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Apollo astronaut Frank Borman has died
- toomuchtodo 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Borman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Borman
- xyst 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20231109231446/https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/11/09/frank-borman-astronaut-eastern-dead/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231109231446/https://www.washi...
- dewski 3y agoImagine your obituary being hidden behind a paywall.
- Aperocky 3y agoThat is outrageous, I think most? present media sites have control over which article to paywall, to paywall an obituary is baffling at best.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoWhy would I expect someone to host/write it for free?
- dylan604 3y agoWhen were obits ever free? The family typically paid to run an obit in the paper. I can't imagine why it would be any different. After that, people had to pay $0.25 to $2.00 for the paper to see them.
- krustyburger 3y agoNewspapers used to cost a lot less than $0.25 and the ones still printed today tend to cost more than $2.
- douglasisshiny 3y agoIsn't that just inflation?
- dylan604 3y agowhat's your point?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kube-system 3y agoYeah, around the same time a decent wage used to be $20k.
- tbossanova 3y agoLibraries typically keep archives of newspapers accessible for free. I imagine the long record of obituaries in this archive would be invaluable for certain types of research.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoI’m somewhat surprised a WikiObituary doesn’t exist yet, with them collectively written and crowdsourced prior to death and licensed permissively. Wikipedia + ChatGPT to do the heavy lifting perhaps for the rough cut, and then clean it up. Might try to find some time to spike a GPT or something and see what happens.
- tagami 3y agoIf you're old enough Facebook, becomes this.
- xyst 3y agookay, I might roll in my grave if an obit is published in fb Adding that to my will: - under zero circumstances will you publish any posthumous docs/writings/obituaries to Meta, Facebook, or anything bearing Zuckerberg’s name - all to be made available publicly, any fees associated to be paid out of estate
- xyst 3y agoI’ll be dead. I wouldn’t give af if it was written on toilet paper. Obituaries are more for the living to help with the grieving process. When my grandparents passed, I think my parents and extended family wrote something and submitted that to the local newspaper. In a way, it’s always been like that. I guess.
- zabzonk 3y agoi remember apollo 8 so well. how brilliant. is anything that good ever going to happen again? often these days i think not.
- dylan604 3y agoWhen Crew1 launched, I watched it and the landing like it was an Apollo mission. The US sent people to space, again, finally. It's sad that we had to get back to just that capability.
- tekla 3y agoArtemis and Starship.
- pbourke 3y agoThe Mars rover landings, Pluto flyby and SpaceX successful returns have been pretty exciting. Feels like we’re building to more exciting times with the beginning of return to human space flight past LEO now.
- ricksunny 3y agopretty clever mission patch: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8
- moron4hire 3y agoKen Mattingly also died recently https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Mattingly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Mattingly I only know this because he worked at my company. And I only found that out the day after he died. A little sad I never got to meet him.
- TMWNN 3y agoTwo interesting facts about Apollo 8 beyond the whole first-flight-to-the-moon thing: * Two of its three astronauts became CEOs of Fortune 500 companies: Borman at Eastern Airlines, and William Anders at General Dynamics. (The third, Jim Lovell, stayed with NASA and survived the Apollo 13 explosion.) * Borman (command pilot) and Lovell (pilot) had flown together on Gemini. Borman again commanded Apollo 8, despite Lovell having more experience in space as he had flown again on Gemini as commander.
- ChicagoBoy11 3y ago...And Jim got into the Telecommunications business before all the consolidation stuff and made himself a significant sum of money along with it!
- jebarker 3y agoI think there are now only eight men still alive that flew to the moon and only four that walked on it. I hope there'll be some still alive to see the next person walk on the moon.
- dylan604 3y agoI'm nowhere near the age of an Apollo astronaut, and I hope I'm alive to see the next person on the moon.
- ChicagoBoy11 3y agoIf Artemis goes on as planned, hopefully you'll just have to hold on at least a few more years!
- dylan604 3y agoHas anything about Artemis occurred as planned? Why would we be silly enough to expect it to start now?
- tekla 3y agoArtemis 1 flew without incident and Orion landed back on earth nominally and achieved all scientific objectives.
- dylan604 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_1 Launch date November 16, 2022, 06:47:44 UTC (1:47 am EST) "Artemis 1 was outlined by NASA as Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) in 2012, at which point it was set to launch in 2017" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_2 "Launch date During preliminary reviews in 2011, the launch date was placed somewhere between 2019 and 2021, but afterwards the launch date was delayed to 2023 on an SLS launch vehicle.[25][26] Although, as of March 2023, the mission is pegged for a November 2024 launch,[1] the need to recycle and refurbish components from Orion that flew on Artemis 1 may push this back to later in 2024 or the first quarter of 2025" I'm getting older just reading it
- martinclayton 3y agoSeems Jim Lovell is now the oldest living Apollo astronaut. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_astronauts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_astronauts
- dkislyuk 3y agoRocket Men by Robert Kurson tells the Apollo 8 story in a captivating manner. Some of the passages are quite dramatic but it's justified given the litany of firsts accomplished by the mission.
- hcrisp 3y agoI read it recently. I came away amused by Borman being such a no-nonsense person. He would warn the other guys on his crew if they joked too much or goofed off. He was a straight shooter, and didn't mind telling NASA when something wasn't being done right. When Apollo 11 landed on the moon he considered the job done. He thought they had beaten the Russians to the moon and why would anybody want to go back? He was devoted to his wife, who suffered from addictions due to the frazzled life of her husband's career.
- ChicagoBoy11 3y agoSeems to go hand-in-hand too with his later recounting that he had no further interest to go back to the moon to walk on it; he was there to "beat the Russians" and loved his family too much to risk his life to "go pick up some rocks." From all accounts, he was clearly an extremely brilliant man with a sense of purpose, skill, and courage aplenty to go along with it. Glad the US put his talents to good use!
- jbandela1 3y agoThis video of the Apollo 8 launch along with commentary from the astronauts always gives me goosebumps: https://youtu.be/Syf_uLrBAJU?si=Wx-OF1HgtgM5sKaF https://youtu.be/Syf_uLrBAJU?si=Wx-OF1HgtgM5sKaF
- scj 3y agoDuring the Apollo 1 investigation, he said something that suck with me when thinking of begrudging users who are willing to look past faults for utility: "There's no question that it was a coffin, and I'd have flown it gladly."
- ethbr1 3y agoExplains the preference for test pilots -- when abnormal is normal, you're in rarified company. Amazing when "the office" might kill you.
- Animats 3y agoAt the time, the career casualty rate for fighter pilots was one in five. Just from flying around, without any enemy.
- jeffdn 3y agoAre you sure that number doesn't include Vietnam?
- Animats 3y agoYes. Read "The Making of an Ex-Astronaut",[1] from someone who quit the program because the part about becoming a fighter jock was too dangerous. Four US astronauts died in jet aircraft accidents in the 1960s.[2] [1] https://archive.org/details/makingofexastron0000unse/page/162 https://archive.org/details/makingofexastron0000unse/page/16... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents#During_training_or_testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...
- wut-wut 3y agoDamn, what a badass comment and you know he meant it.
- ChicagoBoy11 3y agoThis reminded me too of Jim Lovell's reaction when they switched the Apollo 8 plan at "the last minute" to actually be the first TLI mission. Something about the way he tells it, and just the sheer (and apparently extremely genuine) reaction of awe, wonder, excitement, mixed with a seeming complete lack of worry, concern, self-preservation instinct, just kinda signals to me those guys were just built different.
- aaronharnly 3y agoI've been listening with my kid to the excellent BBC podcast "13 Minutes to the Moon"[1]. It does a great job describing both the astronauts' experience (including Frank Borman and Apollo 8) and the scale and speed of efforts on the ground. I highly recommend it. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2
- unethical_ban 3y agoI listened to the first episode and it seemed to have what I call "Ted radio hour syndrome": an excess of quick cut audio, sound effects, and drawn out narration that had me, an enthusiast of manned spaceflight, bored. Maybe it was like season 1 of a TV show where you gotta give it a few shots. The book "A Man on the Moon" was quite well written though, and some day I may read "failure is not an option".
- Shawnj2 3y agoUnfortunately the entire thing is cut like that but I do think the actual content of the podcast is good.
- closewith 3y agoThe Brady Heywood podcast had a great series on Apollo 13 that covered parts of the earlier missions. Unfortunately they "remastered" and rereleased it with the same awful pacing and music, but the originals are still available in the feed.
- lsofzz 3y agoOh no. A really sad moment. My condolences are with him. RIP.
- venti 3y agoOfficial statement from NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-administrator-honors-life-of-apollo-astronaut-frank-borman/ https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-administrator-honors-...
- lalabert 3y agoApollo 8 was the greatest of all the Apollo missions. The greatest leap into the unknown with the greatest number of unknowns! For me, Borman and his crewmates never quite got the kudos they deserved. A true loss.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago> Borman and his crewmates never quite got the kudos they deserved. It’s worse than that. Indiana named a horrible stretch of perpetually under construction interstate after him.
- daltont 3y agoI read this book, https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Men-Odyssey-Astronauts-Journey/dp/0812988701 https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Men-Odyssey-Astronauts-Journey... and Apollo 8's accomplishments were way under-rated.
- airtonix 3y ago[dead]
- CHB0403085482 3y agoI still haven't recovered from Ken... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Mattingly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Mattingly
- albeebe1 3y agoColonel Borman, may you rest in peace. For those reading this, check his wikipedia page. He has a very inspiring legacy.
- billforsternz 3y agoApollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger is one of my favourite books. It was basically extraordinary that NASA gambled so extravagantly, combining multiple steps in the planned sequence into one mega mission in order to get back on schedule after the disastrous fire and meet Kennedy's aspirational goal. Chances of success? (surviving the mission), maybe 50%. Thinking about Frank Borman being alive and well and still flying his plane has been a favourite thought for me, and I'm very sad to have to retire it.
- heresie-dabord 3y agoIt is thought-provoking to consider how much the success of the Apollo programme depended on courage as well as other qualities of character: "When Shepard was grounded in October 1963, Grissom and Borman became the prime crew of Gemini 3.[41] Grissom invited Borman to his house to talk to him about the mission, and after a long discussion, decided that he could not work with Borman.[34] According to Gene Cernan, "the egos of Grissom and Borman were too big to fit into a single spacecraft".[44] Slayton therefore replaced Borman with John Young.[41] Slayton still wanted Borman for the two-week flight [...] so Borman was assigned as backup commander of Gemini 4, with Jim Lovell as his co-pilot. [...] Prime and backup crews trained for the mission together, and Borman found the experience as a backup valuable, amounting to a dress rehearsal of their own mission.[49] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Borman#Project_Gemini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Borman#Project_Gemini
- ZaoLahma 3y ago> ... and after a long discussion, decided that he could not work with Borman. This I wish was (still?) acceptable. It's like somewhere along the way we decided that everyone must be able to cooperate effectively and efficiently with everyone, and largely (do our very best to) ignore all the problems that brings. I've only been at one company where they tried to address this, and actually let us form our own teams. It worked better than expected.
- sirsinsalot 3y agoNot working together in a situation where character differences can mean life-or-death in a high-stakes mission that depends on a few souls ... ... is not the same as refusing to work with someone in an office doing low-stakes work. That said, humans cooperate better when they get along, but the lines are in totally different places and the degree to which character differences matter in those two settings is radically different too. Assembling a team, I would take care to pick people who get along, just to lower day-to-day friction. But if two people can't leave some of their emotional baggage at the door to write some code ... well, they need help frankly. The office isn't and shouldn't be a high enough stress environment that character flaws are involuntarily amplified, therefore different rules of thumb apply. Be an adult.
- shon 3y agoGodspeed Frank. Thanks for your service.
- Gina65 3y ago[flagged]
- bryananderson 3y agoMichael Collins—who was bumped from Apollo 8 due to a medical issue and of course ended up flying Apollo 11 instead—became increasingly convinced with time that it was Apollo 8, more so than 11, that represented the true landmark in human history. Apollo 11 was when we first arrived somewhere new, yes, but it was Apollo 8 when we first dared to venture out into the dark. For the first time we surrendered the ability to quickly return to Earth in a matter of minutes or low-single-digit hours. Collins’ autobiography Carrying the Fire is easily the best of the astronaut memoirs, and is written purely by Collins without a ghostwriter. It wasn’t one of the talents NASA was looking for, but I’m glad they sent an excellent writer to the moon.
- ChicagoBoy11 3y agoCan't more emphatically recommend Collins' book. Having read my fair share of Apollo stuff, this, and the Blye Cox Apollo books are easily the best. Also, I'll add that apparently Charles Lindbergh spoke with Jim Lovell at the 11 launch and also expressed that, in his mind, the most significant leap was also 8, which I have sympathy for. There's something about being on that spacecraft for the first TLI, having nothing but the math to trust, that is deeply exhilerating, incredibly scary, and awe-inspiring.
- cobbaut 3y agoCollins’ autobiography Carrying the Fire is also an excellent book to get a feel of the 1960ies. Like four (out of twelve?) people dying during training because, well it's a really hard training. In 2023 if so much as one person gets an injury then the project is suspended for years until a committee decides it is safe again.
- jmk123 3y agoMichael Collins was also CAPCOM (capsule communicator - the one who was actually talking to the astronauts) when they initiated TLI (translunar injection - leaving earth's orbit for the first time). He was the one who said "Apollo 8, go for TLI".
- ChicagoBoy11 3y ago
- spandextwins 3y agoSo sad. We really need to get back to the moon, not just for the adventure, but for the technology. There was a lot of technology that came out of the space program that wouldn't exist, even today.
- pfdietz 3y agoCan you give examples and explain why? BTW, integrated circuits are not such a technology. A general problem with all such claims is establishing that without the space program, the technologies would never have been invented.
- moffkalast 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies It's a decently long list, though not all of them from Apollo obviously.
- pfdietz 3y agoAgain, the problem with all those is establishing they would not have arisen without NASA. Another problem is the transition from "NASA was involved with this technology somehow" to "NASA is entirely responsible for this technology". Behind all this is the presumption that technological advancement is limited by the availability of inventions rather than the availability of markets.
- moffkalast 3y agoAh in that respect I'm sure just about all would have been invented eventually, just like aviation or calculus were by different people during the same time period, albeit a lot later and likely tied to a corporation with exclusive rights for 20 years (like FDM 3D printing was for example, which I still kinda consider almost a crime against humanity) instead of being freely available for licensing. There are a few that are completely space dependant however, like GPS, orbital weather monitoring, communications, satelite imagery, knowledge about other planets, etc. the kind of thing that has space travel as a prerequisite. Before GNSS and satelite maps navigation was pretty much hell, detecting tropical cyclones early and evacuating has certainly saved a lot of lives. Of course if NASA hadn't done these, then ESA or Roscosmos or whoever would've, but in terms of argument I think we're talking about space agencies in general.
- GnarfGnarf 3y agoWe are approaching a time when there will be no one alive who walked on the moon.
- mr_toad 3y agoLast time someone walked on the Moon I could barely walk at all. I’m going to be pissed if I don’t get to see somebody walk on the Moon again before I die.
- nakedneuron 3y agoSomewhat off-topic, but did anyone notice: Apollo The "A" could symbolize a rocket, the both "o" would stand for earth and moon (also in the official logo), the "ll" could represent break lines, symbolizing the vast distance between the two bodies and "p" could mean impulse (like the symbol in physics) or propulsion which brings the rocket from one place to the other.
- t-s 3y agoThere’s a display in the Air & Space Museum here in DC with a succinct quote from Mr. Borman: “Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty! “