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1mofo
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Joined: 11/14/2007
Msg: 127 | |
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| So where were YOU when man first walked on the moon?
Posted: 11/17/2007 7:45:45 PM | I had just recently turned 8, and I was glued to the TV watching all of the Apollo missions. If you had asked me then, I would have thought by now we would have had a full-fledged colony on the moon, with mining and mass impellers, orbital yards for building spaceships, solar farms, darkside observatories and all the rest, and I was counting on being part of it. But America lacked the political will to make it happen. Looking back now, its as if Queen Isabella had said to Columbus, "Let's feed all the hungry people here, and stop all the wars, before we go and explore something new." If that was the case, we'd still be waiting for European civilization to discover America.
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| So where were YOU when man first walked on the moon?
Posted: 11/20/2007 6:38:09 AM |
I would have thought by now we would have had a full-fledged colony on the moon, with mining and mass impellers, orbital yards for building spaceships, solar farms, darkside observatories and all the rest, and I was counting on being part of it. But America lacked the political will to make it happen. Looking back now, its as if Queen Isabella had said to Columbus, "Let's feed all the hungry people here, and stop all the wars, before we go and explore something new." If that was the case, we'd still be waiting for European civilization to discover America.
I agree,what a disappointment the 21 st century turned out to be.I'm still waiting for the big,black monolith to pop up on the moon and cause people to do intelligent things,but we know that's a fantasy .
Now if someone like a real life Zefram Cochrane could just be born...... But then he wouldn't get funding either with the present day mindset. | |
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| So where were YOU when man first walked on the moon?
Posted: 11/20/2007 10:42:47 AM | .
Damn, I'm starting to think that perhaps I'm way too old to be here! Maybe I should be fitting myself up with one of those walkers with wheels some of the very old people use. lol
For the first two Moon shots, I worked as a junior (then mid level) engineer at a Southern California aerospace company with a name most people would recognize. One of my jobs was to prototype the equipment used to monitor the astronauts. And yeah, we had live coverage of the whole thing where I worked. However, we also had one hell of a lot of champaign getting drunk at that time so some of what I saw may be a little foggy.
When they landed on the Moon that first time I was in a large viewing area filled with people from the company (all involved in the Apollo Project in some way) there was dead silence. All those engineers and scientists and no one was really sure what would happen. Same thing getting them off the Moon again. Dead silence until they docked up again.
Yup, we celebrated a bit that week! Most of us stayed at work to watch the live feed and when that was over the company practically needed a bulldozer to remove all the pizza cartons and food wrappers -- and many, many wine, beer and whatever bottles. The place was a mess and we all smelled like pigs, but it was surely a very interesting time. Quite the experience for a young man starting out.
When I remember the electronics used in the spacecraft back then I shudder! The memory in the computer consisted of three large cans of core memory, each containing just 130,000+ bits. Today, the cheapest cell phone has hundreds of times more memory and runs thousands of times faster.
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| So where were YOU when man first walked on the moon?
Posted: 11/21/2007 8:50:29 PM |
Damn, I'm starting to think that perhaps I'm way too old to be here!
Don't feel bad. I had forgotten about it. I had to look it up to see when it happened. 1969, eh? That would have put me at age 26 and I had just moved back to Atlanta. I worked on those old computers. The first one had a whopping 10K core memory and I repaired a memory card once by replacing one of the cores that was cracked and was missing. I sewed the address and sense wires through the new ferrite core.
Imagine virtually holding just one bit of a computer in your hands today.
As for the hoax arguments I can tell you from first hand experience that the military and government entities have far advanced technology compared to what you might be able to purchase as a civilian. When the moon landing took place, four years had passed since I was in the military and some of the technology of the radar I had worked on was not seen in the consumer sphere until recently. You just wouldn't believe what is possible. .
Instead of believing that the moon landing was a hoax, you'd be more accurate to believe the stories about alien technology and reverse engineering of saucers. Not saying I have information on that point but from what I have seen in my life, there is more chance of the latter being true.
I just have to comment on the idea of a person taking pictures of the step off the lander being on the moon already. Think about it, if you were going to have such an occasion wouldn't you assign at least a couple people to figure out how to take a picture of the event without the cameraman having to be the one who made the historic step. A tripod sitting on the surface would still be able to take perfect shots and could be deployed without stepping on the surface.
Whoever wrote in here about it all being a hoax really needs to take a course in physics. | |
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| So where were YOU when man first walked on the moon?
Posted: 11/25/2007 4:08:08 PM | .
I worked on those old computers. The first one had a whopping 10K core memory and I repaired a memory card once by replacing one of the cores that was cracked and was missing. I sewed the address and sense wires through the new ferrite core.
Yeah, I’ve strung a bit of core in my younger days. Prototyped and installed a few stacks, too. The amazing part was that they worked! I mean, yeah, we learned the physics and knew the theories backwards and forwards. But, even so, it was always a thrill to see those electronics actually do something!
You know, it was just a couple years from when we had really useful transistors until someone handed me a little can with 747 marked on it and said, “see what you an make this do.” That was the first IC I got to play with, long before they came out publicly. And it was only about two weeks before I had three of them and a diode speech clipper pumping up the modulation on my old D104 microphone at home. lol
The funny part is; no one under 50 realizes just how fast technology jumped into the future back in those days. Young engineers sometimes ask me why I still use some of those old IC’s when designing something. My simple answer is that they work well and they are dirt cheap today. Analog still rules in most medical devices (for the front end, anyway) and the designs are easy and straightforward. Most of those concepts are a direct result of the research needed for the Apollo Project.
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| So where were YOU when man first walked on the moon?
Posted: 11/25/2007 4:25:26 PM | | It really amazes me how technology is advancing. It seems to me (A completely uninformed person) that things are moving to a Quantum level in computing and physics and others. I reckon this could be the next leap forward? | |
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| So where were YOU when man first walked on the moon?
Posted: 11/25/2007 5:56:49 PM | | The lunar landing was the first memory I had that wasn't related with family. July 20, 1969. I was four years old. Watched it on TV, with mom and dad. The TV was an old B&W, with a weird hunk of colored plastic mounted in front of it to make it look like color TV. Armstrong's head was green, his feet purple. | |
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