You casually say that, but technologically, the blasting off part is much, much harder to achieve than the rest of the moon mission (going to the moon, touching down, taking off, re-entry back to Earth) put together. Just look at this link to see how many missions it took (inc. failed ones) before they actually managed to work up to an attempt at a moon landing. We are talking about lifting 45,000 kgs of payload (Apollo Service Module: 30,332 kg; Lunar Module: 14,696 kg) into orbit at a speed fast enough to sling to the moon. Seems to me that if they managed to pull off the really hard part, it is likely that they were able to pull off the relatively easy part as well. And consider Apollo 13. Was that just a bit of good drama (can't have the public taking the "moon missions" for granted)? Or has everyone at NASA (and independent astronomical observers) just been conspiring with this really big secret? I think that is a much less likely theory than actually having walked on the moon.
And how it could have been... *Caution* 18.5Mb .mov file linked above. Low bandwidth users use this link.
With the science, the theory, or both? Seing that the evolution theory (as an exmaple here)is a theory (thus science, science is theory) even the scienteists can’t make it fit perfectly nor fully understand it, now to be clear; I am not suggesting that the evolution theory would be inaccruate but laymans are not the only ones unable to fully grasp the science and ask questions. That is an assumption Nexxo, which of course could be viewed as logical but also illogical, yet an assumption it is....science, remember. Its been 39 years of suposed development so we wouldn't be talking about the same conditions.
But the scientists ask better questions, not the stupid ones like "did God fake the dinosaur bones"/"did NASA fake the moon landings". No it isn't. There is no point in replicating a moon landing for the seventh time --which is why the last three on the drawing board (Apollo 18 to 20) were cancelled. Been there, done it, brought back the rocks; can't justify the tax payers' dollars anymore. The only justification for the money would be to do something that has not been done before, and moreover cannot be done by an unmanned mission. Yeah, space is a much nicer place these days. No. Development has given us better technology --but at a price tag: Note the inflation. The cost of living keeps going up... Now imagine the cost of building a safer, better moon lander. Better technology has also given us a better appreciation of the dangers --and has given us much, much better alternatives, like robot landers --there is no reason for people to lay their lives on the line anymore.
As far as all this moon talk goes, a logical reason to me is that their funding has been slashed to the point where they can't have any more unsuccessful missions, and so they have to have a very good reason to go to the moon again before they do go back. From what I heard when I visited Johnson Space Center, they want to go back to the moon and establish a base much like how the ISS is now so that they can learn how to survive in a space environment, in the hopes that it will help a mission to Mars.
QFT, i think this is true, why fly all the way to mars, which has been announced as the next big step (with humans that is) when we can have a dry run at ground space stations on our doorstep
Yes and no. Getting to the moon in the late 60s and early 70s is a great example of what we can do with top scientists, an unlimited budget, and political/social pressure to beat the Russians at any cost. As Nexxo said, the original astronauts were classic flyboys. They were test pilots who had no problem strapping themselves in a tin can on top of a giant bomb and launching themselves into space. Safety measures were almost unheard of. Today, NASA operates under a very watchful microscope. There is no longer a "space race" so we have neither political nor social pressure to beat another country. The American public is all to ready to cut NASA's funding to pennies, so we have to operate in a very frugal manner. Remember that launching the Shuttle into space is only one piece of NASA's overall objective. There are a number of other programs operating at the same time (ISS, Hubble, Mars rovers, various other satellites, etc), and they're all competing for a sliver of that 1/10 of 1% of the federal budget. In the Apollo days, the mission managers were actually given blank government checks (the name of the checks escapes my memory at the moment). One manager once wrote a check to rent an aircraft carrier from the US Navy. We simply don't have that kind of freedom anymore; we now operate with greater public and congressional oversight. When the Apollo/Mercury/Gemini programs were canceled, NASA went stagnant. We call it the "brain drain." Without a definite program to pick up where those programs left off, a lot of the great scientists and researchers left to pursue other things. We didn't just keep building on the lessons learned during the glory days. We left a lot if it to rot. Also, as Nexxo again points out, NASA's mission has expanded beyond simply landing on the Moon. Today, we are much more focused on scientific endeavors, hence programs such as Hubble, Mars rovers, and various other satellites. Rather than beat another country to the Moon, we're actively working with other countries to learn whatever it is we can learn while exploring the space environment. While the current astronaut corps still has a few test pilots (a pilot is required to fly the Shuttle), scientists, teachers, and other assorted super-intelligent folks comprise the bulk of the current crew. I've said this before, but I'll bring it up again. As we look toward establishing a longer presence on the Moon, and as we think about traveling to other planets, we have to learn how to live and work cuntinuously in space. Nobody realizes how hard it is to build spacecraft and have everything function just right in space. The technology required to do so, and to do it safely, is quite advanced. There's more than meets the eye. Every day we're discovering little things that we never thought about before. We learn about how different materials work in reduced gravity environments, and all those little discoveries are beginning to add up to greater applications both in space travel and for life here on Earth. Using portable MRI machines to check athletes for fractures on the sidelines seems so obvious; however, it wasn't until astronauts used that technique on the ISS that the idea came about. Think about it. How long did it take human beings to discover certain forces of nature (fire, electricity, etc), and how long did it take us to apply those discoveries in new and interesting ways? Humans have only been flying in space for 47 years. It's one thing to say, "Hey, we already have the technology." It's another thing entirely to say "OK, we've been to the Moon. Now, let's take everything we know about physics, and see what happens when we remove the one force that's pervasive in everything around us - gravity." Sorry if this seems like a bit of a rant. I'm somewhat biased when it comes to space. -monkey
its the wrong pole dammit! they're supposed to go to the south pole to find the hollow part (AKA geo front). from there they find some kind of alien life form and it goes mental and explodes or something, then 14 years later, titanic sized angels start attacking the earth and the only ones who can save us are a few 14 year old kids in giant robots that are actually giant angel clones encased in armor. no matter, there's still 4 years before any of this happens so they've still got time. as to the whole nasa thing, I was watching an episode of Penn & Tellers BullSh*t last night on youtube about it: part 1 part 2 part 3
You could have just ask the Russians, they've done it for 10 years with Mir and I'm shure they are willing to share the knowledge. NASA is useing their engines already anyway.
What's more annoying is people who think that everyone before the rennaisance period believed the earth was flat, which just isn't true.
Science is slow and methodical. Mir was great, and we certainly learned quite a bit from it, but Mir alone won't get us to the moon and beyond. One thing Mir lacked was a true international undertaking. With the ISS, we're not only building on everything learned during Mir, we're also learning how multiple countries can cooperate to build and work on a single, united project. Russian engines, American engines. all made in Taiwan, right? -monkey
Sure, until everything's Americanized in the live action version, then the hole will appear in Manhattan.
I love creationists. Evolution has to be the why, and can't just be the how to these people. Having said that, did anyone see "The Genius of Charles Darwin"? It had Richard Dawkins on it, and while I agree with most of the things he says about religion not being right, he goes around basically telling religious people they're stupid for having beliefs like they do, and saying how bad religion is for forcing people to believe without being any better himself. Not the best example of an evolution-believing atheist.
You are right about the ISS. As for the engines: when USSR colapsed NASA got over 30 rocket engines made for Energia and Boran (the soviet space shutle) dirty cheap, engines that were years ahead of their own. They are still usieing them i think.
I honestly don't know. I do know that the Shuttle main engines were designed and built by Rocketdyne (now a part of Pratt & Whitney), and the Saturn V engines were built at various facilities here in the US. However, I don't doubt that there was a lot of "information sharing" going on during the Space Race years. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Buran and the Shuttle look almost identical. -monkey
The thing about old Soviet rocket engines, is that the Russians ran them at higher pressures than the Americans considered safe at the time. Actually, iir, the Energia/Buran system was much safer than NASA's shuttle, with Buran being a payload for Energia rather than a part of the whole. From here: "Safety is a great part of the Buran development. The safety or the probability of success of the flight, i.e. the fact that the crew stay in life and the equipment is not damaged was given at the beginning of the project as a requirement. This probability was fixed at 0.99-0.995. The studies made showed that the installation of a rescue system of the crew is not always easy to make, because of the complexity of the systems and the characteristics of the Buran-Energia structure. The detailed diagnoses of the equipment in real time, the various trajectories are as many problems as it is necessary to get rid of to ensure the survival of the crew. The most complex scenarios are taking place at the beginning of the launcher between 90 and 135 s, because the choice must be made between ejecting the crew (thanks to the ejector seats) or immediately separating the shuttle from Energia for an emergency landing. By taking into account all the systems and safety measures that it is on the blocks of the first stage, the second stage or the Buran shuttle, one can advance in an unquestionable way that an exploitation accident like the one wich struck the Challenger shuttle (loss of the totality of the crew) is impossible for Buran-Energia."
