ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
As you will all know Neil Armstrong died over the weekend, and I for one will light a candle tonight in our backyard.
As well as remembering the Moon landing events (which happened when I was doing National Service in the Air Force - where we all sat huddled around a single transistor radio listening to the landing), I have been thinking about how much everyday life has changed.
We all know that today's smart phones, lap tops, etc are more powerful than NASA's computers of that time - and I mean their BIG computers not the little device that was on the LEM.
But then there were no "home computers" - certainly no micro-computers and the mini-computer had barely been born (imho).
And in my home country of the time there was no television broadcasts - so no televisions to see flickering black and white pictures of the launch or the bootprint.
Nor were there mobile phones et cetera et cetera.
But there was this system, the BeoLab 5000, which a schoolfriend's dad had, and which was probably the first B&O I ever saw, and certainly the only one I ever saw outside of a store ...
And I thought it was so cool - because of its slide rule controls (so high tech ) and its space satellite tweeters
And some Beoworlders are lucky enough to still have these units in their position - going strong 45± years later.
The next year when the Apollo 13 mission went bad I was in university, and now as long haired hippie students (as opposed to crew cut conscripts), we come out of lectures and walk past the Engineering Faculty's main building to see the blackboard on the steps where the engineering students were providing hand chalked bulletin board updates of the status of the disaster and rescue attempts ... no internet, no RSS feeds, no twitter.
So raise a glass tonight to those brave men of the Apollo program and give thanks that we can remember Neil at 82, and not as it might have been (http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/11/in-event-of-moon-disaster.html):
BeoNut since '75
Yes, it all makes me wonder whether every generation feels the same about the pace of change or whether some of us have experienced something exceptional. At the time of the moon landings I was at college, with calculations dominated by slide rules and 7 figure logs!
Five years after the moon landing the first of the programmable Hewlett Packard pocket calculators came out. For £100 you got a 100 step programmable calculator which had a few built-in games, one of which was to simulate a moon landing without running out of fuel or crashing!
Graham
About the generations thing:
No one born after 1935 has ever walked on the moon.
XavierItzmann: About the generations thing: No one born after 1935 has ever walked on the moon.
a chillingly sad fact
XavierItzmann: No one born after 1935 has ever walked on the moon.
The conspiracy crowd believe that no one ever walked on the moon! There's an interview somewhere with an Australian who saw the first transmitted pictures (Australia getting the signal first) who swears that there was a coke bottle in the foreground that disappeared by the time the pictures were re-transmitted.
Did anyone see this picture from the recent Mars landing?Looks like a 1969 Saab to me..............
Since Mars was mention, here is an HD video of the recent landing. It is really amazing.
http://youtu.be/fJgeoHBQpFQ
linder: Since Mars was mention, here is an HD video of the recent landing. It is really amazing. http://youtu.be/fJgeoHBQpFQ
Great video link Linder!
(The moon landing conspiracy theories are thoroughly debunked here.)
Away from Mars and conspiracy theories, a couple of googlelites (or whatever google illuminaries are called) have written an article (with more facts) along the lines of my original post .... for those who want the hard core details:
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/the-power-of-apollo-missions-in-single.html
PS overnight there have been a burst of space news stories ranging from silly (Will.I.am singing via Curiosity on Mars) to verrrry interesting (sugar molecules detected in the gas cloud surrounding a young sun-like star)
elephant: PS overnight there have been a burst of space news stories ranging from silly (Will.I.am singing via Curiosity on Mars) to verrrry interesting (sugar molecules detected in the gas cloud surrounding a young sun-like star)
Yes -The new Danish government are already planning to send tax-collectors out there to collect their new 'sugar taxes'... Their way of saving the Danish economy...
Very nice video!