The moon, and something I've never thought of before

Bobb Fwed

I thought this was interesting, it had never even crossed my mind:

http://youtu.be/QBK3QpQVnaw?t=9m24s

W9GFO

I highly recommend you watch the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. The Nixon speech was mentioned in it.

Heater.

Which part had never crossed your mind?

As a thirteen years old guy in England I followed the progress of the Apollow 11 mission avidly. I was totally overwhelmed by the idea that those guys were going out there with a high probablilty they cannot make it back. I could not imagine how fearless you would have to be to even think about doing that.

localroger

That speech was crafted out of an abundance of caution. They really didn't have a lot of doubt about Apollo 11 working. They'd done the whole drill except for landing itself in Apollo 10, with the LM coming within 8 miles of the lunar surface before executing the orbital rendezvous, and the LM had been flown extensively in Earth orbit during Apollo 9 so its capabilities were thoroughly tested, and since the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere there wasn't much reason to expect any surprises. The lunar surface had been proven to be solid and reliable by several unmanned landers. So it was really bad luck and not the total unknown that that speech was about.

Had Apollo 13's oxygen tank explosion waited to happen when the LM was on the surface, that speech could very well have been in for some last-minute editing and deployment though.

Also, the astronauts would not have starved. They would have run out of oxygen long before either food or water became an issue. I would imagine that if I had been one of the pair that faced such a fate I would have spent my last hours figuring out how we could get the hatch open and both make it to the surface and see the Earth without a piece of glass in the way in the 15 seconds or so you have of consciousness when exposed to vacuum.

whiteoxe

Off topic but.. I watched a talk on quantum mecanics and they did the good old sending electrons through one or two slits and ten took notice where they landed. If you werte having controls that enabled u to see whch electron passed through a slit it was all 'normal, as expected) THEN IF YOU DPNT. OR TAKE AAY THE ABILITY TO SEE WHATS GOING ON THE RESULTS ARE 'MAJIC' THE ELECTRON PSASSES THRPOGH BOTH SLITS AND IS PICKED UP BY THE PATTERN CAPTURED ON THE 'WALL') The electron was in two places at one but the act of observing makes the experiment end because bt watchng the electron only passes through one of the slits.

So one of theres folks proposed an interesting question "Is the moon still there if nobody is looking at it? "

ElectricAye

Firefighters, police officers, rescue workers, military people (of course), even diplomats are sometimes faced with entering situations in which they know they might never survive. The Right Stuff happens at so many of the wrong moments.

kwinn

whiteoxe wrote: »

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So one of theres folks proposed an interesting question "Is the moon still there if nobody is looking at it? "

This type of philosophical navel gazing is a relic of the Aristotelian world view, like water having an "innate desire" to flow to the lowest level. If humans became extinct the moon would still be there. Unless of course our extinction was caused by the moon dropping on our heads.

whiteoxe

i CANT REMEBER THE LECTURE Lawrence Krauss GAVE AND REFERRED TO IT. bUT i DONT BELIEVE IT IS AN ENTIRLY DEAD ISSUE sorry for caps.. They were playing around with seemingly absurde idea but from they had learned from quantim machanics is that in fact idf nobnody loked at it and all sensers were off then the moon may not be there, untill you turned around and looked for itb I think it would be still there but their argument s were pretty good

ElectricAye

localroger wrote: »

... The lunar surface had been proven to be solid and reliable by several unmanned landers. So it was really bad luck and not the total unknown that that speech was about....

Did they have any way of knowing the lunar soil wasn't somehow toxic or pathogenic? Had prior missions sent back samples for analysis? Or were the unmanned landers able to determine that?

whiteoxe

I dont know what Lawrence iq is but it seems good. Your post mentioned there were people there to observe it. That breaks the rule.

Martin_H

The Moon not existing when you are not looking at it was a quip by Einstein about the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. He despised the notion that particles don't have definite properties until measured or possibly observed. Most of his thought experiments (e.g. EPR paradox) to prove locality ended up back firing when people eventually did the experiment and the paradoxical results happened.

The argument centers around what counts as a measurement. For example in the delayed quantum eraser experiment a measurement is taken the information is destroyed. This produces the same result if the measurement is not taken. However, if the results are observed then the system acts like the measurement was taken. While I'm not a fan of loopy interpretations of QM, there's definitely strange things afoot at the circle K.

Heater.

That's what gets me about the Schr

localroger

ElectricAye wrote: »

Did they have any way of knowing the lunar soil wasn't somehow toxic or pathogenic? Had prior missions sent back samples for analysis? Or were the unmanned landers able to determine that?

There weren't any successful sample returns before Apollo 11, but there were meteorites strongly suspected of being lunar in origin and in practice most of the expected mineral chemistries were inert. The returning astronauts were quarantined after returning in case of pathogens. There was very little opportunity for contact between the astronauts bodies and actual lunar material except for dust tracked into the LM.

ElectricAye

localroger wrote: »

... There was very little opportunity for contact between the astronauts bodies and actual lunar material except for dust tracked into the LM.

I guess running a vacuum cleaner inside the LM would have been a bit uselessly redundant.

bill190

Bobb Fwed wrote: »

I thought this was interesting, it had never even crossed my mind

There are a LOT of things which go on in this world which are kept from the general public...

From the following link...
["Horror stories of Korean War POWs -- brainwashing and torture -- had led the CIA Agency to furnish U-2 pilots with cyanide capsules and the infamous poison needle hidden in a bisected silver dollar. Powers never took them along. Like the other pilots, he considered their use optional, not mandatory."]

The U2...
http://area51specialprojects.com/u2_mayday.html

erco

My friend's son just met Buzz Aldrin at a book signing today, he made quite an impression. It reminded me of this old Punky Brewster episode, where Buzz did a cameo after the Challenger disaster in 1986: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1QDHZHad1Q

Tragedies do happen, lessons are learned, and progress goes on. It is amazing that the Apollo program returned all the astronauts safely from the moon, but of course during training there was the deadly fire on Apollo 1.

LoopyByteloose

I can't but think of all the men that have gone to sea and been left to tread water in the midst of a vast ocean for the final moments of their life and wondering what went wrong. Or the sailors on all sides in WWII that found themselves being dragged to the bottom of the ocean and having to accept their fate in those final moments.

This is indeed a very compelling YouTube, but for me it reeks of a media exploit of the iconic heroes of the modern world. And sadly presents the ever-present pragmatism of the Washington, D.C. spin doctors to write up a speech for every contingency when the eyes of the world are turned your way.

Most brave men died alone and didn't have multiple versions of their obituaries written in advance for their handlers to revise and review in terms of gaining the most political cashe.

I lived in a fishing town on the Oregon Coast for three years, and every year some didn't come home, and it was never known why or how. They were just lost at sea.

~~~~~~~~~
On the other hand, I was in Taxco, Mexico when these men landed on the moon and the whole town stopped to watch the event. I sat on a hillside above a hotel that had pulled out one of the few available TVs and placed it on a table that about 500-1000 people sat in front of.

It gave me the impression that for that one event, the whole world had paused to see history. I was quite proud to be American, the Mexicans all said they loved America... but hated Nixon. I felt they were honest and sincere, and I was treated as a welcome guest.

Why are we talking about tragedies that never happened?

Miners, fishermen, loggers, taxicab drivers all deal regularly with death as an occupational hazard - just like soldiers and astronauts.

erco

Interesting vid on telescope resolution.

MikeDYur

It's crazy to doubt we ever went to the moon. I found a picture from an earth bound telescope recently of Jupiter and two of it's moons. Thought it was pretty cool, going to see if there is a a high-res of it.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap170325.html