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
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
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
