Forty years ago today...

[Janus]

I was 10, going on 11 (put away the calculators, that means I'm 50, going on 51) and we were on a cross-country car trip. We had stopped at Soap lake, WA and while we were walking across the beach back to the car, a guy laying on a blanket listening to the radio suddenly jumped up and started yelling "They did it! They did it! They landed on the Moon!

We were on our way to some friends of my parents who lived not too far away and my dad drove as fast as he could, but by the time we got there the EVA was over and I had missed it.

I was so disappointed that my mom felt sorry enough to let me stay home from school to watch the Apollo 12 landing. Wouldn't you know it, just moments after it was unpacked, the TV camera they were using was accidentally pointed at the Sun and burned out.


So, what were you doing?

[TheBigDog]

I was 14 going on 15 (months) and have no memory of any of the moon landings. But I have studied them in detail since. I was reflecting today that this was the high point of the space program, and everything since has paled in comparison. I love the moon and the Apollo missions, the power of human ingenuity taken to its most powerful.

Bill

[lemit]

I was 23, unemployed and living with my parents. I watched the whole thing, didn't miss a minute of it, except to get my father out of bed so he could watch it. Did anybody else hear Neil Armstrong say later that he blew one of the most famous lines in history? He planned on saying, "That's a small step for a man, but one giant step for mankind," which would have made sense. But then, Kennedy probably planned on saying he was a Berliner, not one Berliner.

I have thought about starting a thread to ask the question, "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we put a man on the moon?" I didn't know where to put it, I thought it might be too confrontational, and I thought I knew the answer anyway, so I decided not to do it.. Still, the advantages of a staging area for further exploration should be considered.

I personally thought Apollo 13 was possibly as significant for the future of manned spaceflight as Apollo 11, since it showed those guys in space really could fly the things they were riding in. I wish we hadn't had to go through Columbia to get to the point where we started to put that lesson into effect.

I have become a NASA TV fan. One thing I heard there caught my attention. (See my "Power of Profundity" theory elsewhere.) Somebody was saying it would cost 10 times as much to send people to Mars and return them to Earth as it would cost to send them to Mars and leave them there with all the support they would need. Can anybody explain that to me?

Thanks.

--lemit

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by lemit

Somebody was saying it would cost 10 times as much to send people to Mars and return them to Earth as it would cost to send them to Mars and leave them there with all the support they would need. Can anybody explain that to me?

Basically, if they want to come back, they have to go there with enough fuel to make the return trip and escape Mars' gravity well. If they were to stay there, they would only need enough fuel to get there.

Yep - by the time Apollo 11 came around, I was not even a dim twinkle in my dad's eyes yet. But it still stands as the single highest point reached by humankind, in my mind. It ranks right up there with the first fish that got tired of the sea and tried out living on land for a change, giving rise to all the land animals.

[Janus]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Basically, if they want to come back, they have to go there with enough fuel to make the return trip and escape Mars' gravity well. If they were to stay there, they would only need enough fuel to get there.

Put another way: If it takes 10 kg of fuel to get a 1 kg payload to Mars, then it would take 10 kg of fuel to get back from Mars to Earth. But, you have to take that fuel with you to Mars on the outward trip, so you have to deliver 11 kg (1kg of payload and 10 kg of fuel fro the return trip) to Mars. This takes 110 kg of fuel for every kg of payload for a total of 111 kg of fuel needed per kg for a round trip..

[lemit]

If we would be resupplying them, could we resupply them with the fuel they would need to come back? Would that just mean they'd need to have a vehicle adequate for the fuel? Of course, if we sent enough supplies for them to live out their natural lives (and children's lives?), wouldn't that be more than a tenth of the vehicle and the fuel?

I suppose the decisions of the people most directly involved should be the most important factor if the technicalities would be at least similar.

I should confess that the main source informing my questions is "Mission To Mars." Those of you who've seen it know how technical it was. I don't even know enough to do a search I would trust. Is there other source material out there that's a little more informative while being readable for even somebody like me? Is that expecting too much?

That last question is actual, not just argumentative.

Thanks.

--lemit

p.s. I looked up "argumentative" on Google. The fourth citation is Monty Python's "Argument Clinic." With my recent problems on another thread, I should explain that I didn't even come here for an argument.