Man on the Moon – July 20, 1969

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July 20, 1969. The most momentous and historic achievement in human history. Hard to believe it’s been 53 years since humans landed and walked on the Moon. Even harder to believe we haven’t been back. When Apollo 17 lifted off from the Cape for the final Apollo Moon mission in 1972, everyone was already talking about missions to Mars by the year 2000.

It was just talk. Still is.

But Americans can be proud of this anniversary. No single human endeavor in the past 53 years has paralleled or compared to the Apollo program, and especially this date, when grainy TV images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the lunar surface thrilled and captivated millions around the world. And while the quest for journeying to the Moon was more political than scientific, it will always be a feat that will be permanently embedded in the history books for as long as the human race exists.

What’s sad is when I come across younger people, especially teens who look at the Moon landings of Apollo as almost an afterthought. With probes sending high resolution images of distant Pluto, and telescopes that look back to the beginning of time itself, landing and walking on the Moon would seem like a Sunday drive to most young folks. They have no clue that, back in the 1960’s, going to the Moon and back was the most significant technological achievement ever attempted, and still remains today the crown jewel of all human endeavors.

Let’s all pause today and reflect that on this date in 1969, the entire world came to together as one, if only for a few fleeting moments.

"War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. And I say let us give them all they want" ----- William T. Sherman

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53?

cheers, Paul

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2022-1969=53

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SueW

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53 years! WOW. It’s been more than that since I was at the Lunar Receiving Lab while it was being built.

Dana:))

HTH, Dana:))

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While still in good part political, the main thing going on now is that there is a serious race between various space-faring nations to go back to the Moon in the near future and to setup bases there where people can live and work in and outside them. These bases are essential for learning how to survive and even thrive under harsh conditions so inimical to human life that, at present, just staying alive would be a major task that leaves little room for anything else. To find out how to move beyond this is the essential part of becoming able to live in other worlds of the Solar System and, who knows? perhaps some day beyond it.

The Moon is the closest large world to Earth and so the most accessible one when it comes to receiving supplies and help from Earth, or sending to it products made in the Moon, or people who need medical attention not possible in one of those bases. This makes it a very good reason for trying to live semi-permanently first there and only later, the necessary lessons already learned, in Mars (which is almost as deadly as the Moon), or exploring Europa, Ganymede, Titan, as well as for having people doing other possibly useful and profitable things, such as mining asteroids.

While much can be done using robots, the long communication delays with Earth and back makes it necessary to have people in place out there, if for nothing else than to take care of things immediately.

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Millions are still convinced that ‘man on the moon’ was a hoax as the technology wan’t there at the time…

https://krishna.org/man-on-the-moon-a-colossal-hoax-that-cost-billions-of-dollars/

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/10/one-giant-lie-why-so-many-people-still-think-the-moon-landings-were-faked

https://www.enkivillage.org/moon-landing-hoax.html

https://theunredacted.com/moon-landings-the-apollo-hoax/

https://listverse.com/2012/12/28/10-reasons-the-moon-landings-could-be-a-hoax/

….

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Alex I don’t know if “millions” still believe in that old conspiracy theory, although I am not surprised to learn that many still do. But many would believe anything that cast doubts on things that they feel are outside their comfort zone. Why the Moon landings? Maybe because learning about such a magnificent achievement by others leads them to unpleasant comparisons with their own measly ones? Or whatever. Frankly, I’ve never understood what is those people have between their ears.

Once, long ago, I saw a movie with O.J. Simpson as the lead actor, where some men, soldiers I seem to remember, out in a military exercise, got lost in a desert and ended up in an abandoned film set that, judging by what they found there, had been used by NASA to make faked Moon-landing TV film and pictures. At the time I thought the movie was a deadpan comedy, but later on I had doubts about that being so.

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Alex5723 wrote:

Millions are still convinced that ‘man on the moon’ was a hoax as the technology wan’t there at the time…

Well there are billions of us and if even 1% of us are loony ( ) that makes millions.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Lars220

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According to the article in “The Guardian” linked by Alex, about 4% – 5% of the US population (around 330 millions) believes this was a hoax. Also some hundreds of thousands in the UK. That makes a few million people older than, maybe, 18 (as babies and children probably are not to be counted) in the US and a smaller number in the UK, plus whatever many may believe this elsewhere.

Not a percentage of billions but, even so and if this information is correct, quite a few people still believe the Moon landings were not real. And not all are nuts, if we assumed that nuts are 1% of the total. Which is the most depressing thing of all about this.

But enough of this, and back, I hope, to why the real present developments brought to our attention by Clear-Thunder are important for the future of space exploration and to find out if it is possible in the near future to establish functional, useful and long-lasting extra-terrestrial settlements, first on the Moon, then on Mars and beyond.

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Congrats to the Apollo 11 team, 53 years ago today! I have always been in awe of the Apollo space program. I have toured the NASA space center at Cape Canaveral, and have seen the relics of that era. Too real to have been a hoax or a movie set, IMO.

I am all for going to the moon or Mars to further human exploration, but not for our collective survival or colonies. I think the best chances for the survival of the human race is to take care of planet Earth.

The main reason is that we are not able to survive outside of Earth’s magnetic field for very long. Radiation will be a killer, on long duration space flights, or on the surface of other planets, moons, asteroids, etc. Even if we can solve the issues of air, water, and food, there will still be radiation to deal with.

So unless we invent technology to eliminate that risk, long term human colonies off-Earth are just science fiction dreams.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/space-radiation-is-risky-business-for-the-human-body

“In space, outside Earth’s protective magnetic field and atmosphere, there is a very complex radiation field of protons and all the elements on the periodic table are coming in at energies approaching the speed of light,” Slaba said. “Exposure to radiation in space is quite different than exposure to radiation on Earth (like X-rays and gamma rays).”

https://www.space.com/21353-space-radiation-mars-mission-threat.html

“An instrument aboard the Curiosity Mars rover during its 253-day deep-space cruise revealed that the radiation dose received by an astronaut on even the shortest Earth-Mars round trip would be about 0.66 sievert. This amount is like receiving a whole-body CT scan every five or six days.

A dose of 1 sievert is associated with a 5.5 percent increase in the risk of fatal cancers. The normal daily radiation dose received by the average person living on Earth is 10 microsieverts (0.00001 sievert).

The moon has no atmosphere and a very weak magnetic field. Astronauts living there would have to provide their own protection, for example by burying their habitat underground.

The planet Mars has no global magnetic field. Particles from the sun have stripped away most of Mars’ atmosphere, resulting in very poor protection against radiation at the surface. The highest air pressure on Mars is equal to that at an altitude of 22 miles (35 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. At low altitudes, Mars’ atmosphere provides slightly better protection from space radiation.”

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Lars220

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I agree that the future place for a substantial part of humanity, for the predictable future, is here on Earth, so we better start taking better care of it, and in a hurry.

That said, there are also good reasons for some humans to live on other worlds than our on, to explore, do in situ experiments and observations that could be carried out much faster than with robots, mine asteroids for precious minerals rare on Earth, etc.

If you have seen the pictures of rovers on Mars, or read about how far they have gone after weeks on the move, you may have noticed how very slowly they advance. That is because most of what they do is to execute entirely on their on the important and even vital moves needed, moment to moment, to follow some general instructions received from Earth earlier that day or week. “Hmm … there is a rock in front, what could be very loose terrain on the right and a big hole on the left, so how can this rover get from here to beyond these obstacles to continue executing the instruction of “go from where you are now to coordinates x, y, z, stop there and get ready to take photos and some rock samples, per instructions to be sent once you get there”?  So the robotic rover is a semi-autonomous machine, because the instructions it receives from people on Earth take as much as twenty four minutes to reach it and another twenty four for its reply to be received at the Control Center.

If there was a base with astronauts on Mars and they could travel on some vehicle, with adequate shielding from radiation, to follow and guide a rover or some other useful moving machine, or do the work themselves on board their vehicle, much more could be accomplished in a shorter time.

As to protection of people from cosmic radiation in the absence of a strong magnetic field to deflect or slow down much of it, as we are fortunate to have down here, the bases could be built underground. Both in the Moon and Mars there are lava tubes (*) that from data collected with several Moon and Mars orbiters and also as calculated based on the lower gravity there, can be much much bigger inside than those here on Earth, large enough to accommodate small cities. That might or might not turn out to be be very practical, but is one of several possible solutions to the radiation problem.

Another problem worth mentioning is that of an occasional meteors bombardment. Neither the Moon nor Mars have the thick, protective atmosphere we have here on Earth, that causes many of these rocks to burn out before they reach the ground, or explode in smaller fragments, or at least slow down considerably, so their impacts are less energetic than they would be without such protection. Without it, no much could be done other than to have satellites orbiting the Moon, or Mars, with equipment capable of detecting approaching meteoroids, calculate their trajectories and figure out which ones, if any, are likely to hit near where a settlement is located and, if they find any meteoroid like that, to issue a warning to those there to take shelter.

(*) Two years ago I did a study for NASA on ways to detect and map Moon lava tubes, from their effect on the gravity field around them sensed from an orbiting satellite with a special instrument for measuring this effect from high above — and had to learn quite a bit about lava tubes, not onlly on the Moon and Mars, but also here on Earth, for that study. It was fun; I love my job.

 

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Lars220

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OscarCP wrote:

If there was a base with astronauts on Mars and they could travel on some vehicle, with adequate shielding from radiation, to follow and guide a rover or some other useful moving machine, or do the work themselves on board their vehicle, much more could be accomplished in a shorter time.

Agreed, and hopefully they will solve that problem with materials to provide that shielding, at least sufficient for space transit and for surface exploration.

That subterranean lava tube habitat idea may prove interesting. I was always amazed by the scene at the end of the 1959 film “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, where the explorers were blasted back to the surface of the earth through a volcanic chimney by a wave of lava. Riding in an asbestos altar bowl. What a ride!

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JohnW: I added an “artist impression” just above your comment.

The return to the surface by shooting out from a volcano is in the original “Journey to the Center of the Earth” Jules Verne novel too.

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JohnW

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OscarCP wrote:

JohnW: I added an “artist impression” just above your comment.

That almost looks like a scene of the underground city of Zion from the film “The Matrix”.

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