China launches Moon mission

[Skylon]

Since after all funding flows through the legislature the uneducated mumbling-shuffling-soul-searchery still plays a part.

I don't recalling hearing much about the media questioning the dangers of a manned space program after Apollo 1, as I think it was taken for granted at the time (I'm sure someone probably did). However between Challenger and Columbia with the retarded sensationalist 24 hr news cycle (with 2 hrs of content at best) there was certainly a lot of screeching from the media, and of course some politician will stick their nose in, especially if they're opposed to spending money on space exploration, and now we even get every idiot with a blog or youtube account posting their 2 cents as well.[/quote]

No. But during the Congressional Hearings, politicians took their pot-shots at NASA, they were just far less publicized at the time owing to lack of the 24 hour news cycle, and that there was still the "BEAT THE RUSSIANS" mentality.

In fairness, I'm not calling the crew of Challenger a bunch of adrenaline-junkie thrill-seekers.

No, astronauts aren't. However, they do generally have a mentality that "unless you can prove to me this will be fatal, I'll fly it." Pilot and military astronauts come from a background where death is part of the game. Either in testing an unproven aircraft, or in combat. Fear does ultimately take its toll, however its usually not personal. Many astronauts leave due to the emotional stress the job puts on their family. Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane's recent autobiography, "Riding Rockets" gives a pretty good look into the Astronaut mentality.

[Temujin]

Descriptors like brave or daring work, but adrenaline junkie is for extreme sports enthusiasts, not astronauts.

[Kanastrous]

In all fairness I think it's silly to blanket-assume that a profession where you get to ride rockets to orbit doesn't attract any adrenaline junkies, at all. Fine, some of them probably are. So what? It doesn't make them any less brave, daring, etc, does it?

[Skylon]

In all fairness I think it's silly to blanket-assume that a profession where you get to ride rockets to orbit doesn't attract any adrenaline junkies, at all. Fine, some of them probably are. So what? It doesn't make them any less brave, daring, etc, does it?

I don't think the term is fair, considering its connotations. For one thing, 90% of an astronaut's job is tedious. Its either office work, verifying procedures and software in simulators, work on support crews, sometimes work on a backup crew, years of training for flights and of course intense competition for seats on those flights. Most in flight tasks are tedious as hell. That is not work for an adrenaline junkie, but a professional.

As I noted, they do get an intense sense of fulfillment from doing their job. Some astronauts have confessed they'd rather die on their first flight, than never fly in space. In the book I mentioned earlier, Mike Mullane recalled his prayer at launch wasn't "don't let me die" but, "please if something goes wrong, let it happen above 50 miles" (the USAF definition of "space", reaching that high qualifies you for astronaut wings). Also, if I trained for years on a space flight, and I was strapped into a rocket, unless someone told me "the engine has a 90% chance of failure", I would say "launch this sucker!" That's why calmer heads have the final go/no go on launch day.

[PeZook]

Heh...I recall Gene Krantz thought Apollo 13 should continue the mission after something exploded in the capsule. At least at first, before it became obvious they'd be lucky to even get home.

So it's not just astronauts who can do it

[Kanastrous]

Bad (probably damaged) O2 tank exploded in the Service Module. We made a movie about it!

[Vympel]

You'll have to chalk me up as not caring. What's going to the moon going to accomplish? If they're going to put money into space exploration, they should put the effort into coming up with ways to actually explore space, not prance about on the moon. What more is there to learn that would justify the expense?

[Phantasee]

I don't want to get too off-topic, but I'm pretty sure the guy with the Apollo sig and avatar knows what blew up on 13.

[PeZook]

Bad (probably damaged) O2 tank exploded in the Service Module. We made a movie about it!

Kranz and the flight controllers didn't know that at first ; They know there was an explosion (which was bad whatever it was) and the readings were all screwy and there possibly was a leak, but the first thing they did was try to salvage the mission...somehow.

It took a few minutes before they decided it can't be done and should switch to saving the astronauts and hope they can do that. But you could see the attitude: we can do this! It's just an explosion! We worked with glitches before, and it's just a bigger glitch!

It was kind of the attitude at NASA at the time, though. One could argue it was was got them to the Moon in the first place: I mean, Armstrong could've aborted too when he got a serious-looking computer error during descent. But neither he nor Houston decided to scrub the mission, they went ahead and landed anyway.

[ShadowDragon8685]

As I recall, he didn't have a computer error, the computer he had was an error. Specifically, the computer they had at the time was incapable of processing data fast enough, and he had to eyeball it.

[PeZook]

As I recall, he didn't have a computer error, the computer he had was an error. Specifically, the computer they had at the time was incapable of processing data fast enough, and he had to eyeball it.

You couldn't "eyeball it" when flying the LEM, since it was utterly dependent on the computer to control the descent rate and vector (the astronaut adjusted the desired settings using control sticks, and the computer controlled the engines)

Though you're right that it wasn't really an "error" per se: the data overflow resulted from astronauts leaving the rendezous radar on (to be ready in case an abort was needed), which generated data the computer couldn't process in real time, so it postponed these tasks in favor of more important ones. It looked serious at first, but flight controllers quickly figured out the reason, checked the computer did not postpone mission-critical tasks (like controlling the descent), and decided to go ahead with the landing anyway.

...then it turned out the landing site was full of huge rocks, but that's another story altogether