Today is the 46th anniversary of the first human visit to the surface of our moon. There is a ceremony that can be downloaded to commemorate it here, and two of the authors (I and Bill Simon) will be discussing it on The Space Show this afternoon at 5-6:30 Eastern, 2-3:30 Pacific.
8 thoughts on “Evoloterra”
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In the Evoloterra Cast: the births and deaths of Orville and Wilbur Wright are incorrect. Wilbur was the older but died much sooner than his younger brother. Their dates should be listed as:
Wright, Orville 1871 – 1948
Wright, Wilbur 1867 – 1912
And of course Neil Armstrong passed in 2012.
Dave
And nearly 43 years since Gene Cernan boarded the LM for the last time. It’s unbelievable that we haven’t been back or outside of LEO since then.
I’m skeptical that we will have a US based manned space flight system at the 50th Anniversary. Just skeptical, but near a heavier skepticism that NASA could develop such a system in house by that time, which isn’t necessarily a big loss.
“Prelim conclusion is that the failure was a strut holding down the COPV bottle.”
“One of the struts broke free during the flight. Missed in testing as stage in acceleration changes the conditions. 3.2Gs the strut appears to have snapped.
Lots of helium was released causing overpressure event”
Jeff Foust: “Musk: strut failed at 1/5th rated force, no evidence of damage to it in closeout photos before launch.”
Parabolicarc.com @spacecom 18s19 seconds ago
Musk: strut issue is fairly straightforward, switching to something with higher level of performance.
http://spacenews.com/falcon-9-failure-linked-to-upper-stage-tank-strut/
It was only after testing what Musk said were “thousands” of the struts did they find a few that failed at much lower forces that expected. “It was sort of a statistical thing,” he said. A closer examination of the failed test struts turned up problems with the grain structure in the steel used in the struts.
Every year on this day, my thoughts turn to me dad.
As we watched Neil and then Buzz step out onto the Moon’s surface, it was deadly quiet in our living room. After about 10 minutes of us sitting there dead silent, my dad said, “..those guys are braver than I’d be. If I was up there I’d stuff some of those rocks in my pockets, climb BACK up that ladder and make sure that SOB would blast off and get me BACK home!”
It is just one thing about that day that stands out in my mind. They say we have ‘snap shot’ memories of events that are meaningful to us. That entire day is a snap shot for me. I can even tell you what I ate that day.
We have lost much more than just the just our space program over the last 4 decades. Our kids and their kids will never know that kind of revery. They’ll never look at an American flag the way we do, after seeing it up there, on the Moon.