Difference between revisions of "July 6, 2013"
(Created page with "__NOTOC__ =Manufacturing Dreams= <!-- ws:start:WikiTextHeadingRule:0:<h1> --> <!-- ws:start:WikiTextLocalImageRule:6:<img src="/file/view/LPOD-Jul6-13.jpg/44...") |
|||
| Line 2: | Line 2: | ||
=Manufacturing Dreams= | =Manufacturing Dreams= | ||
| − | + | <!-- ws:start:WikiTextHeadingRule:0:<h1> --> | |
| − | + | <!-- ws:start:WikiTextLocalImageRule:6:<img src="/file/view/LPOD-Jul6-13.jpg/440582094/LPOD-Jul6-13.jpg" alt="" title="" /> -->[[File:LPOD-Jul6-13.jpg|LPOD-Jul6-13.jpg]]<!-- ws:end:WikiTextLocalImageRule:6 --><br /> | |
<em>Apollo 11 image [http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/6642.jpg 6642] showing LM approaching command module while passing over Mare Smythii.</em><br /> | <em>Apollo 11 image [http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/6642.jpg 6642] showing LM approaching command module while passing over Mare Smythii.</em><br /> | ||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
| Line 12: | Line 12: | ||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
<hr /> | <hr /> | ||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
Revision as of 00:48, 3 January 2015
Manufacturing Dreams
Apollo 11 image 6642 showing LM approaching command module while passing over Mare Smythii.
I'm 21 years late but I just finished reading Mike Gray's totally engaging 1992 book, Angle of Attack - Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon. Although it has the hyper-enthusiasm of a 1950s boy's adventure story with a hero and his true-blue companions, the stories of the technical problems that were solved to produce the Apollo success are astonishing. I grew up with the excitement of space, and devoured the Apollo science chronicle of Don WIlhelms' To a Rocky Moon, but I simply did not appreciate the engineering complexity of the spacecraft and the Saturn rockets that took the crews to the Moon and brought them home safely. I recommend this book, and now am starting Mike Collins' Liftoff to get the astronaut perspective. There have been so many new space machines since Apollo that I suppose technological problems now have solutions that were inconceivable 60 years ago. But I bet the heart attack-provoking and divorce-causing obsessive dedication and vision of Harrison Storm and cohorts are still required.
Chuck Wood
Note: Science may not be Gray's strength for there are a few errors including the last page saying that Apollo samples confirmed that tektites were blasted out of lunar volcanoes; they weren't, they are ejecta from Earth impacts.
