I hope your patch dosen't kill me...
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The guys who flew the apollo program were crazy. Imagine if this happened to you:
After separating from the command module in lunar orbit, the LM Antares also had two serious problems. First, the LM computer began getting an ABORT signal from a faulty switch. NASA believed that the computer might be getting erroneous readings like this if a tiny ball of soldering material had shaken loose and was floating between the switch and the contact, closing the circuit. The immediate solution—tapping on the panel next to the switch—did work briefly, but the circuit soon closed again. If the problem recurred after the descent engine fired, the computer would think the signal was real and would initiate an auto-abort, causing the Ascent Stage to separate from the Descent Stage and climb back into orbit. NASA and the software teams at MIT scrambled to find a solution, and determined the fix would involve reprogramming the flight software to ignore the false signal. The software modifications were transmitted to the crew via voice communication, and Mitchell manually entered the changes (amounting to over 80 keystrokes on the LM computer pad) just in time.
A second problem occurred during the powered descent, when the LM radar altimeter failed to lock automatically onto the moon's surface, depriving the navigation computer of vital information on the vehicle altitude and groundspeed. This was later determined to be an unintended consequence of the software patch. After the astronauts cycled the landing radar breaker, the unit successfully acquired a signal near 50,000 feet (15,000 m), again just in the nick of time. Shepard then manually landed the LM closer to its intended target than any of the other six moon landing missions. Mitchell believes that Shepard would have continued with the landing attempt without the radar, using the LM inertial guidance system and visual cues. But a post-flight review of the descent data showed the inertial system alone would have been inadequate, and the astronauts probably would have been forced to abort the landing as they approached the surface.
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Are they taking a programmer on that flight to Mars?
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@PJH said:
Are they taking a programmer on that flight to Mars?
You kidding? Nobody would try this shit today. If a problem like this happened, the lawyers, politicians and media would descend on it and turn it into a circus. The mission would be scrubbed, there would be billion dollar settlements over "emotional stress", Oprah interviews with the wives and NYT editorials rhetorically asking if space exploration is too dangerous.
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@trwww said:
probably would have been forced to abort the landing as they approached the surface.
This assumes the abort switch still worked (actually, they'd probably remapped another switch to be the abort switch instead... So assuming THAT was done properly)
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@morbiuswilters said:
NYT editorials rhetorically asking if space exploration is too dangerous.
We already have those. This is why NASA will never do anything meaningful as far as manned space flight is concerned ever again. Our health and safety culture, combined with our legal culture demands that we confine the human race to this planet until we all die off, never having tried to survive in the true long term.
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@morbiuswilters said:
We already have those. This is why NASA will never do anything meaningful as far as manned space flight is concerned ever again. Our health and safety culture, combined with our legal culture demands that we confine the human race to this planet until we all die off, never having tried to survive in the true long term.
Which is of course why there are no plans for a moon base and you people didn't just sucessfully test a new rocket as part of exactly that program.
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@PSWorx said:
@morbiuswilters said:
We already have those. This is why NASA will never do anything meaningful as far as manned space flight is concerned ever again. Our health and safety culture, combined with our legal culture demands that we confine the human race to this planet until we all die off, never having tried to survive in the true long term.
Which is of course why there are no plans for a moon base and you people didn't just sucessfully test a new rocket as part of exactly that program.
Odds are the program will get the axe in the next 2 years.
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@Weng said:
@trwww said:
probably would have been forced to abort the landing as they approached the surface.
This assumes the abort switch still worked (actually, they'd probably remapped another switch to be the abort switch instead... So assuming THAT was done properly)
The part you are replying to had nothing to do with the switch whatsoever. Because of the software patch to bypass the faulty switch, landing radar stopped working (there was a bug in the patch). The radar had to be power cycled before it would start working.
Shepard at first was going to try to land without surface radar. After they cycled the radar it started working (just in the nick of time) so it never came to that. But later data shows that landing without radar probably wouldn't have been possible and the lunar module would have had to abort the landing (a process that did not involve the faulty switch).
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@Weng said:
@morbiuswilters said:
NYT editorials rhetorically asking if space exploration is too dangerous.
We already have those. This is why NASA will never do anything meaningful as far as manned space flight is concerned ever again. Our health and safety culture, combined with our legal culture demands that we confine the human race to this planet until we all die off, never having tried to survive in the true long term.NASA will never do anything meaningful, at least until we build one of these:
http://www.sg-soc.com/Images/Daedalus_in_orbit.jpg
But then the Air Force, not NASA was in charge of those. Oh NASA, useless shell of what you used to be.
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@Weng said:
Our health and safety culture, combined with our legal culture demands that we confine the human race to this planet until we all die off
Look at the bright side, we'll never get the chance to turn other planets into shitholes.
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@DOA said:
That's because for humans, the other planets already are shitholes. However much havoc we wreak on this planet, moving to one which doesn't even have the appropriate atmosphere or gravity, let alone the resources and ecosystems we're overexploiting here, is unlikely to be a solution. Sorry for being serious all of a sudden, I haven't had enough sugar today.@Weng said:
Our health and safety culture, combined with our legal culture demands that we confine the human race to this planet until we all die off
Look at the bright side, we'll never get the chance to turn other planets into shitholes.
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@NSCoder said:
That's because for humans, the other planets already are shitholes. However much havoc we wreak on this planet, moving to one which doesn't even have the appropriate atmosphere or gravity, let alone the resources and ecosystems we're overexploiting here, is unlikely to be a solution. Sorry for being serious all of a sudden, I haven't had enough sugar today.
Aside from there being very little evidence that we're overexploiting anything here, there are other things we might want from those shithole planets besides grass and trees and rainbows and hand-holding. We don't necessarily want to move there; setting up mining/siphoning operations would be far more useful, and since the planets are already dead, we won't have whiney little bitches from the enviro-socialist movement screaming that we're destroying the planet.
Actually, now that I think about it, they'd probably figure out some way to complain about that too, so we could actually kill two birds with one stone - mine those planets for resources and send the health, safety, and environmental nuts to work there as slaves so we don't have listen to their crap anymore. It's win-win.
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@Aaron said:
This weekend we're going to pick up trash and plant trees. Should I sign you up?Aside from there being very little evidence that we're overexploiting anything here, there are other things we might want from those shithole planets besides grass and trees and rainbows and hand-holding. We don't necessarily want to move there; setting up mining/siphoning operations would be far more useful, and since the planets are already dead, we won't have whiney little bitches from the enviro-socialist movement screaming that we're destroying the planet.
Actually, now that I think about it, they'd probably figure out some way to complain about that too, so we could actually kill two birds with one stone - mine those planets for resources and send the health, safety, and environmental nuts to work there as slaves so we don't have listen to their crap anymore. It's win-win.
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@Aaron said:
We don't necessarily want to move there; setting up mining/siphoning operations would be far more useful, and since the planets are already dead, we won't have whiney little bitches from the enviro-socialist movement screaming that we're destroying the planet.
I take it you don't have much experience with enviro-weenies. They hate humanity and will only be happy with everything has returned to its "natural" state. These are the people who are proud that they stopped the use of DDT, not just in spite of the fact that millions of poor in Africa and Asia have died from malaria, but because of it. Letting people die of painful disease by the millions to spare some fucking bugs and birds is a moral victory to these monsters.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I take it you don't have much experience with enviro-weenies. They hate humanity and will only be happy with everything has returned to its "natural" state. These are the people who are proud that they stopped the use of DDT, not just in spite of the fact that millions of poor in Africa and Asia have died from malaria, but because of it. Letting people die of painful disease by the millions to spare some fucking bugs and birds is a moral victory to these monsters.
I know that - all the more reason to relocate them to, say, Jupiter. They'll rebel against terraforming, insist on only breathing "natural" air, and promptly die a quick but painful death at the hands of noxious gases.
Apollo 14 - Wikipedia
