Here's video of retired Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the 2nd man to walk on the moon being confronted by an asshat named Bart Sibrel who calls him a "coward, a liar and a thief." It's great stuff.
Here's a longer video of the same thing...which show's Mr. Sibrel as a genuine asshat who deserves more than just getting clocked, Buzz should have beaten the crap out of him!
My father Dr. Edwin G. Vail, Ph.D., USAF (ret) was a "rocket scientist" in the 50's and 60's. He was part of the team the developed the first partial pressure suits and then went on to make the first full pressure suits that were then, with slight modifications used by NASA. There are two near life-size photographs of him in the "space suit room" of the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.
In the mid 1960's where we lived many of the kids parents I went to school with were working in space related industries. But, because most of that work was highly classified, we didn't know what they were doing, myself included. A common question that fell out of favour was "what does your daddy do?" because the answer most often was "I don't know, he can't tell us." As a reward, after the first moon landings, NASA sent the Apollo astronauts around to the various companies to meet the workers, but more importantly, to be seen by the families at company picnics and such.
At one point, I had personally autographed pictures of all the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts. Unfortunately, they disappeared in marital break up...big sigh...
My father maintained to his dying day that by going straight to the moon instead of building a permanent space station in a geosyncrinous orbit (approx 28k miles up) that we made a huge mistake. His point was that by failing to take the smaller steps, we lost the chance to begin colonization and exploitation of the Moon and asteriod belt for the forseable future. Events of the past 40 years have proven him right.
His take was that by building a pernament station, with gravity (1/2 a G would have been sufficient) to use as a way point, we missed the ability to build, in space, vehicles that could have been used to travel within the solar system. Additionally, by maintaining a government monopoly, we strangled any possible benefits that could have been derived from such intra-solar craft.
It's well past time to remove the hurdles that our government has laid down to discourage civilian space craft. We must, not only encourage private companies, it's the only way to get off the ground at this point, since NASA has long since stopped being in the "space" business and has become yet another government "jobs" program...
Hat Tip: Instapundit
4 years ago
2 comments:
My father maintained to his dying day that by going straight to the moon instead of building a permanent space station in a geosyncrinous orbit (approx 28k miles up) that we made a huge mistake.
He's right, as you'd guess from nearly all the pre-Apollo science fiction on the topic. According to Arthur Kantrowitz, a key player in the development of re-entry technology, going straight to Moon spent a billion dollars more in Texas, so that was the method chosen.
I heard the above from him in a talk at MIT sometime in the late '80s; Wikipedia has this less specific version through Jerry Pournelle:
Arthur Kantrowitz tried to convince Kennedy's people that the best way to the Moon was through development of manned space access, a von Braun manned space station, and on to the Moon in a logical way that left developed space assets. That didn't work, because Johnson's support of the Moon Mission was contingent on spending money in the South: the real objective was the reindustrialization of the South. The Moon mission itself was a stunt.
The "old man" was a huge fan of Jerry P. He bought most of his books...and I've inhereted most of them as well.
It was a stunt, because after the stunt...we left space to the Soviets, who couldn't really afford to make a geo-synch space station a reality. They were only able to afford a low earth orbit vessel...which has led to the cobled together monstrocity we have today...which is still in a relatively low earth orbit.
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