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Heinlein and Clarke discuss the Moon landings as they happen (2016)
- oldandtired 8y agoAs it happened. At our little country school, there was great deal of effort to set enough televisions so we could watch the event live. What I find amusing was seeing a video recently by a film producer/director talking about the difficulties of that time of faking the moon landings. What I took away from the video was that it was cheaper to send men to the moon than it was to build all the film and storage technology to fake the moon landings.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoThese 'fake' instrumends left behind continue to function. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment
- oldandtired 8y agoThat has been one of my little favourite things about the whole "fake" debate and the question that goes with it. "How were these instruments placed so precisely on the moon, if they weren't put there by a man?"
- Sharlin 8y agoTo be fair, you don’t need a manned mission to install a retroreflector. The Soviet pre-Apollo Lunokhod landers included similar reflectors and they work fine.
- utopcell 8y agoValid point, but with a crucial correction: The Lunokhod landers landed on the moon way after Apollo 11 [1] so they are in no way pre-Apollo. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_programme
- Sharlin 8y agoOops, right! I read that the Apollo retroreflectors were improved based on Lunokhod experiences and got confused. Presumably the text was referring to the later Apollo 14 and 15 reflectors.
- utopcell 8y agoPut it differently: both faking it and actual landing were monumental engineering feats for the time
- AllegedAlec 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw
- oldandtired 8y agoOh the irony, excellent skit.
- rzzzt 8y ago"Moon hoax not" by S G Collins: https://youtu.be/TYFMU7XfyzE https://youtu.be/TYFMU7XfyzE
- Angostura 8y agoI love that one. In addition - Moon hoax or not by Mitchell and Webb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M50Fd3gXvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M50Fd3gXvM
- utopcell 8y agoIMO, the best way to experience the Apollo 11 landing is on [1]. [1] http://www.firstmenonthemoon.com http://www.firstmenonthemoon.com
- rzzzt 8y agoSpacelog transcripts are also very well made: http://apollo11.spacelog.org/ http://apollo11.spacelog.org/
- pimmen 8y agoThe US didn't fake the moon landings, the American politicians faked that it was about anything but beating the USSR. They supported it and sold it as a research project to further humankind, as dipping our toes in the cosmic ocean. Then, after the Russians were beat, the interest among the decision makers cooled off.
- dh5 8y agoIt was clear from the beginning it was about beating the Soviets. The fear of the USSR achieving space superiority was very real at the time, especially after Sputnik. JFK even said in his moon speech the US needed to establish "a position of pre-eminence" and would do so with the landing.
- golergka 8y agoNobody on either side of the cold war made much effort to conceal that most of the rocket research was intended towards ICBM arms race, not peaceful research. No sane nation would pump that much money into simple research and awe. It was about the next war, or all the game theory stuff that predates or prevents it. And rightly so.
- nabla9 8y agoI remember how school physics teachers face lit up when the discussion about moon landing came up. He told that there was great speculation and differing opinions on what would happen next (like Heinlein and Clarke do here) but nobody thought that next 50 years would be just "Boldly going where Yuri Gagarin has gone decades before". Simple rule for futurology: Economies of scale + incentives >> inspiration + technological ability. Our smartphones match or outpace what science fiction of that time thought possible. Internet has transformed our culture in just few decades. In space only satellites are good business and they make just $260 billion revenue per year. There is not enough ROI in space to justify investing significantly more money into it.
- 3rdAccount 8y agoAs far as the smartphone angle you mentioned, it makes for a decent analogy, but isn't entirely relevant unless I'm being too specific. Computational power was never the problem getting to the moon. The analog computers were basically some op-amp circuits. I think they had a differentiator and an integrator. You don't need 4 modern cores running on Android or anything. In fact, simple is probably best and safest. Overall, I'm just being nitpicky and fully agree with the rest in that space currently isn't worth the economic cost.
- nabla9 8y agoYou were too specific. Hundreds of billions are spend in computer and electronics R&D every year because they increase economic productivity and there is vast market and demand for them. The demand enables fast development track. If space exploration was the only use for computers, we would be still using 60's era computers. Without military applications for missile technology we might not have been in the moon at all.
- adventured 8y ago> nobody thought that next 50 years would be just "Boldly going where Yuri Gagarin has gone decades before" Pretty comically dramatic undercounting of what has been accomplished since Yuri Gagarin. Hubble alone embarrasses that premise. The ISS does as well. What New Horizons recently accomplished, by itself, is enough for me to feel entirely comfortable with what we've accomplished as a species over last 50 years regarding space. The same goes for Curiosity on Mars. The sole issue is the lack of understanding and appreciation for how difficult these truly extraordinary accomplishments (of which there have been many others I didn't list, such as Voyager or Rosetta) are compared to merely blasting someone into an orbit around the planet.
- sparkzilla 8y agoHere's a joke Arthur C. Clarke told me about the Navajo and the moon landings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NEh8nspzXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NEh8nspzXw
- iofiiiiiiiii 8y agoBBC Space Race (2005) is a great 4-part series about this (albeit a bit overdramatized): * https://youtu.be/xcLphSY8PX0 https://youtu.be/xcLphSY8PX0 * https://youtu.be/kefm18yAFco https://youtu.be/kefm18yAFco * https://youtu.be/UxTf-kWbYk4 https://youtu.be/UxTf-kWbYk4 * https://youtu.be/wZI8uLCsjlU https://youtu.be/wZI8uLCsjlU
- pp19dd 8y agoIf there ever was a good time for a book recommendation, check out "The Calculating Stars." Probably the most impactful part of the book is the appendix, where it's made abundantly clear how much of it was based in reality.