Links tagged with “Space”
Apollo
I just finished reading Apollo by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Scott, and it is an absolute must-read if you’re a fan of the moon landings.
Mars is Hard
IEEE Spectrum goes through just how difficult it would be to get humans to Mars:
The shortest one-way trip, using conventional chemical propulsion, would take six months. If you include the time spent on Mars waiting for the two planets to move back into optimal alignment and also the trip home, the total mission would last at least two and a half years. The crew would have to endure extremes of boredom, isolation, and radiation, and they would require a vast amount of fuel and rations packed into a vessel sturdy enough to shield them from the harshness of space. Simply landing a spacecraft safely on a planet with an atmosphere and substantial gravity poses stunning challenges. And then there’s the matter of keeping the crew alive on the Martian surface.
Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, and as JFK said, we do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
LRO sees Apollo landing sites
NASA has posted photos of the Apollo landing sites as seen by the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter (LRO). This is the first time the sites have been photographed, as no Earth based telescope, or even any satellites such as the Hubble Space Telescope, have the resolution to resolve anything on the moon that’s smaller than about a mile wide.
The giant Apollo 11 post
Jason Kottke posted an enormous collection of links, videos, an articles related to Apollo 11. I haven’t had any chance to look through these yet, but I definitely plan on taking a couple hours and reading just about everything.
Apollo 11 Videos
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, NASA released several restored videos of the mission. I went ahead and put the videos on Viddler, so they’re easy to embed. My favorite is the intro video:
Remembering Apollo 11
40 years ago today, Apollo 11 lifted off from Earth on its way to the moon. The Big Picture has some great photos from the misson. Looking at the photos makes me really wish I were alive at the time, but hopefully we’ll be back sometime soon.
LRO's First Photos of the Moon
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recently sent back its first photos of the moon, which you can see over at Bad Astronomy. What’s remarkable is how good the resolution on the photos is:
This image, taken in the Mare Nubium region of the Moon, shows a heavily cratered area. The scale here is amazing: the whole image is 1400 meters across, or just under a mile. That’s like looking out your airplane window… if you were over the frakking Moon!
When LRO settles into its final orbit, it will be able to resolve objects only 18 inches across. I can’t wait to see the shots of the Apollo landing sites (which I mentioned earlier).
Abandoned Spaceships and Moon Buggies
I was poking around NASA’s site today, looking for more information about the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which today entered Moon orbit, and I came across a great article about abandoned spaceships and rovers on the moon.
Included in the article is a video of Apollo 17’s lunar module taking off from the surface of the moon (embedded below). This is the only footage ever recorded of a LM leaving the lunar surface, and it is also the last footage ever recorded on the moon.
To record the video, they used a camera on the lunar rover, which was positioned a fair distance away. One reason previous attempts to record the lift-off failed was the positioning of the camera–if it was too close, it was knocked over by the power of the rockets.
(Note: I uploaded the video to Viddler, so I could embed it here; as far as I know, all NASA videos and images are available for public use, so I shouldn’t be violating any copyright by posting this here.)
Five Physics Lessons for Obama
A great piece on facts regarding nuclear energy, alternative fuels, and several other topics. I’m not sure I agree with #4, that we shouldn’t be sending more humans into space, but I can certainly see where the author’s coming from. The nuclear energy section, however, is right on the money.