#LBJ, a very accomplished POTUS who passed two Civil Rights Acts with bipartisan support, the Voting Rights Act, created Medicare and Medicaid, made #NASA's #Apollo program a priority, and had numerous other accomplishments, failed to change his mind about the Vietnam war amidst anti-war protests. He never got a second term, leaving the presidency to Richard Nixon
Much less accomplished Biden (see Anita Hill/C.Thomas) said student protests haven't made him rethink his policy in #Gaza.
It’s sometimes amusing to listen to some of the air to ground transmission on the #Apollo flights. A lot of the chatter is the #astronauts talking about #poo, actually #p00, with no hint of adolescent smirking, like this gem on #Apollo12:
109:46:48 Conrad: And, Houston, whenever you’re ready, we’re ready to give you P00 and Data.
P00 was the quiescent state of the #Guidance#Computer where it was ready to receive instructions and data either from the #DSKY#keyboard or #Houston.
Don’t fuck with moon dust. No seriously, do not fuck with moon dust.
Absent any moisture or atmosphere, millennia of asteroid impacts have turned lunar regolith (soil) into a fine powder of razor sharp, glass-like particles. What’s more, the solar wind imparts an electric charge on the dust, causing it to cling to any and every surface it touches through static electricity. On earth, sand tends to get smoother over time as wind and water tumble the grains about, eroding their sharpness. Not so on the moon – lunar dust is sharp and deadly. This is Not A Good Time if you’re an explorer looking to visit our celestial neighbor.
During Apollo, the astronauts faced a plethora of unexpected issues caused by dust. It clung to spacesuits and darkened them enough that exposure to sunlight overheated the life support systems. Dust got in suit joints and on suit visors, damaging them. It ate away layers of boot lining. It covered cameras. Upon returning to the cabin, astronauts attempting to brush it off damaged their suit fabric and sent the dust airborne, where it remained suspended in the air due to low gravity.
Inhaling moon dust causes mucus membranes to swell; every Apollo astronaut who stepped foot on the moon reported symptoms of “Lunar Hay Fever.” Sneezing, congestion, and a “smell of burnt gunpowder” took days to subside. Later Apollo missions even sent a special dust brush with the team to help clean each other and equipment. We don’t know exactly how dangerous the stuff is, but lunar regolith simulants suggest it might destroy lung and brain cells with long-term exposure. 1
In fact the dust is so nasty that it destroyed the vacuum seals of sample return containers. We no longer have any accurate samples of lunar dust, “Every sample brought back from the moon has been contaminated by Earth’s air and humidity […] The chemical and electrostatic properties of the soil no longer match what future astronauts will encounter on the moon.” 2
Whats worse, the solar-charged dust gets thrown up off the moon’s surface via electrostatic forces. The moon doesn’t technically have an atmosphere, but it does have a thin cloud of sharp dust itching to cling to anything it can find.
And it probably isn’t just the moon. “A 2005 NASA study listed 20 risks that required further study before humans should commit to a human Mars expedition, and ranked "dust" as the number one challenge.” 3
The coolest solution I’ve heard about in next-gen spacesuit design is a mesh of woven wires layered into the suit. When activated, the wire mesh would form an anti-static electric field that repels dust. Quite literally a force field. 4 #astronomy#apollo#moon#lunardust
SDASM has posted a treasure trove of images showing the mock-up of their proposed LEM. There's more besides these, but I'm picking out these ones as they give details not readily available elsewhere 1/2
Via Mike Acs on Flickr, an image of what I believe was the proposed Saturn MLV-11.5 configuration -- basically a Saturn IB with four five-segment solid boosters strapped to it.
The idea was to hit a middle spot for payload between the IB's 18.6 tonnes and the Saturn V's 118 -- around 40 tonnes.
I’m trying out the #IceCubes app and it looks and works awesome! It, somehow, reminds me of the #Apollo Reddit app in terms of the appearance, polish, and the customisability! Great job, @dimillian! ❤️
TIL: The "beeps" in #NASA's #Apollo missions are called #Quindar tones, named after the company that produced the equipment.
There is an "intro" and an "outro" tone. They were generated when CapCom (the person in the control center tasked with talking to the astronauts) pushed the transmit button. Since there were several transmitters on earth, connected to Houston via telephone, this was an in-band signal causing them to activate, transmit, then deactivate again.
The #CPU that runs some #USB-C wall chargers has more than twice the RAM, and is 563x faster than the #computer that ran the guidance system in #Apollo 11.
To those "my cellphone has more computing power than Apollo 11" guys...
Finished! DIANA PIERCES THE AZURE SKY, 9x12”, ink and watercolor on illustration board. Inspired by a photo of Apollo 4, the first launch of the Saturn V rocket on Nov. 9, 1967 from Kennedy Space Center.
A few days’ progress on the Saturn V launch piece, finishing the tower and the rocket, the exhaust using Ferris Wheel Press PLAITED GOLD TRESS, and foreground pad structure in ATLAS IRON ORE.
🎄🛰️🌑 Aujourd'hui c’est le 55e anniversaire de l'une des photographies spatiales les plus célèbres : le “Lever de Terre” photographié la veille de Noël 1968 par Bill Anders de la mission #Apollo 8
In spite of the joke that NASA spent a million dollars developing a pen that could write in space, while the Soviets just used a pencil.
In reality, US astronauts used pencils, crayons, and grease pencils, as did Soviet cosmonauts. None were an adequate solution.
Paul #Fischer, of Fischer #Pen Company, had been working on a pen that could write upside down or in any other position, something useful for many jobs, and offered it to NASA at a discount of $3 per pen.
When the Soviets eventually turned up asking for pen, they had to pay full retail.
🚀 First dibs for Mastodon peeps: I’m selling an unassembled Open DSKY (Apollo guidance computer user interface) kit which includes all electronics (including Arduino nano) and 3D printed parts and laser cut components to build an Open DSKY.
The man who, in all likelihood, saved the lives of the three Apollo 13 astonauts - and probably the remaining Apollo missions.
Hell, possibly even NASA itself. Losing 3 astronauts to die in space, with its attendant publicity, could well have destroyed the agency.
"Mattingly, who knew the spacecraft intimately, worked with engineers and others as they analysed the situation and scrambled to find solutions and pass on instructions to the crew."