The Eagle Has Landed

[Belatti]

It is priceless to inspire people with a great act... winning a race by sure will alone with only one gear, in the rain with slick tires and under exhaustion.

Are you talking about the event that took place on March 24th, 1991 ?

Oh! and by the way, the biggest discovery in space exploring was that all the chimps NASA sent to space came back super-intelligent. One even could be president of the US for 8 years.

[RacingManiac]

If you look at Apollo as a project in isolation, then maybe those technology may not be immediately relavent to you and me, but think of it this way, the average age of NASA's engineers involved in that program at the time was 26 years old, I'd imagine having worked on a project of that kind of involvement and magnitude lead a great majority of them to others things, space or military related or not, and hopefully they have passed on what they learn to the new engineers they trained, and so on and so forth.

[Jon]

As it stands it approaches that more and more every passing minute, but there was a time when motorsport had many technologies that trickled down to improve the lives of a great many. What benefits did they gain from landing some men on the moon? Tang? Zero G toilets & pens? And at what costs?

Motorsport is probly at its least relevant these days, quite a shame when so many problems face humanity and a couple big ones could be addressed by the superior engineering prowess of the great minds involved in motorsport.

I'm surprised no one paused to take a look at that which is staring at them and even getting punched when contributing. Yes, I mean your PC (or Mac, or Linux box, or whatever). These are all direct developments of tehcnologies that were originally designed to get man to the moon.

Development for men? Hell yeah.

And that's just looking at a couple of things that were a direct consequence of the Moon race. You need to quantify the countless children that decided that they wanted to be scientists, engineeers, and what not because they wanted to be part of something as awe inspiring as that.

Looking at it all, the benefits far outweighted the costs. If you ask me, we need more races like that.

[modbaraban]

Here is a nice documentary for those who don't think space programmes are a waste of space, time and money.

[tk421]

Here is a nice documentary for those who don't think space programmes are a waste of space, time and money.

The Mythbusters also dedicated an episode to busting all the consipracy theories out there, which they thoroughly did. Quite an interesting and entertaining episode, not to mention program.

[Giblet]

It's really simple to shut up conspiracy theorists about the Moon landing.

5 - The Soviet Union did not dispute it, should be reason enough

4 - The sheer number of photos, and the whole shadow thing that theorists talk about, is negated because light behaves quite differently when there is no atmosphere.

3 - Rock samples returned are universally accepted as non terrestrial.

2 - Not one of the 400,000 people involved have ever come forward and agreed it was a hoax. Keeping 400,000 people with egos and financial incentive quiet is impossible.

1 - If it was a hoax, why did they keep pulling it off as various Apollo missions went up, rocket launches viewed by thousands live. They pulled the greatest hoax of all time, more than once. Riiiiiiight.

While we are at it, you all know that Bush was the mastermind behind 911 right?

[joseff]

Recent images of the Apollo mission landing sites:

LRO
SELENE

[majicmeow]

Hate to say it, but Skylab was in no way a "cheaper" project than Apollo...

The very rocket used to launch that chunk of metal they called a "space station" was a Saturn V. The crew even went up in modified Command Modules. Even the safety rescue craft were based on the Command Module.

So in essence, Skylab was just an extension of Apollo.

Now, if you look only at the cost of the "Skylab" missions without consideration for the R+D that went into the Apollo hardware that sent it up, then sure, it may have been cheaper. But it was also even LESS useful than you claim Apollo was IMHO.

As far as benefits we see today, the pressure suits worn today by the Endeavour crew are all based on the suits designed for Apollo as well. Not to mention all the benifits that the Vehicle Assembly building provides to NASA and the rest of the aeronautical community since it was built FOR Apollo. Launch Centre 39 has been used by NASA for every mission since Apollo. All the tech for the ISS is based in some way, from Apollo.

So, unless you argue that all of the last 40 years of space exploration by NASA and the US Govt. has been wasted money, I'd say thats a pretty good bang for the buck considering how much current tech and hardware came out of that 9 year race to the moon.

Just my 2¢

-Aaron

[dumrick]

You are placing this discussion on the mere cost effectiveness of one of the greatest endeavours of our species - the first time a lifeform from Earth left its world and landed in another one. I really can't be objective about an event with the ability to transform deeply our self-perception as a species. Not to mention that, looking at how we are quickly transforming the planet that gave us birth in an unfriendly environment, we may still need to know how to live without a cosy atmosphere...

[jon-mullen]

Figuring out if the moon was made of cheese or if there was a man in it definitely was not worth the cost. Skylab was alot cheaper and brought forth much more benefit, but smoke detectors could have easily been designed without skylab.

I'm not against space exploration, I'm just pointing out the Apollo mission for the farce that it was, it was nothing but a way for the government to hide the costs of developing ICBM's. After The US installed nuclear missiles in Italy and then in Turkey, that move was countered by the USSR placing nuclear missiles 90 miles from Florida in Cuba. It was then that they decided to accelerate research into ICBM's but needed a way to cover up the costs, especially with the high costs of Vietnam and Korea still.

Inspiration can come from something that is uplifting to mankind, people can be inspired by finding a cure for diseases just as they can be inspired by landing on a barren rock.

First of all, the moon is not made of cheese. It does, however, contain a lot of He-3 which could some day be used in a nuclear reactor to get to other moons or planets.

Secondly, the largest engineering challenge as far as propulsion was concerned was with an oscillation in the gas in the Saturn V that would rip it apart. The Saturn V was never weaponized and that research has not gone towards killing people.

Thirdly, I'm surprised to see someone on an engineering-related forum put curing diseases above going to the moon. Last I checked people still die every day and will continue doing so, but we still use the Apollo missions as a high watermark for American and worldwide undertakings. It's the goddamn moon, after all.

Lastly, I'm sure I've got a tirade coming about what people assume are my politics because I'm American and live in Kentucky but you might as well save it. I agree that the US was ruled and is still ruled by the military-industrial complex, I don't understand why people still feel sorry for the czars, and I know we've got our share of civil rights/imperialist/engineering/whatever other problems to work on. But please don't --- on our trip to the Moon just because we did it first and without making our citizens wait in line for toilet paper.

[Richard]

Hate to say it, but Skylab was in no way a "cheaper" project than Apollo...

One Apollo launch gave say 10 days in space much of which was focussed on lunar decent/ascent with a couple of days of experiments/research? However one skylab launch gives a year in space focussed entirely on research.

please don't --- on our trip to the Moon just because we did it first and without making our citizens wait in line for toilet paper.

Surely it is the other way around? The Russians got to space first despite a fundamentally broken state system that required citizens to wait in line for toilet paper?

[jon-mullen]

please don't --- on our trip to the Moon just because we did it first and without making our citizens wait in line for toilet paper.

Surely it is the other way around? The Russians got to space first despite a fundamentally broken state system that required citizens to wait in line for toilet paper?

lol, that's an interesting take. I was thinking more like in Civilization II where you have resources that can go to making the citizens happy, research, or the treasury.

[DaveKillens]

But please don't --- on our trip to the Moon just because we did it first and without making our citizens wait in line for toilet paper.

It was a great accomplishment by the United States of America. Period.

[modbaraban]

On both sides of the iron curtain there was another plus to the 'space race'. Back then kinds used to dream about being astronauts and not being bling.

[andartop]

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlin ... ct98_1.htm

Yes, curing diseases and the space race are indeed connected.
You may argue it was all based on cold war era propaganda, or even go as far as to argue it was all a cover up for weapons development..
Whether we like it or not, war has always been the main reason behind great scientific innovations and discoveries anyway.
But to argue it was all a waste of money, really can only make me feel pity for you!
Go on then, go back to a cave, put a dead animal's skin on to hide your nudity and keep you warm, and good luck hunting your lunch every morning with bare hands..