40 Years On — Apollo XIII

April 11, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Science | 1 Comment 

The Kennedy Space Center is remembering the fortieth anniversary of the launch of the Apollo 13 mission:

The 40th anniversary of Apollo 13 is being celebrated on Sunday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida,

At the time of the oxygen-tank explosion two days into the mission, Lovell, Haise and fellow astronaut Jack Swigert were not initially aware of the seriousness of their situation.

“Well, when the explosion occurred and we sort of found out and assessed on our own that we weren’t going to land on the moon, the first thoughts were one of disappointment,” said Lovell. “We didn’t realize the significance or the danger.”

But soon Lovell realized that so much of the spacecraft was virtually useless and he spoke to mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Texas those now-famous words: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

“The two fuel cells, or the three fuel cells, failed,” Lovell said. “The two oxygen tanks failed. We lost communication. We lost the use of our computer for a while. And consequently we had never really practiced for that.”

For five days, the crew of Apollo 13 and mission specialists on the ground dealt with crisis upon crisis, rationing food and water, dealing with a loss of cabin heat and even using the Lunar Module as a so-called “life boat” during the return trip to Earth.

“We always were able to solve a crisis as it came up some way, jury-rigging, or doing something to keep our spacecraft going, and finally for a safe landing,” Lovell said.

The Apollo 13 crisis — later made into a motion picture starring Tom Hanks — captivated the nation.

Large crowds gathered at New York’s Grand Central Station to watch the astronauts’ successful splashdown in the Pacific and the hero’s welcome for Lovell, Swigert and Haise aboard the U.S.S. Iwo Jima recovery ship.

In the end, Lovell never landed on the moon during his 11-year career as a NASA astronaut.

On April 17, 2010, RN welcomed the astronauts home, and offered praise for their “courage,” “ingenuity,” and “bravery:”

RN with Apollo 13 astronauts John Swigert, Jim Lovell, and Fred Haise during post-mission ceremonies at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii.

FOR MUCH of mankind the reaches of space had never seemed so infinitely remote as they did when Apollo 13 was crippled nearly a quarter of a million miles from earth, headed toward the moon.

With Astronauts Lovell, Haise, and Swigert safely back on earth, a surpassing human drama that gripped the world for 3 1/2 days at last has a happy ending. Their safe return is a tribute to their own courage and also to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of those on the ground who helped transform potential tragedy into a heart stopping rescue.

From the beginning, man’s ventures into space have been accompanied by danger. Apollo 13 reminds us how real those dangers are. It reminds us of the special qualities of the men who dare to brave the perils of space. It testifies, also, to the extraordinary concert of skills, in space and on the ground, that goes into a moon mission.
To the astronauts, a relieved Nation says “Welcome home.”

To them and to those on the ground who did so magnificent a job of guiding Apollo 13 safely back from the edge of eternity, a grateful Nation says “Well done.

Someone Has Way Too Much Time On His Hands

August 18, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Domestic issues, Humor, Science | 1 Comment 

The headline in today’s Telegraph is twice-qualified but completely irresistible:

ZOMBIES WOULD MOST LIKELY WIPE OUT HUMANITY IF THEY REALLY EXISTED, CLAIM SCIENTISTS

Even the subhead, which reflects the same wishy-washy approach, has its own fascination: “Civilisation would most likely be finished in the event of a zombie outbreak, claim Canadian mathematicians who have calculated the possible devastation caused by an attack by the fictional monsters.”

The Canadian mathematicians conclude that, unless mankind struck back quickly and aggressively, mankind would be doomed.

Nixon, The British, And The Moon

August 11, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth, Richard Nixon, Science | Leave a Comment 

Over at the UK version of Wired Magazine, Katie Scott ruminates about the British space program and poses the question: why didn’t Britain win the race to the Moon?

According to Scott, the British instead focused on satellite technology, a development that — according to folklore — RN gave due deference to:

When Sputnik shocked the US into a space race with the Soviet Union, British scientists were soon working alongside the Americans. In 1962, a US Thor-Delta rocket launched Ariel 1 (also known as UK-1), the first spacecraft to contain UK technology and the world’s first international satellite. “Ariel 1 was built by Nasa, but contained seven scientific experiments devised and constructed by UK universities and industry,” Millard says. This was the first of five Ariel satellites.

As work on satellites continued, Britain surprised partners by withdrawing from efforts to build a European spacecraft in June 1966, blaming spiralling costs. This move, says Millard “signalled the UK’s exit from any further substantive development of space launch vehicles”.

Even so, British scientists continued to play a key role in the development of satellites. The US offered massive opportunities for advanced minds, and scientists from the UK were among those who joined Nasa and became integral to its success. Francis Thomas Bacon, for example, developed the fuel cells used on Apollo 11, and was later lauded by Richard Nixon. According to space lore, the President put his arm around the Englishman’s shoulders and told him: “Without you, Tom, we wouldn’t have gotten to the Moon.”

How It Happened

July 20, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Science | Leave a Comment 

The UK Times has a very detailed account of how we came to land on the moon.

“We Came In Peace For All Man Kind”

July 20, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon, Science | Leave a Comment 

Politico has a story up featuring the historical moment when RN watched the first lunar landing. It also includes an interesting tidbit of RN’s support for the space program:

On this day in 1969, President Richard Nixon joined upward of 500 million people around the world to watch two American astronauts leave their lunar landing module to become the first humans to walk on the moon.

Shortly after they planted an American flag on the lunar surface, the two astronauts spoke to Nixon, who congratulated them on their mission. His White House phone was patched into them through the NASA control center in Houston. That evening, Nixon wrote in his diary, “The president held an interplanetary conversation with Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin on the moon.”

Both the Soviet Union and China, America’s two ideological rivals in a decadelong space race, blacked out the live televised scenes of the initial moonwalk.

In April 1961, the Soviet Union had scored both a technological and political triumph when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth in his Vostok I space capsule. A triumphant Nikita Khrushchev told members of the Communist Party hierarchy that “Gagarin flew into space but didn’t see any God there.”

Later that year, President John F. Kennedy forecast that the United States would be first in putting a man on the moon. “To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead,” he said.

To achieve this goal, President Lyndon Johnson pressured Congress to authorize large sums for space exploration. The generous support continued under Nixon, who initially also approved a new space shuttle program. With the end of the Cold War, shuttle flights to the international space station became a cooperative project as Americans and Russians joined forces to launch missions and exchange space exploration technology.

RN recounted this moment in his memoirs:

HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY, 1969 A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND

On Sunday night, July 20, Apollo VIII astronaut Frank Borman, Bob Haldeman, and I stood around the TV set in the private office and watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon. Then I went into the Oval Office next door where TV cameras had been set up for my split-screen phone call to the moon.

Armstrong’s voice came through loud and clear. I said, “Because of what you have done the heavens have become a part of man’s world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to earth.”

7.20.69

July 20, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon, Science, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

7.19.69

July 19, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Science, Technology, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

19 July 1969: One day out.

In Orbit

July 18, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Science, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

The death of Walter Cronkite and the vivid memories it evokes of his coverage of the Gemini and Apollo missions of the 1960s and early 1970s, serves as a reminder that Monday will mark the fortieth anniversary of the arrival of the Apollo 11 lunar module on the moon and of the moment that Neil Armstrong’s foot touched its powdery surface and he uttered the words, “One small step…”

Armstrong has always kept a low profile in the succeeding decades and he doesn’t plan to change it now. On Sunday night he will talk for 15 minutes at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, but the institition’s spokesperson was quick to inform the media that no interviews or pictures would be permitted. By contrast, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, always the most visible member of the three-man crew, has been vigorously pressing the argument that NASA’s ongoing plans to establish a permanent presence on the moon in the next decade represent a dead end. In an op-ed that appeared in the Washington Post and other newspapers on Thursday, he maintains that America should set its eye instead on Mars.

Aldrin will be at the Smithsonian tomorrow, too, as will Apollo 11’s command module pilot, Michael Collins. (A report from the AP states that all three will also meet at the White House with President Obama on Monday, as they once met President Nixon in the Pacific moments after splashing down to Earth.)

Collins is the author of the 1974 book Carrying The Fire, one of the most thoughtful and profound of American autobiographies, for which Charles Lindbergh wrote the foreword. In the decade after Apollo 11, he was the director of the National Air and Space Museum, but in the last twenty years has been less visible. But a statement he issued this month through NASA, as quoted in the AP article above, makes it clear that the concerns about the future of the planet that he expressed in the 1970s are still on his mind today.

The Guardian has just published an article about Collins which describes the terrible responsibility which was uniquely his during the Apollo 11 mission. Although the lunar module had repeatedly been tested and allowances made for its performance in the weightless atmosphere and lighter gravity of the moon, no one at NASA, or anywhere else, could be completely sure that the trip to the moon’s surface would conclude successfully.

Neil Armstrong, coolly assessing the situation before liftoff, thought that the chances were about 50-50 that the lunar module would not be able to escape the moon’s gravitational pull and that he and Aldrin would either crash back to the surface or, perhaps, would be stranded in an orbit far below the capacity of the command module to help, until their oxygen ran out. There were eighteen separate rescue plans devised, but there was no guarantee that any of them would work if needed.

Collins agreed with Armstrong’s view of the risks. As the world listened to Armstrong and Aldrin announce that “the Eagle has landed” and then watched them walk from their module, Collins remained in orbit, well aware that if worst came to worst, he would return to Earth alone, always to be, in his words, “a marked man.” Later, Charles Lindbergh, who spent thirty hours alone over the Atlantic, would observe that Collins, for a similar duration, had experienced the most profound isolation a human being had ever known until then.

At the White House, there were similar worries. Frank Borman, the commander of the Apollo 8 mission which was the first to orbit the moon, advised the White House that the President should be prepared to speak to the nation if Apollo 11 ended in tragedy. Nixon speechwriter William Safire therefore was assigned to draft a speech for this contingency that read, in part:

“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.”

(Over the last few weeks the text of this address-that-never-was has been mentioned in some websites and news reports as if it were recently unearthed, but in fact it’s been part of the historical record since Safire discussed and quoted from it in his 1975 book Before The Fall.)

I was 11 when Apollo 11 reached the moon and can well remember those grainy black-and-white images which amazed and stirred my whole family in the middle of the night. It was truly a time of wonder. And of thankfulness when Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were safely back on Earth.

7.18.69

July 18, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Science, Technology, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

7.17.69

July 17, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Science, Technology, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

7.16.69

July 16, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Science, Technology, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Found In Space

April 26, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Science | 1 Comment 

Today’s Daily Telegraph offers a spectacular series of NASA photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Here is the spiral galaxy M104,  aka The Sombrero Galaxy.

RN Call Home

April 23, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Richard Nixon, Science | 1 Comment 

The headline in the Daily Telegraph was intriguing —

“Are UFO’s real?  Famous people who believed”

— and the sub-head was promising —

The former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell has claimed that aliens exist and their visits are being covered up by the United States government. Mitchell is in good company in his beliefs. Here we highlight 12 other public figures who believe that extraterrestrials may have been visiting our planet over the last 100 years.

Admittedly, some of the “examples” adduced were more convincing than others.

Jimmy Carter led off the list of twelve:

Jimmy Carter, US President from 1976 to 1980, promised while on the campaign trail that he would make public all documents on UFOs if elected. He said: “I don’t laugh at people any more when they say they’ve seen UFOs. I’ve seen one myself.”

Ronald Reagan was also there:

Ronald Reagan, US President from 1980 to 1988, “I looked out the window and saw this white light.It was zigzagging around. I went up to the pilot and said, ‘Have you ever seen anything like that?’ He was shocked and he said, ‘nope.’ And I said to him: ‘Let’s follow it!’ We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light.We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens. When I got off the plane I told Nancy all about it.”

Mikhail Gorbochov was cited:

Mikhail Gorbachev, the USSR’s last head of state: “The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously.”

But the few shreds of cred that still remained were blown away by the list’s penultimate name and quote:

Richard Nixon, US President from 1969 to 1974: “I’m not at liberty to discuss the government’s knowledge of extraterrestrial UFO’s at this time. I am still personally being briefed on the subject.”

Let’s assume for the moment that the quote is accurate (there are no citations).  It was likely in reference to the impending decision to shut down Project Blue Book —the Air Force’s inquiry into the existence of UFOs and their potential threat to national security.  There is a conspiratorial substratum that considers 17 December 1969 —the day that decision was publicly announced— as among the darkest days of official government suppression of evidence of extraterrestrial existence and visitations.

But the idea that this statement ranks RN as someone who believed “that extraterrestrials may have been visiting our planet over the last 100 years” indicates that there may be too much space dust in the air ducts at the Telegraph building.

At one point during our labors in San Clemente, I asked RN if he believed in UFOs and if there was anything to the whole Roswell Area 51 business.  He raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes and I moved right on to the next subject.

Here’s Looking At You

February 26, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Science | Leave a Comment 

Today’s Telegraph publishes a photograph taken by European astronomers of a celestial phenomenon —a shell of gas and dust— that resembles (on, literally, a cosmic scale) a human eye.  Not unreasonably, they are calling this one the Eye of God.

The bright blue pupil and the white of the eye are fringed by flesh-coloured eyelids – but this eye is so big that it light takes two and a half years to cross from one side to the other. The object is actually a shell of gas and dust that has been blown off by a faint central star. Our own solar system will meet a similar fate five billion years in the future. It lies around 700 light-years away in the constellation of Aquarius, and can be dimly seen in small backyard telescopes by amateur astronomers who call it the Helix nebula. It covers an area of sky around a quarter the size of the full moon. The photo was taken with a giant telescope at the European Southern Observatory, high on a mountaintop at La Silla in Chile. It is so detailed that a close-up reveals distant galaxies within the central eyeball.

The Sun Sets On Another Part Of The British Empire

January 13, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Science | 1 Comment 

As reported in today’s (London) Times:

The classic British bulldog, a symbol of defiance and pugnacity, is to disappear. A shake-up of breeding standards by the Kennel Club has signalled the end of the dog’s Churchillian jowl. Instead, the dog will have a shrunken face, a sunken nose, longer legs and a leaner body.

The change has angered the British Bulldog Breed Council and it is threatening legal action against the club. Robin Searle, the chairman, said: “What you’ll get is a completely different dog, not a British bulldog.”

The shake-up comes as one of the country’s leading zoologists and animal behaviour experts, Sir Patrick Bateson, announced that he would be heading an independent inquiry into dog breeding.

The Kennel Club is determined to show its commitment to dog welfare and has ordered the removal of characteristic features from some dogs. In a statement it said: “The breed standards have been revised so they will not include anything that could in any way be interpreted as encouraging features that might prevent a dog breathing, walking and seeing freely.”

In a country where the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded sixty years before the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, this is no small thing.

Proponents of the new regs claim that the life of a British bulldog isn’t all beer and skittles kibbles. Most are born by Caesarean section because their large heads and small hips make natural delivery difficult. And, as the report discreetly puts it, “the breed’s anatomy also hinders mating.” The poor blighters are also prone to skin and coat problems, cherry eye, respiratory disorders, and bone and mouth problems.

But many bulldog fanciers and pet owners see the sudden introduction of new regs that go into effect immediately as an attempt to muzzle discussion.

The new regulations —which, depending on your point of view, represent a step in the right direction or the intrusion of PC into the canine world— will apply to other breeds as well:

The shar pei will lose the familiar folds of skin on the neck, skull and legs while the Clumber spaniel and the labrador retriever must stay slim to qualify as top show dogs. Flat faces without a muzzle on Pekingese are also no longer acceptable because they cause breathing difficulties. Other breeds to change are the bloodhound, German shepherd hound, basset hound, Saint Bernard, chow chow, the Dogue de Bordeaux and mastiff.

Judges at licensed dog shows have been instructed to use the new breed standards and to choose only the healthiest and best-adjusted dogs when deciding champions. Those at Crufts are under orders to expel from the competition any animal that shows signs of disease or deformity. Incestuous breeding of dogs is also to be banned. Marc Abraham, veterinary adviser to the Kennel Club, said: “The changes will leave breeders and judges in no doubt about their responsibilities to safeguard the health and welfare of dogs, first and foremost.”

Bad symbol! Bad! The above poster—published when Britain stood alone in Europe after the fall of France in 1940— may have to be airbrushed to fix the large head, small hips, and thinning coat.

A One Time Only Invention

December 9, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Book Review, China, Cold War, History, Science | Leave a Comment 

In today’s New York Times, veteran science correspondent William A. Broad previews two new books that combine to do some rewriting —or at least some major revision— of the atomic history.

The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation by Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman and The Bomb: A New History, by Stephen M. Younger are both based on extensive research supplemented by insider insight and information.  And both conclude that the atom bomb was only invented once — by the scientists of the Manhattan Project led by J. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

The proliferation that now plagues the world is the result of spying that leaked the secrets and national policy or ideological interests that spread the technology.  A striking graphic charts the claim.

All paths stem from the United States, directly or indirectly. One began with Russian spies that deeply penetrated the Manhattan Project. Stalin was so enamored of the intelligence haul, Mr. Reed and Mr. Stillman note, that his first atom bomb was an exact replica of the weapon the United States had dropped on Nagasaki.

Moscow freely shared its atomic thefts with Mao Zedong, China’s leader. The book says that Klaus Fuchs, a Soviet spy in the Manhattan Project who was eventually caught and, in 1959, released from jail, did likewise. Upon gaining his freedom, the authors say, Fuchs gave the mastermind of Mao’s weapons program a detailed tutorial on the Nagasaki bomb. A half-decade later, China surprised the world with its first blast.

 “Since the birth of the nuclear age,” they write, “no nation has developed a nuclear weapon on its own, although many claim otherwise.”

Among other things, the book details how secretive aid from France and China helped spawn five more nuclear states.

The book, in a main disclosure, discusses how China in 1982 made a policy decision to flood the developing world with atomic know-how. Its identified clients include Algeria, Pakistan and North Korea.

Two of the major sources, and resources, for nuclear proliferation have been China and France.

Why did Beijing spread its atomic knowledge so freely? The authors speculate that it either wanted to strengthen the enemies of China’s enemies (for instance, Pakistan as a counterweight to India) or, more chillingly, to encourage nuclear wars or terror in foreign lands from which Beijing would emerge as the “last man standing.”

A lesser pathway involves France. The book says it drew on Manhattan Project veterans and shared intimate details of its bomb program with Israel, with whom it had substantial commercial ties. By 1959, the book says, dozens of Israeli scientists “were observing and participating in” the French program of weapons design.

The book adds that in early 1960, when France detonated its first bomb, doing so in the Algerian desert, “two nations went nuclear.” And it describes how the United States turned a blind eye to Israel’s own atomic developments. It adds that, in the autumn of 1966, Israel conducted a special, non-nuclear test “2,600 feet under the Negev desert.” The next year it built its first bomb.

Israel, in turn, shared its atomic secrets with South Africa. The book discloses that the two states exchanged some key ingredients for the making of atom bombs: tritium to South Africa, uranium to Israel. And the authors agree with military experts who hold that Israel and South Africa in 1979 jointly detonated a nuclear device in the South Atlantic near Prince Edward Island, more than one thousand miles south of Cape Town. Israel needed the test, it says, to develop a neutron bomb.

 

Win Ben Stein’s Scalp

December 4, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment, Media, Movies, Nixon Administration figures, Religion, Science | Leave a Comment 

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, the film critic whose face and voice (and thumb) were familiar to TV viewers for decades, has not been on the airwaves for several years, since a bout with thyroid cancer necessitated a jaw operation that robbed him of the ability to speak.  However, he has continued to review films (and blog about them, and on many other subjects) at the newspaper’s website.

One film Ebert did not review upon its release in April was eXpelled, the highly controversial documentary starring (and co-written by) former Nixon White House speechwriter and latterday Renaissance man Ben Stein, in which the case was made for the presentation of creationist beliefs along evolutionist theory in schools.  eXpelled received a slew of negative notices from mostly liberal critics, but made a respectable $7 million, becoming the 13th-highest grossing documentary in movie annals, and might have earned much more had its distribution not been hindered by a lawsuit brought by Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon charging unauthorized use of the John Lennon song “Imagine.”

The suit was ultimately settled and eXpelled was issued on DVD last month, minus “Imagine” but otherwise unchanged.  During the preceding seven months, comments to Ebert’s blogposts, and bloggers elsewhere, had periodically suggested that the critic had refused to discuss the film because it conflicted with his own beliefs.  Well, yesterday Ebert finally got around to writing about eXpelled and Ben Stein’s argument that the creationist view is being unilaterally excluded from academe.  And what he has to say is here.

Ebert’s post runs close to 3000 words and is one thoroughly determined attempt to knock the wind out of all the arguments Stein presents in eXpelled. Both of the critic’s thumbs are definitely down, and the rest of his fingers have produced a philippic that brings in everything from The $64,000 Question to the Alley Oop comic strip to the gambler who was the subject of the old music-hall song (and Ronald Colman film) “The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo.”  In the course of this blizzard of images and words, Ebert does make a pretty good case that Stein’s interviews with scientists such as Richard Dawkins in the film are rather less than even-handed.

But the most striking thing about Ebert’s post, for me, was this: every other attack on Ben Stein and his views running more than a few hundred words, that I’ve ever seen, sooner or later brought in the actor/writer/economist’s connection with RN by way of arguing that such an association proved him to be wrong.  But Ebert, in his post, never mentions Nixon, in such a context or otherwise. (Although seven or eight of the 400-odd comments appended to this post do bring him in.)  For that alone, it’s worth a look.

A Great Endeavour

December 1, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Science, Technology | Leave a Comment 

A space shuttle landing? Still nothing like it.

To Make Us Feel Small (Or Big!)

November 21, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Science | 2 Comments 

The first-ever optic image of a planet orbiting another star, 250 trillion kilometers from earth. The image was captured by the Hubble. Read about it here, at Discovermagazine.com.