Bill Anders, Apollo 8 astronaut, crashes in Puget Sound

Palmpilot said:
I've never been in a seaplane, but has the water been reported as glassy at the time and location of the accident? Having spent a lot of my childhood on the Puget Sound shoreline, I would guess that it would be rare there.
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I’ve just landed on one of the outer San Juans this evening, about 6-8 miles from the accident site. About half the surface right now is glassy-there’s regions of non glassy too. (Not a seaplane guy though). Who knows if that mattered.

Impromptu aerobatics can be bad news, even for experienced folks. As Ed said above, he either had a waiver or was busting the 1500’ floor. Heck, I use 4000’, but I’m a chicken, and don’t think I could ever get out fast enough to make 1500 work. Same thing though: who knows why he was doing what? And at 90, not a bad way out.

Reminded of a friend’s uncle who died when he tboned his Harley into a car after running a stop sign.

At age 96.
 
TonyG said:
Heck, I use 4000’, but I’m a chicken, and don’t think I could ever get out fast enough to make 1500 work.
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IAC contest floor is 1500 for Primary and Sportsman, 1000 for intermediate, and 500 for advanced. Accidents are almost unheard of ... AFAIK one fatal crash in 50+ years of US contests. A significant amount of practice and discipline goes into that safety record. But the key is being very deliberate about altitude, airspeed, and position for each figure and sequence.

Impromptu acro breaks that chain of preparation and execution. Not saying a bit of gentleman's acro can't be done fun and safely, but spur of the moment decisions for something as unforgiving as aerobatics should raise a red flag in a pilots' mind. I am sometimes tempted to do "just one" loop or roll at the end of a non-acro flight. I usually have the restraint to tell myself no.

I reviewed every fatal Decathlon crash in the NTSB database and compiled stats. The clear majority of aerobatic accidents were showing off at low altitude.

TonyG said:
Reminded of a friend’s uncle who died when he tboned his Harley into a car after running a stop sign.

At age 96.
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Favorite movie depiction of this is the Stearman flight in Second Hand Lions.
 
Rick A said:
A beautiful photo. Apologies for being off topic.

I've always wondered what the scientific reason is that there never seems to be any stars visible in such high-quality NASA photographs? You'd think that minus the atmosphere these photos would be outstanding, like ones taken from the Hubble. I'm sure there's a reason, does anyone know why not?
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https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/u5i54/why_are_there_no_stars_in_the_images_taken_by

TL;DR: It's too bright in space to set the exposure to capture stars while still capturing Earth or the moon.
 
Rick A said:
I'm sure there's a reason, does anyone know why not?
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iamtheari said:
TL;DR: It's too bright in space to set the exposure to capture stars while still capturing Earth or the moon.
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It's all faked on a soundstage in Area 51, and they keep forgetting to paint the stars on the walls. :stirpot: :rofl:

P.S. I should've written it in a random mix of uppercase and lowercase letters for extra credibility, but I can't lower myself to that level.
 
Rick A said:
A beautiful photo. Apologies for being off topic.

I've always wondered what the scientific reason is that there never seems to be any stars visible in such high-quality NASA photographs? You'd think that minus the atmosphere these photos would be outstanding, like ones taken from the Hubble. I'm sure there's a reason, does anyone know why not?
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Cameras don't have infinite dynamic range. If the camera's exposure time and aperture had been set to capture distant starlight (i.e., from stars other than the sun), the sunlit sides of the Earth and moon would have been way overexposed, thereby washing out all detail.
 
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AV8R_87 said:
It's all faked on a soundstage in Area 51, and they keep forgetting to paint the stars on the walls. :stirpot: :rofl:
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I've got a co-worker that I've started calling "Conspiracy Billy". Almost every day he regales us with another conspiracy theory, even after they've been proven to be wrong...
 
AV8R_87 said:
It's all faked on a soundstage in Area 51, and they keep forgetting to paint the stars on the walls.
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According to Futurama (can’t find a video clip at the moment like I usually do, sorry) they were faking the moon landing with a sound stage at Area 51, but repurposed it to analyze a crashed alien spaceship and had to fly a moon mission for real.
 
iamtheari said:
According to Futurama (can’t find a video clip at the moment like I usually do, sorry) they were faking the moon landing with a sound stage at Area 51, but repurposed it to analyze a crashed alien spaceship and had to fly a moon mission for real.
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Too bad they didn't figure out how to duplicate the warp drive.
 
Dana said:
No, not Area 51. We all know it was faked, but they needed to make the films of the astronauts walking on the moon as realistic as possible so they went and shot it on location. :biggrin:
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The most believable conspiracy theory of them all would be that the Hollywood lobby got enough pork added to the Apollo program to haul a sound stage to the moon.
 
AV8R_87 said:
It's all faked on a soundstage in Area 51, and they keep forgetting to paint the stars on the walls. :stirpot: :rofl:
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Actually Area 51 was being used at the time, so the fake moon landings were filmed on Omicron Persei 8, under the direction of Emperor Lrrr.
 
I always tell people that we didn't fake the moon landings because it turned out to be infinitely easier to actually sent humans there than it would have been to fake it so convincingly that all of the hundreds of thousands of people involved in the Apollo program were fooled.
 
GaryM said:
I always tell people that we didn't fake the moon landings because it turned out to be infinitely easier to actually sent humans there than it would have been to fake it so convincingly that all of the hundreds of thousands of people involved in the Apollo program were fooled.
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Yeah, one of my mom's cousins built a health monitoring system that was used to keep track of certain vitals on the Apollo missions, and he was reasonably proud of his involvement in solving the problems needed to make that work. I don't think he would've tolerated any fool who claimed they faked it.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Yeah, one of my mom's cousins built a health monitoring system that was used to keep track of certain vitals on the Apollo missions, and he was reasonably proud of his involvement in solving the problems needed to make that work. I don't think he would've tolerated any fool who claimed they faked it.
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Well, neither would Buzz.

When a hoax theory guy confronted Aldrin about being a “thief, coward, and liar”, the guy learned that freedom of speech also means the freedom to get what’s coming to you.

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If it was all a hoax, a tremendous amount of money, time, research, and the like was done for nothing, but we know it wasn't a hoax. Here's a PDF I found that mentions his contributions to the research.


Crazy to think that this was all done without our modern computers. Those were some really smart guys. My mom's cousin's last big project before he died was designing a machine to maintain pressure in the eye so that surgery could be done on it without it literally disassembling itself, if I understand correctly. And he was a pilot, too. When I was a rookie I remember him being a bit jealous and asking questions about how things were going. Good man. I miss him. https://www.bradshawcarter.com/obituaries/Louis-Scott-Meharg?obId=42126036
 
I can't believe anyone thinks it was fake. Didn't they see the documentary?
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Matthew said:
Well, neither would Buzz.

When a hoax theory guy confronted Aldrin about being a “thief, coward, and liar”, the guy learned that freedom of speech also means the freedom to get what’s coming to you.

View attachment 151757
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Yeah, Buzz’s response was far more eloquent and to the point than mine.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Crazy to think that this was all done without our modern computers. Those were some really smart guys.
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True! But while it might have *been* hard, it might not have *seemed* hard. When I'm engineering something, I tend to go straight for "use a computer" (EE, of course) but if I never had computers available, that "easy button" wouldn't be there to cloud my thinking! Those guys didn't have the modern tools available, so it was a matter of "OK, how do we do this?" That step Neil took for all mankind was a feat of many people each solving one of the millions of problems that had to be solved to make it all happen. It was truly a feat of humanity.
 
AV8R_87 said:
Except they had computers equivalent to a low end 486.
en.wikipedia.org

IBM System/360 Model 91 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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There was one 360/91 used in the space program, it was installed at the Goddard Space Flight Center and went live in mid 1968. Most of the computing work done for Apollo had already been in progress for years, mostly using card readers and a few simple processors.

The Apollo and LM guidance computer was nothing more than thousands of 3 input NOR gates in primitive RTL IC chips, with magnetic core and core rope memory.
 
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3393RP said:
The Apollo and LM guidance computer was nothing more than thousands of 3 input NOR gates
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Yes, but they didn't do the advanced orbital math. That was done in the RTCC (Real Time Computer Complex), and uploaded to the spacecraft.

3393RP said:
Most of the computing work done for Apollo had already been in progress for years, mostly using card readers and a few simple processors.
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The RTCC used five IBM 360 Model 75 computers. Each could do about 1 MIPS, which is 286 level of performance.
en.wikipedia.org

IBM System/360 Model 75 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
I worked four years at the CONUS ground station for the USAF's missile early warning satellite system. On the ground, had three IBM 360s to process the data and format it for presentation.

The satellites had magnetic-core storage, with a big 16K (eight bit) of memory.

Ron "An' we were 'appy..." Wanttaja
 
AV8R_87 said:
Yes, but they didn't do the advanced orbital math. That was done in the RTCC (Real Time Computer Complex), and uploaded to the spacecraft.


The RTCC used five IBM 360 Model 75 computers. Each could do about 1 MIPS, which is 286 level of performance.
en.wikipedia.org

IBM System/360 Model 75 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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I obviously misunderstood your post to say the /91 was in general use, not the 360 line.
 
AV8R_87 said:
Listen up, young whippersnapper! I've spent plenty of time compiling FORTRAN code for flight control stability matrices on a 286, a 486 is modern to me.
:rofl:
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Seymore Cray.jpg
 
AV8R_87 said:
Listen up, young whippersnapper! I've spent plenty of time compiling FORTRAN code for flight control stability matrices on a 286, a 486 is modern to me.
:rofl:
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Hey, it's nice being called a whippersnapper these days. Thanks!
 
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