Missing it the first time

Post #310,917 by rcareaga 7/13/09 11:19:53 PM Reply	Missing it the first time Can I have a show of hands for both missing and catching? In the latter case, where and under what circumstances? I'll start: A fortnight away from my seventeenth birthday; living with father and stepmother in an apartment in the far northwest corner of LA county (technically also within the LA city limits, although no one took this seriously). The lunar module had landed, and there was an interval of, I don't know, fifteen minutes or half an hour before the astronauts emerged. During this interval the picture tube on our massive console color TV—these used to be considered furniture, and this unit was probably nine or ten years old in 1969—expired with a soft pop, and we had to run down the outside walkway (overlooking palm trees and a pool) to neighbors three doors down with whom we were on friendly terms to watch those incredibly muddy first images of Armstrong hopping onto the lunar surface. If I'd known that forty months later the entire undertaking would be put to bed...well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Certainly I wouldn't have believed it had anyone essayed the prediction at the time. cordially,
Post #310,919 by drook 7/13/09 11:43:52 PM 7/13/09 11:46:41 PM Reply	Re: those incredibly muddy first images You ever hear the story about that? Apparently the footage was crystal clear when it got back down to Earth. But in a different format than the commercial TV networks. Oops, nobody thought of that. They literally pointed a TV camera at a monitor, which was showing a compressed feed. And those are the tapes that have survived. No one currently knows for sure where the original tapes are, nor do they have any working equipment with which to scan the warehouse full of un-indexed tapes that might contain the originals. Oh wait, holy crap. They found them! http://www.dvorak.or...40th-anniversary/ If that's what they have on the site linked at the top of this thread, it wasn't very noticeable. -- Drew Edited by drook July 13, 2009, 11:44:24 PM EDT Edited by drook July 13, 2009, 11:46:41 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #310,920 by rcareaga 7/14/09 12:09:45 AM Reply	Re: those incredibly muddy first images Yes, I had heard about that. Jeez, Dvorak wants Paypal donations for his blog? On the basis of his Mac coverage since 1984 I'd consider paying him a modest monthly stipend to STFU. cordially,
Post #310,932 by malraux 7/14/09 8:48:21 AM Reply	Allegedly the report from The Express is a fraud There's something odd going on in that clip. In the latter half of the video items in the background are showing through the spacesuit, similar to the effect of a poor green-screen attempt. Watch the right-most pole at about 1:18 or so. Ah, from one of the comments: ItÂs a kind of short-term temporary burn-in. There is a technical term for it, but I canÂt remember what it is. Remember, this was shot in direct sun, more direct than you get at the bottom of our atmosphere. When the astronaut crosses in front of the camera, it takes a few seconds for the image that had been in that spot since the camera was turned on to fade away. Making the whole thing moot, the British report is allegedly a fraud: http://blogs.discove...ideo-tapes-found/ Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #310,936 by static 7/14/09 9:29:26 AM Reply	I heard just the other day a story about that. There was an interview on the Science Show on ABC Radio National with someone who used to work in OTC in Sydney at the time. NASA were using the radio telescopes at Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek (near Canberra) as part of their relay network. Parkes, being the larger dish, was to be the primary link, but on the day in question, there was a windstorm. However the dish was over at its limits and even though it was withstanding windgusts ten times the design limits, the operators refusd to stow it. Regardless, the wind made its signal too chancy so the world saw the descent and landing from Honeysuckle Creek. Once the Eagle had landed, though, the wind at Parkes had died down. The NASA people had an argument about cutting over to Parkes, as the picture from Parkes was much better. Obviously, the cutover was going to take some time. Australia wasn't supposed to be the main link at the landing, but Armstrong overrode the schedule from Houston and took the lunar module down early. Oh and he confirmed that the "conversion" process from the slow-scan pictures was to point a camera at the slow-scan screen. :-) Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #310,922 by Andrew Grygus 7/14/09 2:12:17 AM Reply	Saw it. Had to drive down into Burbank to see it with friends, since I traditionally don't have a TV. The streets of Burbank were eerily deserted - I saw only a couple of cars. Arrived in time to see the landing.
Post #310,925 by Ashton 7/14/09 3:51:52 AM Reply	Oh Yeahhh - - Saw it at the Lab, amidst cohorts; serendipitously, one knew what that Redmond-grade Error # (thrown by the landing computer) signified: Glenn landed that sucker by VFR (Pilot-speak: Visual Flight Rules) -- with seconds of fuel remaining, because of that {literal!} lateral arabesque, to avoid some boulders. (And when you consider his spatial location / viewing port orientation -- it was a Heifetz-grade masterpiece of kinetic grokking to Fullness. (Control could have.. almost Did: commanded an immediate firing of the return rocket, about the time of that computer BSOD; probably took lots of guts to just.. Leave Them Alone. Too.) Talk aboutcher Whew!! Fascinating, eerie -- and with the requisite close-escape -- High Drama. Pity they blew the video conversion, but inconsequential compared with the 111,000 things they didn't screw up, even a little. Today, Muricans could not 'do' such a concept --> full and perfect execution of a similarly challenging project: two+ generations of the innumerate plus the overlay of creeping-dumbth. Blame it on the steady junk-food salt-fat-sugar diet? EZ cop-out. But maybe right, too (?) 40! fucking. years. later -- and we're still mired in superstitions; tribes of losers are worried about the gummint Takin Their Gunz Away.. and millions bought a potboiler series of novellas ['Left Behind'] on Rupturing Out. er BODILY == like from airplanes and stuff. From this horde 'we' are gonna Save the Planet from homo-sap -??- yashure. Mad Max meets Terminator on The PIcture Show at the End of the Universe. On IMAX, natch.
Post #310,928 by boxley 7/14/09 8:01:47 AM Reply	and all of the computing power used, a 64k chip was the biggest chip used back then (heard anecdotaly from a tech on the apollo 13 mess. I remember thinking that by the time I was in my mid 20's we would have civilian shuttles on a daily basis going from earth to the moon and a weekly run to mars. Didnt know much about humans back in the day obviously
Post #311,016 by rcareaga 7/14/09 10:45:24 PM Reply	Even Homer nods; Ashton too Armstrong landed the module, Glenn being a quarter of a million miles distant on that date. earthily,
Post #311,019 by Another Scott 7/14/09 10:54:00 PM Reply	It's easy to get those Ohioans mixed up. ;-) http://en.wikipedia....ki/Neil_Armstrong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn Cheers, Scott.
Post #311,032 by Ashton 7/15/09 4:28:11 AM Reply	Think that grey-cell got overwritten by the 'Lance' guy
Post #310,931 by malraux 7/14/09 8:27:35 AM Reply	Both. I was 2 months old at the time, and while my parents were watching it, I probably treated it no differently than any other environmental attraction. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #310,965 by folkert 7/14/09 3:35:21 PM Reply	'Twas 17 months old... And I don't remember it any more than you do.
Post #310,933 by mvitale 7/14/09 8:48:59 AM Reply	Re: Missing it the first time Uh, hmmm. My parents were still more than a year away from their wedding, much less birthing their first child (me) almost four years after that... Suffice to say, I wasn't there. -Mike "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania
Post #310,939 by Another Scott 7/14/09 11:21:47 AM Reply	I saw it. I was 7. It was way past my normal bedtime. My mom, brother and I went to a neighbor's apartment to see it on their B&W(?) TV. It was very grainy, but a thrilling sight. I ate up the National Geographic articles on the space program during the 1960s and early 1970s. Fabulous pictures and lots of statistics. It was a heady time... <sigh> Cheers, Scott.
Post #311,020 by a6l6e6x 7/14/09 11:05:23 PM Reply	I'm one of those that did not miss it the first time. I became a father for the third and last time just weeks before that. Not that it mattered much, even had a 25 inch color TV. Those were fantastic days! Whippersnappers! :) Alex

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