & Service Module, and they took that think all the way to the moon! People talk about how NASA had an unsafe culture during the shuttle program, but the way they bent mission rules and took chances to get to the moon before 1970 makes the dangers of the shuttle pale in comparison. Then again they were honest with themselves about it being a high-risk, experimental program. There was never this nonsense of spaceflight being "routine" the way it was supposed to be with the shuttle.
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Not to mention the lunar astronauts were nearly irradiated to death several times because we didn't know much about solar flares. I think I also read that most of the lunar astronauts developed cataracts due to insufficient radiation shielding.

We would never subject people to that kind of danger with today's open media blowing the whistle on everything they get their hands on. This is why space exploration has become so prohibitively expensive. Hell, we weren't even sure if we could get their first people on the moon back - Nixon had a speech ready to go telling the men on the moon they would die heroes and a permanent monument to man's achievements.

Brave men like this aren't allowed to exist anymore.
 
Fritzo said:
Not to mention the lunar astronauts were nearly irradiated to death several times because we didn't know much about solar flares. I think I also read that most of the lunar astronauts developed cataracts due to insufficient radiation shielding.
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Sorry but that's nonsense. Most of the Apollo astronauts have lived to ripe old ages. 9 of the 12 men who walked on the moon are still alive, and 2 of the 3 who died passed away for reasons that couldn't have had anything to do with radiation (Pete Conrad was killed in a motorcycle accident and Jim Irwin died of a heart attack.) I suppose it's possible that Alan Shepard's leukemia was caused by radiation but 74 isn't an unnaturally young age to die.
 
Fritzo said:
We would never subject people to that kind of danger with today's open media blowing the whistle on everything they get their hands on. This is why space exploration has become so prohibitively expensive. Hell, we weren't even sure if we could get their first people on the moon back - Nixon had a speech ready to go telling the men on the moon they would die heroes and a permanent monument to man's achievements.

Brave men like this aren't allowed to exist anymore.
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NASA took big risks with the shuttle program as well. STS-1 was the first time the shuttle had EVER flown, and they put people on it! How's that for danger? That flight has gone down in history as a triumphant achievement but it came close to being a catastrophe at several points in the mission. It actually could've been flown unmanned, but interestingly enough two of the loudest voices speaking out against an unmanned test mission were John Young and Robert Crippen, the first flight's crew.

As for the Apollo 11 astronauts NASA certainly knew that they could get them back, they simply had to prepare for the possibility of something not working. It's not like they sent them to land and then figured "aw shucks, let's hope this rocket engine fires."
 
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John Kennedy - tell me if you aren't moved by this:

"Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where the F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute. [laughter]

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade. "
 
ichy said:
NASA took big risks with the shuttle program as well. STS-1 was the first time the shuttle had EVER flown, and they put people on it! How's that for danger? That flight has gone down in history as a triumphant achievement but it came close to being a catastrophe at several points in the mission. It actually could've been flown unmanned, but interestingly enough two of the loudest voices speaking out against an unmanned test mission were John Young and Robert Crippen, the first flight's crew.

As for the Apollo 11 astronauts NASA certainly knew that they could get them back, they simply had to prepare for the possibility of something not working. It's not like they sent them to land and then figured "aw shucks, let's hope this rocket engine fires."
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Again, that was the 1970's. We would never do that today.
 
ichy said:
Sorry but that's nonsense. Most of the Apollo astronauts have lived to ripe old ages. 9 of the 12 men who walked on the moon are still alive, and 2 of the 3 who died passed away for reasons that couldn't have had anything to do with radiation (Pete Conrad was killed in a motorcycle accident and Jim Irwin died of a heart attack.) I suppose it's possible that Alan Shepard's leukemia was caused by radiation but 74 isn't an unnaturally young age to die.
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Straight from the source:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/22oct_cataracts/

At least 39 former astronauts have suffered some form of cataracts after flying in space, according to a 2001 study by Francis Cucinotta of NASA's Johnson Space Center (see journal references below). Of those 39 astronauts, 36 had flown on high-radiation missions such as the Apollo Moon landings. Some cataracts appeared as soon as 4 or 5 years after the mission, but others took 10 or more years to manifest.
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STS-1 was in 1982.

A lot of people don't appreciate this since it's not as spectacular as a rocket launch, but the assembly of the International Space Station was an extraordinarily dangerous endeavor. Spacewalking is a very dicey business although we've been fortunate enough never to have a serious accident during an EVA. To say that we aren't willing to take risks is not true. What we need to do is be honest with ourselves about the risks we are taking. Space exploration is pioneering exploration with all the dangers that it entails, and it will never be a taxi service for shuttling school teachers and geriatric senators into space for stupid PR stunts.
 
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