Interesting -- the webcast is working for me right now. They're just saying they seem confident they'll be able to get off within their launch window.

-the other Doug

Just got home and popped up the webcast. They're 23 minutes into a hold at T-16 minutes. No indication I can see as to why they're in a hold.

-the other Doug

In the Who-related Torchwood series, the final episode of this last season offed two of the main characters, Tosh and Owen. I was surprised they went that far, but it was reasonably supportable from a dramatic and character standpoint.

-the other Doug

I was going to say -- I *am* a smug elitist. Don't know about the rest of y'all...

-the other Doug

Tennant was apparently planning on leaving the show after the four specials that will comprise this coming season. (The plan is for both Dr. Who and Torchwood to produce only four two-hour specials each for the coming season, with Dr. Who returning as a weekly series the following season. I imagine Torchwood's future will depend on the ratings of these upcoming specials.)

However, there has been a major change in production on Dr. Who -- the former producer decided to retire, and a new producer was lured out of a project with Steven Spielberg to become the new hand on the helm. This has apparently piqued Tennant's interest, and he's now backed off from his public stance that he will definitely quit the show.

To be honest, I've seen Tennant on a bunch of British shows as a guest star (everything from Top Gear to Weakest Link) on the basis of the Dr. Who role. I can't imagine it's a bad thing for his career, getting all this exposure.

And speaking of exposure, I heard that Catherine Tate's current job is in a London production of a nice little play -- in which she appears sans clothing.

-the other Doug

I understand from what I've read that this last season-ender of Dr. Who set records over there in the UK, attracting enormous audiences.

To all of our British subjects, here -- was it as much of a big media thing there as the press has been saying? Was everyone talking about it the next day?

The season ending episode just aired tonight on the Sci Fi Channel here in the U.S., and I will say this -- I've never seen them have to swing out those supporting-cast names during the title sequence quite as fast before, to fit nearly all of the Doctor's companions from the Eccleston revival to the present. Really good to see Billie Piper back again, too -- if only for a few episodes.

Gotta say, as someone who used to watch Dr. Who back in the seventies and eighties, the writing and production values on this new series are truly outstanding. No wonder the good Doctor has made such a comeback in Britain.

-the other Doctor... er, Doug

If you're counting Skylab, both backup crews included a few other people who didn't fly until Shuttle. The Skylab 2 backup crew was Rusty Schweickart (CDR), Bruce McCandless (PLT, or Pilot) and Story Musgrave (SPT, or Science Pilot). The backup crew for Skylabs 3 and 4 was Vance Brand (CDR), Don Lind (PLT) and Bill Lenoir (SPT). Yes, there were only two backup crews for the three Skylab flights.

Of those backup crewmen, Schweickart had already flown in Apollo, on Apollo 9. Brand flew in an Apollo on the Apollo-Soyuz flight. The other four did eventually fly in the Shuttle, McCandless waiting an eternity for his first flight (selected along with moonwalkers Mitchell, Irwin and Duke in 1966, Bruce didn't fly until 1984). Then again, he was the astronaut involved in the AMU jet backpack project, so he waited to fly until the AMU was ready, and became the first person to fly it. But McCandless does have his own place in history, as the CapCom during the Apollo 11 EVA.

-the other Doug

Um, yeah. But to an extent, that's exactly what the Phoenix team announced, final "proof" that water exists on Mars.

Unfortunately, the American media sort of treated it as a joke. I saw one of the cable news networks greet this news with your basic "And this is what, the 20th time we've heard this from NASA? How is this time different from the last 19?" A planetary astronomer then explained how it's different, how this time we're not inferring water's presence at some time in the past, this time we actually *tasted* the water, to which the anchor's inevitable reply was "Really? How does it taste?"

The 24-hour news cycle isn't very friendly to complex scientific issues... *sigh*...

-the other Doug

I just wanted to say again how appreciative I am of these images.

And, BTW, I just noted that the VIP tour was in August, just the month after Apollo 11. Which explains the relatively advanced state of Apollo 12's assembly and check-out. Had Apollo 11 failed to make the lunar landing, Apollo 12 (SA-507) would have flown in September from pad 39B. Had Apollo 12 failed to make the landing, Apollo 13 (SA-508) would have flown in November from 39A. And if 13, too, failed, it was thought that Apollo 14 (SA-509) could be made ready to fly in December, from 39B.

That gave NASA a maximum of four shots to get the landing accomplished by midnight on December 31, 1969. Fact is, *no one* believed that Apollo would succeed in its very first landing attempt, and that none of the preceding missions would need to be re-flown.

So, these wonderful images show a Saturn stack that was nearly ready to be rolled out. The Apollo spacecraft (CSM and LM) weren't quite in as advanced state of readiness, but by this time, they knew they had an extra couple of months to play with. Besides, final fitting-out of the spacecraft depended somewhat on its mission, and you would configure things (especially the LM) a little differently for a first landing than for a second. (For example, had 11 failed, LM-6 wouldn't have carried an ALSEP, it likely would have carried another EASEP.)

I think the documentaries don't really give you a feel for the expedited timelines NASA was willing to use to get that landing done by the end of the decade. One telling point is that the last practice run of a lunar landing before Apollo 11 flew used not the prime or back-up crew from Apollo 11, nor even the prime Apollo 12 crew. That final simulation saw Dave Scott and Jim Irwin, the back-up LM crew for Apollo 12, flying the simulator. So, here we were, before Apollo 11 flew, and the crew in the simulator didn't fly for another two years. But had problems developed and it had taken three or four shots at making the landing, Scott and Irwin might have found themselves flying in not much more than 7 or 8 months' time, hence the perceived value in giving them the simulator time.

-the other Doug

Gee, Nick, it sounds like you're a good candidate for "upgrade"!

Cybermen of the world, unite!

-the other Doug

Here are a few slogans ESA may want to adopt that truthfully reflect their demonstrated views on public outreach:

"ESA: Exploring the Universe Before Everyone Else!"

"ESA: It's Our Party, You're Not Invited."

"ESA: Doing Complicated Science-Things You Wouldn't Understand."

Anyone have any more?



-the other Doug

Yeah -- and in the background, you can hear a giggling voice saying "Mine, all mine! I can look, you can't!" Followed by the sound of a clearing throat, and the more stententious proclamation "Um, nothing interesting for anyone but us Special Scientists to see, anyway. Trust us."

Followed by more giggling...

*sigh*

-the other Doug

I was born and raised in central Illinois, not far from where the New Madrid fault passes through that state. Back when I was in my early teens, there was a fairly minor tremblor (something like 5 or less on the Richter scale). I was on the lower floor of our split-level house, and didn't notice a thing. My parents, upstairs, felt the house move a tiny bit. But I felt nothing.

I've been close to disasters and never had them actually impact me in any way. About a year ago, a major highway bridge over the Mississippi River here in Minneapolis collapsed into the river. It was a stretch of the highway I've driven over hundreds of times, had driven over it the day before. But I was a good 15 miles away when it happened.

I've had tornados pass within five miles of my location, in conditions where nothing beyond a wall of black churning cloud was visible from where I was standing.

The apartment building in which I lived for two years at the end of my college career burned to the ground -- seven months after I graduated and moved out.

I've been driving down the highway at 100 km/hr in an old beater car, pulled off to get gas, and had an entire wheel decide to break off the car... after I had slowed down to a crawl.

Some, I'm sure, would say Providence keeps its hand over me, shielding me from danger. As for myself -- I have a vague sense of always being cheated out of seeing and experiencing really exciting things that seem to happen all around me, but never *to* me.

I ought to be glad, I suppose. But I'm not... the more fool, I.

-the other Doug

We're talking the October 17, 1989 World Series quake, correct, Mike?

I thought I heard that the quake lasted about 36 seconds, at least at Candlestick Park (as it was named then). I was safe and sound in Chicago at the time, but I took a keen interest in what happened at Candlestick. I was (and still am, poor me) a Cubs fan, and that year the Cubs had lost the NLCS to the Giants. So, World Series Game One was happening not in my beloved Wrigley Field, but at Candlestick. (And on my 34th birthday, no less.)

I was so immersed in baseball at the time that I made sure I got home in time to watch the game coverage as it began. I was watching while the picture broke up and you heard the announcer call out, rather excitedly, "I think we're having an earthqua..." That sudden cut to the feed, not only mid-word but mid-IMPORTANT-word, was one of the more chilling things I can recall witnessing.

Anyway, over the next couple of days the Commissioner's Office and the Giants hired engineers to determine if Candlestick was safe for the upcoming Series games. They determined that the upper deck had flexed back and forth longitudinally, and that while the supports were still solid and reliable, another 15 to 20 seconds of additional flexing would have brought the upper deck down -- right onto the lower deck. A full minute's worth of shaking would definitely have done it. (At least, that's how I recall the reports at the time.)

There were something like 60,000 people at the stadium right then. I still get a really dense hot thing in the pit of my stomach when I think about *that* possibility...

-the other Doug

As for that car -- those weren't clunkers, then. That car in that pic, which is the size of a Cadillac of today, was considered a *sub-compact* car back in '69. And it was stylish for its time, too!

And, well -- it's not exactly like we no longer have the technology to go to the Moon. We don't have the infrastructure. There's a difference.


Exactly right! The first electronic calculators to come into wide use wouldn't come around for another year or so. And those were *desktop* calculators, with tiny layered neon tubes comprising the numeric displays. A single digit was made up of elements receding down into the display 'cube' up to 6 or 7 cm.

The roomsfull of IBM mainframe computers ran very narrowly defined and specific trajectory plots, calculating location and vectors in three-dimensional space. They ran a single program each at any given time, with dozens of computers running to support dozens of consoles. There was no such thing as "click on System Tools and pull up Calculator" on those computers.

They actually had a name, back in the '60s and '70s, for computers with the processing and storage capabilities of the computer I'm using right now.

Supercomputers.



-the other Doug

I guess it's apropos to ask here, then -- everyone out on the Left Coast doing OK, now? I saw the news and while there isn't anything along the lines of "big damage" reports in what I'm seeing, I figured I'd make sure no one on the Forum is in a bad way.

-the other Doug

As I'm sure many of you are aware, The Science Channel completed their annual Space Week a couple of weeks ago. As usual, a few new pieces of programming were included, one of which had been "previewed" on Discovery's more mainstream History Channel.

We've already had some discussion of the first one to premiere (on History), "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions." The other two are "Rockets Into Space" (which actually, I believe, is an older series that Science had not run in its entirety before) and "Moon Machines," the centerpiece of the premieres during Space Week.

Oddly, the older piece, "Rockets Into Space," was most satisfying to me, being a straight documentary on the manned space program from its infancy in Nazi Germany and on Goddard's farm, to the present day. Some very good footage is included, and most of the commentary is accurate. The one really annoying tendency of the commentary is to take the crew designations and infer incorrect assumptions -- specifically, speaking of how the Lunar Module Pilots "piloted" their vehicles to landings and back up to rendezvous with the CSMs. It might be amusing to hear it stated that Buzz Aldrin piloted the LM Eagle to the first lunar landing (entirely incorrect -- as Buzz himself has said, if he had tried to grab the control stick, he would have had his hand slapped) to the impossibility of stating that Jack Schmitt piloted his LM, Challenger, to its landing at Taurus-Littrow. (Reminding me of the most amusing Schmitt anecdote I know, that when Schmitt was training with Dick Gordon as backup LMP for Apollo 15, the SimSup decided to fail the CDR's controls, forcing the CDR and LMP to switch roles and have the LMP actually land the LM. Instead, Gordon grabbed Schmitt bodily, moved him to the left side of the cabin, and completed the simulated landing from Schmitt's right-side position -- as Schmitt laughed hysterically. As they walked out of the LM simulator, Gordon called out to the SimSup, "Tried to get me to let Jack land, didn't you?' As he strode past SimSup, he said "Didn't work, did it?" And as he walked away, he added over his shoulder, "It never will!" )

There is even a segment on the first women astronauts/cosmonauts. It goes all the way back to the earliest female test pilots, including Hanna Reisch (sp?), the famous German WWII test pilot.

"When We Left Earth" features a lot of really nice footage from training and spacecraft development I had not seen in decades, but not much beyond what I had already seen. And the commentary was less sharp than in "Rockets Into Space." There was a lot of nice footage, but the overall impression was less than satisfying.

And then we come to "Moon Machines," in which a separate episode was devoted to the different modules and development areas involved in Apollo. The episodes covered the Saturn V, CSM, the LM, the Guidance and Navigation hardware and software used for translunar flight, the Lunar Rover and the Apollo space suits. A very uneven effort, I think. Far more footage of spacecraft and equipment development/test than in any of the other series, yes. And interviews with a lot of the engineers involved in the development efforts. But highly unsatisfying in many ways.

For example, the episode on the space suits gave a very detailed history of the relationship between Hamilton-Standard and ILC, who ended up being the prime contractors for the PLSS backpack and for the rest of the suit (usually called the PGA, for Pressure Garment Assembly), respectively. And yet, there is no mention whatsoever of the fact that the ILC suit was running far enough behind that the Apollo 1 crew was wearing a slightly modified version of the David Clark Company's Gemini suit when the Fire occurred (and would have worn those modified Gemini suits into orbit).

And while "Moon Machines" featured interviews with numerous engineers involved in the various development programs, they tended to be the guys who were middle managers, who ran small organizational units that dealt with development at a subsystem level, or who just did their part on their very small piece of the overall effort. I think the most senior guy they had from North American to discuss the CSM development was George Jeffs, who was more of an integration manager than anything else.

If you've ever read "Apollo" by Murray and Cox, you know the names of the major players on the development side. And for the most part, those names are entirely absent from the list of interviewees in the "Moon Machines" episodes. Now, before anyone calls me on it, I do understand one of the reasons -- the "big" names in that effort are mostly dead, now. It's not possible to interview Max Faget, Joe Shea, Tom Kelly, Stormy Storms, etc., etc., for a documentary made in the latter half of the first decade of the 21st century. But that took a lot away from the documentary, IMHO.

So, while I welcome this kind of renewed interest in the Apollo era, the work is, to me, somewhat unsatisfying.

-the other Doug

With apologies to all...

"Comedy is easy. Mars is hard."



-the other Doug

Oooh... I've been trying the same thing, CR, and I've been using both good-quality wands and multi-person spell casting, so far with no luck. Tell me, have you decided whether or not to use live sacrifices? I've not yet committed to that level of effort, alas.



-the other Doug

I wonder if it sublimated between rasp/scoop and drop, or if they just didn't get enough out of the rasping?

-the other Doug

I didn't have access to a camera for Apollo 12, though my older brother borrowed a Yashica (twin-lens reflex) from high school and took pics off the screen during Apollo 11. (I actually accompanied my Dad to the drugstore to get film for the event, thus not returning home until about four minutes into Apollo 11's PDI burn. I nearly sat in the car to listen to the landing without interruption, but decided to tear into the house as fast as I could.)

Starting with Apollo 13, I was working for the school newspaper myself and had access to the same set of cameras, and was all set to take pics off the screen. Then I had to wait 9 months after 13 aborted to take pics during Apollo 14. I continued that practice and took several rolls of film during the remaining Apollo flights.

Over the many years, the prints from those pics have been lost, but I recently discovered that I still have (in moderate to poor shape) the negatives from those rolls. I may get them reprinted someday.

And I was certainly a teenager during Apollo. I turned 13 while Apollo 7 was in orbit. I was 15 years old when Apollo 15 flew, 16 years old when Apollo 16 flew, and 17 years old when Apollo 17 flew. With a birthday in October, it just worked out that way.

So, yes -- I began obsessing with Apollo before they started flying.

-the other Doug

According to several reliable sources, yes.

-the other Doug

Naw... Chaikin wrote my book. Granted, I'd have added some other things than he did. But he basically wrote the book I had been working on desultorily for about 15 years.

The only actual formal interview I ever was able to set up with one of the 12 moonwalkers was with Gene Cernan. I will not speak ill of the famous; all I will say is that it was a most disturbingly unsatisfactory interview. In hindsight, I can see quite clearly Jim McDivitt's point of view.

-the other Doug

But, Dan -- to sound like me, you also have to read the Apollo Lunar Surface Journals several hundred times (as well as contributing some items to them), and read each and every book written about the Mercury-to-Apollo era, preferably re-reading the best ones (like Chaikin's or Murray & Cox's) several hundred times.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that I actually audio taped the Moonwalks (onto cassettes whose iron oxide flakes off if you try and play them today) from many of the missions, live from the TV coverage, and used to fall asleep listening to them. For years.

As I've said in all humility, I am positive there are other people out there who have a broader and deeper knowledge of that era of manned space flight than I do, but I also suspect you could count them on some of the fingers of one hand...

-the other Doug

As for Tycho, the approach was so difficult, the landing ellipse covered so many areas of extremely rough terrain (er, lurrain) and the trajectory to get to such a southerly site reduced payload enough that Jim McDivitt, the head of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office in Houston at the time, laid down the law: "You will go to Tycho over my dead body."

Of course, McDivitt also said that he would resign as chief of ASPO before he would approve Gene Cernan to command Apollo 17. And, in fact, he *did* resign after Apollo 16. McDivitt felt strongly that Cernan was not an appropriate choice for a crew commander. Ever.

-the other Doug