yeah, what better way to reverse global warming than a cold war?
just picked up mike collins' carrying the fire, andrew chaikin's a man on the moon: the voyages of the apollo astronauts, and deborah cadbury's space race: the battle to rule the heavens. hoping to get them all finished before i make it to the kennedy space centre in a couple of weeks. which reminds me, i need to see if i can get tickets to have lunch with an astronaut while i'm there...
― bizarro gazzara, Friday, 24 July 2015 08:43 (eight years ago) link
the cold war was prosecuted because the political and military leaders of the USA felt that the USSR was an existential threat to the nation, whereas climate change is merely an existential threat to the entire world.
― Aimless, Friday, 24 July 2015 16:51 (eight years ago) link
finished a man on the moon: the voyages of the apollo astronauts a couple of days ago and i'm about halfway through carrying the fire at the moment. a man on the moon is a really good run-through of the apollo programme, based on late-80s interviews with most of the main players. chaikin sketches the characters of the astronauts really well and it gave me a much better appreciation of the achievements of the later missions. chaikin is also excellent at conveying the sensations of space travel: what it's like to wear a pressure suit on an eva, what moon dust smells like, etc
carrying the fire is fantastic so far - collins is a good writer with a dry wit, and he does a great job of delving into the roles each astronaut played in the development of apollo as well as explaining some of the technical aspects of spaceflight in an understandable way.
i also rewatched my blu-ray of for all mankind, which never ceases to make me emotional.
i'm off to the kennedy space center tomorrow. kinda think i might keel over at the sight of a saturn v or a shuttle.
― bizarro gazzara, Monday, 10 August 2015 01:11 (eight years ago) link
saw the shuttle atlantis, cried
awesome
― bizarro gazzara, Tuesday, 11 August 2015 00:15 (eight years ago) link
Do tell
― Eternal Return To Earth (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 11 August 2015 00:34 (eight years ago) link
sure!
atlantis has its own building at the space centre, and nasa has carefully stage-managed your experience before you see it for real for the first time. you watch a short dramatisation of the shuttle development process, then a really gorgeous montage of shuttle mission footage on a massive screen. then the screen lifts and behind it is the atlantis, lit dramatically and tilted on its side with the cargo bay doors open.
https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/t31.0-8/11864981_10153461127620638_7060066314462098229_o.jpg
it's smaller than i'd have guessed but it's absolutely gorgeous, all flowing, elegant lines contrasting with a surface which is pockmarked and rough-edged from 33 visits to space. the sight of it hit me like a ton of bricks and i was instantly teary. i spent a lot of time as a kid reading and thinking about the orbiters - i was six when the challenger disaster happened and i vividly remember crying while watching it on the tv - but i was still surprised by how moving it was to see a shuttle for real.
there's also an amazing full-scale model of the hubble telescope in there, along with some replica space suits:
https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/t31.0-8/11816230_10153461126845638_808564544352120920_o.jpg
we also took a trip in the space shuttle simulator, which is cool as hell and does what feels like a reasonable job of recreating the experience of blasting off into orbit, including the lying-on-your-back wait for takeoff. then we took a guided bus tour around various locations including the mindbogglingly huge vehicle assembly building, which is every bit as massive as i expected and more, and launch complex 39, from which apollo and space shuttle missions took off and which is now leased to spacex:
https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/t31.0-8/11865348_10153461124950638_7321524299771301802_o.jpg
then we stopped off at the saturn v / apollo building to take a look at the actual control room from apollo 8:
https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xat1/t31.0-8/11823022_10153461124495638_4658601945709688007_o.jpg
and the saturn v stack, which is as intimidatingly huge as the shuttle is compact and friendly. it takes up a whole building and it is fucking massive:
https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xft1/t31.0-8/11856340_10153461124100638_2890088577621426801_o.jpg
even with a super-wide lens i couldn't fit the whole thing into the frame. it's insane and inspiring and terrifying to think that there's two million working parts in it, any one of which could malfunction and stop a launch (explosively or otherwise):
https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/t31.0-8/11807191_10153461123510638_216552785613825137_o.jpg
also on display: the apollo 14 command module and al shepard's moon-dust-crusted space suit:
https://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xat1/t31.0-8/p960x960/11807352_10153461121975638_748753903730101738_o.jpghttps://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t31.0-8/11802685_10153461122435638_1461597965149089638_o.jpg
i have a million other pictures and things to say but this is too long already. it was an incredible experience and i loved every second of it.
― bizarro gazzara, Tuesday, 11 August 2015 01:33 (eight years ago) link
I am so envious. Lovely write-up!
― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Tuesday, 11 August 2015 06:37 (eight years ago) link
thanks! one more thing: I was convinced at first the mercury and gemini capsules we saw must have been scale models, but nope, they actually are incredibly small and claustrophobic. mike collins called the gemini 'a flying men's room' - doing 14 days in orbit in a space only very slightly larger than the seat you're in while having to go to the bathroom right next to your copilot seems like a special kind of hell.
― bizarro gazzara, Tuesday, 11 August 2015 11:34 (eight years ago) link
i meant to say how much i love the photos, too. is the spacesuit behind glass? I assume there's no way of touching it, getting a little bit of moon on your fingertips...
― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Wednesday, 12 August 2015 02:10 (eight years ago) link
yeah, it's behind glass unfortunately. there is a little chunk of moon rock you can touch, though!
― bizarro gazzara, Friday, 14 August 2015 00:10 (eight years ago) link
if you've got the time, this massive five-part waitbutwhy.com piece on spacex's history and insane future ambitions is definitely worth a read: How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars
― bizarro gazzara, Wednesday, 19 August 2015 08:28 (eight years ago) link
i finished mike collins' autobio recently - it's really fantastic. goes in to a massive amount of detail about his flights but it's never dull or difficult to follow, and his occasional slightly catty asides about the other apollo astronauts are amusing (he really seemed to have it in for donn eisele for some reason)
i'm about halfway through deborah cadbury's space race: the battle to rule the heavens, which focuses on the work of wernher von braun and sergei korolev. there's a fantastic action-adventure movie waiting to be made about the race of the allied powers to track down and win over german rocket scientists after wwii ended, which cadbury goes over in detail in the opening chapters. she very effectively communicates the utter horror of the slave camps which produced the v-2 rockets, which i didn't know much about - 60,000 slaves worked on the programme, subsisting on 1,000 calories a day which the nazis calculated would keep them alive for six months. 20,000 of them died.
the thought that the heroic age of manned spaceflight was built on the horror of slave labour is something i knew about but reading about it in some detail is still pretty horrible.
― bizarro gazzara, Wednesday, 19 August 2015 08:39 (eight years ago) link
I have a faint memory of that Clooney movie 'The Good German' looking as though it was going to be that film, and then going off into other, much more boring, directions
― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Thursday, 20 August 2015 00:49 (eight years ago) link
there's a fantastic action-adventure movie waiting to be made about the race of the allied powers to track down and win over german rocket scientists after wwii ended
it's gravity's rainbow
korolev had quite a story iirc. the revered father of soviet rocketry, called "the designer" like someone's called the godfather, died of complications following surgery that could not be successfully completed because of injuries sustained decades earlier in the gulag.
solzhenitsyn's the first circle a not-bad tolstovian novel about the relatively comfortable (as in, not actually designed to kill you) scientist-slave gulag camps. some truly nightmarish meetings about deadlines.
― playlists of pensive swift (difficult listening hour), Thursday, 20 August 2015 01:28 (eight years ago) link
You just reminded me of this novel, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/26/konstantin-tom-bullough-review, about Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the first great Russian rocket scientist: it was very good(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky)
― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Thursday, 20 August 2015 05:26 (eight years ago) link
i've read and enjoyed gravity's rainbow but i dunno if 'fantastic action-adventure movie' would be my main choice of descriptor for it
called "the designer" like someone's called the godfather
the CHIEF designer no less!
never read the first circle, i'll add it to the list
― bizarro gazzara, Thursday, 20 August 2015 08:22 (eight years ago) link
Apollo 18 is on Netflix but expiring on the 2nd, so watching now. Thanks for the extensive reporting, bg.
― Exile's Return To Sender (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 30 August 2015 21:25 (eight years ago) link
a kickstarter to reissure the 1975 nasa graphics standards manual (which introduced the iconic 'worm' logo) has smashed its funding goals right out of the gate. weirdly tempted to back it myself tbh
https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/004/396/546/23b3aeda89dc77759d288b970b7844bf_original.png?v=1440769823&w=680&fit=max&auto=format&lossless=true&s=3b904ba2935aa388fd45932015483658https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/004/396/667/f3f8269bc7a1534ba10b1b6683c0bdd0_original.png?v=1440771142&w=680&fit=max&auto=format&lossless=true&s=a0be2a8209a1ae130878ef0072f6394b
― bizarro gazzara, Friday, 4 September 2015 09:59 (eight years ago) link
Cool. If you like that, you might like a design-oriented book called Spacesuit.
― Bon Iver Meets G.I. Joe (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 4 September 2015 10:58 (eight years ago) link
ooo, that does look interesting. cheers!
― bizarro gazzara, Friday, 4 September 2015 11:00 (eight years ago) link
"The Eve of the Last Apollo," by new ILB fave Carter Scholz.
― Thank You For Cosmic Jive Talkin' (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 20 February 2016 18:27 (eight years ago) link
Then there this, which mentions that story, and has a quote from it that I can't find: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/16/books/one-small-shelf-for-literature.html?pagewanted=all.Haven't really read but I don't quite dig the tone. Also, can't find the quoted line from the story in question in the story itself. Perhaps it was edited out later.
― Thank You For Cosmic Jive Talkin' (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 21 February 2016 00:24 (eight years ago) link
It's not a good line! ''We took one step out of the cradle; we put our foot out - and drew it back. . . . I think what it is is that space is really fucking hard, and expensive, and we have too many other problems down here" would be more accurate.
― ledge, Sunday, 21 February 2016 09:55 (eight years ago) link
Yup
― Thank You For Cosmic Jive Talkin' (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 21 February 2016 10:15 (eight years ago) link
You should read, ledge. Especially since he took your note and deleted that sentence.
― Thank You For Cosmic Jive Talkin' (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 23 February 2016 00:53 (eight years ago) link
"sputnik: the shock of the century" by paul dickson is a fun book that anyone who loves space age stuff would probably dig. lots of details about early rocket history that i never knew, plus inevitable entertaining anecdotes about how ppl reacted to sputnik (isaac asimov said it was what convinced him to stop writing science fiction and start writing popular science!).
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 23 February 2016 01:07 (eight years ago) link
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/01/from-astronaut-to-refugee-how-the-syrian-spaceman-fell-to-earth
― like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Tuesday, 1 March 2016 10:10 (eight years ago) link
Albums that never were and never will be:Prince Major Nelson - Cosmic RainCocoa BeachHarem PantsLittle Red Sputnik/Little Red MercuryJeannie Talk 2 NASAGemini (Evil Twin)Saturn VVAB VIRK Eye C Bust of ApolloAnna Banana RiverStar CityGumdrop vs. SpiderLight Dis CandleTranquility BassLovelace Clinique OgFlame TrenchI Would Fly 4 Un OrbitKapton AmericaDrogueSwimming LeeI Wanna Be Your RoverReg o' LithNurse Dspaminacan Dr. RendezvousSteel EelHeat ShieldEVAPLSS PLSS PLSSFit 2 Fly
― Cry for a Shadow Blaster (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 June 2016 17:31 (eight years ago) link
( I didn't know where to post that so I posted it here)
― Cry for a Shadow Blaster (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 13 June 2016 23:18 (eight years ago) link
http://apollo11.spacelog.org/page/04:05:22:37/
― Gravity Well, You Needn't (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 22 September 2016 01:04 (seven years ago) link
Also just saw that Margaret Dean Lazarus is co-writing the memoirs of an Apollo astronaut: short interview with her here https://medium.com/the-ribbon/author-interview-margaret-lazarus-dean-a027b36fa2c9#.8avlganc8
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Thursday, 22 September 2016 01:33 (seven years ago) link
Wonder which of the Apollo astronauts hasn't already written a memoir. Let's see.
― Gravity Well, You Needn't (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 22 September 2016 01:47 (seven years ago) link
Um, Scott Kelly, born in 1964, was not part of the Apollo program. Would be interested to read her novel.
― Gravity Well, You Needn't (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 22 September 2016 01:53 (seven years ago) link
Argh, i wondered if i had misremembered, and the link was down and i could not check, so i thought it would be fine, and here i am. Ashamed.
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Thursday, 22 September 2016 02:38 (seven years ago) link
The novel is very good, btw
― Gravity Well, You Needn't (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 22 September 2016 02:46 (seven years ago) link
John Young needs to write one.
― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 19 October 2016 21:39 (seven years ago) link
I find it hard to believe he didn't.
― Sketches by T-Boz (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 19 October 2016 21:50 (seven years ago) link
It seems to be named after a song by a recent Nobel-prize recipient.
― Sketches by T-Boz (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 19 October 2016 21:52 (seven years ago) link
blowing in the wind -- an inexplicable late-life turn to conspiracy
― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, 19 October 2016 22:22 (seven years ago) link
Eh, not quite.
― Sketches by T-Boz (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 19 October 2016 22:54 (seven years ago) link
Mentioned third post in
― Sketches by T-Boz (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 19 October 2016 23:35 (seven years ago) link
Hello, space-nerd checking in finally
I got "We Seven" for Christmas, haven't started it but timing turned out bittersweet with Glenn's passing.
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 17 January 2017 06:04 (seven years ago) link
that's the one that reprints the life magazine articles from the time of the mercury missions right? always meant tog et around to reading that one but i haven't yet, so looking forward to seeing what you think about it
gene cernan's passing has reminded me that i don't think we've talked about the last man on the moon anywhere else on ilx have we? i watched it when it came to netflix and thought it was a decent overview of the man and his career but it could have done with being longer - there was lots of stuff i'd have liked to have seen more on, and i wish there was more input from jack schmitt. i'm fascinated by the amount of important work he and cernan did on the moon during apollo 17, and their justified frustration that their discoveries were never followed up by other missions.
in other space-dork news i'm going to see chris hadfield lecture on friday. saw him (and met him!) last year and it was fantastic - he's such a charismatic ambassador for space
― How To: Make the perfect summer jorts (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 17 January 2017 09:48 (seven years ago) link
exciting! i enjoy him in the interviews & other stuff i've seen - full report plz
― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 17 January 2017 21:01 (seven years ago) link
I'm ashamed that I haven't posted more in this thread - (long story, all IRL nonsense) but James Redd nagged me over here after Gene Cernan's passing was noted on the obit. thread.
It worked like this - my mom was a mid-level apparatchik in the O.C. political establishment - somewhere in the early 70s she met Skylab astronaut (and O.C. resident) Jerry Carr at a function and got us (mom, dad, & me) VIP passes to see the launch of Apollo 17. I was seven years old and liked NASA more than ice cream - nevermind that we also flew on a Pan Am 747, my dad and I hung out at the plane upstairs bar. We also went to Disney World, but fuck that shit compared with a Saturn V launch.
After the mission was over the A17 crew took a meet-and-greet around the states and somehow my mom got us into the California stop. I can't really remember what I asked Cernan - I was way too self-conscious. Nevertheless everyone signed my stuff. I just unpacked everything at my new place and have to get it framed.
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2U1aSWUoAAkm5r.jpg
I watched The Last Man on the Moon - it's not necessarily a memorable documentary, but it is worth watching. It's entirely possible that the only answer to "what was it like to walk on the Moon and how did it change you?" will be whatever we can piece together from what these guys say and I'd watch it for that reason alone.
― Elvis Telecom, Friday, 27 January 2017 10:13 (seven years ago) link
wow.
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Friday, 27 January 2017 10:30 (seven years ago) link
Yeah, wow, thanks.
― In Walked Bodhisattva (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 27 January 2017 11:55 (seven years ago) link
holy shit elvis, that's amazing. that's gonna look fantastic in a frame.
We also went to Disney World, but fuck that shit compared with a Saturn V launch
seeing the saturn v on its side at kennedy space centre last summer was one of the more stunning things i've ever set eyes on in real life - i can't even imagine how incredible it must have been to see one of those things take off.
― the greg evigan school of improvised explosive devices (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 27 January 2017 14:57 (seven years ago) link
http://www.earthtothemoon.com/apollo_10.htmlhttps://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR4U0J4RDIVNqhCva25E8vmuJCk0q05EQ9rUkOyyCQuHIekYHEAHouston, this is Snoopy! We is GO and we is down among 'em Charlie!
― In Walked Bodhisattva (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 28 January 2017 03:15 (seven years ago) link
I hadn't checked in with LM5's YT channel in awhile and completely lost a day watching his Top 100 Space Moments video series. Really well done and even with footage I hadn't seen before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIiMRdcIAQ
― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 20 June 2023 07:14 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbMRyri3q8I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cimWUVqQy70
Fell into another YouTube hole - this time on the Homemade Documentaries channel. Outstanding quality with footage I've never ever seen before. Charlie Duke himself started commenting on his Apollo 16 doc. His Voyager doc is better than anything I've seen come out of NASA.
― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 26 July 2023 05:08 (eleven months ago) link
RIP Ken Mattingly, bumped from Apollo 13, eventually flew to the moon on Apollo 16, stayed around for a couple of shuttle flights. (Gary Sinise played him in Apollo 13), 87.https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/astronauts/former-astronaut-thomas-k-mattingly-ii/
― Elvis Telecom, Thursday, 2 November 2023 21:40 (seven months ago) link
aw RIP
― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 3 November 2023 03:59 (seven months ago) link
Rolling Obituary Thread 2023
^ Frank Borman obit and links posted by Elvis T
― koogs, Sunday, 26 November 2023 10:32 (seven months ago) link
Borman did release his own book in 1988: Countdown: An Autobiography - iirc it's pretty much a downer. If you read his NASA oral history interview, he's the super-intense military guy who you want commanding the first crewed flight of a Saturn V to the moon (when Anders sees Earthrise and starts taking pictures, Borman immediately says "hey, that's not scheduled") - but his own book is the super-intense military guy trying to figure out why his home is broken, why his wife is an alcoholic, and why the Eastern Airlines unions really hates his guts. Spoiler alert: he hates their guts too.
― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 28 November 2023 11:07 (six months ago) link
I have heard several interviews with Borman. He came across as someone who spared no one's feelings, including his own, and gave not an inch to sentiment. Even his description of seeing Earth from space was prosaic. He did have a lot of interesting stories, though.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 29 November 2023 22:50 (six months ago) link
i guessed "manned" isn't strictly correct: https://crookedtimber.org/2024/02/19/death-lonely-death/
anyway, an evocative post from a site i only very rarely check these days, abt the tin can we threw furthest
― mark s, Wednesday, 21 February 2024 12:49 (four months ago) link
Poor voyager
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Wednesday, 21 February 2024 20:44 (four months ago) link
y'all have seen The Farthest right?https://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/
― assert (matttkkkk), Wednesday, 21 February 2024 22:48 (four months ago) link
This one is good too. I drive past the office building featured in this a couple times a weekhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6L9Du_IFmI
― Elvis Telecom, Thursday, 22 February 2024 08:31 (four months ago) link
Love The Farthest.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Friday, 23 February 2024 00:43 (four months ago) link
What video is that, Elvis? Stupid YT is geoblocking it.
it's the trailer for It's Quieter In The Twilight - a 2022 doc about Voyager's flight team. It's streaming in a couple of different places, but you can find it on the torrents
― Elvis Telecom, Friday, 23 February 2024 03:53 (four months ago) link
Cheers!
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Friday, 23 February 2024 04:39 (four months ago) link
I think I posted this one before? The Homemade Documentaries YT channel has been making space documentaries that are routinely superior to any of the NASA ones - especially his Voyager one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M62kajY-ln0
― Elvis Telecom, Friday, 23 February 2024 04:45 (four months ago) link