Designed as "an expeditionary force for a geologic assault
1" on the Moon’s
Hadley Rille,
Apollo 15 was a groundbreaking lunar mission. Designed to be devoted entirely to scientific exploration, it included a number of notable firsts: first to land outside of the
lunar mare;
first 3 day stay on the moon; first use of the
Lunar Rover by Commander David Scott and Lunar Module Pilot Jim Irwin; first use of the
Scientific Instrument Module, used by Command Module Pilot Al Worden to study the moon from lunar orbit; and first launch of a
subsatellite, used to map the plasma, particle and magnetic fields of the moon. On top of that, Scott gave
a visual proof of Galileo's theory of objects in gravity fields in a vacuum, showing gravity acts equally on all objects regardless of their mass. Scott and Irwin also discovered of the
Genesis Rock, a piece the moon's primordial crust, formed only 100 million years after the solar system itself.
The mission was a spectacular success, publicly called
"One of the most brilliant missions in space science ever flown". The crew was lauded and their future with NASA seemed assured.
Then the stamps hit the fan and Apollo 15 became the first US space crew that was ever fired.
[more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Dec 2, 2011 -
61 comments
Initially the conventional wisdom was that spacesuits “would be like rockets: adamantine, metallic, armored and smooth.” But in practice, rigid spacesuits repeatedly failed under testing. So when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon they were protected from the vacuum of space by flexible spacesuits crafted from twenty-one layers of fabric, “each with a distinct yet interrelated function, custom-sewn for them by seamstresses whose usual work was fashioning bras and girdles” for the Playtex Corporation.
The Spirit of the Spacesuit ,
Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo [more inside]
posted by Herodios
on Jul 21, 2011 -
25 comments
For All Mankind "Al Reinert’s documentary For All Mankind is the story of the twenty-four men who traveled to the moon, told in their words, in their voices, using the images of their experiences. Forty years after the first moon landing, it remains the most radical, visually dazzling work of cinema yet made about this earthshaking event." "For All Mankind is irreplaceable: one of a kind and likely to remain so. It is, formally, among the most radical American films of the past quarter century and, emotionally, among the most powerfully affecting. It makes its impossible title stick. In For All Mankind, we all lift off together, and we all come home the same way, and few movies have captured so well the rhapsodic absurdity of our common voyage."
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posted by puny human
on Apr 7, 2011 -
35 comments
Apollo 14, with
Alan Shepard,
American's first man in space, as the Commander,
Stuart Roosa,
Command Module Pilot and
Edgar Mitchell,
lunar module pilot,
splashed down forty years ago today. It was
flight of the rookies (total previous time in space was 15 minutes, all by Shepard).
There were several odd things about the flight, but no need to worry,
the moon trees are doing
just fine.
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Feb 10, 2011 -
11 comments
They Were There is a 30 min video from IBM, who is turning 100 this year. "
told by first-hand witnesses—current and retired employees and clients—who were there when IBM helped to change the way world works."
posted by finite
on Jan 22, 2011 -
52 comments
Built as part of the fifth
/dev/fort developer retreat,
Spacelog.org allows you to explore early space missions via the original NASA transcripts. Currently live are
Mercury 6 which made John Glenn the first American in orbit, and the 'successful failure'
Apollo 13 (The transcribed
key moment and the
original). Alongside the transcripts are supporting materials from the NASA archives including
photography and descriptions of the
mission phases. The developers are
looking for help to digitise the Gemini 7, Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions.
posted by garrett
on Dec 1, 2010 -
11 comments
At the mostly abandoned Moffett Field in an abandoned McDonald's, digital archeologists attempt to restore, recover and archive abandoned high resolution imagery and data from previous manned Moon missions, using an abandoned Ampex 2" tape drive found in a chicken coop - the last working machine in the world, restored by the last man alive capable of rebuilding the heads.
This is likely only part of their weird story.
posted by loquacious
on May 1, 2009 -
66 comments
In honor of
this morning's impressive lunar eclipse, another moon-photo post: For decades you had to be a scholar or specialist to get access to the original Apollo flight films, most of which have been stored in freezers at Houston's Johnson Space Center. Now Arizona State University and NASA are scanning the negatives with high-resolution equipment and creating
an online digital archive of downloadable images for the general public.
Here are
the first few, from Apollo 15.
(Similar topics previously:
1,
2,
3,
4.)
posted by GrammarMoses
on Aug 28, 2007 -
9 comments
I contend
this house-swaying performace at the Apollo Theater earlier this year, purporting to feature soulful everyman
Brad Prowley ("real life homeless man . . . who makes a living singing classic R&B songs on the streets of major cities not just to get by, but out of a true, life-long passion for music"), actually showcases
this man in disguise. You be the judge.
posted by azaner
on Jul 15, 2007 -
71 comments
Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man. Direct Google Video link to a fruitcake-tastic half-hour film of "a symposium held at Boston University on November 20, 1972 that explores the implications of the possible existence of extraterrestrial life within the galaxy and the universe. " Well worth scrubbing through for some good moments if you don't have time to watch the whole thing.
Other cool old NASA videos on google video include
Who's Out There?, starring a cigar smoking Orson Welles squinting a lot and reading off the cue cards, and
Debrief: Apollo 8: "Happiness is bacon squares for breakfast".
posted by 6am
on May 11, 2006 -
7 comments
Moonbase Visions. You've
read about and
discussed NASA's plan to use
new post-shuttle launch vehicles to return to the moon.
But what, exactly, is the US planning to
do on the moon? What would a semi-permanent moonbase look like? And why return at all? NASA's announced answers to these questions remain vague. But last year eleven sets of responses to these questions were offered to NASA in
the development proposals submitted to NASA by eleven Aerospace concerns, each of which suggested different designs, missions, and philosophies for NASA's return to the moon. Some common themes:
Military:
"Provide nationally assured access to orbital locations for the placement of observation systems" and "assured access to space for development of force projection systems and movements of logistics." (pdf link, p. 5)
Commercial:
"Commercialize space products and services" (pdf link, p.6)
Public Relations:
Keeping the public inspired with "regularly placed program milestones." (pdf link, p.7)
It's interesting to compare the details of these proposals. But taken together, they raise a broader question: does NASA's fear that the public will lose interest in this commercializing, militarizing, moon venture reflect an awareness that that
the vision has finally been lost?
posted by washburn
on Sep 22, 2005 -
62 comments
Thanks to
Yahoo's video search, I've spent the morning thrilling to movies from Nasa's earlier space programs.
Ed White
does the first american spacewalk,
the crew of apollo 8 sends out a christmas message (wonder how that would play these days),
Neil Armstrong goes for a walk,
Buzz Aldrin gives a science lesson,
John Young goes muddin',
Apollo 17 lifts off from the moon.
Galileo gets his due via Apollo 15,
as does Kubrick, via
Skylab.
all this makes
the Challenger explosion just incredibly sad.
Though I still don't know why
searching for apollo 8 turned up gay porn and I don't wanna know.
What is really interesting though, is watching
this Apollo 17 astronaut work on the moon. His body is moving in all sorts of subtle ways that highlight
how odd it must be to work in lower gravity.
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Jan 9, 2005 -
35 comments
