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Trivia: Jim Lovell is the only person to fly to the moon twice without landing on it (scheduled "test flight" on Apollo 8, unscheduled emergency on Apollo 13).
by FabHK 1y ago
Trivia: Jim Lovell is the only person to fly to the moon twice without landing on it (scheduled "test flight" on Apollo 8, unscheduled emergency on Apollo 13).
12 people flew to the moon without landing on it, now only 1 is still alive (Fred Haise).
12 people walked on the moon, 4 are still alive (Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, Charles Duke, Harrison Schmitt).
(Conclusion: walking on the moon is healthy?)
- dyauspitr 1y agoConclusion: the people selected to walk on the moon were fit and healthy
- WJW 1y agoI don't doubt that the people selected to walk on the moon were indeed fit and healthy, but it seems like a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier Apollo missions were selected to less stringent criteria. The selection effect should be just as strong for the people who "merely" got to fly around the moon. So out of two sets of people selected for being healthy, one group seems to be much more alive than the other. (Also yes obviously the sample size is too low to draw meaningful conclusions)
- amalcon 1y agoIf anything, it would be even more so. If a person on the moon had a medical emergency, this would be a serious problem but there's another person there to help and/or fly the lander back to the capsule. If the person in the capsule had a medical emergency, it's hard to see how any of the crew survive. More likely though, as you suggest, the same astronomical standards (pun intended) applied to all crew members.
- garaetjjte 1y ago>If the person in the capsule had a medical emergency, it's hard to see how any of the crew survive. They could spacewalk and open CM hatch from the outside. Wrench for opening the hatch was stored in the lunar module.
- gonzobonzo 1y ago> I don't doubt that the people selected to walk on the moon were indeed fit and healthy, but it seems like a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier Apollo missions were selected to less stringent criteria. It's not a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier missions could have been older on average, though. Just looking at some of the ages, 2 of the still alive crowd are younger than all of the Apollo 8 astronauts. All of them are younger than two out of the three Apollo 8 astronauts. Even a few years difference in age can make a huge impact when we're talking about people in their 90's.
- LorenDB 1y ago> (Conclusion: walking on the moon is healthy?) NASA vetted the Apollo astronauts for those who did not have medical problems, so it would be more accurate to say they walked on the moon because they were healthy.
- sealeck 1y agoThey also vetted the people who didn't walk on the moon (because they apply the same testing to all astronauts).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- shermantanktop 1y agoI also didn't walk on the moon, so therefore I'm healthy.
- hollerith 1y agoThe average lifespan of the astronauts that did not walk on the moon might be even longer than the ones that did. I mean, you don't have any data (or evidence) on that one way or the other; do you? ADDED. Oops: the comment 3 levels above gives data. I regret wading into this thread.
- xattt 1y agoWhat about backup crews as a control?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- elliotec 1y agoIncredibly small sample size, but aren’t they all
- frosted-flakes 1y ago
- hinkley 1y agoLong flights without getting up to stand are dangerous after all.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI have a dream that another human will walk the Moon while at least one of the Apollo astronauts is still alive to watch.
- potato3732842 1y agoI bet a couple will see it it on their deathbeds in the same way that Adams and Jefferson refused to die until the country hit a key milestone.
- drweevil 1y agoI'm wondering if the surviving Apollo astronauts are kinda like the surviving '72 Dolphins ;)
- Bluestein 1y agoThis would be so great - a "changing of the guard" of sorts ... If only Apollo hadn't lost momentum ...
- ToucanLoucan 1y agoI mean it's not so much that they lost momentum as there's just... not a ton of good reasons to go to the moon. It's a long, incredibly dangerous trip and there's just not much there. Same reason we've never sent people to Mars, it's even more complicated, magnitudes more dangerous, and what exactly are we accomplishing in doing so...? Nothin there.
- snozolli 1y agoGeorge W. Bush called for a permanent moon base back in '04. The primary motivator, from what I recall, was as a launching point for Mars exploration. https://www.npr.org/2004/01/15/1597182/bush-calls-for-manned-base-on-the-moon https://www.npr.org/2004/01/15/1597182/bush-calls-for-manned... The timeline is pretty entertaining and a bit depressing, if you wanted to see the plan succeed: ... By 2014: The first manned mission for the Crew Exploration Vehicle. By 2015: Astronauts will land on the moon using the Crew Exploration Vehicle. By 2020: The United States will have established an extended human presence on the moon, using it as a launching pad for other manned exploration missions. As for why, 1) to ensure the survival of humanity, 2) to drive scientific development and 3) because it's there.
- latchkey 1y agoWalking is good exercise!
- karim79 1y agoI'm not sure how galactic cosmic rays, other forms of radiation, and a small fraction of Earth's gravity (1.62 m/s²) could make it healthy and contribute to longevity. I'll go with NASA vetted the hell out of the health of their astronauts.
- ReptileMan 1y agoRead Lost Moon where Lovell explained how he was rejected because he has had a flu in the past tense. It was couple of steps above hell out. They really got the creme de la creme.
- eksu 1y agoDo the moon viewers skew slightly older as a group because the earlier missions did not include space walking, and the walkers skew slightly younger? Could also be impacted by fame / levels of personal income from being in one of the two distinct groups.
- throwawaylaptop 1y agoStaying not depressed, active, and social is probably HUGE in terms of long lifespan. Someone that walked on the moon is probably feeling pretty dang good for a long time about themselves. And people want to talk to them. Someone that flew but didn't probably doesn't have that same advantage.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kqr 1y agoLog-odds difference from contingency table: ln (4×11) - ln (1×8) = ln (44/8) = ln 5.5 ~= 2.3 × lg 5.5 ~= 2.3 × 0.75 = 1.75. Standard error of log-odds difference: √(1/1 + 1/11 + 1/4 + 1/8) ~= √(1 + 0.09 + 0.25 + 0.13) = √(1.47) = 1.47^0.5 = 10^(0.5 × lg 1.47) ~= 10^(0.5 × 0.16) = 10^0.08 ~= 1.2. The effect is 1.75/1.2 ~= 1.5 standard errors from zero, thus not significant by common thresholds. You would find Fisher's exact test in agreement, but I like the (vepry slow) party trick of doing this all in my head. Techniques: - Poor man's logistic regression: https://entropicthoughts.com/contingency-table-for-poor-mans-logistic-regression https://entropicthoughts.com/contingency-table-for-poor-mans... - Mental logarithms: https://entropicthoughts.com/learning-some-logarithms https://entropicthoughts.com/learning-some-logarithms
- FabHK 1y agoVery neat! Just one comment: For square root of 1.47 you don't need to take the log, half it, and exp it again. It's just sqrt(147/100), or a bit more than sqrt(144/100) = 12/10 = 1.2. (If you like mental math you can then run an iteration of Newton's method: you take the remainder between the number and the square of your guess, 1.47-1.44 = 0.03, and divide it by twice your current guess, and add it to the current guess: 0.03 /(2x1.2) = 3/2.4 / 100 = 1.25 / 100 = 0.0125, so the next guess would be 1.2 + 0.0125 =1.2125. And the actual sqrt of 1.47 is 1.2124355653..., so that's pretty close. Newton's method roughly doubles the number of accurate digits at each iteration.)
- kqr 1y agoOh. That's actually very helpful. I hadn't realised Newton--Raphson could be that easy to use in practice. The closeness between 1.47 and 144 did strike me.
- FabHK 1y agoIndeed - taking the square root of numbers iteratively is very satisfying, because of the super fast convergence. Sqrt 10: Guess 3, then residual is 10 - 33 = 1, so next guess add 1/(23) = 1/6, so now we're at 3.166..., and the square of that is 10.0277..., so you're very close already.