Originally posted by SuzianneI told my family at dinner last night and they didn't know about it. I did for sure, been following it all along. They want a man on the moon in another 3 years.
I've been looking all this week, and not even one word in here about China's moon landing, the first soft landing on the moon since 1976. And that's the year I was born.
No discussion about this?
I hope it spurs another space race, that is what engendered Apollo, got me a job there too🙂 Goddard Space Flight Center, I was on Apollo Tracking and Timing. Atomic clocks that coordinated the timing when the lunar data jumped from one radio telescope to another several thousand miles away, they had 1/10th of a millionth of a second to get the pass to the next station or data would be lost. Not bad for 1970 eh.
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Originally posted by sonhouseActually I'm hoping it spurs space cooperation and not a space race.
I told my family at dinner last night and they didn't know about it. I did for sure, been following it all along. They want a man on the moon in another 3 years.
I hope it spurs another space race, that is what engendered Apollo, got me a job there too🙂 Goddard Space Flight Center, I was on Apollo Tracking and Timing. Atomic clocks that coordinated the ...[text shortened]... onth of a second to get the pass to the next station or data would be lost. Not bad for 1970 eh.
The space race was highly inefficient and unsustainable expensive.
I would also like nice international peaceful cooperative space ventures and not star wars.
The way NASA got to the moon in the 60's was probably the fastest, and with the technology
of the time, possibly the only way of getting to the moon back then.
But the Saturn V rocket was 100% non-reusable and mind-bendingly expensive.
They, you, achieved the incredible... and then ran out of money and stopped.
You had a race to the moon, and when you won the race, the reason for the program (in the
minds of the politicians at least) ceased to exist.
The goal needs to be sustainable and not some finishing line you try to cross fastest and then stop.
Also, the Russians had a number of fires due to using overpressure Oxygen atmospheres in
their space craft. They kept it secret and didn't share what they learned.
And so the Americans didn't learn from the Russians mistakes and thus We had the
fire in Apollo 1.
If China, Russia, USA, India, and Japan, all got together to cooperate on space.
To share knowledge and spread costs... then think what we could achieve.
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Originally posted by googlefudgeYeah, good luck getting that kind of international cooperation. You don't even get a whole lot of cooperation between ESA and NASA. Much less China. Sure, Russia will lift our astronauts for 50 mil a pop but that is simple commercialism not cooperation.
Actually I'm hoping it spurs space cooperation and not a space race.
The space race was highly inefficient and unsustainable expensive.
I would also like nice international peaceful cooperative space ventures and not star wars.
The way NASA got to the moon in the 60's was probably the fastest, and with the technology
of the time, possibly th ...[text shortened]... to cooperate on space.
To share knowledge and spread costs... then think what we could achieve.
And guess what we are going to have in place of the shuttle?
Another near duplicate of the Saturn V, with 40 years technology updates but basically another non reusable rocket.
The Shuttle was extremely expensive, originally touted as bringing down the cost of space launches by a factor of 10, it in fact increased it by about the same amount. Billion dollars per launch. Talk about inefficient. Made Saturn V look like a yard sale.
Nixon basically killed Apollo, I think (me guessing here) is he went, I won't be supporting a democratic party project....All I know in 1970 I was doing Apollo tracking and timing and shortly thereafter, like 72, I was fixing car detectors that were buried in asphalt, ironically assigned to the whitehouse at one point to fix the one the guards used to know when the president and family were driving to the gate to be let through.
Pat Nixon herself gave me the first test of the detector I had repaired.
Some fall, eh.
