Последний "Аполлон"

Автор ronatu, 09.12.2012 16:17:28

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ronatu

ЦитироватьForty years ago, this month, two human explorers bounced and bounded across the surface of the Moon at a mountainous place called Taurus-Littrow. Clad in their snowman-like suits, they formed a stark contrast with the almost uniform greyness of the lunar terrain around them. At the time of writing, Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt are the last of our kind ever to leave their footprints on another world. In the first instalment of this Apollo 17 commemorative series of articles, published last weekend, it was seen how skills and experience were pivotal in bringing the final lunar landing mission to these two men...and it was also seen that, as with human life itself, fortune turns on a dime. Fortune turned in favour of Cernan and Schmitt—and their command module pilot, Ron Evans, too—but it turned against Dick Gordon, Vance Brand, and Joe Engle. For Engle, the blow was particularly harsh, as more than two years of training for a lunar landing came to nothing, because he wasn't a professional geologist.

The National Academy of Sciences had long pressured NASA to fly its only formally qualified geologist-astronaut, Schmitt, on a lunar landing mission, and the space agency eventually caved in. Yet flying Schmitt on Apollo 17 simply because he happened to be a geologist, and had contributed enormously to the programme, was not enough, and NASA senior managers would have fought the scientists and politicians tooth and nail if the man nicknamed "Dr. Rock" was not up to the task. Many questions were asked as to how useful Schmitt would really be—encased in a bulky suit, with only minutes available at each geological sampling stop to make judgements and observations—and the fact remained that going to the Moon was fraught with intense risk.

One day, early in 1972, Chris Kraft—the legendary flight director who had recently been appointed Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston—took Gene Cernan to one side.

"Geno," he began, "put away that fighter pilot's silk scarf and just bring your crew home alive. If you run into something you don't like out there and decide not to land, I'll back you one hundred percent."

Cernan felt quite differently. The very fact that Apollo 17 was to be the final mission of the programme made him even more bold, and he impressed on the journalists, the workers building and checking out their spacecraft, and the politicians that this was not the "end," but the "end of the beginning." However, as our generation knows, Apollo 17 was the end. For two years, NASA's workforce had been in decline and President Richard Nixon's budget cuts had made this immensely painful for those giants who had made possible the greatest achievement in human history. Although Cernan meant it with all sincerity, his words grew to become a popular joke: A cartoonist drew a pair of workers at the top of a scaffold, one holding a notice informing him that he had just been fired. The other man was on the telephone, saying "Can we get Gene Cernan up here to give Smith that 'it's not the end, it's the beginning' speech again?"
Когда жизнь экзаменует - первыми сдают нервы.

ronatu

ЦитироватьBy the evening of 6 December 1972, all was ready. The gigantic Saturn V gleamed under the floodlights as it was readied for its only night-time launch. Even today, it remains the largest and most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status. Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt proceeded through the ritual of a steak-and-eggs breakfast, after which they were helped into their bulky suits. At length, all three men were ensconced in their seats in the command module, which they had named "America." Launch was scheduled for 9:53 pm EST, at the start of a four-hour "window," and the countdown proceeded smoothly...until the first glitch reared its head. The automated launch sequencer on the ground failed to properly command the oxygen tank of the Saturn V's third stage to pressurise. The launch controllers issued the command manually, but the sequencer knew that it had not sent the command and refused to proceed.

Eventually, a work-around procedure was devised and the countdown clock resumed ticking a few minutes before midnight. Finally, at 12:33 am on 7 December, the Saturn took flight, stunning the assembled crowds and most of America's East Coast with a spectacle rivalling sunrise. "It's lighting up the sky," announced public affairs commentator Jack King with astonishment. "It's just like daylight here at the Kennedy Space Center!" From his left-hand couch, Cernan could clearly see the fiery glow reflecting off the clouds and the shuddering cabin seemed "painted" with a fearsome reddish hue. Ron Evans and Jack Schmitt, experiencing their first ride into space, were exultant.

Shortly after midday on the 11th, the command and service module America and lunar module Challenger parted company in orbit around the Moon, and Cernan and Schmitt steeled themselves for their Powered Descent to land at Taurus-Littrow. By this time, Cernan was an old hand at such matters, having flown down to just nine miles above the Moon on Apollo 10. "Thanks to the simulators back on Earth, with their computer-enhanced photos of the approach to the landing site," Cernan wrote in his autobiography, The Last Man on the Moon, "I knew this place better than I knew my own palm and there were no surprises as we zoomed toward the jagged highlands that separate the Sea of Tranquillity from the Sea of Serenity. I called out the passing landmarks that verified we were on track to the narrow entrance to the Valley of Taurus-Littrow."

Dropping closer now, both men's eyes remained on their instruments...until Cernan spotted something that he wanted Schmitt to take a look at. Halfway through the 12-minute burn of Challenger's descent engine, he told Schmitt to look at "something spectacular" outside his window. Expecting to see some unexpected jewel of lunar geology, Schmitt looked; but he couldn't see a thing, he said, except for the blue and white globe of Earth.

"That's what I'm telling you to look at!" chuckled Cernan.
Когда жизнь экзаменует - первыми сдают нервы.

ronatu

Когда жизнь экзаменует - первыми сдают нервы.

ronatu

#3
Цитировать.....
During their time inside the lander, the astronauts stored their suits at the back of the tiny cabin. However, they were sodden with sweat and in order to dry them in time for the second EVA, Cernan and Schmitt attached the helmets and gloves and hooked up the oxygen hoses to circulate air through them. "That was like inflating a pair of big balloons," wrote Cernan, "and it seemed as if two more guys had just crawled into our lunar pup tent." Their massive backpacks, meanwhile, were hung on the walls. They had a quick dinner, then debriefed over the radio with Mission Control and, for a few moments, rolled a couple of the rock samples over in their hands. Cernan was amazed. These pieces of regolith had lain undisturbed for maybe three billion years and had been exposed to fearsome solar and cosmic radiation...yet they did not look totally different to samples he had seen on his geology trips on Earth.

By the time Cernan and Schmitt dozed off to sleep for their first night on an alien world, they had already been awake for the better part of 24 hours. Like previous crews, they strung their hammocks—Schmitt near the floor, Cernan above—and even without their pressurised suits it could hardly be described as comfortable. Initially, Cernan was too keyed-up to sleep; his mind raced with plans for tomorrow's excursion, which was to take them to the South Massif.

Every so often, he heard Schmitt breathing steadily, and sneezing occasionally in the midst of so much dust, but otherwise the lander and everything around it were eerily still and silent. There was no hushed breeze or patter of raindrops, Cernan wrote, or the slightest hint of anything else alive, save the two of them. He was physically and mentally exhausted, yet the irony of sleeping when they only had about 60 hours left on the surface seemed too much: at times, he lifted the window blind and gazed outside at the motionless flag and the Earth slowly rotating in its fixed position above the South Massif
Когда жизнь экзаменует - первыми сдают нервы.

instml

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2405.html

Apollo 17 Launch


The huge, 363-feet tall Apollo 17 (Spacecraft 114/Lunar Module 12/Saturn 512) space vehicle is launched from Pad A., Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida, at 12:33 a.m. (EST), Dec. 7, 1972.

 Apollo 17, the final lunar landing mission in NASA's Apollo program, was the first nighttime liftoff of the Saturn V launch vehicle. Aboard the Apollo 17 spacecraft were astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, commander; astronaut Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot; and scientist-astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt, lunar module pilot. Flame from the five F-1 engines of the Apollo/Saturn first (S-1C) stage illuminates the nighttime scene. A two-hour and 40-minute hold delayed the Apollo 17 launching.

Photo credit: NASA




Go MSL!


instml

Go MSL!

SFN

ПОСЛЕДНИЙ АПОЛОН - ЭПАС (Экспериментальный полёт «Аполлон» — «Союз») 1975 год)

pkl

Приближается грустная дата. 40 лет уже. Я иногда думаю, что тогда нынешняя цивилизация прошла пик своего развития. :(
Вообще, исследовать солнечную систему автоматами - это примерно то же самое, что посылать робота вместо себя в фитнес, качаться.Зомби. Просто Зомби (с)
Многоразовость - это бяка (с) Дмитрий Инфан

Луноход

#9
А мне кажется, что человечество (развитое) ещё чуть-чуть поднакачает мышцы (возможно для этого понадобится чуть больше времени, чем хотелось бы), и тогда его будет уже не остановить.

pkl

Возможно, это иллюзия, порождённая непрерывным прогрессом в течении последних 500 лет /особенно XIX и XX вв/. Но ведь перед ними было тысячелетнее Средневековье!
Вообще, исследовать солнечную систему автоматами - это примерно то же самое, что посылать робота вместо себя в фитнес, качаться.Зомби. Просто Зомби (с)
Многоразовость - это бяка (с) Дмитрий Инфан

SpaceR

Луноход
Согласен. :)
Развитие - процесс в большинстве случаев неравномерный.

З.Ы. главное только не вляпаться в какую-нибудь долгоиграющую техногенную котострофу...

Ну-и-ну

Это наивная иллюзия, что цивилизация не откатывается. Такое бывало в истории сплошь и рядом. Чтобы прогресс продолжался, надо много над этим работать, халявы нет нифига.

pkl

Я только сейчас начинаю понимать, что любая техногенная катастрофа /да и многие природные/ - фигня по сравнению с катастрофой социальной.
Вообще, исследовать солнечную систему автоматами - это примерно то же самое, что посылать робота вместо себя в фитнес, качаться.Зомби. Просто Зомби (с)
Многоразовость - это бяка (с) Дмитрий Инфан


Petrovich

Цитироватьpkl пишет:
Приближается грустная дата. 40 лет уже. Я иногда думаю, что тогда нынешняя цивилизация прошла пик своего развития.  :(
Ну почему же .  Прогресс налицо  :)

может мы те кого коснулся тот (еще) энтузиазм...

pkl

Имеется в виду прогресс в производительности компьютеров? Но тогда летали на Луну, а сейчас только картинки рисуют на эту тему.
Вообще, исследовать солнечную систему автоматами - это примерно то же самое, что посылать робота вместо себя в фитнес, качаться.Зомби. Просто Зомби (с)
Многоразовость - это бяка (с) Дмитрий Инфан

Petrovich

Цитироватьpkl пишет:
Имеется в виду прогресс в производительности компьютеров? Но тогда летали на Луну, а сейчас только картинки рисуют на эту тему.
Я вроде перед картинкой смайлик поставил  :)
может мы те кого коснулся тот (еще) энтузиазм...

pkl

И что он в данном контексте означает? Я что-то торможу
Вообще, исследовать солнечную систему автоматами - это примерно то же самое, что посылать робота вместо себя в фитнес, качаться.Зомби. Просто Зомби (с)
Многоразовость - это бяка (с) Дмитрий Инфан

Petrovich

Да то что на картинке только линейный прогресс (и то незначительный) по КК , а рядом как бы в таком контексте изменился бы Форд за 40 лет  8)
может мы те кого коснулся тот (еще) энтузиазм...