Neil Armstong Dies

[Wayne T Mathews]

Hope Mr Gorsky enjoyed it !!................do you remember that the second man to climb out of the luner lander knocked the guts out of the main rocket switchs, when he hit it with his large back-pack on the way out ?..They needed that switch to work to blast off from the moon, to rendevous with the lunar orbitor, otherwise it was curtains. Mission control worked for hours on the serious problem, and finally came up with a suitable solution...jam a metal 'space pen' into the switch, and active the blast-off rocket, which is what they did.My hats off to all of them with large enough manjewels to strap themselves to any of those rockets !.....................................................................Maj...

In the videos Vev posted above (post#2), Neil addresses and talks about that part of the mission. He says they were circuit breakers that Buzz Aldrin had hit. That he thought they'd stay in, but just to be sure, they jammed the pen into the main one. Or words to that effect.

 

The part that got to me, was Neil's decision to take over manually during the descent and move to a better landing spot. Which had him doing a landing that no one had ever done before, in a machine that no one had ever flown before with only 20 seconds of fuel left when he touched down? To paraphrase Goose, "That's serious test pilot sh#t." The man's gotta have had balls the size of the great outdoors... And I'll be damned if I think it's indicative of how lucky he was. I think it shows us how bloody good he was.

 

 

[Sapphire]

And I'll be damned if I think it's indicative of how lucky he was. I think it shows us how bloody good he was.

 

He was very good and a teensie bit lucky. (how's that for diplomacy]

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

To coin a line from a movie: "what's it feel like sitting on a bomb made up of parts supplied by the lowest tenders?"

 

Luck, fate, skill or combination thereof it always comes down to 'ya just pays yo monies and takes ya chances.'

 

When i look back on all the potentially risky events I've done i sometimes wonder how I've made it this far and how far there is to go.

 

Like a few here i grew up as a kid witnessing all of the Mercury Gemini and Apollo flights. I thrived on the "Space Race" and it took me to were i am today. I'm happy. Neil probably more than any other person must have inspired thousands of people to chase their aviation dreams. We need more like him.

 

Neil walked on the Moon, a satellite of the planet Earth. We don't know the name of the person who will be the first to walk on another planet, that's the next big event for a future generation and that will probably stop the world and watch in awe just like we did when Neil planted his boot print in the dust. But for me Neil Armstrong will always be one of the main inspirations in my life.

 

ozzie

 

 

[damkia]

People don't realise the spin off technology that we have now as a direct result of the race to space.

 

LED's now found in almost every part of modern technology were invented due to the old "nixie tubes" not being reliable enough in use in high vibration areas, and consuming too much power.

 

Papermate pens (the ones that can write upside down) were invented to work in zero gravity (mind you, the Russians overcame this issue by using pencils - D'Oh!)

 

Heaps of other stuff too. If you've got an afternoon it's worth a Google.

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

Here here Ozzie !, like Yeager before him, Neil Armstrong was the one who got the top spot, when it came to the big action. You just don't get there without some large personal degree of skill, and with the respect of those around you. He took control when he needed to, and planted the thing in the right place when the pressure was on...and came back with his mates to tell the story !...

 

I will always respect what he, and all the others have done to advance (and I do mean advance) the human race........................Maj...

 

 

[Wayne T Mathews]

He was very good and a teensie bit lucky. (how's that for diplomacy]

Very diplomatic. Thank you...

 

But now I'll go back to what I diplomatically said in post #23: "So while luck may have played a part in his making old age, I suspect that hard work, self discipline and focus would have had a lot more to do with it than any luck. Test pilots who rely on luck, don't get to do it for very long."

 

I think it's fair to say that Neil Armstrong was a test pilot extraodinaire, and he did it for a very long time. (how's that for diplomacy?)

 

 

[motzartmerv]

Mate, those blokes were and forever will be, in a class of their own. Think about a car built in the same era. Nice old rides, but not a bit of computer technology in them. Your average pocket calculator has more power than then systems they had on these flights.

 

They Dead Reckoned their way to the moon. A position fix by pointing a tiny telescope out the window and adjusting the trajectory to keep the ship headed in the right direction.

 

When appolo 13 had its "problem", they were freezing, in a all but dead ship, hurtling towards the moon, and using a slide rule and a stubby pencil performed the calcs to do a burn that would send them around the moon and back to earth.

 

Back in those days, there was a reason they tested so stringently, to make sure the guys had the right stuff. Because they bloody well HAD to have it.

 

Brave, skilled aviators.. My hat will forever be tipped to this breed of bloke.

 

 

[RKW]

Here's an extract from JFK's famous speech which got the ball rolling.

 

For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond .….We choose to go to the moon.... we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too…..John F Kennedy

 

 

[turboplanner]

The part that got to me, was Neil's decision to take over manually during the descent and move to a better landing spot. Which had him doing a landing that no one had ever done before, in a machine that no one had ever flown before with only 20 seconds of fuel left when he touched down?

There was a fascinating reason he did that, against orders. I'm on the road but will look it up when I get back.

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

Orders or no orders, (and I don't believe they were appropriate at that phase of the game), the fact is he rejected the chosen landing site as PIC because it was strewn with large boulders, and simply chose another suitable one close by, with only seconds of fuel remaining. A real great example of what "having the right stuff" means.............................Maj...

 

 

[merc]

double post

 

 

[merc]

One of my earliest childhood memories was standing in the front yard with my parents watching John Glenn pass overhead Townsville (2-3 times I think) in Friendship 7, the first manned orbit of the earth. He passed over Perth and they were all asked to turn on their lights there, so Glenn could do a course trajectory check. He plainly saw all the lights as it was only a low-earth orbit of about 60 miles high ?........We clearly saw the little capsual go overhead, and it was definitly no shooting star !!!. and very few if any satelites up there at that time............................................................Maj...

Poor Yuri Gagarin forgotten already.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Poor Yuri Gagarin forgotten already.

Never! Those gutsy pioneers, Soviet or American, will always be remembered. Valentina Tereshkova and all the other heroes.

The immensity of their achievement can be measured by the fact that we couldn't go to the Moon today, generations later. If anyone, even the US, decided to do it all again now, it would take a decade and bankrupt nations.