It's now been 25 years that mankind has not been on the moon.
If you where born after 12/12/72 you where not born in the age of 
man on the moon.
        So what are you all under 25 gonna do see humans on the moon
in your lifetime?

39 responses total.

  Although I was alive for (though not old enough to remember) the first
  batch of moon landings, it's probably typical of my generation that I
  wonder what, in particular, is so desirable about further moon trips..
  It's true we've drawn some substantial benefits from the space program
  (though mostly, I think, from satellites and the communications and
  improved knowledge of the earth that they offer..) but just going to
  the moon seems kind of pointless without a specific goal..

  The first time it happened it was inspiring, a triumph of human
  engineering.  By the time we stopped it seemed more like, "OK, we got
  here, now what can we do with that fact."  That the answer seemed to be
  "well, as long as we're here let's hit a few golf balls" just didn't
  fire the imagination the way the first trip had..

  I'm not advocating that we completely give up on further human exploration
  of the solar system but it's a complicated, expensive, and dangerous
  undertaking to send out humans unless you're actually going to do something
  that needs human flexibility once you get there..   

Agreed. I watched the first moon landing - it is one of the few world
events where I rmemeber exactly where I was (but then, I was at a
memorable place anyway, so which came first.....  :)). Most of what
was accomplished scientifically could have been done instrumentally, which
is not to disparage the up-close look around and sampling. I don't think
another visit by humans has much point, unless it were to set up an
observatory. 

I was born in August of 72. Does that count? :)

        It took a human navigator/pilot to successfully bring the 
Eagle down to the moons surface.  The changing conditions (angle of
descent, alttitude, cureent weight of spacecraft, etc.) where to
much for the on-board computer to handle.  You probably have more
computing power in your wristwatch these days.

I suspect that a 1950's mechanical "computer" could have landed the LEM.
(It would have to be designed and built for that exact task and given a
really clear landing area, but those aren't tough requirements.)

Re #4,5:  I believe that the computer aboard the LEM had 32K of ROM and 16K of
RAM, and it was indeed built just for the task of landing on the moon.  Some
people blame the computer's failure on Neil Armstrong for leaving a particular
radar dish turned on after the time when it was needed.  The input from the
dish contributed to overloading the computer.

January 9, 1977 - I saw men on the moon when I watched the movie in History
class.  ;-)  I'd love to see another moon landing - I always get so jealous
when my parents talk about how cool it was.

I remember the first landingon the moon...it was the middle of the
night (like 2 a.m. or something I think)  I used to hate the apollo
missions because when there was one going on, CBS would have
special report coverage in the mornings and pre-empt Captain Kangaroo....

I mean I liked astronauts...but the Captain and Mr. Greenjeans were
my heroes, not Neil Armstrong.  How dare they pre-empt the Captain!

I was 8 years old when I watched the first Moon landing.  I had already 
determined that I wanted to be an astronaut, and so it was a very 
personal experience for me.

A few months later, I found I had to get glasses.  Since I knew that all 
astronauts had to have perfect vision (it was true then, anyway!) I was 
very disappointed.  But a few years later, I found out about computers.  
At age 12, I was the first person in the Lansing area to get the 
computer merit badge, with the help of my scoutmaster, who was an actual 
*computer* *programmer*!!!  I intended to work for NASA, if I couldn't 
be an astronaut myself.

I've kept my interest in computers through to the present.  It didn't 
get me to the Moon, or to any close contact with the space program.  
It did give me a career, which does let us pay the bills.  Aandrea has a 
brother who works as a contractor for NASA (as a programmer), that's as 
close as I've gotten to the space program.  So far.

Re #7: I don't think the moon landing was done to cool your parents... 8^}

Funny - I remember the first moon landing to be late afternoon (EST).
So, whose memory is better?  :)

        First landing may have been like 8pm (still plenty of daylight
on July 21st), while the walking on the surface (and the TV coverage)
occured later at night (near midnight).  this from recallection and
conjuecture.  I could look it up in Encyclopedia, but you all with
fast web service could probably cut and paste something here faster.

I was away at camp during the first moon landing. Other campers were spreading
the word that according to the Bible the earth would come to a firy end when
man set foot on the moon. As luck would have it, that night a nearby munitions
factory caught fire and exploded, lighting up the sky and booming with
explosions. Although the camp administration eventually let everyone know what
was happenning, peoples' reactions under stress were quite interesting. I
grabbed my Swiss Army Knife and was prepared to flee (classic reaction!).
A counselor (a big husky football-player type had to grab one of his thighs
with botyh hands to keep it from shaking. And afterwards, another camper lay
in his bed endlessly repeating the phrase "Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord,
Praise the Lord . . . ." Fascinating (and scary) stuff for a youth.

(This is item #128 in Agora and #28 in Science.)

Hmm.  I've never seen anything on the LEM computer, but just last night I
found some info on the Apollo capsule's navigation computer.  By today's
specifications it had 50K of ROM and 2K of RAM, a 16-bit data path, and a 2
MHz clock, as far as I can tell.  Both the ROM and RAM were core memory, the
only difference being the ROM was set up to be read-only during each
mission, and could be reprogrammed between...kinda an early form of Flash
EPROM, if you will.  I/O was via numeric displays and a numeric keypad,
coupled to the computer's Input and Output registers.

Source: http://wwwis.cs.utwente.nl:8080/~faase/Ha/Apollo.html

The first landing was shown live - that it what made it so gripping.

I don't remember the moon landing, since I wasn't born. I do, however recall
the Challenger explosion.

I was in 8th grade, home sick from school that day. I came downstairs to try
and eat lunch, and saw the TV on in the kitchen. Mom told me the shuttle had
blown up. The impact of this didn't hit me until that night when I listened to
talk radio. One person said the hardest part was that everyone had seen this
live on TV.

My friend who was in school that day, said it was announced over the PA system
during lunch. The entire cafeteria went cold quiet... and that was all young
children.

Wasn't born, but there's something to say for the accomplishment of getting
man on the moon.  Screw all the experiments, there was only one real purpose
for doing it, and it was done well.  I can't complain, except for the fact
that I'm about 15 years to young to remember any of it.

  Oh geee, The Challenger. I can tell you exactly what I was doing. I was
driving for Yellow Cab, and just parked on the Depot, and stepped out to use
the necessary and buy a paper. When I got back in the car, I heard that the
Challenger had exploded. I was so stunned, I went home to tell my Mom and she
had the set on, and I was just aghast at the horridness of the explosion.
  I don't remember what I did for the rest of that day.

That was the year I was in third grade, and I was living in England.  The
British kids I knew and our teachers didn't seem to have the same fascination
with the space shuttles that Americans did.  I think my downstairs neighbor
asked me sometime the next day if I had heard about the space shuttle
explosion, and that was the first time I heard of it.  I remember seeing
replays of the explosion on the TV news several times over the next few days,
but other than that it didn't get talked about much.  It wasn't until I got
back to the US that I started hearing a lot about it.

Re #4:  Tim, the Surveyor probes (one of which was visited by an Apollo
team who removed the camera and returned it to Earth) landed under
control of their on-board computers.  The job no more required a pilot
on board then than it would now.
 
The Surveyors proved that a probe could land on the Moon and not
disappear into "dust pools" which some people feared would swallow
anything which landed on it.  They blazed the trail, but they couldn't
do the kind of extensive sample and data collection performed by Apollo.
(Like it or not, the most versatile data collection and analysis system
available to the scientist can still be created by unskilled people
who enjoy their work. ;-)
 
Re #2:  Actually, an observatory (or several) would make excellent
sense for the Moon.  The far side is one of the few places you can
get away from Earth's raucous radio noise, not to mention above the
signal-blocking ionosphere.
 
However, you're quite wrong about being able to perform the entire
mission by remote sensing.  Without actual, physical samples it would
be impossible to date the rocks and thus assign them a position in the
events which formed our part of the Solar System.  You have to put down
probes and drill holes to do the heat-flow experiments which gave
more information on the origins of Luna.  This is mighty complicated
work for robot probes, and people are not *that* expensive to send.
Volunteers will do it for the glory, if the public will allow them.
 
Reasons to go back?  There may be many, including good financial ones.
If there is ice in the shadowed craters of the lunar poles (still in
doubt) it would make space travel much cheaper, as lunar rocket fuel
would not have to be hauled up from Earth at great expense.  Finally,
one of the discoveries of Apollo is that the lunar "soil" (regolith) has
absorbed comparatively large amounts of the rare isotope helium-3.
He-3 can be fused with deuterium to yield He-4 and hydrogen, without
producing any neutrons (which induce radioactivity).  It is just about
the ideal fusion fuel.
 
Clean energy without any CO2 would seem to be the answer to global
warming, no?  There are people who believe that the Moon will be the
source of the energy to run Earth's industry for the next century-plus.

(Actually, the Soviets' Luna 9 probe was the first probe to land on the moon,
4 months before Surveyor 1.)

Just nitpicking.  I agree with Russ, but am skeptical that fusion energy will
pan out in my lifetime.  I think we need to have alternative plans for our
energy needs.

We sat out at the lake and played cards with my dad waiting for the first moon
walk.

I sat and watched Challenger live.  I kept trying to think of some way to tell
the announcers that the damned thing had blown up, they couldn't seem to reach
that conclusion.

Russ, what would it cost to mine He3 and bring it back to Earth to be 
used as fuel for power plants?  Manned deep space travel is expensive -- 
what would it take for that to be feasible?

I remember more vividly the botched Apollo 11 mission (theone they made
into a movie with Tom Hanks) where lives were in the balance and
everyone was glued to the tv to see if they were going to make it into the
atmosphere or had burned up.

That was Apollo 13.  Apollo 11 was the first moon landing.  Not a botch.

It is easy to remember that it was Apollo *13* that was unlucky. No
connection of course - such a mnemonic aid.

moon landing, womb.
challenger, school lunch line.

I applaud Rane's use of the word "mnemonic".

(.....bow....)  :)

Maybe if we build a more permanent base we could use it as a point from which
we could more thoroughly explore the solar system. There are people who say
that mining asteroids could be profitable. Making a base on the far side of
the moon as a way-station for people and cargoe makes sense, I think.

My scenario in regards to the Challenger incident is almost exactly like
beeswing's, except I was a little older.  Home sick from school, and watched
it live. Terrible.

Moon landing: I remember sitting on the couch watching the Old, Old B&W TV
during the moon landing.  What I mostly remember was watching light grey fuzz
moving apparently randomly on dark grey fuzz, with lkots of medium grey fuzz
to confuse the issue.  I also remember being told I was to sit there until
it was over because someday I'd be glad I'd seen it.  Between the bad
resolution of our 20 year old TV and the fact that I needed, but didn't have
glasses, I didn't see a thing.  I do remember the incident though.  ;)

Challenger 13: I was at work in Community Newscenter in Lansing, just dusting
and tidying my section (History, I think) when the news came over the in-store
radio.  The already quiet  murmer of voices hushed and several people near
me looked stunned and pale.  I remember being terribly sad for the families
of the astronauts and concerned that this would put an end to the space age
... if not forever then for a long time.

Challenger explosion...I was in college, and had skipped a class to
be online hotchatting with this girl on a private channel.  She had her
TV on CNN, saw the explosion, and got very upset.  We let five or six
people into our channel and had a group discussion about the explosion and
life while she narrated fromher end what was going on on tv.  Actually a
quite memorable afternoon.

(hotchatting in 1984?)

It was in 1986.

Re #21:  I never said otherwise, but the Soviets weren't sharing
data pertinent to engineering a lander.  There was a race to the
moon going on, and they weren't giving up any advantages.
 
Re #23:  John, I honestly have no idea.  It's been years since I've
seen anyone's figures for such a concept.  However, there are few
doubts that it could be done vastly cheaper than NASA does anything.
 
One thing which I can answer is how much energy He-3 would yield.
(Gross, not net).  A nucleus of hydrogen weighs 1.007825 AMU;
deuterium is 2.0140, He-3 is 3.01603, He-4 is 4.00260.  The reaction
He-3 + D -> He-4 + H loses (3.01603 + 2.0140) - (4.00260 + 1.007825)
= 0.019605 AMU, or about 0.65% of the mass of the He-3.  This missing
mass is converted to energy, by E=mc^2.
 
Accordingly, a kilogram of He-3 fused with deuterium yields
0.0065 * (3*10^8)^2 = 585 TRILLION joules of energy.  That's
162 MILLION kilowatt-hours.  To get the same amount of raw energy
from burning anthracite coal, you'd need about seventeen thousand
metric tons of it.  Recovering energy from the fusion might be
more efficient, to boot.
 
Recovering He-3 from lunar soil is about as simple as heating it
up and catching the gases which boil off.  A metric ton could
replace about twenty million tons of coal, more or less.  Would
it be worth doing?  You tell me.
 
That scheme represents extreme finesse.  At the extremely crude end
of the scale, anything thrown from the Moon to Earth arrives with
kinetic energy of 60 million joules per kilogram (minimum).  This is
about 2/3 more than the energy from burning anthracite coal.  Since
you don't have to go through the lossy steps of combustion and such
to make it into electricity, the useful energy would be equivalent
to 3-5 times its weight of coal.  All you have to do is catch the
incoming rocks and pump them through a dynamic brake, aka electric
generator.  (This would not be easy, but it's a different set of
problems compared to nuclear fusion.)
 
Last, there'd be money to be made from the rock.  Of the Apollo 12
sample analyses I have, none contained less than 7.8% iron.  The
average of the crystalline rocks is 16.6% iron (1/6 by weight).  I
understand that this iron is mostly fine metallic particles (which
you would expect from billions of years of bombardment by nickel-iron
meteors).  "Refining" it involves crushing the rock and removing the
iron particles with a magnet; you don't even need a furnace.
 
Widely used, generators powered by falling moon rock could eliminate
the coal consumed for electric power as well as the coal used to smelt
iron.  You'd eliminate most coal mines and most iron mines.  I hadn't
expected this, but it's a direct consequence of the numbers.
 
Before you ask, tossing something off the Moon takes only about 5% as
much energy as it yields at Earth.  Further, there are ways to make a
"ladder" to lift rock off the Moon, and even make it self-powering.
 
I know how to calculate some kinds of numbers pertaining to science
and engineering, but that's not the same as having the One Truth.
So you tell me:  are any of these good reasons to go back to the moon?

Well, let's not get too simplisitic. I agree that there are possible
opportunities for energy and materials from the moon, but it isn't easy.
For example, one also has to transport to the moon all the equipment to
extract and concentrate and handle and store that He3, so while the
energy yield might be great, it still might be cheaper in the short term
to transport fuels. And, while there is a lot of iron on the moon, it has
admixtures of nickel and other metals, and therefore a moderately complex
metallurgical installation is also required - and also transported from
the earth. I am glad that you were willing to say that recovering the
kinetic energy of the incoming rocks "would not be easy". 

Re #37: Some of the things you're pointing to as difficulties, do not
appear to be.  For instance, extracting He-3 from lunar soil is literally
as simple as heating it.  (That's how NASA assayed the samples.)  On the
moon, the sun shines for 14 days at a time; IIRC, the design for the
helium extractor was a crawler with a solar mirror on it, continuously
preparing the entree du jour, baked lunar regolith under glass.  Lousy
menu, but hey... I wouldn't go to Luna for the restaurants.  (Yet.)
 
Along with the helium, you get some hydrogen (all from the same source,
the solar wind).  I assume there would also be some argon from the
decay of potassium-40, but that's not mentioned in the analyses I have.
 
Going from science to engineering, I've read that the radiative temperature
of a dark sky is colder than liquid nitrogen, and sensors on mountain-tops
have been kept chilled that cold by letting them radiate to space through
infrared-transparent insulating windows.  If it will work on a mountain
top on Earth at night, it can be done at least as easily and as well on
the Moon at night and probably all day as well.
 
Argon freezes at about 84 K.  It appears that a simple radiator could
freeze it out pretty easily.  Hydrogen has a multitude of uses (especially
on an airless body) and can be separated by chemical affinities.  Separating
it would probably pay for itself, so this leaves the helium.  If separating 
He-3 from He-4 on the Moon costs more than shipping all of it, you know
what the accountant is going to say.
 
With regard to metals, I wasn't even thinking about separating them on
the Moon.  If it was useful enough to do so (say, to make metal shells
for slugs of rock and soil), the chromium, cobalt, nickel and manganese
wouldn't hurt the mechanical properties.  They would increase the value 
of the scrap once it got to Earth, though.
 
>I am glad that you were willing to say that recovering the
>kinetic energy of the incoming rocks "would not be easy". 
 
Oh, I'm sure that some aspects might be infuriatingly difficult.  But
do not underestimate the power of human creativity.  I have dealt with
infuriating problems which have been assigned to me because someone was
trying to shave (literally) two cents off the cost of a part!  And I've
done it.  Right off the top of my head, I can think of at least two
completely different ways to recover the energy from loads of rock dropped
from the Moon and deliver it to Earth in useful forms.  (Even one more
gives more fallback positions than with fusion, which has only two basic
methods [implosion and magnetic confinement].)  I can tell you without
reservation:  this *IS* possible.  If there is sufficient incentive to
replace fossil fuels with other forms of energy (say, heavy carbon
taxes), someone *WILL* do it.
 
There is widespread fear of radioactives from nuclear energy, and the
batteries required by solar are expensive and short-lived.  Moon rocks
have nothing to inspire dread.  Will they light our lights someday?
150 years ago, who would have predicted that "swamp gas" would spin
turbines to pump the stuff stored in Leyden jars to our houses to
light our lights?  Stranger things have happened.  Physics says this
is not only possible but possibly attractive, so I keep an open mind.

Challenger explosion ....Guess it was the last year of my stay in England
before returning to India.I happened to see the explosion on Tv ,perhaps BBC
news .Was in first year high school and saw the very first shuttle Columbia
make a successful mission .Was very surprising and moreover the T - 10 seconds
countdown was so exclaimatory ,the onnouncer cooly said and space shuttle
challenger explodes.It was the latter critics mentioning the debris as
shattered human bones scattered over couple Km radius that touched me.Infact
a school teacher about to make the first teaching from outer space to her 
class was on board.
It definetly was a setback to NASA but i couldn't keep track of further
missions owing to poor media back in India.

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