DSKY-DSKY Him Sad: Official ILB Thread For The Heroic Age of Manned Spaceflight

Based on recent readings by myself and the real James of ILB, James Morrison, of Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight, by Margaret Lazarus Dean and Ian Sales Apollo Quartet series, the latter of which does a very satisfying job of mixing alternate history with real Apollo hardware and jargon as well as making an concerted effort to describe what it felt like to be a part of it, to walk on the moon and hear your own breathing inside your helmet and your spacesuit, to have difficulty bending your knees or fingers inside that spacesuit despite the reduced lunar gravity.

If I am including fiction I suppose I should definitely count the relevant Ballard Memories of The Space Age stories although I haven't read them all, because I think he also took pains to think hard about the real space program, albeit the filter of his unique imagination, focusing on it being gone, like Raymond William's on the organic society.

The Margaret Lazarus Dean book mines a couple of interesting veins as she deftly compares her experiences watching space shuttle launches with that of Oriana Fallaci and Norman Mailer writing about the Apollo missions as well as befriending a NASA employee and his dad, a 30-year veteran of the shuttle program and respectfully telling the parts of their story she has access to. For me the parts involving the dad is some of the more interesting and affecting in the book,.

Here is some stuff I put on from RIP Neil Armstrong, there are some other recommends from others an that thread as well

After the good book with the title Moonshot, the one by Dan Parry, I read Moondust, by Andrew Smith, where he interviews all the surviving moonwalkers and tries to find out what it was like- rave review from Arthur C. Clarke and J. G. Ballard! Then Andrew Chaikin's A Man On The Moon, which is kind of a standard work that narrates all the Apollo missions which, although it has its longueurs when they are on the ground, does a really good job once they are in flight. Then the most excellent How Apollo Flew to the Moon, by W. David Woods, which goes into as much technical as you could want without reading the actual NASA manuals. Paged through Al Worden's Falling to Earth, saving up Mike Collin's Carrying The Fire, which is supposed to be the best of the "nose cone histories."

― Albee Thousand (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, December 31, 2012 9:44 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Mike Collins. Lately my apostrophes have started floating in microgravity.

― Albee Thousand (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, December 31, 2012 9:45 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Did not read Gene Cernan's book or Chris Kraft's, nor Deke!, although the last is supposed to be pretty good. Nor 2012's Forever Young.

I've got to get that Oriana Fallaci book. I'd never heard of it before reading Leaving Orbit, but it sounds marvellous.

James Redd, I can also recommend a film to you, 'Apollo 18', about a secret 18th Apollo mission, that finds hostile lifeforms on the Moon. Very, very good on all the 1970s tech and so forth, if a bit flawed because of being yet another "found-footage" movie.

Another excellent book is Jed Mercurio's 'Ascent', a novel about a Soviet Korean War pilot turned cosmonaut who is selected for a secret Moon mission to beat the US.

great thread title, btw

thx. Just read about two thirds of Ascent -can't put it down- and it is indeed excellent and perfect for this thread. The Korean War flying stuff reminded me a lot of the late James Salter's The Hunters, which obviously takes place on the other side of the Yalu River.

Yes, I loved The Hunters, and Ascent really captured the same atmosphere well.

Ten pages left - will he make it?

it's... complicated

*finishes, claps*

I knew that was going to happen.

That really hit the spot, thanks so much for Thw recommendation, James.

My pleasure. it's a great book, weirdly little-known. But just beautifully done.

read both leaving orbit and ascent on a long flight a couple of days ago - thanks for the recommendations, guys, i really enjoyed both of them. i'll be visiting the kennedy space center in a few weeks and leaivng orbit was the perfect prep.

Please report back on your visit.

will do!

I so want to get into the vehicle assembly building!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiLaNEFyCiM

You know, I first became vaguely aware of Mercurio when I saw his JFK book on the new arrival shelf in the library. Was not in the mood to read that one at the time and wasn't sure he would be able to make it work, but dimly recall thinking I would want to read the one about the cosmonaut.

Yeah, the jfk one didnt appeal, but his first book, Bodies, is very good

I just picked up a copy of Ascent from my local public library. Looking forward to being gripped.

Have no idea whether it will be your cup of tea, but definitely interested to hear your opinion, as always.

Started reading it last night. The Korean War has ended and our hero has just been banished to the Arctic.

It is hardboiled in a way that I find only moderately engaging, as opposed to, say Hammett or Chandler, but I just finished 400pp of late-stage Henry James, so this is a welcome change regardless. It's short enough I am sure I'll stick to the end.

You might prefer The Hunters. Salter writes of manly doings with little trace of macho posturing, having a warmer side that is pretty deftly managed, never feeling fake or forced.

He is such good writer that it is kind of intimidating to try to say anything about him without feeling that one is not measuring up to his standard and damning him with faint praise.

I enjoyed Ascent, but it was pretty obvious to me that the book was conceived as an ending in search of a beginning. Mercurio succeeded well enough in finding the beginning he needed that the book hops past some questionable transitions and gets you to the payoff ending. It's not the kind of book that requires pondering, so I won't inflict any on ILB. Suffice it to say I was adequately entertained.

Glad you liked it even that much.

read the first three of ian sale's apollo quartet and half of the fourth on another long flight, again thanks to this thread.

i enjoyed the first two a fair bit, thought the third fizzled out a bit (and i wasn't entirely convinced by the characterisation of jerrie cobb, especially her christianity) and i'm struggling a bit with the self-conscious authorial interjections in the fourth. it's true he's definitely good on the tactile, sensory parts of spacefaring, but i wish he'd been a bit less obvious with flashing the fruits of his research via namechecking bits of equipment and endless acronyms.

From Subterranean Press:

https://d3pdrxb6g9axe3.cloudfront.net/uploads/The_Top_of_the_Volcano_by_Harlan_Ellison_500_719.jpg

We've just received a number of copies of Harlan Ellison's The Top of the Volcano back from one of our wholesale account. Some are perfect, some are slightly worn. We'll put new dust jackets on copies to bring them up to snuff, and are happy to offer them at only $25 per copy, a wholly great price for an oversize hardcover that clocks in north of 500 pages.

Have at them! Think I'll keep an eye peeled for *even* cheaper

Sorry, wrong thread!

Lol. Just don't let HE find out or he just might try to shut us down.

Agree that the first two AQ books were the best and that there was a dip afterwards. Third one veered close to being the most obvious alternate history 101 inversion and therefore seemed the slightest. Fourth one though I thought was a satisfying wrap up of the whole thing and brought together a bunch of interesting stuff- golden age sf, women in sf, astronauts and their wives and nurses and Vehicle Assembly Buildings.

The more I read/think about the US manned space program the more depressing it is that such a vast, science-driven, hugely expensive state-funded enterprise was possible back then, mere decades ago, but not now when it's needed vs climate change

if only putin would threaten to solve climate change

yeah, what better way to reverse global warming than a cold war?

just picked up mike collins' carrying the fire, andrew chaikin's a man on the moon: the voyages of the apollo astronauts, and deborah cadbury's space race: the battle to rule the heavens. hoping to get them all finished before i make it to the kennedy space centre in a couple of weeks. which reminds me, i need to see if i can get tickets to have lunch with an astronaut while i'm there...

the cold war was prosecuted because the political and military leaders of the USA felt that the USSR was an existential threat to the nation, whereas climate change is merely an existential threat to the entire world.

finished a man on the moon: the voyages of the apollo astronauts a couple of days ago and i'm about halfway through carrying the fire at the moment. a man on the moon is a really good run-through of the apollo programme, based on late-80s interviews with most of the main players. chaikin sketches the characters of the astronauts really well and it gave me a much better appreciation of the achievements of the later missions. chaikin is also excellent at conveying the sensations of space travel: what it's like to wear a pressure suit on an eva, what moon dust smells like, etc

carrying the fire is fantastic so far - collins is a good writer with a dry wit, and he does a great job of delving into the roles each astronaut played in the development of apollo as well as explaining some of the technical aspects of spaceflight in an understandable way.

i also rewatched my blu-ray of for all mankind, which never ceases to make me emotional.

i'm off to the kennedy space center tomorrow. kinda think i might keel over at the sight of a saturn v or a shuttle.

saw the shuttle atlantis, cried

awesome

Do tell

sure!

atlantis has its own building at the space centre, and nasa has carefully stage-managed your experience before you see it for real for the first time. you watch a short dramatisation of the shuttle development process, then a really gorgeous montage of shuttle mission footage on a massive screen. then the screen lifts and behind it is the atlantis, lit dramatically and tilted on its side with the cargo bay doors open.

https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/t31.0-8/11864981_10153461127620638_7060066314462098229_o.jpg

it's smaller than i'd have guessed but it's absolutely gorgeous, all flowing, elegant lines contrasting with a surface which is pockmarked and rough-edged from 33 visits to space. the sight of it hit me like a ton of bricks and i was instantly teary. i spent a lot of time as a kid reading and thinking about the orbiters - i was six when the challenger disaster happened and i vividly remember crying while watching it on the tv - but i was still surprised by how moving it was to see a shuttle for real.

there's also an amazing full-scale model of the hubble telescope in there, along with some replica space suits:

https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/t31.0-8/11816230_10153461126845638_808564544352120920_o.jpg

we also took a trip in the space shuttle simulator, which is cool as hell and does what feels like a reasonable job of recreating the experience of blasting off into orbit, including the lying-on-your-back wait for takeoff. then we took a guided bus tour around various locations including the mindbogglingly huge vehicle assembly building, which is every bit as massive as i expected and more, and launch complex 39, from which apollo and space shuttle missions took off and which is now leased to spacex:

https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/t31.0-8/11865348_10153461124950638_7321524299771301802_o.jpg

then we stopped off at the saturn v / apollo building to take a look at the actual control room from apollo 8:

https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xat1/t31.0-8/11823022_10153461124495638_4658601945709688007_o.jpg

and the saturn v stack, which is as intimidatingly huge as the shuttle is compact and friendly. it takes up a whole building and it is fucking massive:

https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xft1/t31.0-8/11856340_10153461124100638_2890088577621426801_o.jpg

even with a super-wide lens i couldn't fit the whole thing into the frame. it's insane and inspiring and terrifying to think that there's two million working parts in it, any one of which could malfunction and stop a launch (explosively or otherwise):

https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/t31.0-8/11807191_10153461123510638_216552785613825137_o.jpg

also on display: the apollo 14 command module and al shepard's moon-dust-crusted space suit:

https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xat1/t31.0-8/p960x960/11807352_10153461121975638_748753903730101738_o.jpg
https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t31.0-8/11802685_10153461122435638_1461597965149089638_o.jpg

i have a million other pictures and things to say but this is too long already. it was an incredible experience and i loved every second of it.

I am so envious. Lovely write-up!

thanks! one more thing: I was convinced at first the mercury and gemini capsules we saw must have been scale models, but nope, they actually are incredibly small and claustrophobic. mike collins called the gemini 'a flying men's room' - doing 14 days in orbit in a space only very slightly larger than the seat you're in while having to go to the bathroom right next to your copilot seems like a special kind of hell.

i meant to say how much i love the photos, too. is the spacesuit behind glass? I assume there's no way of touching it, getting a little bit of moon on your fingertips...

yeah, it's behind glass unfortunately. there is a little chunk of moon rock you can touch, though!

if you've got the time, this massive five-part waitbutwhy.com piece on spacex's history and insane future ambitions is definitely worth a read: How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars

i finished mike collins' autobio recently - it's really fantastic. goes in to a massive amount of detail about his flights but it's never dull or difficult to follow, and his occasional slightly catty asides about the other apollo astronauts are amusing (he really seemed to have it in for donn eisele for some reason)

i'm about halfway through deborah cadbury's space race: the battle to rule the heavens, which focuses on the work of wernher von braun and sergei korolev. there's a fantastic action-adventure movie waiting to be made about the race of the allied powers to track down and win over german rocket scientists after wwii ended, which cadbury goes over in detail in the opening chapters. she very effectively communicates the utter horror of the slave camps which produced the v-2 rockets, which i didn't know much about - 60,000 slaves worked on the programme, subsisting on 1,000 calories a day which the nazis calculated would keep them alive for six months. 20,000 of them died.

the thought that the heroic age of manned spaceflight was built on the horror of slave labour is something i knew about but reading about it in some detail is still pretty horrible.

I have a faint memory of that Clooney movie 'The Good German' looking as though it was going to be that film, and then going off into other, much more boring, directions

there's a fantastic action-adventure movie waiting to be made about the race of the allied powers to track down and win over german rocket scientists after wwii ended

it's gravity's rainbow

korolev had quite a story iirc. the revered father of soviet rocketry, called "the designer" like someone's called the godfather, died of complications following surgery that could not be successfully completed because of injuries sustained decades earlier in the gulag.

solzhenitsyn's the first circle a not-bad tolstovian novel about the relatively comfortable (as in, not actually designed to kill you) scientist-slave gulag camps. some truly nightmarish meetings about deadlines.

You just reminded me of this novel, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/26/konstantin-tom-bullough-review, about Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the first great Russian rocket scientist: it was very good
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky)

i've read and enjoyed gravity's rainbow but i dunno if 'fantastic action-adventure movie' would be my main choice of descriptor for it

called "the designer" like someone's called the godfather

the CHIEF designer no less!

never read the first circle, i'll add it to the list

Apollo 18 is on Netflix but expiring on the 2nd, so watching now. Thanks for the extensive reporting, bg.

a kickstarter to reissure the 1975 nasa graphics standards manual (which introduced the iconic 'worm' logo) has smashed its funding goals right out of the gate. weirdly tempted to back it myself tbh

https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/004/396/546/23b3aeda89dc77759d288b970b7844bf_original.png?v=1440769823&w=680&fit=max&auto=format&lossless=true&s=3b904ba2935aa388fd45932015483658
https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/004/396/667/f3f8269bc7a1534ba10b1b6683c0bdd0_original.png?v=1440771142&w=680&fit=max&auto=format&lossless=true&s=a0be2a8209a1ae130878ef0072f6394b

Cool. If you like that, you might like a design-oriented book called Spacesuit.

ooo, that does look interesting. cheers!

"The Eve of the Last Apollo," by new ILB fave Carter Scholz.

Then there this, which mentions that story, and has a quote from it that I can't find: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/16/books/one-small-shelf-for-literature.html?pagewanted=all.
Haven't really read but I don't quite dig the tone. Also, can't find the quoted line from the story in question in the story itself. Perhaps it was edited out later.

It's not a good line! ''We took one step out of the cradle; we put our foot out - and drew it back. . . . I think what it is is that space is really fucking hard, and expensive, and we have too many other problems down here" would be more accurate.

Yup

You should read, ledge. Especially since he took your note and deleted that sentence.

"sputnik: the shock of the century" by paul dickson is a fun book that anyone who loves space age stuff would probably dig. lots of details about early rocket history that i never knew, plus inevitable entertaining anecdotes about how ppl reacted to sputnik (isaac asimov said it was what convinced him to stop writing science fiction and start writing popular science!).

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/01/from-astronaut-to-refugee-how-the-syrian-spaceman-fell-to-earth

Albums that never were and never will be:
Prince Major Nelson - Cosmic Rain
Cocoa Beach
Harem Pants
Little Red Sputnik/Little Red Mercury
Jeannie Talk 2 NASA
Gemini (Evil Twin)
Saturn V
VAB VI
RK Eye C Bust of Apollo
Anna Banana River
Star City
Gumdrop vs. Spider
Light Dis Candle
Tranquility Bass
Lovelace Clinique
Og
Flame Trench
I Would Fly 4 U
n Orbit
Kapton America
Drogue
Swimming Lee
I Wanna Be Your Rover
Reg o' Lith
Nurse D
spaminacan
Dr. Rendezvous
Steel Eel
Heat Shield
EVA
PLSS PLSS PLSS
Fit 2 Fly

( I didn't know where to post that so I posted it here)

http://apollo11.spacelog.org/page/04:05:22:37/

Also just saw that Margaret Dean Lazarus is co-writing the memoirs of an Apollo astronaut: short interview with her here https://medium.com/the-ribbon/author-interview-margaret-lazarus-dean-a027b36fa2c9#.8avlganc8

Wonder which of the Apollo astronauts hasn't already written a memoir. Let's see.

Um, Scott Kelly, born in 1964, was not part of the Apollo program. Would be interested to read her novel.

Argh, i wondered if i had misremembered, and the link was down and i could not check, so i thought it would be fine, and here i am. Ashamed.

The novel is very good, btw

Argh, i wondered if i had misremembered, and the link was down and i could not check, so i thought it would be fine, and here i am. Ashamed.

Wonder which of the Apollo astronauts hasn't already written a memoir. Let's see.

John Young needs to write one.

I find it hard to believe he didn't.

It seems to be named after a song by a recent Nobel-prize recipient.

blowing in the wind -- an inexplicable late-life turn to conspiracy

Eh, not quite.

Mentioned third post in

Hello, space-nerd checking in finally

I got "We Seven" for Christmas, haven't started it but timing turned out bittersweet with Glenn's passing.

that's the one that reprints the life magazine articles from the time of the mercury missions right? always meant tog et around to reading that one but i haven't yet, so looking forward to seeing what you think about it

gene cernan's passing has reminded me that i don't think we've talked about the last man on the moon anywhere else on ilx have we? i watched it when it came to netflix and thought it was a decent overview of the man and his career but it could have done with being longer - there was lots of stuff i'd have liked to have seen more on, and i wish there was more input from jack schmitt. i'm fascinated by the amount of important work he and cernan did on the moon during apollo 17, and their justified frustration that their discoveries were never followed up by other missions.

in other space-dork news i'm going to see chris hadfield lecture on friday. saw him (and met him!) last year and it was fantastic - he's such a charismatic ambassador for space

exciting! i enjoy him in the interviews & other stuff i've seen - full report plz

I'm ashamed that I haven't posted more in this thread - (long story, all IRL nonsense) but James Redd nagged me over here after Gene Cernan's passing was noted on the obit. thread.

It worked like this - my mom was a mid-level apparatchik in the O.C. political establishment - somewhere in the early 70s she met Skylab astronaut (and O.C. resident) Jerry Carr at a function and got us (mom, dad, & me) VIP passes to see the launch of Apollo 17. I was seven years old and liked NASA more than ice cream - nevermind that we also flew on a Pan Am 747, my dad and I hung out at the plane upstairs bar. We also went to Disney World, but fuck that shit compared with a Saturn V launch.

After the mission was over the A17 crew took a meet-and-greet around the states and somehow my mom got us into the California stop. I can't really remember what I asked Cernan - I was way too self-conscious. Nevertheless everyone signed my stuff. I just unpacked everything at my new place and have to get it framed.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2U1aSWUoAAkm5r.jpg

I watched The Last Man on the Moon - it's not necessarily a memorable documentary, but it is worth watching. It's entirely possible that the only answer to "what was it like to walk on the Moon and how did it change you?" will be whatever we can piece together from what these guys say and I'd watch it for that reason alone.

wow.

Yeah, wow, thanks.

holy shit elvis, that's amazing. that's gonna look fantastic in a frame.

We also went to Disney World, but fuck that shit compared with a Saturn V launch

seeing the saturn v on its side at kennedy space centre last summer was one of the more stunning things i've ever set eyes on in real life - i can't even imagine how incredible it must have been to see one of those things take off.

http://www.earthtothemoon.com/apollo_10.html
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR4U0J4RDIVNqhCva25E8vmuJCk0q05EQ9rUkOyyCQuHIekYHEA
Houston, this is Snoopy! We is GO and we is down among 'em Charlie!

thanks elvis! what an incredible experience.

in other news: 50th anniversary of Apollo 1 tragedy today :/

thanks elvis! what an incredible experience.

in other news: 50th anniversary of Apollo 1 tragedy today :/

Very envious and impressed

http://hackaday.com/2017/05/29/re-creating-the-apollo-dskys-display/#more-258907

weirdly tempted to chip in some cash for that

Greatly enjoyed the first four stories I read this weekend in The Dream Life of Astronauts, which are set on Merritt Island and read like a mix of New Yorker stories written by a Southerner like, say, Padgett Powell, with Ballard's Memories of the Space Age. Which may not be quite accurate and will probably put you off reading it but perhaps I can describe better upon reading the rest of the stories.

Did not know of that book, but now i want

RIP John Young

;_;

dammit :(

Crap

Curious about this new Apollo 8 book

One of the most haunting radar images I think we'll ever see...the Space Shuttle Columbia debris field, 15 years ago today. pic.twitter.com/5Ba8IdBFLZ

— Matt Lanza ⛄️ (@mattlanza) February 1, 2018

oof :(

fuck that’s a real gut-punch

the OPEN DSKY thing i mentioned above launched on kickstarter last week (and is already at 250% of goal)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/438986934/open-dsky-apollo-50th-anniversary-make-100

why do i want that

Why wouldn’t you?

tru

RIP Al Bean :(

RIP

O bum

He was top of my list of Apollo astronauts I would have loved to meet. Such a quirky, enthusiastic, genuine-seeming person.

There’s a lovely quote in the obituary about how he & Walt Cunningham were bffs & ate cheeseburgers together once a month <3

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/astronaut-footprint-moon-warming-180969362/

That is mental.

wow

There's some great stuff in NASA's historical archives, my fave is the oral history project - long interviews with everyone before they pass away A recent fave of mine are the 2004 interviews with Joe Engle - the X-15 pilot who got bumped from Apollo 17 by geologist (and later Senator and climate-change denier) Harrison Schmitt. More to the point, Engle talks about the life of being a badass-casual Air Force fighter/ test pilot - dogfighting & partying with Yeager, hand-wringing over stick-and-rudder vs. spam-in-a-can space travel, flight-testing every goddamn thing at Edwards, rolling the X-15, having to pee while you're in the middle of an abort, getting the phone call from Slayton, training for not going to the Moon and then finding a place in NASA and picking the Space Shuttle because it had wings and a stick-n-rudder.

ooo cool, thx elvis!

kinda heartbroken to hear harrison schmitt is a climate change denier, he and gene cernan are maybe my favourite apollo duo

:/

Hadn't noticed that this came out: https://iansales.com/2016/11/18/apollo-quartet-5-a-visit-to-the-national-air-and-space-museum/

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-hidden-figure-space-program-20190101-story.html

Oceanside resident Shelby Jacobs, 83, is responsible for one of the most iconic video images of NASA’s race to put a man on the moon in the 1960s.

It’s the oft-seen, slow-motion color footage of a ringlike section of the Saturn V rocket separating from the Apollo 6 spacecraft and spinning slowly away toward Earth, 200,000 feet below.

Yet for all of his 40 years working his way up to the executive level on the Apollo and space shuttle programs, Jacobs, who is black, faced near-constant discrimination from his white colleagues and was never paid as well as other engineers doing the same work.

To avoid rocking the boat, Jacobs kept a low profile in his working life. But in recent years, he has stepped into the spotlight to serve as a role model for minorities and women who face workplace discrimination.

Shel-by! Shel-by! Shel-by!

"Taschen teams up with NASA for an archival look into the great beyond"

https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/taschen-nasa-archives-publication-060219

ooooh

hell yes

preordered a copy

speaking of which, have we talked about this astonishing-looking apollo 11 doc anywhere else on ilx? cuz i am fucking psyched

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Co8Z8BQgWc

me & mr veg are going to see it in IMAX

:D

jealous tbh

we have tickets for this Saturday at 1:45pm

I'm going to space, basically

the Apollo 11 doc is insane

some of the footage is of things you’ve seen a hundred times on tv but seeing it HUGE in imax and so pristine with the audio matching, it’s like watching it in real time, it was wild.

even the liftoff becomes new again...it’s like watching an A-bomb explode in your face, it put me back in my seat in a way i wasn’t expecting

and good lord all that 70mm found footage is glorious.

there’s a good rundown of the cool behind the scenes work that went into it here https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/12/apollo-11-50th-year-anniversary

ooh and easter egg breakdown here if you need more convincing

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-030119a-apollo11-documentary-film-details.html

Wow

god I wanna see this so much

in the meantime my copy of the nasa archives arrived and i clearly hadn’t read the description too clearly or thought too much about what it being a taschen production would mean because i was shocked at just how massive and heavy it is - it comes in a box with a carrying handle ffs

it is absolutely incredible to look at though, just gorgeous

I had missed this a couple of years back - it's wonderful and features some of the Apollo 11 production team:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMDdaNLc8DU

We haven’t mentioned yet the thing about one of the space nerds involved in this being Feist’s brother.

YES! Very cool

I forgot to say that the Apollo 17 video above is also directed / edited by Todd Miller and features Ben Feist's work; it's like a short form of how I expect the Apollo 11 feature will be. Cool soundtrack too.

So there’s a new book out...

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5744977b22482e4393b418c2/t/58ac8feb03596e6e757048f6/1537304200387/ This one? I have it on the way, will report when I get it.

https://www.apollopresskits.com/

🖼 This one? I have it on the way, will report when I get it.

Has a blurb from Mike Collins about it being the best Apollo book,

holy fucking shit

?

ran the doc tonite

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2

13 Minutes To The Moon

"How the first moon landing was saved. The full story of the people who made Apollo 11 happen and prevented it from going badly wrong."

specifically the 13 minutes before touchdown of Apollo 11, which were sketchy.

(that's from the bbc. iplayer radio stuff traditionally wasn't region-locked but i'm not sure whether that's true with the new sounds thing. oh, but it's World Service, so maybe it's ok.)

I can download it in Australia. Looks good. ANy idea how many parts it will be? It; doesn't seem to say anywhere.

I *think* he says it's 10 parts somewhere within it, but I can't see that info anywhere else.

(Episode 2 is up and 3 is listed for next week but no details beyond that)

episode 5 (briefly) talks about the DSKY system

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz4dn

Ep.05 The fourth astronaut
13 Minutes to the Moon

The computer that got us to the moon. The size of a briefcase, there had never been anything like it. Apollo 11 was “the first time software ran on the moon”. This is the story of the world’s first digital portable general purpose computer. The work of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, helped give rise to the digital age.

I know this isn’t booksrelated but it’s super cool

https://m.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Restored-Mission-Control-comes-alive-50-years-14057766.php#photo-17770659

No worries, VG, thread has long since widened its scope to included non-book-related discussion.

also in book related news, just started reading Shoot The Moon

i watched this with a friend last night at DOCUMENTARY CINEMA. bertha doc-house documentary cinema: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_(2019_film)

it has no talkings heads* and is basically entirely stitched together out of archive footage from ground (cape kennedy and houston) and space (A11, columbia, eagle, the moon), the narrative also told only as a quilt of voices from the time. lots of split screen, plus some data readouts (time, speed, distance as they tick over at key moments). it goes from just before the launch to just after splashdown, in with some time-dilation (cuts, at least sly slow-down) bot only a very few flashbacks, one exception being kennedy's full "we CAN go to the moon speech from 8 yrs earlier), played in full at the close, as the astronauts re-emerge to the public eye down here

the thing i learnt:
— as he orbited alone ("as lonely as anyone since adam" acc.the overvoice) while neil and buzz pootled around on the dusty ground, he GREW A MUSTACHE TO KEEP HIMSELF COMPANY. it's a shocker too, but lol, well done him

*lol one of the trailers was for a doc abt pavarotti and it included a TH of (wait for it) bono. i told my friend (who'd suggested i come) that if THIS doc featured bono i would stand up, punch him and leave the cinema at that point. however it did not

haven't seen this yet (saving it for a screening on the date of the 50th anniversary like a proper space dork) but mike collins' autobio carrying the fire is grate

how did i only just notice that the 50th anniversary of the moon landings is also the date of my wedding anniversry, wtf

uh oh

it's good! tho the format leaves some (minor) questions unanswered: it very much gets across the "atop a long metal tube full of searingly explosive heat, three men sit in a tiny weeny tin can full of electrical gear, their lives dependent on some other ppl's maths homework" aspect of it all)

lot of close-ups where you're thinking "so how much of this so-called lunar module is not just made of baco-foil?"

also i wanted to know the answer to the question here:
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2496/where-were-the-various-apollo-lunar-modules-lms-discarded

yeah, the contrast of the sheer staggering scale and power of the saturn v rocket on one hand and the extreme fragility of its human and technological payload on the other will never stop being fascinating to me

standing underneath a saturn v filling an entire giant hangar at kennedy space centre and contemplating its two million components is one of the very few genuinely awe-inspiring moments of my life

the real answer to 'where were the various apollo lunar modules discarded' is, of course, in a dumpster behind elstree studios once kubrick had finished filming

moon: real
landing: real
space: still fake

a galaxy brain take fit for a galaxy which does not exist

Watching this National Geographic thing now.

Meh, just skipped right from Apollo 8 to 11. Now another commemorative Bud ad featuring “Spirit in the Sky.”

:/

It was pretty much all contemporary news(reel) footage, no modern day talking heads, which means in particular no Irishman wearing polycarbonate lunar visor sunglasses, just every once in a while a tiny bit of text to clarify something. Too many commercials, not much information, new or otherwise but it was still nice to soak up some of the vibe. Neil Armstrong doc afterward looked more interesting but I had to stop watching.

i have dvr’d a few PBS moon docs airing this month, hopefully one or two of them will be good

Please let us know.

i will give go/no-go updates soon

:)

happy moonday everyone 🌚

🌝

B-b-but isn’t it in four days?

"Sponsored by Kellogs"

so much moon stuff on tv, all the major channels are running bits. it's hard to keep i all straight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnFlx2Lnr9Q

CBS live streaming the original footage on youtube, complete with sub-thunderbirds models.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYnF31el-ik

(complete with 1969 paper bikini adverts)

(ha, i missed the actual launch by 23 minutes)

Speaking of sub-thunderbirds models, over the weekend I was just thinking of a perennial school or Cub Scout trip taken to the Hall of Science in Queens where they showed a film about space travel - Frank Capra’s last, apparently- followed by a cut from film to real life in which two such models docked high above our heads.

https://nysci.org/installing-rendezvous-in-space/

The Great Hall was built for an exhibition sponsored by Martin Marietta called Rendezvous in Space, which culminated with a live demonstration of a docking between a model “space taxi” and an orbiting laboratory, suspended from the ceiling above. The show began with a documentary film produced by Frank Capra (his final film.) Narrated by Danny Thomas, featuring Mel Blanc (uncredited) as the voice of the moon.

CBS feed appears to have stopped. but there's a 4 hour rewind window if you want to see the launch 'as it happened'. (also, miss universe trails)

Happy Launch Day ilx crew <3

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2f/fa/42/2ffa423d88da1f8f4007a96fc7c9f013.gif

:)

Update 1 on moon documentaries go/no-go

PBS American Experience “Chasing the Moon” three parter = GO

so much awesome footage AND voiceovers, no talking heads 😃

covers similar ground to the Donovan book

one of the voiceovers is Khrushchev’s son

lot of close-ups where you're thinking "so how much of this so-called lunar module is not just made of baco-foil?"

Chasing the Moon has been showing on bbc4 in 6 parts over 3 nights, last pair tonight.

First two I found dragged a bit, too much about cold war and racial politics in Gemini / Mercury and didn't even get to Apollo. Second two were better, Apollo 1 audio was shocking but it finished with a great bit on the Apollo 8 wives.

I'll repeat my recommendation for 13 Minutes To The Moon podcast on BBC world service which has a ton of detail. The impatient can listen to episode 10.

I'm also finding the channel 4 realtime live stream on YouTube really relaxing - 6 days(!) of audio feed, the odd bit of video now and then.

saw Apollo 10 today, the capsule anyway. apparently it's been in the science museum on loan since '76 but i must've overlooked it all these times.

look at his happy little face:

https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Apollo-10-Nasa.jpg

aw! hey buddy

🌚

Chasing the Moon is worth it just for the footage that hasn't really been shown anywhere else in any systematic way. Somehow I hadn't known that Ed White's wife took her own life.

13 Minutes To The Moon is great but my best experience right now is to put on the new expended reissue of Eno's Apollo album with the realtime mission audio from https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/ over it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4cn93H6sM0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc1SzgGhMKc

https://www.space.com/neil-armstrong-apollo-11-landing-view-video.html

Guys, I am afraid this anniversary is giving me space fatigue, the same as the first time around.

Give me a reading on that alarm 🚨

take yr protein pills and put yr helmet on

Flight we’re GO on the alarm

https://cbsnews2-cbsistatic-com.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/cbsnews2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2019/07/11/a1daa795-333b-4fd4-8b34-5f2efee60418/thumbnail/1280x1662/cdba68fdb7e6cb31cd5f6be6814812fe/codes.jpg

we’re breathing again

Everything’s going swimmingly

Hey, this is just like a simulation

Be advised there's lots of smiling faces in this room and all over the world. Over.

Well, there are two of them up here.

ILX, Tranquility Blecch here.

(With that I killed all life on the thread )

lol

We’re on attitude hold

https://www.deseretnews.com/images/top/main/61881/61881.jpg?width=853&height=450

he's on the porch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY0Wqf6gHJk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNLZntSdyKE

One small blecch for a mayne, one giant steen for a history mayne

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D_5imOMXYAATZgv.jpg

RIP Chris Kraft?(person with a great real name)

? Was fat-fingered misfire of the gas jet

Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr.

RIP. That was a dude who got things done.

There’s a doc on Prime about the Apollo mission control guys and Kraft seemed like the epitome of an oldschool hardass boss. Even in old age he seemed like he still could put a verbal walloping on you if he wanted to.

not long now til splashdown.

currently 17k nautical miles from earth and about to hit 10,000 mph, ten thousand. i guess they have been travelling downhill for 3 days with no wind resistence.

same tbh

The astronauts donned the BIGs, jumped into the raft, and, as rehearsed, began spraying and scrubbing themselves down with disinfectant.

20k mph

Apollo 16's John Young on the perils of digestion in space: pic.twitter.com/BZ7oOMTgV3

— Caustic Cover Critic (@Unwise_Trousers) July 24, 2019

I believe there a section of, um, Carrying the Fire devoted to this sort of thing

https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02320/b4_2320129k.jpg

(just hadn't seen this photo before)

get a load of these these nerds, smdh

VERB 73

Or
DSKY, Return to Earth now, please.

We are live here at the Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF) on the USS Hornet as President Nixon stands outside the window and jokes with the three astronauts.

imagine getting back from the moon and the first thing you have to do after splashdown is make small-talk with nixon

20 people in the quarantine with them when they got back to the facility. neil had his birthday in there

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/4s73HuWD5UTT5XXPxKLpGC-650-80.jpg

That picture is great.

Adam West and Neil Armstrong, separated at birth.

Ha, exactly

Stand by for ullage.

It looks to me, looking out of the hatch, that we are venting something out into space.

https://i.gifer.com/ObML.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5VRo5MBUXY

https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/10/apollo-flight-controller-101-every-console-explained/

Are you a Pod or a MOCR?

This story of the too-close Service Module during reentry is, um, sobering. The new book it comes from is pretty well done, from what I have read so far.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/classified-apollo-11-anomaly-threatened-to-crash-first-moon-astronauts-2019-6

The author conducted new interviews with a few dozen engineers as well as taking a deep dive into the archives. She does a great job of telling new stories from the engineering/ systems perspective as well as more familiar stories, such as the one about Neil Armstrong going back to the office after he bailed out of the LLTV.

/streetteam

https://i1.wp.com/theapollo11.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/apollo-star-list.jpg

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2019/07/15/apollo-11-50-year-anniversary/

https://wehackthemoon.com/people/ramon-alonso-computer-science

Tindallgrams to thread!

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-Tindallgrams.html

(complete with 1969 paper bikini adverts)

RIP Al Worden

I posted this on the obituary thread but it's worth reposting here. I love this story from Al's book

I extended the mass spectrometer on a large boom, trying to sniff out any hint of lunar atmosphere or escaping volcanic gas. Scientists particularly thought that areas of lunar sunrises and sunsets might concentrate stray gases. They would be extremely tenuous, and that is where we ran into trouble. The spectrometer mostly picked up particles that we brought from Earth. We'd strayed clouds of urine along our flight path all the way to the moon, and these urine dumps continued in lunar orbit. My frozen pee is probably sprinkled all over the moon. Add rocket engine exhaust, and it is no wonder our mass spectrometer had trouble finding anything else.

Thanks.

I remember reading a more academic discussion of the Apollo Missions that was somewhat dismissive of the “nose cone histories” aka the astronaut memoirs. I know Carrying the Fire is supposed to be the best but Al’s book was really good in lots of ways.

Folks who have this thread bookmarked should check out RetroSpace HD on YouTube. Lots of vintage footage up there that I haven't seen at all such as this, the Apollo 9 LEM docking sequence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke8R4zc18Kk

Not a book & i think it’s been mentioned itt already but if you get a chance I really recommend “For All Mankind”, Ron Moore’s series on Apple+

So much nerdy NASA/Apollo detail
INCLUDING: (spoiler) a fkn Sea Dragon launch in the final episode 😃

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket)

Michael Collins' Carrying The Fire is on sale in the various e-stores for $2.99 right now. Well worth reading,

I highly recommend this book, which I have owned in multiple formats, even though I haven’t properly read it yet/pvmic

https://youtu.be/LWLadJFI8Pk

Ah fuck, anyway, that's a deepfaked short film of Apollo XI failure with Nixon giving Saffire's dead astronauts speech.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/science/nasa-space-launch-system.html

Just watched In Event of Moon Disaster, thanks. So Michael Collins was able to crew the return trip all by his lonesome?

And RIP Michael Collins. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/science/michael-collins-third-man-of-the-moon-landing-dies-at-90.html. Hope things are going swimmingly on the FarOther Side.

well, shit

;_;

Time for an unofficial Carrying the Fire book club?

Too soon maybe

Found this interesting link through an ex-ILB0r whose significant other has the same name as the author: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/dear-columbia-apollo-11-astronaut-michael-collins

Well damnit if I haven't been completely sucked in by FOR ALL MANKIND. Despite the odd moment of cheesiness, it's just a lovely bit of reconstruction/extrapolation.

yeah it’s pretty great - i love the characters!

Having the dude from Patriot isn't hurting

I'm sure I have said this before, but anyone who is in this thread and hasn't read Jed Mercurio's ASCENT is really doing themselves a massive disservice.

I didn’t even know what that was, had to MC Serch it.

it's awesome.

I guess it’s streaming somewhere

Apple TV? Do people have that?

sorry I mean the book Ascent! haven't see the other thing

Yeah, thought that book was great too, the Kennedy one not so much.

the Michael Collins book is 99p in the Amazon daily deal in the UK today

The Moon: MISSION CONTROL: FIDO, GUIDO AND RETRO
Time Magazine interview with Chris Craft and company from August 1, 1969.

Maybe not really an interview.

oooh thx

“2.5 million bits” = 312.5 kilobytes

fkn wild

Don’t know where I should put so I am putting it here.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/jeff-bezos-flies-to-space-on-blue-origin-rocket

Jordan Bimm otm.

Here is his original article, with a slightly different, um, spin. https://www.barrons.com/articles/billionaires-space-flights-are-changing-the-arc-of-aerospace-history-51626735785

It is kind of interesting that Wally Funk just went up, but still…

Anyway seems there is already a thread dedicated to that topic, so as you were.

ILX, Tranquility Blecch here.

we’re breathin again

Everything’s going just swimmingly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZSuakXj8xI

Has anyone ever read Gene Kranz's book?

I have thought about reading it before, but was kind of put of by the title ;)

My new favorite term I learned from Gene Kranz is battle short or battleshort.

Put off not put of.

Maybe this has already been linked or you already know everything in it but still:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-07-03-mn-11574-story.html

that was a good one!! thx for sharing

i saw Gene’s Apollo 11 flight vest in the Air & Space museum when we visited, it was as cool as seeing Armstrong’s suit

also made me a little ;_; when i realized oh yeah that Neil was still alive when they wrote that

protect gene at all costs

never previously noticed the op, but i am now going to brag that i worked in a minneapolis bookstore with margaret lazarus dean 25 years ago

she was great but unfortunately my most visceral memory of her is being at a party at her house when her cat ran out into the street and was killed

: /

:(

.

fuuuuuuuuuck

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51uYTHpYv4L._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Anyone read this?

Not I, no.

nope

Today I went on a college tour with daughter #2 and at one point the guide said “two of our alumni worked for NASA as astronauts. They flew to the Moon and the International Space Station!” I don’t think it will come as a surprise to the readers of this thread that I asked him if he was sure about the first part of that last sentence and that I was a bit skeptical when he said “Yes!”

lol

“the moon” soundstage maybe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOe5rB8o0To

shatner's bassoon

https://securebooks.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Star-Trek-icon-William-Shatner-rockets-into-space-in-flight.jpg

(apologies, didn't realise this was ilb. still, looks like nobody cares about the unheroic space age)

It’s technically on ILB, but no worries. It has been repurposed for wider usage.

mr veg gave me Andrew Chaikin’s “A Man on the Moon” for Christmas :D

Excellent. Although be forewarned that it does take its time, um, getting off the ground.

Roger.

Can I get a readout on that POLL rollout alarm.

we got you. we’re go on that alarm

:)

I’m only a little way in but god Chaikin is such an effective writer, and structures the narrative so well to keep you wanting to read more - i love that he’s not drowning you in backstory, keeping The Guys front & center, what theyre thinking/feeling & just kinda peppering in backstory where it’s important/illuminating

Yeah, that is definitely the most detailed telling of the story that I came across but he totally keeps things moving along.

today’s notes

i enjoy the synchronicity of having a Chuck Berry AND a Sam Phillips on the Apollo mission staff

:D

i do not enjoy the waste management system

(technically this was yesterday)

Today is the 49th anniversary of the Skylab strike, the first strike in space. Astronauts protested micromanagement, employer spying, and long hours. They demanded a day off, breaks, and greater autonomy, NASA refused so they struck. NASA gave in to their demands after one day. pic.twitter.com/YtT7yDqdI4

— EddieDempsey (@EddieDempsey) December 29, 2021

my favorite detail from the Chaikin book so far is Ed Mitchell’s secret ESP experiments during Apollo 14

(sorry it’s kinda long) (but worth it)

Monday February 1, 1971  7:37 am Houston Time, 16 hours, 35 minutes Mission Elapsed Time.

…(Stu) Roosa noticed a light coming from underneath the right hand couch, where Ed Mitchell was in his sleeping bag. Roosa assumed Mitchel had turned on his flashlight because he’d gotten tangled in a strap. He could not have guessed the real reason Mitchell was awake , that he was conducting his own private experiment in extrasensory perception, unknown to anyone except a handful of people on earth.

… About three weeks before the flight, a chance conversation inspired Mitchell to take advantage of the fact that he would become one of the few human beings to leave the planet. As some of his colleagues knew, Mitchell had long been fascinated by the study of psychic phenomena, for which neither science nor religion offered a satisfying explanation. He’d become acquainted with a couple of surgeons in Florida who shared his interest. Together they wondered, was it possible to transmit thoughts across a hundred thousand miles of space? In the midst of the all-consuming preparation, Mitchell told them “Line up some people and we’ll do a little experiment on the flight.”

And so they did. Each night of the trip to and from the moon, Mitchell planned to perform the experiment, waiting until forty-five minutes past the start of the sleep period, when he had privacy and quiet. He kept his plan a secret from NASA, knowing that the agency would be completely unreceptive to the idea. He said nothing about it to his crewmates. The test subjects had also agreed to keep quiet. And Mitchell wasn’t worried about what would happen if someone found out: with all the cancelled missions he was already certain that Apollo 14 would be his only spaceflight.

Now, floating in his sleeping bag, Mitchell pulled out a small clipboard bearing a table of random numbers. Each number designated one of the standard symbols used in ESP experiments: a circle, a square, a set of wavy lines, a cross, a star. Mitchell chose a number and then, with intense concentration, imagined the corresponding symbol for several seconds. He repeated the process several times, with different numbers, knowing that on earth, four men were sitting in silence, trying to see the pictures in their own minds. After several minutes of this, Mitchell put the paper away and closed his eyes.

Pg 355-357 A Man on The Moon, Andrew Chaikin

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/scratchpad/images/c/cd/Peter_Venkman.png/revision/latest?cb=20171215052040

https://scratchpad.fandom.com/wiki/Peter_Venkman?file=Peter_Venkman.png

https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/ghostbusters-bill-murray-esp.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_U5y3K8Oaw

Astronaut Mark Kelly once smuggled a full gorilla suit on board the International Space Station. He didn't tell anyone about it. One day, without anyone knowing, he put it on. (source: Reddit) pic.twitter.com/v7aVunL7QF

— SPENCE, TODD (@Todd_Spence) January 9, 2022

i have watched that video SO many times
fkn hilarious

Rolling Obituary Thread 2023

^ death of Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham

I hadn't checked in with LM5's YT channel in awhile and completely lost a day watching his Top 100 Space Moments video series. Really well done and even with footage I hadn't seen before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIiMRdcIAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbMRyri3q8I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cimWUVqQy70

Fell into another YouTube hole - this time on the Homemade Documentaries channel. Outstanding quality with footage I've never ever seen before. Charlie Duke himself started commenting on his Apollo 16 doc. His Voyager doc is better than anything I've seen come out of NASA.

RIP Ken Mattingly, bumped from Apollo 13, eventually flew to the moon on Apollo 16, stayed around for a couple of shuttle flights. (Gary Sinise played him in Apollo 13), 87.
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/astronauts/former-astronaut-thomas-k-mattingly-ii/

aw RIP

Rolling Obituary Thread 2023

^ Frank Borman obit and links posted by Elvis T

Borman did release his own book in 1988: Countdown: An Autobiography - iirc it's pretty much a downer. If you read his NASA oral history interview, he's the super-intense military guy who you want commanding the first crewed flight of a Saturn V to the moon (when Anders sees Earthrise and starts taking pictures, Borman immediately says "hey, that's not scheduled") - but his own book is the super-intense military guy trying to figure out why his home is broken, why his wife is an alcoholic, and why the Eastern Airlines unions really hates his guts. Spoiler alert: he hates their guts too.

I have heard several interviews with Borman. He came across as someone who spared no one's feelings, including his own, and gave not an inch to sentiment. Even his description of seeing Earth from space was prosaic. He did have a lot of interesting stories, though.

i guessed "manned" isn't strictly correct: https://crookedtimber.org/2024/02/19/death-lonely-death/

anyway, an evocative post from a site i only very rarely check these days, abt the tin can we threw furthest

Poor voyager

y'all have seen The Farthest right?
https://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/

This one is good too. I drive past the office building featured in this a couple times a week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6L9Du_IFmI

Love The Farthest.

What video is that, Elvis? Stupid YT is geoblocking it.

it's the trailer for It's Quieter In The Twilight - a 2022 doc about Voyager's flight team. It's streaming in a couple of different places, but you can find it on the torrents

Cheers!

I think I posted this one before? The Homemade Documentaries YT channel has been making space documentaries that are routinely superior to any of the NASA ones - especially his Voyager one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M62kajY-ln0

am reading the new Adam Higginbotham book on Challenger

i knew it would be rough but jesus. i’m about 1/3 of the way in and they’ve launched Columbia and almost every single logistical detail of the process of getting that off the ground is so fucking depressing

compounded x 1000 by knowing how this ends

but Higginbotham is such a g at handling technical info, the fact that it is immensely readable is a huge feather in his cap given all the nerdy details that are essential to the telling

anyway uh, i highly recommend?

👍

This looks great, thanks for the rec! Like how the cast of characters includes thread favorites Chris Kraft and Gene Kranz.

Also, skimming the sample, looks like it's recapping a lot of the standard stuff, but in a snappy, interesting way.

With maybe some new info, although maybe I just forgot a lot ;)

yeah that’s the vibe - he cuts to the chase quickly while teasing out memorable details of both people and processes — and is good at keeping it a human story

quite a juggling act

Wow. This is apparently what was supposed to be a STATIC FIRE TEST today of a Tianlong-3 first stage by China's Space Pioneer. That's catastrophic, not static. Firm was targeting an orbital launch in the coming months. https://t.co/BY9MgJeE7A pic.twitter.com/L6ronwLW1N

— Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI) June 30, 2024

good christ

i thought the revive was about the two astronauts stuck in space! 🥺🥺🥺

i know the official line is that they are not "stuck in space" they are "temporarily marooned" but it's not like they can take another route home (or i guess it is but only in a very undesirable way)

i feel bad for them!

sky news: "If Starliner is deemed incapable of safely returning the astronauts to Earth, one option would be sending them home aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon, which ferried four astronauts to the station in March and is able to fit more people in an emergency. That scenario, considered unlikely, would be embarrassing for Boeing."

how are boeing even capable of embarrassment at this point?

Reposting this broken link from upthread related to the book Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,
by Nancy Atkinson, no doubt out of some misguided (GUIDO to thread!) completism: https://www.businessinsider.com/classified-apollo-11-anomaly-threatened-to-crash-first-moon-astronauts-2019-6

they're still stuck up there :(

massive vote of confidence in the craft when boeing/nasa engineers are still fucking about doing important tests on the batteries, the thrusters, updating the onboard software etc while the astronauts have an enforced extension to their mission. Wouldn't want to be them at all. I'd be pulling all stops to embarrass Boeing.

Ugh

I saw the interview with the astronauts today. They seem ever so slightly pressured (figuratively) to do PR for the dodgy af starliner. Both of them talking about how unusually accurate it's perfect autopilot docking with ISS was despite the degraded thrusters not working properly.

"we docked so smoothly onto the space station which will become our purgatory for infinite eons"

the starliner has run into double the budget of the other one that works, for them to end up hitching a lift back in it might be a PR disaster for Boeing. If I was in their position I wouldn't give it a 2nd thought.

Boeing gets paid either way.

(reposting from the obit thread)

RIP Joe Engle, 91. Last surviving X-15 pilot and only astronaut to hand-fly the space shuttle down from orbit. His NASA oral history transcripts are some of the best/funniest.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-remembers-retired-astronaut-us-air-force-pilot-joe-engle

Here he is barrel rolling the X-15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzPRN7ytXv8

(also according to reports Engle routinely and thoroughly picked at Yeager's ego 100% of the time which makes Engle all-time hero)

KING

love him

Meanwhile, the astronauts are still stuck...
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/yes-nasa-really-could-bring-starliners-astronauts-back-on-crew-dragon/

:(

8 weeks into a 1 week mission now. It seems almost certain they'll be returning on the 7 person capacity Dragon spacecraft (apparently mid September) and the Boeing lemon will get dumped. NASA should just publicly admit the Starliner is no way near ready at best and a bit of a lemon, instead of all this stalling crap about them still busy retesting where faults occurred and recalibrating navigation systems to try + make it safe etc, if it was capable of safely returning they'd already be back.

I'm currently very stressed half way through the 6 week summer break, but better than being trapped in space, I guess.

OTM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKbDApzT1iw

Scottish rocket engineering geek Scott Manley(!) on the technical issues.

must smell up there

Thought the same

no it's ok, those hanging odour fresheners you have in cars were reverse engineered from roswell, like velcro

Velcro? On a spaceship? Um....

thats why they crashed iirc

Seriously the infamous Apollo One fire was partially attributed to all the flammable Velcro in the oxygen-rich cabin iirc

after living on miserable rehydratable food and various processed babyfood type gloop from pouches for 8 weeks you might feel so pleased to have a non-tortuous crap, that you don't care about the stench. I bet the ultra low gravity wouldn't help with space constipation either!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJvjWh2Vhu4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F89McWFENTs

The smell would be mitigated by everyone having blocked noses all the time, since zero gravity means your sinuses never drain.

I read someone seemingly in the know saying they'd probably be glad of the delay, as getting into space isn't something you'll be picked for very often so they can spend time making the most of it. I guess they might be itching to return to terra firma by now though, especially if they only packed enough underwear for a week.

In his book, Frank Borman mentions that after Gemini 7's splashdown the smell inside was so bad after 14 days that one of the Navy divers basically passed out when they opened the hatch. IIRC Borman also didn't want to use one of the diapers for shitting, so he basically willpowered himself into not shitting and not removing his spacesuit - that lasted six days until he finally had to give up.

the first human to shit a diamond

https://www.chemistryworld.com/careers/the-man-who-sniffs-spacecraft/3009611.article

Nasa has a volunteer panel of 25 people whose job is to smell items before they are sent into space. The mainstay of this group is George Aldrich. After 45 years on the panel, Aldrich’s nostrils have completed more than 900 odour tests for the agency (his closest rival has only reached the 600s). It’s a role that’s earned him nicknames ranging from ‘Nasa’s Chief Sniffer’ to ‘Nostrildamus’.

Aldrich is not a chemist and never attended university – he joined Nasa’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico in 1973, straight after graduating from high school. ‘My dad worked out here, and he called me and said they were looking for five temporary hires,’ Aldrich recalls. He immediately quit his job to take one of these provisional posts, before becoming a fireman guard for the site. It was his fire chief, who belonged to Nasa’s first odour panel, that got Aldrich into the smelling business at the tender age of 18. ‘He told me about it, since I was young and healthy, and said it was a great thing to do for the astronauts,’ Aldrich adds.

...

Aldrich remembers that his nose was a lot busier in the days when Nasa was still flying its space shuttle fleet, during which Aldrich averaged almost three odour tests per month. Once, he felt he was likely to break 1000 odour tests. Now, with Aldrich only participating in eight to ten odour tests a year, it feels like an elusive goal.

‘The requirements have just changed a little,’ he says. However, even nearing retirement, Aldrich insists his olfactory abilities will remain on standby in case the panel’s workload picks up again. ‘Once they have a problem up there with odour,’ he adds, ‘I think they might change their mind.’

(this just keeps going)

https://whyy.org/segments/exploring-the-space-time-stench-continuum-where-no-nose-has-gone-before/

Astronaut Scott Kelly once said that the International Space Station smelled remarkably similar to a jail he once toured — featuring similar “combinations of antiseptic, garbage, and body odor.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayemv0XMfxw

YouTube user lunarmodule5 posts some of the best mission compilations out there. Apollo 14 countdown->TLI just went live today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUA8jbnLc3k

Wow!

Will watch later

i mean, it's kind of heroic, like trusting an under-tested carbon fibre hull was heroic

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/19/science/spacex-polaris-dawn-jared-isaacman-spacewalk/index.html

(i hope these guys are OK, we will probably be hearing about it if not)

Just mentally misheard or morphed Jim McDivitt calling The Lunar Module a “tissue paper spacecraft” into a “carbon paper spacecraft.”

However, Reisman notes, the SpaceX suits do not include a Primary Life Support System, or PLSS, which is essentially a backpack that allows ISS astronauts to float more freely through space to carry out complex tasks, such as repairing and replacing hardware outside the space station. Instead, the Polaris Dawn crew will receive their life support from long hoses attached to their spacecraft.

innovation through "breaking things" i.e. going back to long hose tech

😑 😣 😩

WCGW?

Or even WCPGW

NASA have announced the astronauts will be returning on the space x dragon thingy in February and they will attempt to bring starliner down uncrewed

Space travel repeats itself: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

i regret to inform you the boeing starliner is haunted

Sorry but why isn’t absolutely every single person talking about the fact that those two astronauts that are stuck in Space are now hearing mysterious heartbeat sounds and no one know what it is. THIS ENTIRE STORY IS INSANE pic.twitter.com/LCD8qxUXLo

— Summer Ray (@SummerRay) September 2, 2024

if twitter's taught me anything that's ppl trapped for days inside a submersible

these guys think they solved it (space ghosts):
https://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-12/02/content_27545348.htm

A mysterious banging noise on the surface of a spacecraft that baffled a Chinese astronaut turned out not to be aliens, but the result of air pressure changes.

sounds like something you’d say if the mysterious banging noise on the surface of spacecraft that baffled a chinese astronaut did turn out to be aliens tbh

the result of air pressures changes caused by aliens (space ghosts)

nobody died, the empty capsule returned without incident. Amazing, this thing actually works!

during re-entry when the strobe lights switched on it looked like a classic ufo

the touchdown was so slow and gentle, it was impressive tbh

Surprised/not-surprised to learn that the Starliner program is a relatively small part of Boeing's overall budget. If you really want to get pig-biting mad, check out the garbage fire that's the KC-46 tanker program

more news from the furthest-ever tin can:

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/16/science/voyager-1-thruster-issue/index.html

it seems quite mad that the computer on V1 is basically a zx spectrum, but with less memory capacity than a zx 80. And this dog is still facing the earth 15 billion miles later.

I love these 2 little guys so much, long may they live.

https://hackaday.com/2025/01/14/repairing-a-real-and-broken-apollo-era-dsky/

(did we have a non-ilb thread for that? i searched dsky, didn't notice the board until it was too late)

No, there isn’t. It’s fine.