Chuckanut
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
For an interesting documentary on how those rocket engines ended up in American rockets, watch this rather interesting youtube video.
Man that was quite an explosion. I also think part of the challenge of rocket science is the failures are so highly visible.
I wonder how the bad press will affect ticket sales?
Off topic…. but a quick story. I worked for Megacorp 1 which bought Megacorp2. After a program enhancement they had a big “all hands”. All the mucky-mucks were there. I and my coworkers were listening in on a conference room phone.
Mucky-muck says “Folks, you should be proud. We spent over 3 hundred thousand billable man-hours on this project and that equates to how many man-hours NASA puts into a shuttle launch. So congrats on being the NASA of the banking industry”.
My co-worker puts the phone on mute and says, “Um, no. NASA straps people onto a bomb. Blasts them into the vacuum of space, supports all their life systems for weeks, returns them thru the 3,000 oF atmosphere and lands them on a dime on a 2 mile long runway in Florida……….and we can see Megacorp2 account numbers on our screen”. I laughed and laughed.
This Day in Space History: Apollo 12 and SCE to AUXthe phrase “SCE to AUX” used to describe a situation where one narrowly averts a catastrophe by coming up with an ingenious plan.
Awesome story.
There is a reason that people describe something really hard to do as rocket science. I guess this week is good reminder why that is the case.
“SCE to AUX”
This Day in Space History: Apollo 12 and SCE to AUX
The video below is a great, short film about this relatively unknown but harrowing event in Project Apollo.
I think people are being lulled back into the pre Challenger view that space travel is easy. Or, at least, they have it down pat.
We had some lucky breaks with Apollo.
If the Apollo 13 explosion had occurred shortly after the moon landing, the astronauts would not have had the lunar lander to use as a life boat until they were close enough to earth.
Apollo 12 was hit twice by lightening that knocked out all telemetry from the Saturn V. They were close to aborting the flight when one fellow remembered an oddity from a simulation run done a year before. He gave his suggestion "take SCE to AUX" and telemetry was instantly restored. The mission continued on and was a success. Most of the flight crew had no idea what he was talking about. This engineer earned the title of 'steely eyed missile man."
Apollo 11 LEM came down in a boulder field on the moon which would have destroyed the lander. Armstrong was able to hover long enough to reach a smoother patch with only seconds of fuel left - past the abort point - so they were going to have to land in whatever place they found themselves. When time came to blast off from the moon they discovered that the LEM control panel was damaged and the switch to ignite the lift-off was broken off and it was unclear how much damage had been done to the circuitry. Aldrin rigged up a felt tip pen to jab where the switch would have made contact and was able to ignite the blast off from the moon.If the Apollo 13 explosion had occurred shortly after the moon landing, the astronauts would not have had the lunar lander to use as a life boat until they were close enough to earth.
Apollo 12 was hit twice by lightening that knocked out all telemetry from the Saturn V. They were close to aborting the flight when one fellow remembered an oddity from a simulation run done a year before. He gave his suggestion "take SCE to AUX" and telemetry was instantly restored. The mission continued on and was a success. Most of the flight crew had no idea what he was talking about. This engineer earned the title of 'steely eyed missile man."
It's been a bad week for commercial companies trying to make a buck sending satellites and people into space. Bramson's Space Ship 2 blew up today killing one test pilot.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Crashes: 1 Dead, 1 Injured - NBC News