Comments on: The prodigal son returns

The prodigal son returns

Chocolate Pickle — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 19:51:34 -0800

It's been determined that near-Earth Asteroid J002E3 is actually the third stage of the Saturn V used by Apollo 12. It was in solar orbit, but recently was captured temporarily by the Earth and made 6 orbits, then escaped again. Animation here.

By: Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:02:28 -0800

It's kind of poetic the way the moon draws it in to begin with only to cast it away a few months later. Maybe it rebuffed the moon's demand for sandwiches.

By: Curious Artificer

Curious Artificer — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:09:50 -0800

I knew all that spirograph training would pay off in the future.

By: localroger

localroger — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:14:04 -0800

Space junk: it's not just for Earth orbit any more.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:22:46 -0800

Sun, I just can't quit you.

By: figurant

figurant — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:22:58 -0800

Huh. I wouldn't have expected any part of Apollo 12 to be in a solar orbit. Does this mean that Apollo 12 temporarily was, or did this bit of debris get bumped out of Earth orbit by lunar perturbations at some point?

By: ddbeck

ddbeck — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:43:06 -0800

did this bit of debris get bumped out of Earth orbit by lunar perturbations at some point? Yes, it was in Earth orbit and then got jostled out (in 1971). It was originally NASA's intention to launch the S-IVB stage into solar orbit, but the jettison didn't go exactly to plan, so it ended up in Earth orbit by accident. Later Apollo missions deliberately crashed the S-IVB stage into the lunar surface, which aided seismographic study of the moon (and I imagine flinging things at the moon is good fun).

By: RobotVoodooPower

RobotVoodooPower — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:43:38 -0800

After reaching Earth orbit, the third stage (S-IVB) fires one more time to send the Apollo stack to the moon. Then the idea is they separate, and the stage flies alone into solar orbit. However on this mission a miscalculation made the final trajectory just a little short of escape velocity. Lunar perturbations eventually slung it out. I can't find the full text of the 2003 paper linked in the article, but here are a few more details. The animation is a really cool visual aid though. The object enters and exits at the L1 point, where gravity is roughly equal between the Earth and Sun. You can see the moon perturbing the orbit a little bit, but especially at the end when it's ejected back toward the L1. Mission designers iterate through thousands of equally wacky trajectories when planning a trip to other planets. Sometimes they revisit Earth, sometimes more than once. And they have names like VEEGA -- Venus-Earth-Earth, as Galileo took. Things get even wackier when you get to Jupiter and start slingshotting around multiple moons. It's some seriously crazy mathematical analysis.

By: eriko

eriko — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:48:40 -0800

I wouldn't have expected any part of Apollo 12 to be in a solar orbit. The S-IVB stages of Apollo 8 through 12 were all deliberatly put into a heliocentric orbit. After they plucked the LEM out of the spacecraft adapter atop the stage, NASA remotely fired the auxiliary propulsion system to deliberately slingshot the stage around the moon and into solar orbit, to make sure it couldn't hit the CSM/LEM. From Apollo 13 onwards, instead of a slingshot around the moon, they were deliberately crashed into the moon, the impacts being picked up by the seismometers left by Apollo 11 and 12, to try to characterize the deeper interior of the moon. Aside: The final S-IVB built for the Saturn V, S-IVB-515, and the final one built for the Saturn IB, S-IVB-212, were converted into space stations. S-IVB-212 flew as Skylab. S-IVB-515, the backup, is now in the National Air and Space Museum.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:51:23 -0800

OK, so that's cool as fuck.

By: figurant

figurant — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:52:40 -0800

Later Apollo missions deliberately crashed the S-IVB stage into the lunar surface, which aided seismographic study of the moon (and I imagine flinging things at the moon is good fun). That's exceptionally awesome. And on preview, that's just genius levels of awesome. I assumed you used up all your delta-v before you separated a stage. I had no idea this was possible.

By: Nelson

Nelson — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:54:19 -0800

And onboard this "asteroid" is Jebediah Kerbin, heroically arranging an intercept with Kerbal orbit using nothing but his RCS thrusters to alter his ∂v. He was certain that someone at Space Command would figure out how to send up an improbably jury-rigged rescue mission if he could just arrange orbital capture. And so he orbits Kerbin six times, waving to the planet below, and then is ejected back into Kerbol orbit. The lights are growing dim, but he is still smiling. Jebediah always smiles.

By: 256

256 — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 21:27:45 -0800

Thank you, Nelson, for capturing the thought I didn't know I had, the unscratched itch at the back of my mind upon reading this story. Jebediah smiles.

By: Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 21:33:53 -0800

Apparently there was a slight error in the Apollo 12 Trans Lunar Injection and "the abort curve is very sensitive to dispersions in the TLI." See 078:23:32 here. And speaking of Kerbal Space Program (where I am not as delta V efficient or as fail safe as NASA) I do know that if I blow my insertion burn a solar orbit is what I end up with about 9 times out of 10.

By: russm

russm — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 21:47:31 -0800

I assumed you used up all your delta-v before you separated a stage. if you've used up all your ΔV at stage separation then you have no margin for error - anything doesn't quite go as planned further down the stack and you're screwed. The lights are growing dim, but he is still smiling. Jebediah always smiles. I would feel a lot worse about playing KSP if the Kerbals required life support. I've got one little dude who's been hanging out on Vall next to the ruins of his lander for 4+ years in-game, and he's got a long wait yet until I get around to launching a rescue mission.

By: Mike Mongo

Mike Mongo — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 21:48:58 -0800

(and I imagine flinging things at the moon is good fun) Apparently it is. At DARPA's 100 Year Starship Study Symposium in 2011, I was sitting next to Stewart Brand and Dave Worden during a special preview screening of the robot boxer movie Metal Men. I think Dave Neyland was seated in front of us. Or some arrangement like so. Anyhow, either Dave Neyland or Stewart Brand introduces me to Dave Worden with the opener, "This is the only person in the world who has bombed the moon." Pete Worden then explains—to me—the LCROSS impact mission, where he, as NASA Ames Center Director, headed the slamming of NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite into the surface of the moon at over 6,000 miles-per-hour. Seeing all of us were notably awed at his recounting of the story, Worden loosed a schoolboy grin and said with touching glee, "I have the best job in the world!" PS Worden (and Brand) both really enjoyed the film.

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 22:21:07 -0800

Apparently there was a slight error in the Apollo 12 Trans Lunar Injection To say the least. Going strictly from memory (errr...of reading about it) Apollo 12 got struck by lightning twice during primary ascent, lost their entire "platform" (I.e. "everything location/orientation related) during the first stage, and Dick Gordon had to pretty much enter in a shitload of numbers by hand. That being said, the Yankee Clipper still managed a pinpoint-accurate landing on the moon. Apollo 12 is hands-down my favorite crew, and I'd love to believe that this all is just one last prank played by Pete Conrad. Go Navy.

By: happyroach

happyroach — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 22:59:53 -0800

The graphics make me want to find a Space War emulator out there on the web.

By: eriko

eriko — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 23:15:34 -0800

Dick Gordon had to pretty much enter in a shitload of numbers by hand. It was Al Bean who saved the mission, when the Steely Eyed Missile Man^* EECOM John Aaron realized that the reason they weren't getting telemetry was the equipment that encoded it was bad and sent the call "SCE to Aux" to the CAPCOM and up to the spacecraft. I recall Pete Conrad saying "What the hell is that?"^** and Gordon trying to find it -- and Al Bean just flipped the switch and saved the flight. Good Old Al Bean. If you're going to read an entire flight transcript, read Apollo 12. Apollo 11 was all business, all the time. Apollo 13 was, of course, stressful. Apollo 12, though? They're up there, and they are having a blast. * There was no higher accolade in NASA. ** Went and looked at the launch transcripts. He, in fact said "FCE to Aux? What the hell is that?"^*** Pete was a good guy, a great Astronaut, a hell of a pilot, and quite the prankster, but he wasn't exactly the most elegant of speakers. Indeed, in the entire A12 transcript, there are several times where Houston has to remind him he's on VOX, because, well, he's fucking swearing a whole fucking lot. His personal maxim is "If you can't be good, be colorful", and somehow, he managed to be both. *** Gordon then goes "NCE to auxillary..." proving he didn't hear the call right either. Meanwhile, Bean, who know's that it's the Signal Conditioning Equipment, has flipped SCE to Aux and says "It looks - Everything looks good." I love me some Al Bean.

By: eriko

eriko — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 23:17:43 -0800

Oh, yeah -- Apollo 12 was the flight that NASA realized that giant plumes of fire are in fact giant plumes of conductive plasma, so flying a rocket into a thunderstorm was basically bringing a ground wire up into a thunderstorm. Which is why, after A12, they don't fly if there's one too close. This is sort of a problem, because in summer, there's *always* a thunderstorm somewhere near KSC.

By: Ray Walston, Luck Dragon

Ray Walston, Luck Dragon — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:01:42 -0800

By: three blind mice

three blind mice — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 02:51:17 -0800

This might be the coolest thing I have seen on the Internet. Thanks Chocolate Pickle.

By: mikelieman

mikelieman — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 02:55:07 -0800

This is, in my opinion, the single greatest artifact our civilization has ever produced. We launched it to land on the moon, do it's job, then we sent three guys to pick it up and bring it back. We proved that we could "get the job done" on the fucking moon. Then what? NOTHING. Nixon killed Apollo, let 'em run out the program with Skylab, then destroyed NASA with the Shuttle. I will go to my grave believing that Richard Nixon and his cabal brought down that lightning in an attempt to destroy the spacecraft, finally getting his full revenge on Kennedy. Didn't work, so he destroyed our children's future in space instead. *fume*

By: mikelieman

mikelieman — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 03:04:29 -0800

I literally told my 9 year old yesterday that Richard Nixon is the reason they don't live on the moon.

By: mikelieman

mikelieman — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 04:24:22 -0800

I just was thinking, there's someone else waiting to come home, and I'm tearful that we have no plans to bring them back. Isn't THAT worth the effort of sending people to mars, and returning them safely to the earth. Think of the display at the NASM it would make!

By: Steely-eyed Missile Man

Steely-eyed Missile Man — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 04:56:49 -0800

Good Old Al Bean. Hear, hear.

By: klarck

klarck — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 04:57:00 -0800

The earth is a matador and the moon his red cape.

By: kaibutsu

kaibutsu — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 05:10:13 -0800

Words: Bill Higgins and Barry Gehm c. 1978 Music: "Home on the Range" Oh, give me a locus where the gravitons focus And the three-body problem is solved, Where the microwaves play down at three degrees K And the cold virus never evolved. CHORUS: Home, home on LaGrange, Where the space debris always collects. We possess, so it seems, two of man's greatest dreams: Solar power and zero-gee sex. We eat algae pie, our vacuum is high, Our ball bearings are perfectly round. Our horizon is curved, our warheads are MIRVed, And a kilogram weighs half a pound. CHORUS You don't need no oil, nor a tokamak coil, Solar stations provide Earth with juice. Power beams are sublime, so nobody will mind If we cook an occasional goose. INTERLUDE (to Oh, What A Beautiful Morning) All the cattle are standing like statues. All the cattle are standing like statues. They smell of roast beef every time I ride by, And the hawks and the falcons are dropping like flies... I've been feeling quite blue since the crystals I grew Became too big to fit through the door. But from slices I sold, Hewlett-Packard, I'm told, Made a chip that was seven foot four. CHORUS If we run out of space for our burgeoning race No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch, When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart If we just find a big enough wrench. CHORUS I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space And living up here is a bore. Tell the shiggies "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodby, 'Cause I'm moving next week to L4!

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 05:13:38 -0800

The Apollo 12 crew would have been the first to land on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission, but the crews got swapped for engineering and training reasons back around the Apollo 8 mission. As awesome as Neil Armstrong was, Pete Conrad would have been a riot as first man on the Moon.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 05:27:45 -0800

Aww it came back to draw a flower! Thanks, Apollo 12 third stage!

By: JohnnyGunn

JohnnyGunn — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 06:07:22 -0800

I am fascinated by space and space travel. I certainly do not know the maths and science behind any of it. I simply wish to fly in outer space with a jet pack on once before I die. I will settle for just a ride up and back. The space/Apollo threads on the blue are the best of the best. Intelligent and knowledgeable folks telling stories and recanting history. Thank you all.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 06:10:21 -0800

I am fascinated by space and space travel. I certainly do not know the maths and science behind any of it. I simply wish to fly in outer space with a jet pack on once before I die. I will settle for just a ride up and back. If enjoy video games in the slightest, then you might get a kick out of Kerbal Space Program. The basics are fairly realistic, but simplified for fun and excitement. Warning, it can up absolutely suck up your time, use it wisely.

By: Rob Rockets

Rob Rockets — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 06:30:14 -0800

What are Jeff Bezos's plans to recover it?

By: sonascope

sonascope — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 06:35:53 -0800

The animation explains why I have so much trouble with Osmos.

By: nevercalm

nevercalm — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 06:42:09 -0800

Thanks for this post. Metafilter totally fucking rocks on space stuff. I'm always thrilled when I see an FPP about anything spacey bc I know the comments will be awesome.

By: The 10th Regiment of Foot

The 10th Regiment of Foot — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 06:58:14 -0800

I literally told my 9 year old yesterday that Richard Nixon is the reason they don't live on the moon. It was robots, science, and economics that killed it. Politics were the reason there was/is manned spaceflight in the first place, so it's pretty hard to pin that one on a politician, particularly one that was such a cold war cheerleader.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 07:21:40 -0800

It was robots, science, and economics that killed it. How did robots and science kill it?

By: The 10th Regiment of Foot

The 10th Regiment of Foot — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 07:31:52 -0800

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 07:40:05 -0800

Robots are better and way cheaper at flying through space and sending back useful scientific data than a bunch of delicate meat sacks that require silly things like sleep, excercise, toilets, radiation shielding, food, and air. Plus you don't have to bring them back. Those points are debatable, but I'm not aware of those reasons being among those that killed the Apollo program. I'm really curious about Apollo in general, so would love more information if you got it.

By: mikelieman

mikelieman — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 07:53:47 -0800

Robots are better and way cheaper at flying through space and sending back useful scientific data I suppose that's relevant if that's your only goal. I tend to think a bit broader however.

By: tilde

tilde — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 08:09:37 -0800

What are James Cameron's plans to recover it and make a movie out of it? Will the seminal song be "My Parts Will Go On"?

By: nevercalm

nevercalm — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 08:16:31 -0800

Robots are best at exploring space. Humans are best at appreciating space.

By: forgetful snow

forgetful snow — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 08:27:23 -0800

You just don't get it, metal-man!

By: dnash

dnash — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 08:40:09 -0800

Plus you don't have to bring them back. Do NOT remind me of that XKCD strip that always makes me cry, even if it is just a robot rover...

By: immlass

immlass — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 08:43:28 -0800

Another one of those "science is stranger than science fiction" things! At least it's not V'ger.

By: smcniven

smcniven — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 09:04:15 -0800

I re-read James Michener's book Space recently and one of the characters (a german scientist) insists throughout the novel that it was a mistake to send a manned mission to the moon as it would effectively tie humans to a barren wasteland.

By: The 10th Regiment of Foot

The 10th Regiment of Foot — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 09:10:09 -0800

Specific to Apollo (a source here), people require a lot of expensive support, that's why Apollo cost $3 billion per year while the entire NASA space science budget at the same time was $600-650 million anually, that much is pretty solid fact. Once we'd accomplished the primary Apollo mission, which was putting a man on the moon, then NASA turned to actual lunar exploration. Heck, they didn't even plan for having scientific instruments in the lander or much less giving the crew time to use them until Apollo 14!

By: Asparagirl

Asparagirl — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 09:51:21 -0800

"Do NOT remind me of that XKCD strip that always makes me cry, even if it is just a robot rover..." I once got a chance at a friend's party to ask one of the Mars Rover drivers about that comic! He did in fact know about it and winced visibly, and then told me that he liked the remix better. I got the impression that the comic had had an effect...

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 10:25:09 -0800

Once we'd accomplished the primary Apollo mission, which was putting a man on the moon, then NASA turned to actual lunar exploration. Heck, they didn't even plan for having scientific instruments in the lander or much less giving the crew time to use them until Apollo 14! Nah, there was science and rock collection done on the early lunar landing missions. The goal of Apollo 11 was simply to land on the Moon, do a short EVA and get everyone home safely. Thus it only had a few experiments. Apollo 12 was designed to verify that lunar missions could make an accurate landing a specific spot. This technique was needed because all missions, starting with Apollo 13 were designed to be heavily science oriented and scientists wanted to target different areas of the Moon to explore. Apollo 12 also had longer and multiple EVAs to do its science experiments. Apollo 13 was supposed to be where things got really good in terms of science and exploration, but we all know how that went. Still, the mission managed to accomplish a few experiments. Specific to Apollo (a source here), people require a lot of expensive support, that's why Apollo cost $3 billion per year while the entire NASA space science budget at the same time was $600-650 million anually, that much is pretty solid fact. I'm taking your numbers at their word 'cause they sound about right, but so what? Plenty of science was done designing and building all the equipment that would be used on the manned missions. And there's no guarantee that specific science missions would have gotten some or any of that $3 billion. Honestly, I don't understand why people keep championing the cheaper unmanned missions as being superior. You don't get far by constantly undercutting yourself. Apollo had the right idea, have a big grand adventure that people can connect with and politicians will fund and sneak as much science as you can into the mission. We got almost a ton of lunar rock and dust from six different locations via Apollo along with other surface experiments, while the Soviets got under a pound with their unmanned sample return mission. Manned expiration seems like a clear winner in that area. Apollo didn't prematurely end because of science or robots. It ended because there wasn't much there that was useful to humanity and once we realized that, not many countries wanted to spend money going there. After the Soviet sample return mission in 1976, nobody went to the moon until 1994. NOBODY, not a manned spacecraft or an unmanned impacter or orbiter or lander. Zip, nada, nothing. Since then, there's been a nice resurgence in Moon orbiters and China is set to send Chang'e 3, the first lunar rover since the '70s, to the Moon later this year (December launch, I think). You know why they're sending a rover? Because they want to send humans to the Moon. Unmanned robots are great and I've absolutely love to see more of them sent throughout our solar system. But it shouldn't be an either/or situation, humans should be working with machines to extend our knowledge of our system and the universe.

By: dnash

dnash — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 10:53:20 -0800

He did in fact know about it and winced visibly, and then told me that he liked the remix better. Thank you for that, I hadn't seen it. Nice way to re-spin the story!

By: Twang

Twang — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 11:37:25 -0800

2010 Blog entry about J002E3 and 2010 AL30. The latter turned out to be an asteroid. The former, well: "spectral analysis of the J002E3 showed that it has titanium dioxide paint." Some other interesting junk: 6Q0B44E, 2006 RH120, 3753 Cruithne. JPL's Solar System Dynamics Group keeps an eye on it all.

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 11:53:56 -0800

I think we know what--and who--J002E3 really is.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 12:02:35 -0800

The Sovereign?

By: The 10th Regiment of Foot

The 10th Regiment of Foot — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 12:37:10 -0800

Don't get me wrong, manned space flight is badass particularly outside earth orbit and particularly particularly landing on the freakin' moon, but some would argue $45 some odd billion dollars in the 1960s and 70s (@$286 Billion in 2013) would have gone a long ways towards poverty reduction or education. It's baddassitude is its real value over robots. Even if robots can perform analysis WAY better than a guy in a sealed space suit, they can't wave to cameras and make kids want to fly rockets. We got almost a ton of lunar rock and dust from six different locations via Apollo along with other surface experiments, while the Soviets got under a pound with their unmanned sample return mission. So if you just do a pure dollars for dognut comparison the entire Luna program was @$4.5 Billion and Apolo was @$286 Billion. Luna brought back @ 1/3 of a kilo and visited 15 locations successfully. Apollo brought back 22 kilos (not tons) and hit 6 spots. So that's roughly $300 million a landing for Luna and $47 billion per landing for Apollo. Just the rocks then would have been worth $13.5 million per gram on the Soviet side and $13 million on the side of the free world. Had the Soviets had a better success rate all of those numbers would have obviously come down but they kept blowing up, failing, or crashing.

By: JoeZydeco

JoeZydeco — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 13:42:20 -0800

Is there a way they could trace J002E3's path backyward all the way back to 1969 and show that it probably came from Earth? That would be a cool animation to watch.

By: Chocolate Pickle

Chocolate Pickle — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 14:00:08 -0800

Joe, no, it can't be done. The "butterfly effect" (accumulating errors in iterative computation) prevents simulations like that from running that long. It's the same reason you'll never see accurate detailed weather forecasts 6 months out.

By: mikelieman

mikelieman — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 14:39:47 -0800

What did we piss away on the F35 so far? How much did the war in Iraq cost again?

By: dhartung

dhartung — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 01:47:53 -0800

Those points are debatable, but I'm not aware of those reasons being among those that killed the Apollo program. I'm really curious about Apollo in general, so would love more information if you got it. Curiously, no one has yet mentioned "Vietnam", but that was pretty much conventional wisdom when I was younger and more steeped in this stuff. One thing I never realized until I was much older was how constrained Apollo, the Shuttle, and even arguably ISS were by decisions made through political wrangling in the 1960s. NASA's budget actually peaked in 1966 (at 4% (!) of federal discretionary outlays), before a single Apollo astronaut flew. The tail-end missions -- e.g. Apollo 20 -- were actually cut in the 1970-71 budget, because of lead times and engineering prep such as building out the vehicles. But also remember that for all the supposed popularity of the program, Apollo 13 was falling off the media radar until the "problem". that XKCD strip that always makes me cry, even if it is just a robot rover See, I don't get this. Why would you anthropomorphize a rover as a robot that wants to come back to Earth? Why not anthropomorphize it as a robot that wants to stay as long as its batteries hold out? Lord knows the history of human exploration is full of the latter type. Is there a way they could trace J002E3's path backyward all the way back to 1969 and show that it probably came from Earth? That would be a cool animation to watch. I'd actually love it if there were, so to speak, dashcam video.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 08:15:09 -0800

...but some would argue $45 some odd billion dollars in the 1960s and 70s (@$286 Billion in 2013) would have gone a long ways towards poverty reduction or education. It's not as though NASA took billions of dollars in raw cash, loaded them up into the Saturn V and used that power the rocket. That $45 billion injected a lot of jobs into local and national economies. The problems of black people being systematically screwed over were not going to be fixed by deciding not to send people to the Moon. Had a a black astronaut landed on the Moon during the Apollo, it probably would have helped speed up America's general acceptance of some of its own people. But there were very few qualified black pilots at the time, again due to racism and the one that was died in a training accident. Even if he hadn't been killed, he probably would have joined NASA to late to get a seat on Apollo. The groups of astronatus to include Apollo moon walkers was selected in 1966. A lot of the early Shuttle astronauts worked in support positions in Apollo, but had to wait over a decade before getting their first space flight. Luna brought back @ 1/3 of a kilo and visited 15 locations successfully Where are you getting the information that Luna brought back soil samples from 15 locations? Curiously, no one has yet mentioned "Vietnam", but that was pretty much conventional wisdom when I was younger and more steeped in this stuff. The issue with Vietnam was that President Johnson, himself a major player in getting NASA and Apollo funded, got involved in Vietnam. Then he decided not run again, which let Nixon in during the crucial time period of Apollo planing and budgeting for later missions. Had Johnson stuck around for another 4 years, Apollo probably would have flown two more flights at least. Don't know if the Saturn V production line would have started up again, allowing more flights beyond, but I doubt it.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 09:12:01 -0800

some would argue $45 some odd billion dollars in the 1960s and 70s (@$286 Billion in 2013) would have gone a long ways towards poverty reduction or education They'd be wrong. Even Apollo was a minor tick in the federal budget, and small potatoes compared to the scale of total educational spending in the US. Even if we take your $45 billion -- which I'm guessing is probably total NASA spending for this time, not Apollo spending that I've usually seen at around $25 billion nominal -- it pales in comparison to the $700-750 billion that the US spent on education during the Apollo program. Unlike current NASA spending, it was more than just a rounding error, but it still would have been only about 1/14 of educational spending. The more likely figure of $25 billion would be only about 1/30 of educational spending.

By: russm

russm — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 16:55:22 -0800

Luna brought back @ 1/3 of a kilo and visited 15 locations successfully Where are you getting the information that Luna brought back soil samples from 15 locations? Luna returned 1/3 of a kilo. Luna visited 15 locations. Nobody is saying that every mission was a sample return.

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 01:45:28 -0800

Apollo brought back 22 kilos (not tons) and hit 6 spots. Erm...Apollo brought back 382 kilos of moon samples, not 22. They brought back 2200 distinct, hand-picked samples. Whereas the Luna program had to pretty much "drill into whatever was nearby when it landed." Apollo astronauts were also able to pick out (by sight) a super-important sample, the Genesis Rock, which would have been impossible for a robot. And let's face it, you really can't put a price tag on the kind of ass-kicking that the phrase "we walked on the moon" entails. Putting a man on the moon is often held up as kind of a zinger preface to things like "...but we can't make a toaster that works" or whatever. But think about the flipside: "Talk to me once you've put a man on the moon." Sure, people might argue "if you hadn't, someone else would have, so quit milkin' it!" But hey: Russia was as close as anyone, and they never even really got close. Apollo 8 was enough to knock the wind out of their sails. It's easy to sympathize with the fact that 2nd place is not exactly the "feather in the cap" one might bust their ass over, but you know who DID bust their ass in order to be 2nd? Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, and Dick Gordon. Russia quit. U!S!A! and all that...

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 18:12:28 -0800

Not bad for the second guys in space.

By: localroger

localroger — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 19:08:16 -0800

Not bad for the second guys in space. We try harder.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:20:29 -0800

So, back when you had a goverment how was it getting it's astronauts up to the ISS?

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:34:32 -0800

It was hard, but manageable.