Four decades on...

[crfriend]

Fourty years ago today, humankind made good a quest brought up slightly less than fifty years ago -- that of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. This was an event that cut across national boundaries and inspired a generation; and I feel proud to have been in the generation most inspired.

Interestingly, it wasn't the generation before that was inspired -- they were challenged with an almost insurmountable task, they took it in professional stride, and they rose to that challenge and made the entire audacious scheme work; they not only flew men to the moon, but they also saved the lives of three individuals trapped under dire conditions that would, under any standard of "normalcy" be lethal.

To the mind of this writer, it's not the things that go perfectly -- or seem to under the glare of the photographers' flashbulbs -- but rather what we learn through mistake, accident, and adversity. Apollo 11's lunar module's descent stage almost exploded some several seconds after touchdown, and would have save for a blowout disc letting go (as some thoughtful engineer decided to put in, at possible penalty for adding weight to the contraption) [See "Chariots for Apollo"]. The triumphs in the face of utter adversity continued with the outbound rupture of the oxygen tanks in the service module of Apollo 13; once again, human ingenuity came to the fore and contraptions literally cobbled together with sticky-tape, cardboard, and vlecro brought the explorers home, if not fully hale at least alive. Decades later, we -- as a human species -- learned that collisions in space, or even fire, are not necessarily lethal events, although those were proved on a different mission altogether.

To those explorers -- and all who backed them -- I can only stand, salute, and, in some cases, hang my head in sorrow: for without explorers -- those who risk all to gain all -- we'd still be duking it out with chimpanzees.

What's this got to do with Western blokes wearing skirts? On the surface, little; deep down, however, we all share the same sense of wonder at exploration, and want to partake of it. This sets us apart from the herd. Pushing frontiers and boundaries is important, for without doing so we consign ourselves to stagnancy.

Every time I look up at a full moon I cannot help but see that orb thumbing its nose at us and giving us the "Bronx cheer"; why have we not done better? Why haven't we pushed farther? A similar thought occurs with the garments we clothe ourselves in: why can't we do better than jeans, t-shirts, and drabness? If a bloke in jeans and a t-shirt represents sitting on the front porch swilling beer and one in a tuxedo represents visiting low-Earth-orbit, what does a reach for the planets represent? What ever happened to the days when we were not just encouraged to dream big, but also to think big -- and execute on those thoughts?

The Eagle landed 40 years ago today. Has she really flown the coop now?

[Uncle Al]

BRAVO!

Uncle Al
Duncanville, TX

[Milfmog]

The Eagle landed 40 years ago today. Has she really flown the coop now?

Certainly not! Two of her descendants are wandering around on Mars now, collecting data and sending it back to their ancestral home. I really do not understand why so little attention is paid to the utterly amazing job being done by the probes currently wandering around the red planet.

Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden, as NASA Administrator, said he wants to go to Mars. How incredibly old-fashioned! We are on Mars now. We have been on Mars for more than five years, looking for evidence of water and life. This is the 21st century. We have discovered robotics. More than that, we have telerobots. Our two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are merely robust extensions of our fragile human bodies. They don't break for lunch or complain about the cold nights, and they live on sunshine. They do suffer the afflictions of age. Their teeth are worn down from scraping rocks, and one has an arthritic foot that he drags behind him. But their brains are still sharp since they are the brains of their PhD handlers. No need to bring them home when they are no longer able to explore, they will just be turned off. A human on Mars would be locked in a spacesuit with only the sense of sight. Our rovers have better eyes than any human, and we don't have to take their word it; everyone can see what they see. How wonderfully democratic! Moreover, they have the IQ of their PhD operators back on Earth.

I started to try to write something like that myself but could not improve on the above so decided to quote it instead. In case you're wondering, the quote was from a weekly news letter ("What's new") that frequently causes me to sit and think "So why does no one else say that? Is there no one else capable of thinking things through?" The Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org and are well worth a browse. If you'd like to get it emailed to you each week, please visit this link.

Have fun,


Ian.

[crfriend]

The Eagle landed 40 years ago today. Has she really flown the coop now?

Certainly not! Two of her descendants are wandering around on Mars now, collecting data and sending it back to their ancestral home. I really do not understand why so little attention is paid to the utterly amazing job being done by the probes currently wandering around the red planet.

Just so it's not believed that I was denigrating the use of robotic explorers, I'd like to say that I've followed many with great interest. The Viking landers that were despatched to Mars in the 1970s were fascinating, and the spectacular achievements of the two Voyagers beggar the imagination -- and what Cassini is doing around Saturn as this is being written continues to amaze, and the return from the Galileo probe to Jupiter yielded data that will take years more to decipher and analyze. Herschel and Plank promise great discoveries in the coming years.

But, for all the prowess these mechanical marvels with their radiation-hardened silicon brains have, they somehow don't inspire the same sense of awe that manned spaceflight does. Perhaps that we've lost the ability to be amazed is to blame; with supercomputers and all the "high technology" we have on hand now we're just not even vaguely surprised by machines that fly to far-off worlds. However, when mankind flew to the moon, it was in a time where a goodly chunk of the "heavy-lifting" was done by humans with slide-rules and computers to back those calculations up and verify tight spots. It was a triumph of man, not technology.

Perhaps space travel ("extreme exploration"?) has become "routine", and may be one of the reasons that possibly more people than not believe that the Apollo moon landings were faked. Will we all be really happen if skirted garments in the West become "routine"? Or will we be slightly saddened because some of the wonder and "shock and awe" has dissipated into the ether?

In case you're wondering, the quote was from a weekly news letter ("What's new") that frequently causes me to sit and think "So why does no one else say that? Is there no one else capable of thinking things through?"

It's good when one stumbles across such things. Thanks for that.

[Milfmog]

...I'd like to say that I've followed many with great interest. The Viking landers that were despatched to Mars in the 1970s were fascinating, and the spectacular achievements of the two Voyagers beggar the imagination -- and what Cassini is doing around Saturn as this is being written continues to amaze, and the return from the Galileo probe to Jupiter yielded data that will take years more to decipher and analyze. Herschel and Plank promise great discoveries in the coming years.

Sometimes I think that Americans are just not proud enough of some of their country's successes (even though most non-Americans would regard the USA as arrogant). Men in space or on the moon: very impressive, but now a completely obsolete concept. The machines simply do space exploration so much better. ISS has been one of the worst wastes of budget and effort ever perpetrated, it has done no useful science and the lack of point was superbly demonstrated by the Japanese who decided to use it to test how well paper planes would fly in the space station. If all that money had been put into real science and real exploration where would we be now?

But, for all the prowess these mechanical marvels with their radiation-hardened silicon brains have, they somehow don't inspire the same sense of awe that manned spaceflight does.

To be blunt, I think the lack of amazement is really a lack of understanding of just how incredible these technological achievements have been. I lay the blame for that with the agencies involved for failing to get that message into the media in a digestible form that they can then pass on to the great unwashed (that's us). The media are also to blame, it seems that they have become lazy and if it is too complicated for the hacks and opinion makers they simply don't make the effort to understand for themselves and so can neither share in the wonder nor pass it on.

Have fun,


Ian.

[crfriend]

Sometimes I think that Americans are just not proud enough of some of their country's successes (even though most non-Americans would regard the USA as arrogant).

I wonder if the operative question here might not be one of awareness rather than pride. Taking the moon landings as a watershed moment, one must recall that most of the population of the USA was not alive when that happened; our median age is lower than 40, and recall that the "operational" Apollo missions only lasted a few short years before ultimately being cancelled early. That more folks aren't aware of it does not surprise me because the US educational system is positively dismal at educating people in matters of history -- especially recent history.

Men in space or on the moon: very impressive, but now a completely obsolete concept. The machines simply do space exploration so much better. ISS has been one of the worst wastes of budget and effort ever perpetrated,

The astute reader might reasonably surmise that I will argue with the Ian's thesis; however, I will not because his thesis is perfectly and absolutely valid, and I happen to agree with it. Machines DO perform the task better than humans; they can go places that humans can't, they can do things that humans can't, and, as was humourously pointed up, they don't need lunch breaks. As concerns the ISS, I was furious when that won the budget-battle over the competing superconducting super-collider" back in the 1980s; that, in my view, was a whopping mistake, and is only now being rectified in Europe with CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

However, my original point was one of inspiration, not absolute suitability -- which mode inspires humans to do great things?

To be blunt, I think the lack of amazement is really a lack of understanding of just how incredible these technological achievements have been. I lay the blame for that with the agencies involved for failing to get that message into the media in a digestible form that they can then pass on to the great unwashed (that's us). The media are also to blame, it seems that they have become lazy and if it is too complicated for the hacks and opinion makers they simply don't make the effort to understand for themselves and so can neither share in the wonder nor pass it on.

The primary problem here is that we're approaching Asimov's dictum that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". As a primary example, I'll touch on two technologies that are dear to me: computing and communications. How many people these days can actually understand what goes on at the gate level of a modern microcomputer or how a voice gets from one end of a cellular telephone connection to another? The technology has outstripped the layman's ability to comprehend it, and has relegated the understanding to specialists (magicians).

In the 1960s, technology had not advanced to the "magic" stage. It was still within the grasp of the reasonably-intelligent layman. Newtonian physics was well understood, and could be demonstrated; this allowed the populace to grasp what was going on when flight-planners and engineers started discussing orbital mechanics (which is quite strange when first looked at because things may not be immediately intuitive -- but they're consistent with Newton's laws). Likewise, computers -- although a niche specialty at the time -- were simple devices compared to what they are now, and so long as one understood the rules of logic, the technology was within mental reach (See Building an Apollo Guidance Computer Replica for a taste of how things worked and one man's passion for discovery).

So, today we have billion-instruction-per-second computers running gadgetry that's beyond the comprehension of all but the most intellectually-prodigious laymen and it's doing wonderful things. But, it fails to capture the imagination; it fails to stir passion; it does a yeoman's job at the task it was designed for, but it fails to inspire because there's nothing for the average layman to grab onto and say, "i understand that, and I know it's going to be hard, but it's going to be one Hell of a ride to get the the other end. Let's go!" Sometimes I wonder if with all the computer assistance in design, the engineers really understand everything their creations can do; with the trajectory we seem to be on, it's only a matter of time before humankind is dependent on the machines for survival -- and what if the machines take a dislike to that?

[Sarongman]

Yes, computing has advanced so rapidly in the forty years! Those NASA computers that helped put man on the moon are matched by our laptops. We, here in Australia, have some reel to reel tapes from the computers here in our archives, however the fear is that the tape might be too fragile to read when the boffins restore the computer ( stop slavering Carl )

[Since1982]

Last night, on Mythbusters TV show on one of the Discovery stations, the 2 main guys there had procured some moon dust from nasa and were debunking the claim of those (in my opinion) dimwits that say we never landed on the moon. Probably the same dimwits that harp on and on about the Holocaust never happening. Regardless of all the pictures, testimony and ruined death buildings in Germany and Poland.

Anyway, back to Mythbusters, they created a scale model of the lunar lander and a scale model of Buzz Aldrin going down the steps, to debunk the claims of naysayers who contend that the area in the shade of the lander, where Buzz stepped on the moon, would have been in total darkness and he would not have been able to be seen by Neil Armstrong with the camera. BUSTED!! With the moon dust used in the Mythbusters setup, the scale model lunar lander and the scale model Buzz Aldrin. It seems the dust reflects more than enough light from the sun onto that area for him to be seen clearly, as it was depicted by the picture taken by Armstrong.

Another little know fact of lunar lore is Buzz Aldrin was the first man to actually pee on the moon. Not that his pee hit the moon, but he was standing on the moon when he peed in his suit.

[crfriend]

Crikey! How far Off Topic can we go?! (But, that said, this is the place for it!)

Yes, computing has advanced so rapidly in the forty years! Those NASA computers that helped put man on the moon are matched by our laptops.

It's worse than you think, Sarongman. Sapphire has a reasonably new (within a year) laptop that's got a multi-billion instruction-per-second capacity and several giga-bytes of storage; I'll posit that her single machine has more horsepower than was available on the planet during the early- to mid- 1960s. This forms the basis for my "magic" argument -- the technology has outstripped even its passionate practitioners' ability to fully and completely comprehend what the machines are actually doing.

We, here in Australia, have some reel to reel tapes from the computers here in our archives, however the fear is that the tape might be too fragile to read when the boffins restore the computer ( stop slavering Carl )

I hope that at least they're the semi-common (now) nine-track half-inch variety; if they're anything else, you've got a mess on your hands. Oz is fortunate to have a reasonably robust assortment of computer historians and collectors; your boffins might do well to contact some of them.

[Milfmog]

The primary problem here is that we're approaching Asimov's dictum that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

OK Carl, I'm being picky, but that was not Asimov; it was Arthur C Clarke's third law of prediction. (See here for the full picture.)

As a primary example, I'll touch on two technologies that are dear to me: computing and communications. How many people these days can actually understand what goes on at the gate level of a modern microcomputer or how a voice gets from one end of a cellular telephone connection to another? The technology has outstripped the layman's ability to comprehend it, and has relegated the understanding to specialists (magicians).

But if people see the magician's work they are amazed by it precisely because they don't understand it (otherwise magicians could not make a living). The problem is one of visibility, no one is getting the message about just how much scientific progress has been made by using these incredible machines and NASA's publicity service has to take some of the responsibility for that.

Education is also part of the problem; too much of it is centred (at least in the UK) on getting exam passes and too little on teaching people to think and learn. As a result we have kids opting for many "soft" subjects instead of learning subjects in which it is possible to be completely wrong. There are also vested interests fighting against the teaching of science in areas such as evolution and creation that absolutely do not want to find that scientists understand how the universe was created and life evolved because they believe that would erode their religious power base.

...Sometimes I wonder if with all the computer assistance in design, the engineers really understand everything their creations can do; with the trajectory we seem to be on, it's only a matter of time before humankind is dependent on the machines for survival -- and what if the machines take a dislike to that?

There can be no question about it, engineers do not understand everything that their creations do. In complex systems there are simply too many event permutations to allow them all to be considered by humans and while livewear is used to program the machines to do the testing that will remain subject to human errors and foibles. But all is not lost, we know how to beat the machines - Hollywood has shown us in a variety of films over the years

And, in case anyone thinks I have wandered too far from Carl's original post, I take my hat off to the people who made the Apollo program work, even though I now believe manned space exploration should be abandoned in favour of machines. The original achievement of putting men on the moon from a standing start in less than a decade is utterly amazing.

Have fun,


Ian.

[crfriend]

The primary problem here is that we're approaching Asimov's dictum that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

OK Carl, I'm being picky, but that was not Asimov; it was Arthur C Clarke's third law of prediction. (See here for the full picture.)

Nuts. I knew it was one of those chaps, and I managed to get the wrong one during composition and didn't check it....

But if people see the magician's work they are amazed by it precisely because they don't understand it (otherwise magicians could not make a living).

In the case of illusionists, folks know they're "being had" and, yes, it is amazing -- astounding, even, if the trick is a very good one -- but is the viewer inspired to do interesting or amazing things because of the trick? (Note the use of the term "illusionist" rather than "magician"; illusion exists and can be very entertaining, magic (with apologies to Harry Potter fans) does not.)

The problem is one of visibility, no one is getting the message about just how much scientific progress has been made by using these incredible machines and NASA's publicity service has to take some of the responsibility for that.

They've done reasonably well at presenting the end-product, but haven't done well on the how aspect. Part of the human condition is that people need to feel that they're involved in an endeavour.

Education is also part of the problem; too much of it is centred (at least in the UK) on getting exam passes and too little on teaching people to think and learn. As a result we have kids opting for many "soft" subjects instead of learning subjects in which it is possible to be completely wrong.

We're back to inspiring again -- and what attempts to pass as "education" these days is about as far from inspriing as it gets. However, that's a rathole I really don't want to go down right now.

There are also vested interests fighting against the teaching of science in areas such as evolution and creation that absolutely do not want to find that scientists understand how the universe was created and life evolved because they believe that would erode their religious power base.

Or that one, either, but let me say that I happen to agree with you. However, that notion gets close to the boundaries of "polite conversation" here at SkirtCafe.

There can be no question about it, engineers do not understand everything that their creations do.

This is where things start to get into the realm of magic -- it's when the humans lose control of the technologies involved. It's also off-putting to a large segment of the population who just give up and accept the magic for that and go on using it without ever getting up the curiosity to open the bonnet and look inside to see what makes the thing tick.

But all is not lost, we know how to beat the machines - Hollywood has shown us in a variety of films over the years

Colossus: The Forbin Project comes to mind in that regard....

And, in case anyone thinks I have wandered too far from Carl's original post, I take my hat off to the people who made the Apollo program work, even though I now believe manned space exploration should be abandoned in favour of machines. The original achievement of putting men on the moon from a standing start in less than a decade is utterly amazing.

The main thing that was amazing was the fight to push the exisiting technology to the point where it would be able to support such an endeavour -- and it was the fight that was inspiring. Everybody knew that someday it would be perfectly possible to go to the moon and get back safely; they physics was all there and was well understood: it was just a matter of time before we had the hardware to do the job, and the tactics to do it somewhat economically (See "Lunar orbit rendezvous"; the idea dates to 1916). It was all the backroom machinations and engineering that went into it that was fascinating. That it led to humankind stepping foot on a foreign world -- even one so close to home -- was just the crowning touch.

And, even if the physical end-product was only a couple of hundred pounds of rocks and some really cool museum pieces, the enduring legacy of the endeavour remains the generation of humans who were inspired to go on and do things.

Have fun,

That's the intent!

[Sarongman]

Carl, I'm sorry to knot the thread again but, have you actually looked under the bonnetof a modern car? The engine is not to be seen- it is hidden under what looks like a plate of spaghetti and, after half an hour's hunt, one finally finds the dipstick, This old fossil remembers when an engine was accessible, recognisable and invited tinkering. Just thought your analogy was out of date. The manufacturers don't want you to. They in fact actively dissuade you from looking in there!
This is a case in point of technology becoming far less accessible in ordinary things that we all use.

[crfriend]

Carl, I'm sorry to knot the thread again but, have you actually looked under the bonnet of a modern car? The engine is not to be seen- it is hidden under what looks like a plate of spaghetti and, after half an hour's hunt, one finally finds the dipstick, [...]

I'm a bit of a motorhead, so I actually do stick my schnozz under the bonnet reasonably frequently -- and, from my experience, I find that automotive systems are just as understandable as they were in the 1960s. It was during the 1980s -- before digital engine-management systems -- that the emissions-controls overwhelmed the engine proper and turned the mill into, as you put it, a mass of spaghetti. (In a way, it was analogue computing at its worst.)

I rather like the modern systems. 'Tis true, there's no more gapping the plugs using a matchbook cover (frequently in the dark and in the rain) by the side of the road, but overall, reliability and ecciciency have been radically improved by better engine-management systems. The mechanical bits, by the way, remain reasonably unchanged, save that manufacturing techniques have gotten vastly better. Pneumatic systems are still pneumatic systems, as are hydraulics; aside from a brief flirtation with the Wankel engine, the pistons still move the way they've always done, and exhaust systems still rust out and fall off.

I've not spent any real time looking into the hybrid technologies -- mainly because I don't own one -- but as I can read, a little time with a good service manual will tell me all I need to know.

Ultimately, what I'd lke to see is a fully electric transmission with motors at each wheel and all under direct control of a (redundant) central computer; generation could then be completely decoupled from the road and allowed to operate at its most efficient point full time with batteries, possibly, taking up the slack or providing a bit of a boost when neeed. Whether the generation is by fuel-cell, turbine, conventional piston-engine, steam, or gerbil-wheel doesn't bother me.

And I shall now declare this thread most completely "off topic".

[sapphire]

Ultimately, what I'd lke to see is a fully electric transmission with motors at each wheel and all under direct control of a (redundant) central computer

I think this is being worked on by a small company in West Boylston.

[Sarongman]

Carl, a retired Major and I have often spoken of such a vehicle as you wish, and has toyed with the idea of using a VW Kombi as the test platform. (We both believe it would make an unbeatable offroad vehicle) His tales of flogging off RR merlins from redundant Centurion tanks, and drifting the Abrams like a hot sedan are most entertaining.
I agree that the basic Otto engine design is unbeatable as a good, commonsense design. A point in fact is that, as a late teen, I stripped the engine on my newly acquired 1928 Essex tourer without making reference marks. Using logic, I reassembled the engine, to have it running flawlessly. I also got the vacuum tank working!