Moonshot

Hang 4 said:
That's Calculus and Physics for me. Acing physics because it was describing actual stuff, struggling in Calc because it was all theoretical. This in spite of most of the math being the same in both.
Click to expand...
That's like PPL and IFR. PPL is easy because it's mostly physics and mostly intuitive. IFR is harder because it's mostly bureaucracy and memorization of rules designed by committees.
 
Bob Noel said:
the one on the left. :-)
Click to expand...
Matthew said:
That’s how they can sneak up on a guy.
Click to expand...
ateamer said:
The combat-sized guy on the far right?
Click to expand...
Half Fast said:
The petite lady in the middle? She looks like a good swimmer who could kill you quickly and quietly.
Click to expand...
Racerx said:
The only one there that has ever used running shoes for running.
Click to expand...

Ah you guys were looking for a trick question. Sorry, it's the really obvious guy in the middle. The sunglasses are the tell.
 
Dana said:
Being able to get so much of the descent on camera was impressive compared to the old days.

But every time they ran out of useful things to say and cut to an interviewer asking somebody how they felt about it, I muted the sound and went to get another beer. Well, not really, that would have left me slobbering drunk. But I did mute the sound.
Click to expand...
That's why I stuck to NASA's official broadcast as opposed to any of the networks. I can only imagine what the doinks at CNN or Fox News were filling the time with. Although, this morning a friend told me that at one point, Fox News proclaimed "Astronauts out of Integrity" on the screen banner. That made me chuckle.
 
midwestpa24 said:
View attachment 151369
Click to expand...
Ah, Crichton. The man who forced me to realize I'm not the big-picture thinker I once thought I was.

When I was a chemistry grad student, and trying my best to keep up with the literature, I came across an interesting paper in the mid-80's. A couple of academic groups were making progress on sequencing bits of dinosaur DNA. They got their hands on some mosquito specimens, preserved in amber of such an age that the last meal of the mosquitos was likely from dino blood. I thought 'isn't that interesting', then promptly forgot about it.

Fast forward to 1990. I'm reading far into the night, fascinated by the recent best selling novel about dinosaurs being cloned as theme park attractions. When I got to the description of how the they obtained dinosaur DNA, I still recall throwing down the book and shouting 'son of a *****' loud enough to wake my wife sleeping in the next room.

Crichton, trained as a scientist/physician turned author (though he never practiced medicine) had read the same source material as I had, at roughly the same time.

After reading the paper, I had gone back to writing my thesis, which most assuredly will never be turned into a blockbuster film franchise.

Crichton wrote 'Jurassic Park'.
 
172andyou said:
Making the case that gravity physics (which is what all three of those examples boils down to) serves the MIC is gonna be a challenge. I'll look forward to reading your dissertation.
Click to expand...
Contracts. Money.

KE5BM said:
This "front porch" thing is ridiculous. In the interview with the Navy divers, they said that this is designed to stabilize the craft in case of heavy seas. Dude...I'm watching them screw around with this in calm seas and it's taking forever. I can't imagine them trying to put this together in 6'+ seas. We're over an hour since splash down and nobody has been extracted yet. You could've towed the damn thing half way to San Diego harbor by now!
Click to expand...
Agreed. Cozy up a Zodiac, lash it to the door, and haul them out.

Larry in TN said:

Key Differences​

  • Reentry speed/heat: Orion hits ~25,000 mph lunar return (vs. Dragon's ~350 mph orbital), creating a toxic hypergolic fuel vapor cloud around the capsule post-splashdown. Helicopters hoist crew via basket from the "front porch" inflatable raft above the hazard zone before divers/swimmers approach.
Click to expand...
There were personnel in boats and in the water LONG before the crew was hoisted from the front porch.

Larry in TN said:
  • Crew fatigue: After 10 days, high-G reentry (~11G), and ocean egress, helicopters get fatigued astronauts to the USS John P. Murtha's medical bay faster (~3,000 yards, minutes vs. boat hours).
Click to expand...
11 G's! Obviously this AI was not paying attention to the information it scrubbed. 11 Gs or more for an unmanned vehicle but considerably less for manned vehicles. Shuttle crews experienced less than 2 Gs because of the ships design. Artemis II crew experienced about 4 Gs for a portion of the blackout period.

Hang 4 said:
That's Calculus and Physics for me. Acing physics because it was describing actual stuff, struggling in Calc because it was all theoretical. This in spite of most of the math being the same in both.
Click to expand...
Calculus explains the real world. Position, velocity, acceleration, and so much more. Physics is rooted in calculus.

Dana said:
Being able to get so much of the descent on camera was impressive compared to the old days.

But every time they ran out of useful things to say and cut to an interviewer asking somebody how they felt about it, I muted the sound and went to get another beer. Well, not really, that would have left me slobbering drunk. But I did mute the sound.
Click to expand...
I watched the official NASA feed. Had the TV on but muted.

What I didn't understand is why did they need 4 medical personnel to crawl into that little capsule. Couldn't one or two medics have checked out the crew. I also believe the medical "Check out" was a verbal check out. Remember they were in reentry suits.

Another thing I didn't understand was why the hatch was opened BEFORE the flotation collar was in place. Shades of Gus Grissom.
 
Domenick said:
Another thing I didn't understand was why the hatch was opened BEFORE the flotation collar was in place. Shades of Gus Grissom.
Click to expand...
No one on the recovery crew was alive at the time of Gus Grissom's flight. I suspect most were born a couple of decades after his capsule sank. Perhaps a lack of institutional memory was a factor.
 
Domenick said:
Agreed. Cozy up a Zodiac, lash it to the door, and haul them out.
Click to expand...
Risk tolerance seems to be an order of magnitude or more lower that it was during Apollo.

Domenick said:
What I didn't understand is why did they need 4 medical personnel to crawl into that little capsule. Couldn't one or two medics have checked out the crew.
Click to expand...
I looked at the NASA web page about those dive medics. There was one for each crew member, and they’ve been training together for three years.
 
I'm positive that risk management is different today than it was during Apollo. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily any safer for the astronauts. The cynic in me believes that agency reputation is at the top of the risks that they're concerned about today, where back then it was all just about the astronauts. The video of Apollo 13's recovery is up on Youtube. The first thing they did was drop 2+ frogmen in the water, who swam to the capsule and attached the flotation ring. That's a risk to those frogmen, they were swimming in the open ocean. They didn't have a meter to check for gases around the capsule, because the engineers probably told them that anything leaking would either blow away or blow up. The plan was to act quickly to minimize the chances of losing the capsule with the astronauts in it or having the astronauts run out of air. Everything else seemed secondary...as it should be.

This rope show seemed to be about making sure that every contingency that could be thought of was addressed, so that at the press conference at the end of a tragedy, they could honestly say that they had a plan for "X" whatever "X" was, and it was just that their plan didn't work. If the plan for everything slows down the critical tasks, there's the potential to increase risk on most likely problems.

Easy to armchair this stuff, and in hindsight everything worked out fine anyway.
 
Domenick said:
Calculus explains the real world. Position, velocity, acceleration, and so much more. Physics is rooted in calculus.
Click to expand...
Maybe in your Calc class. Physics we used calculus all the time, but the examples were real world (position, velocity, acceleration etc). In my calc class, it all felt theoretical which is why I struggled doing what for the most part was exactly the same math. Might have been a function of the era or the teacher, but my grades showed a marked difference :)
 
Use a CH-53 Sea Stallion to lift the entire capsule to the ship and open the hatch there.
<Shamefull self-promotion> (A CH-53 Sea Stallion is featured in my next book.)
That confessed, a CH-53 could easily lift the 9 metric ton capsule.
 
I know the divers did spend a lot of time with chemical sniffers making sure there were no propellant fumes hanging around. They did all that while the communications problems were trying to be worked out.

At one point I thought I saw one of the Zodiacs trailing the flotation ring, like they were getting it ready, then the boat went out of the picture. Then I started thinking maybe it had been recovering one of the parachutes. But later, maybe 20-30 minutes, I saw a boat unloading the flotation ring, and it looked the same as what I saw earlier l. So I don’t know what was going on with all that. It really looked pretty clumsy.
 
AV8R_87 said:
They were waiting for the capsule to air out after all those days in space with a malfunctioning toilet.
Click to expand...
There might be some truth to that. The docs that went inside probably took a bunch of Clorox and baby wipes with them.
 
"...Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock"

-We Didn't Start the Fire, Billy Joel (1989) [Damn, I'm old. -djt]
 
Had my bimonthly Zoom call with fellow retirees. They have family involved in various portions of the space industry. One provided some insight relative to the cluster**** after splashdown.

Apparently the planners were ordered to strictly use Apollo procedures. Allowed to deviate only with good reason.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Apparently the planners were ordered to strictly use Apollo procedures. Allowed to deviate only with good reason.
Click to expand...

Holy anachronism, Batman!

Yeah, let's use procedures that were deemed good and necessary in the 1960s. Ignore modern technology and methods. Was that direction from NASA?
 
Wait, whut? I thought this new dealo was all up on modern 'visionary' and super-duper extra novel stuff? You mean they used Apollo methods to A. Take off from Earth (with SLS rockets and boosters). B. go past the moon. C. Fly it home. D. Re-entry. E. splashdown. F. retrieve the crew, fly them to a ship motoring nearby.

It's a rootin-tooten gosh darn miracle it all went right! :rolleyes2:

(except for the billion $ toilet)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top