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Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater
- winestock 14y agoQuote:"Now thirty five years later, Cernan and Schmitt are still the last to walk on the Moon." That page was last updated in December of 2007, so add another four years. How many people in this forum can truthfully say this sentence: "Man has not walked on the moon in my lifetime." Say it again. Say it again. Say it again until righteous rage makes you want to spit on all of the bureaucrats, activists, and other parasites who clipped humanity's wings. Repeat after me: "Man has not walked on the moon in my lifetime."
- 51Cards 14y agoWell, they have in my lifetime... but at bordering 42 I'm higher than the average here. Still, I was too young to remember it which is about the same.
- wonnage 14y agoPersonally I'd rather take heart looking at the private-industry space vehicles getting off the ground - if humans do avoid blowing ourselves up and make it to the stars, the ability to do it profitably and sustainably will be much more significant than hooning around in a government-run rover again. "righteous rage" is a little much.
- 46Bit 14y agoI look on this as another example of the miraculous leap the moon program was. Being so far before it's time, it was miraculous but doomed nonetheless. You can't commercialise something that was only affordable because two countries were trying to out-cold-war each other. Now, I hope and believe, we can.
- lylemckeany 14y agoReminds me of this graphic: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/303619_10101187877171453_909806457_n.jpg https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/303619_... Ugh...
- adventureful 14y agoThe moon isn't very impressive at this point. Apollo 11 was 43 years ago. I'm mildly annoyed that humans haven't walked on Mars in my lifetime yet. In not quite 70 years we went from being very earth bound, to walking on the moon. As such I'm far more disappointed by the extremely modest space flight progress of the last 43 years (particularly given the radical advancements of other helpful technologies).
- warmwaffles 14y agogravity is a hard thing to overcome and replicate
- mkramlich 14y agoDue to SpaceX and Elon Musk alone I think we're going to see mankind set foot on Mars in our lifetime.
- stevewilhelm 14y agoI remember the Apollo 11 landing and the missions preceding it. They were incredibly inspirational to me. That being said, without coupling space exploration with proper funding of the America's public educational system, K through PhD, NASA should be a small fraction of the National Endowment for the Arts budget.
- rogerbinns 14y agoI can recommend some books about the era that are very good reading. http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Man-Moon-Astronaut/dp/0312199066 http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Man-Moon-Astronaut/dp/0312199... written by Eugene Cernan (the last man on the moon) http://www.amazon.com/Flight-My-Life-Mission-Control/dp/0452283043 http://www.amazon.com/Flight-My-Life-Mission-Control/dp/0452... written by and about mission control http://www.amazon.com/First-Man-Life-Neil-Armstrong/dp/B001O9CGHG http://www.amazon.com/First-Man-Life-Neil-Armstrong/dp/B001O... about Armstrong but representative of many astronauts (and the only book Armstrong cooperated with) http://www.amazon.com/Two-Sides-Moon-Story-Space/dp/0312308655 http://www.amazon.com/Two-Sides-Moon-Story-Space/dp/03123086... about the US and Soviet perspectives written as a collaboration between an astronaut and cosmonaut Current era: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393339912 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393339912 This one is also a good read which roughly summarises our current knowledge about having people live for over a year in space (how long it would take to get to Mars). (Spoiler: not much)
- malbs 14y agoI'd also recommend reading "Carrying the Fire" by Michael Collins, it's probably my favourite book written by a Gemini/Apollo astronaut
- Nick_C 14y agoNice list. I add "Failure Is Not An Option" by Gene Kranz, flight director on both Apollo 11 and 13 and also in flight control from way back to the Mercury program. It's a nice history of manned space flight from the controllers' perspective. Very interesting, especially from a general engineering point of view. http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Is-Not-Option-Mission/dp/0783891369 http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Is-Not-Option-Mission/dp/07838...
- bfe 14y ago"Humans have not walked on the Moon in my lifetime." I remember being really disappointed as a little kid when I first learned we hadn't yet gone anywhere farther away than the Moon. I want to go to other planets and explore them when I grow up.
- jparise 14y agoIt's also fun to remember that all of the Apollo moon landings took place during just a 3.5 year period in the middle of the Nixon administration.
- simonh 14y agoAbsolutely, what we need to solve all humanity's problems is more moon rock. If only we had enough moon rocks, things would be just so much better. Why can't the paper pushers and beureaucrats just get with the program and give us our moon rocks? How much moon rock do you think we need? A dozen tons? A hundred tons? Wow, imagine what we could achieve with a hundred tons of moon rock. Why, the sky's the limit! Which pressing need of humanity for moon rocks do you think we should tackle first?
- rimantas 14y agoYeah. Imagine the same kind of thinking many many years ago: why would we play with fire—it burns! Why should we leave the cave? Why should we sail the seas?
- simonh 14y agoWhy shouldn't I wear my pants on my head and run down the street naked? Maybe I'll start a new trend. Note that I'm not against us going to the moon. The fact is we've done it. So now if we're going to do it again, all I ask is for an actual reason to do so. If it turned out that fire had no actual useful applications and was just horrifically dangerous, we would perhaps have experimented with it briefly and then forgot about it. We wouldn't still be habitually setting everything around us on fire, just because. It turned out that fire did have many useful practical applications though.
- ericd 14y agoYou're really missing the point of going to the moon really, really hard.
- jwu59 14y agoSpit on bureaucrats? You sound arrogant. Sorry but they had bigger issues than catering to your lame childhood wishes. I recommend you go live in an Indian slum for a few years to realign your selfish priorities.
- ericd 14y agoThe fact that humanity has not reached a uniformly high standard of living doesn't at all mean that we shouldn't keep expending extraordinary effort and resources to keep the frontier of science moving forward. On the contrary, advances of science will make it easier to raise the baseline standard of living.
- jlgreco 14y agoI am so glad our bureaucrats are hard at work fixing those Indian slums. Had we not ended manned moon missions, there might still be people living in poverty today!
- jerrya 14y agoThat photograph of them on the edge of the crater is wonderfully dramatic. Makes me wonder what instructions they had, precautions they took, preparations they made to make sure they didn't tumble in accidentally.
- andrewfelix 14y agoNot to feed the conspiracy nuts...but why are the shadows on the left and right of the shot being cast in different directions?
- Renaud 14y agoBecause its a panorama taken of multiple shots that span a very wide area of whole scene, almost making the resulting shot a 360° view.
- caf 14y ago"This sharp panorama is digitally stitched together from pictures taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the valley floor."
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- icegreentea 14y agoWell, it's a panorama. If the light source (sun) is located in the 'missing' portion of the panorama, then you would expect the different shadows on either side of the missing bit. This is consistent with the apparent shadow under the buggy. Here's a terrestrial example of the madness that happens to shadows (and geometry in general)with panoramas. It's partly less obvious on the moon since it lacks familiar references. [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundeena-pier-360-panorama-NSW-Australia.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundeena-pier-360-pan...]
- andrewfelix 14y agoGreat reference shot. Thanks.
- ricardobeat 14y agoMany features in moon photographs are bizarre, I don't blame the nuts too much... In this crop from a panorama, for example, the rover seems completely out of proportion, like a miniature: http://cl.ly/3M0v0S3R2M2N3h180Q1W http://cl.ly/3M0v0S3R2M2N3h180Q1W Compare the size of the footprint and the stones in the left side, to the stones near the rover. Either the moon has some weird rock distributions, the image is highly deformed, or this is a fake :) The fact that for multiple generations we haven't been up there again just contributes to the idea.
- markbnine 14y agoA bunch more Apollo panoramas. . . http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/maps/Moon-Apollo-Landing-Panoramas http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/maps/Moon-Apollo-Landing-Panora...
- Luc 14y agoThis is a beautiful image, but I think the colours are a bit off. There's some vertical red banding especially on the left of the image that I can't un-see. I emailed the person who made these about this once, and he mentioned he had a slight colour-blindness. I know there's some colour on the moon, but I don't think it's as much as this image suggests.