3 ms·

How Curiosity, Luck, and the Flip of a Switch Saved the Moon Program (2014)

52 points by dctoedt 11y ago

dmd 11y ago
> (For the astronauts, speeding into space at one and a half times the speed of sound, a mile and a half up, time, according to Einstein, was literally slowing down.) Indeed! Those intrepid relativistic explorers, at Mach 1.5, would experience 0.99999999999855 seconds for every 1 we poor earth-bound non-moving folks did. Of course, once they were on the way to the moon, moving at the far faster 11 km/s, then they'd really start to get some relativity going on: 0.9999999993 seconds for every 1 in our rest frame.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  The relativistic effects of just being a satellite in Earth orbit are enough that GPS has to correct for it. Don't discount the impact of even tiny errors in this stuff.
  - rimantas 11y ago
    Don't discount the importance of context.
quesera 11y ago
> There was a driving rain on Cape Canaveral on the morning of November 14, 1969 ... Interestingly, Cape Canaveral didn't formally exist in 1969. The name was changed to Cape Kennedy six years prior, and restored four years hence. Great article though. Vice has come a long way.
grecy 11y ago
> burning some thirteen metric tons of fuel per second Whoa, the mind boggles.
- noselasd 11y ago
  I suppose when you have 5 of these, http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/eande-f1scale.jpg http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/eande-... , you can push a lot of fuel through.
Animats 11y ago
This is a dumbed-down version of a story told in more detail in various histories of Apollo. I think it's in Mike Collins' book. Anyway, there are key points here that the story doesn't mention. The Saturn V booster's control system was completely independent of the crew capsule systems. It had its own guidance, gyros, computers, and telemetry, those were all working, and the ground knew they were all working. The astronauts had no control over the booster anyway; they could abort, but that's all. They weren't driving at that point. As long as boost phase was going well, there was no urgent reason to abort; more altitude offered more return options, along with time to fix the problem. The Apollo stack had a good grounding system; the possibility of a lightning hit had been considered. Lightning didn't, in fact, do any significant damage to the onboard systems.
raverbashing 11y ago
Funny how there was a small fumble with the 'SCE to AUX' and they didn't try to use the phonetic alphabet to solve that

52 points by dctoedt 11y ago

dmd 11y ago

> (For the astronauts, speeding into space at one and a half times the speed of sound, a mile and a half up, time, according to Einstein, was literally slowing down.) Indeed! Those intrepid relativistic explorers, at Mach 1.5, would experience 0.99999999999855 seconds for every 1 we poor earth-bound non-moving folks did. Of course, once they were on the way to the moon, moving at the far faster 11 km/s, then they'd really start to get some relativity going on: 0.9999999993 seconds for every 1 in our rest frame.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ubernostrum 11y ago
The relativistic effects of just being a satellite in Earth orbit are enough that GPS has to correct for it. Don't discount the impact of even tiny errors in this stuff.
- rimantas 11y ago
  Don't discount the importance of context.

quesera 11y ago

> There was a driving rain on Cape Canaveral on the morning of November 14, 1969 ... Interestingly, Cape Canaveral didn't formally exist in 1969. The name was changed to Cape Kennedy six years prior, and restored four years hence. Great article though. Vice has come a long way.

grecy 11y ago

> burning some thirteen metric tons of fuel per second Whoa, the mind boggles.

noselasd 11y ago
I suppose when you have 5 of these, http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/eande-f1scale.jpg http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/eande-... , you can push a lot of fuel through.

Animats 11y ago

This is a dumbed-down version of a story told in more detail in various histories of Apollo. I think it's in Mike Collins' book. Anyway, there are key points here that the story doesn't mention. The Saturn V booster's control system was completely independent of the crew capsule systems. It had its own guidance, gyros, computers, and telemetry, those were all working, and the ground knew they were all working. The astronauts had no control over the booster anyway; they could abort, but that's all. They weren't driving at that point. As long as boost phase was going well, there was no urgent reason to abort; more altitude offered more return options, along with time to fix the problem. The Apollo stack had a good grounding system; the possibility of a lightning hit had been considered. Lightning didn't, in fact, do any significant damage to the onboard systems.

raverbashing 11y ago

Funny how there was a small fumble with the 'SCE to AUX' and they didn't try to use the phonetic alphabet to solve that