next person walk on the moon.
2025-2026 if everything goes to plan at NASA
The Chinese also announced that they will be attempting to build a lunar base with Russia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, South Africa, UAE, and Belarus by 2035.
I'm curious what JAXA, ESA, and ISRO are going to try with regards to human space flight. I know JAXA and ISRO work very closely with each other, but seem to be much more probe and rocket driven for financial reasons.
Makes sense; if you want to build a lunar base, you gotta have Venezuela and Azerbaijan on your team, otherwise it's basically futile.
In the United States the space race led to a ton of STEM education, and secondary technology use cases. It would amazing to get similar benefits in those countries.
We need those benefits for the US.
No, we need those benefits for the whole of humanity.
Much of humanity depends on the US. You save the US, you save the world.
Oh, Please. Don't put the US on a pedestal. There is a shitload of issues that the US needs to fix and a little humility in accepting that others have better solutions, is one of them.
The internal issues of the US are of no concern to other nations, the only thing they care about is what the US can do for them and the rest of the world.
For all of the US's problems, Pax Americana has been statistically pretty damn successful.
Fix the immigration system
We don't necessarily need to do that. We just need less anti-intellectualism and to reduce the power/influence of the religious right in the US.
People were generally much more religious and conservative in the 1950s/60s than they are today no? How many Black astronauts were in the Apollo program?
In living memory of most of us, China was just a deeply impoverished nation known for little more than exporting cheap unreliable crap. Any achievement they did make was framed as being stolen from somebody else. Yet now, their successes in space, industry, science, and technology are completely taken for granted. Funny how quickly things change! The status quo of the world is constantly shifting. Those nations which strive to advance, will. Those nations which rest on their laurels of achievements past, will gradually find themselves with little left to cling to beyond those laurels.
I think it's awesome to see previously neglected nations beginning to be able to take part in major space programs. They also come with unique benefits. Like somebody else mentioned, for one thing Venezuela is in a dream scenario for launches. Eastern exposure to the ocean and substantially closer to the equator than e.g. Florida. This means ships taking off from there are able to more optimally sort of 'sling shot' off of Earth's rotation - the Earth rotates Eastward, and fastest at the equator. Same reason that in Andy Weir's Artemis novel, Kenya ended up being a world leader in space. And there's no logical reason this wouldn't happen. Countries can be developed, but they can't be moved.
> Any achievement they did make was... stolen from somebody else. Yet now their successes in space, industry, science, and technology are completely taken for granted.
Many nations "bootstrap" internal industry with organized mass IP theft. The US extensively (and quite intentionally) stole from Britain's industrial IP, for instance.
Besides the often quoted IP stealing from GB, there are also more recent examples.
At the end of WWII, not only the Soviet Union has moved piece by piece many industrial factories from Germany to Russia, but also USA and GB have "stolen" massive amounts of IP from the occupied Germany.
One of the most notorious cases in how the American industry of making magnetic tape recorders (e.g. Ampex) and of making magnetic tapes for them has been founded based on the samples brought back from Germany.
The case of the liquid-fueled rockets directly connected to this Apollo story needs no further mention.
Whenever they could get away with it, no country has refrained from copying foreign better technology.
While there in no doubt that China must have done this frequently in the past, in recent years there are little chances for them to benefit from this, because now in many domains their products are much more innovative than anything made in USA, and also in research publications they have many that are also more innovative.
I do not believe that sabotaging the Chinese companies that were on the brink to take most of the market share from US companies like Qualcomm and Micron has been the right strategy for counteracting the Chinese threat.
This is just a temporary setback for them and there is the risk that they could emerge from it stronger, no longer fearing any US blackmail.
This should have been either saved for a more critical moment, when it could have a greater effect, or the so-called "sanctions" should have been real sanctions, and not just anti-competitive measures, i.e. they should have been tied to some political demands made to China, e.g. to recognize Taiwan as an independent country, or to give up their claims to extend their maritime borders.
not only the Soviet Union has moved piece by piece many industrial factories from Germany to Russia, but also USA and GB have "stolen" massive amounts of IP from the occupied Germany.
Not just the Soviet Union. The USA also moved factories piece by piece.[0]
The reverse example occurred during inter-war period, when US companies extensively outsourced to (cheap labor in) Germany. The US companies who exported their factories all made huge profit on paper, which promptly evaporated the moment war broke out. A lesson for the modern age, perhaps?
China faced a significant deficit in fundamental science infrastructure and knowledge during the transition from the Qing dynasty to modern times. Couple that with Africa-tier GDP and some truly horrendous setbacks (civil war, cultural revolution) they had no choice but to absorb knowledge from foreign nations (legally and illegally - copy, steal, learn) if they wanted any chance of competing with them.
They've made a lot of progress but still lag behind in these fundamental areas, for example bulk, precise fabrication of exotic materials for more complex items (jet engines). There is an enormous gap between having the specifics of the design and implementing it effectively when it comes to advanced fabs. There is a bit of 'arcane magic' to it unfortunately.
I do not believe that sabotaging the Chinese companies that were on the brink to take most of the market share from US companies like Qualcomm and Micron has been the right strategy for counteracting the Chinese threat.
I knew a lawyer in DC who was part of a defense team for a US aerospace company accused of assisting China with their missile and space program. Among the things he learned were: 1) China is working pretty hard on improving its technology without necessarily relying on tech transfers (although they still at the time required certain Western machining tools), 2) sincerely concerned US members of Congress have no understanding of the technologies involved so they messed it all up and 3) there are many who are not so sincere and are just grandstanding and most importantly 4) it's never going to be a matter of stopping China's progress, just a matter of saying a couple of years ahead of them (ie. does it matter if they have 7nm chips when we have been using them for a decade already?)
Aehm… living memory of an impoverished nation that didn’t export anything else than propaganda - not even cheap crap yet. It’s been incredible to watch Capitalism and hard work rescue and empower a nation that was literally completely destroyed by communism in the past 50 years.
Countries can be developed, but they can't be moved.
Ever heard of Poland? It moved quite a lot.
Well said. And one further advantage of Venezuela is that crowds of people looting the rocket on the pad will greatly reduce the launch weight.
Russia seems to be moving ever so slightly to the west and south as of late.
Venezuela would make a pretty attractive launch site.
only for retro-grade orbits, meaning you lose the "boost" from the rotation of the earth (in fact, you have to work against it)
there's a reason that there are launch sites in French Guiana and Florida.
Where do you think Venezuela is?
ah. serves me right for geeking out during boring meeting. confused it in my head with Colombia. Visited both, should have known better =)
Venezuela has an eastern coast that, I think, would be suitable for a launch site if you put it south of Trinidad and Tobago.
It’s far from population centers, though (1), so it would require building/growing a city for personnel to live. It also appears to be swampy (not a show stopper, as Florida shows, but not ideal, either), and it has monsoons, so the weather may be a showstopper.
I also would be worried about political stability of the country.
(1) Apple Maps shows Tucupita as about the only thing near that coast. It’s about 100km away and, according tohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucupitahas a population of less than 100,000.
It helps those countries further enhance their own Military R&D (ICBM research often goes hand in hand with Rocket research - that's why India and China started their space programs) while also becoming a PR coup for China+Russia.
Part of that NASA plan depends on people figuring out how to put Starship into orbit, how to refuel it in orbit, and then how to safely land it on its tail on the moon. These are three enormous technical challenges that I can't imagine being solved by 2026, even if all the dysfunctions at NASA proper were to disappear tomorrow.
Maybe one could just decide that concrete blocks and debris can be collected any time int the future from a field area and just allow it to launch
The bigger issue is that part of the reason why Starship didn’t make it to orbit is because debris from the launch pad being destroyed was kicked back into the engines.
There was never any evidence of that. Starship failed because a internal fuel leak causing a fire.
JAXA and ESA (among others) are part of the Artemis program's human spaceflight component.
I didn't realize that. NASA really needs to fix their PR department.
Highlighting international cooperation with Japan, UK, Germany, France, etc is a massive PR coup
Edit: they signed the Artemis Accords, not part of the Artemis Program
No, they really are part of the Artemis Program. e.g.https://www.space.com/artemis-4-5-moon-missions-european-ast...
2026 will likely be cutting it really close for boots on the Moon. Assuming the upcoming Starship test flight goes well, we might see a test of refueling operations in late 2024, 2 years is likely to be cutting it really close for operationalizing refueling and crew rating the HLS. Particularly on the paperwork front.
I'd say that if everything goes perfectly from this point onwards, 2026 might see the uncrewed test of the system and maybe a crewed landing by 2028.
Similarly with Blue Origin's HLS, maybe New Glenn finally flies in 2024, but they too have so many steps to prove out first. JAXA and ISRO IIRC have seats on a future Artemis crewed mission, which would probably be how they get their first boots on the Moon. ISRO would probably be too busy with its LEO station at that point to make a crewed lunar lander, but JAXA and ISRO would most likely contribute with base components or related (rovers, orbital infrastructure).
The Chinese plans for a lunar base by 2035 are essentially imaginary in terms of partnerships, particularly since of them, China is the only one with any worthwhile space program (the Russian program being in steep decline and would be lucky to even pull off a proper ISS replacement by 2035 let alone a worthwhile contribution to a lunar base).
the Russian program being in steep decline
Idk.
The Russian program seems to be weaker at operationalizing in 2023 but still has a lot of IP from the USSR era.
China is making massive strides but doesn't seem to have as deep IP experience yet.
Imo I wouldn't oversell the Chinese and undersell the Russians.
JAXA and ISRO would most likely contribute with base components or related
That tracks, and fits with their specialities.
Also, I didn't realize JAXA, ESA, and ISRO are part of Artemis. NASA needs to have a better PR team. The Chinese Lunar Base is getting so much PR despite being much more behind Artemis
Edit: they signed the Artemis accords, they are not part of the similarly named Artemis Program
I think Russia has mostly lost the perks of its USSR legacy in space to time, and I would argue has even less current experience than China on making new systems. Most of the USSR stuff would've been like NASA's stuff from that period, extremely reliant on the experience and intuitions built up by the engineers of the time such that reusing the designs from that time now is almost as much work as just designing a new thing from scratch. Russia hasn't invested in propagating that knowledge to younger generations, and the people from that time are quickly aging out of the workforce. So the only institutional knowledge they really have left at this point would be Soyuz, which, while a workhorse, is certainly not enough on its own to cover the systems needed on a space station/base of any sort.
JAXA, ESA are considered partners on the Artemis program (at least based on Wikipedia, there does not seem to be an explicit list of partners on NASA's site), they're training astronauts to eventually be sent to the Moon in a similar arrangement as with the ISS. JAXA and ESA (along with the Canadian Space Agency) are also contributing various key components for the Gateway space station. Plus, the ESA is an important player with the Orion capsule which Congress-critters seem committed to forcing to be the center of the program regardless of technical and financial sense.
As for ISRO, I think I mixed things up a little. I think I had heard talk about the potential for an arrangement to fly a vyomanaut to the ISS on Dragon, assumed that it was about the agreement having been made and then mixed it up with Artemis. Turns out none of that was real, there does not appear to be any talk of sending an vyomanaut to the ISS.
Aren't JAXA, ESA and ISRO part of the Artemis Accords? ISRO has human spaceflight planned for 2024.
Artemis Accords =/= Artemis Program.
Artemis Program - Land on the moon and make a habitation station
Artemis Accords - A global legal agreement on Space Exploraration and Research.
The naming is confusing (and I think partially done on purpose)
Zero chance Artemis is ready in 2025.
If we are lucky it will be before 2030.
I'm nowhere near the age of an Apollo astronaut, and I hopeI'malive to see the next person on the moon.
If Artemis goes on as planned, hopefully you'll just have to hold on at least a few more years!
Has anything about Artemis occurred as planned? Why would we be silly enough to expect it to start now?
Artemis 1 flew without incident and Orion landed back on earth nominally and achieved all scientific objectives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_1
Launch date November 16, 2022, 06:47:44 UTC (1:47 am EST)
"Artemis 1 was outlined by NASA as Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) in 2012, at which point it was set to launch in 2017"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_2
"Launch date During preliminary reviews in 2011, the launch date was placed somewhere between 2019 and 2021, but afterwards the launch date was delayed to 2023 on an SLS launch vehicle.[25][26] Although, as of March 2023, the mission is pegged for a November 2024 launch,[1] the need to recycle and refurbish components from Orion that flew on Artemis 1 may push this back to later in 2024 or the first quarter of 2025"
I'm getting older just reading it
Considering the moon landing craft they've chosen is one that hasn't even reached space, I'd adjust your outlook to "decades."
I have something to tell you about literally the Apollo program (October 27, 1961 -> December 19, 1972)
That was the '60s, and the amount of risk accepted and stability of funding were completely different worlds. The entirety of first flight (Apollo 4) to first landing (11) was 20 months.
Today just development of the SLS has been going for as long as the 11 years of Apollo program. We have exactly one uncrewed test launch to show for it, with another not planned for 24 months later (next November) and a landing looking like 2028 at the earliest and no reason to think it won't be delayed.
I have no idea what physical shape Aldrin is in these days at 90 years old, but it's really interesting to think if he holds out another few years, he might be able to return if there's any realistic chance he could withstand the g forces and zero gravity.
Well, he got married to a much younger woman.
Can't be in very bad shape.
Funny you should say that. The Buzz about Aldrin's Competency:https://lindleylawoffice.com/blog/2018/06/27/the-buzz-about-...
If the children had any sense they’d just drop the project based on his request. The fact that they press on shows deception in my opinion. Unfortunately people try to profit off of their family. It is beyond shameful.
I hear he still has a good right hook.
Obligatory XKCD:https://xkcd.com/893/
Looks like about 7 years until the expected number of moon walkers drops below 1.0.
As the number of people who have walked on The Moon dwindles, I've long wondered if there will every come a period in which we, as a species, can say"we have been to The Moon, but there is no one currently alive who has". I'd like to see us return before there is that gap in continuity. Fingers crossed for Artemis.
Gimme a rocket and a space suit! I volunteer! No salary!
Imagine your obituary being hidden behind a paywall.
Why would I expect someone to host/write it for free?
When were obits ever free? The family typically paid to run an obit in the paper. I can't imagine why it would be any different. After that, people had to pay $0.25 to $2.00 for the paper to see them.
Newspapers used to cost a lot less than $0.25 and the ones still printed today tend to cost more than $2.
Yeah, around the same time a decent wage used to be $20k.
what's your point?
Isn't that just inflation?
Libraries typically keep archives of newspapers accessible for free. I imagine the long record of obituaries in this archive would be invaluable for certain types of research.
I’m somewhat surprised a WikiObituary doesn’t exist yet, with them collectively written and crowdsourced prior to death and licensed permissively. Wikipedia + ChatGPT to do the heavy lifting perhaps for the rough cut, and then clean it up.
Might try to find some time to spike a GPT or something and see what happens.
If you're old enough Facebook, becomes this.
okay, I might roll in my grave if an obit is published in fb
Adding that to my will:
- under zero circumstances will you publish any posthumous docs/writings/obituaries to Meta, Facebook, or anything bearing Zuckerberg’s name
- all to be made available publicly, any fees associated to be paid out of estate
I’ll be dead. I wouldn’t give af if it was written on toilet paper.
Obituaries are more for the living to help with the grieving process. When my grandparents passed, I think my parents and extended family wrote something and submitted that to the local newspaper.
In a way, it’s always been like that. I guess.
That is outrageous, I think most? present media sites have control over which article to paywall, to paywall an obituary is baffling at best.
During the Apollo 1 investigation, he said something that suck with me when thinking of begrudging users who are willing to look past faults for utility:
"There's no question that it was a coffin, and I'd have flown it gladly."
Explains the preference for test pilots -- when abnormal is normal, you're in rarified company.
Amazing when "the office" might kill you.
At the time, the career casualty rate for fighter pilots was one in five. Just from flying around, without any enemy.
Are you sure that number doesn't include Vietnam?
Yes.
Read "The Making of an Ex-Astronaut",[1] from someone who quit the program because the part about becoming a fighter jock was too dangerous. Four US astronauts died in jet aircraft accidents in the 1960s.[2]
[1]https://archive.org/details/makingofexastron0000unse/page/16...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...
This reminded me too of Jim Lovell's reaction when they switched the Apollo 8 plan at "the last minute" to actually be the first TLI mission. Something about the way he tells it, and just the sheer (and apparently extremely genuine) reaction of awe, wonder, excitement, mixed with a seeming complete lack of worry, concern, self-preservation instinct, just kinda signals to me those guys were just built different.
There's a good book, "The Right Stuff" [0] by Tom Wolfe, which goes into quite a bit of detail about the stories and some of the psychology around being a test pilot in those days, and in particular about the men chosen as the Mercury Seven astronauts, many of whom were also later involved in both the Gemini and Apollo programs.
Damn, what a badass comment and you know he meant it.
Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger is one of my favourite books. It was basically extraordinary that NASA gambled so extravagantly, combining multiple steps in the planned sequence into one mega mission in order to get back on schedule after the disastrous fire and meet Kennedy's aspirational goal. Chances of success? (surviving the mission), maybe 50%.
Thinking about Frank Borman being alive and well and still flying his plane has been a favourite thought for me, and I'm very sad to have to retire it.
It is thought-provoking to consider how much the success of the Apollo programme depended on courage as well as otherqualities of character:
"When Shepard was grounded in October 1963, Grissom and Borman became the prime crew of Gemini 3.[41] Grissom invited Borman to his house to talk to him about the mission, and after a long discussion, decided that he could not work with Borman.[34] According to Gene Cernan, "the egos of Grissom and Borman were too big to fit into a single spacecraft".[44] Slayton therefore replaced Borman with John Young.[41]
Slayton still wanted Borman for the two-week flight [...] so Borman was assigned as backup commander of Gemini 4, with Jim Lovell as his co-pilot. [...] Prime and backup crews trained for the mission together, and Borman found the experience as a backup valuable, amounting to a dress rehearsal of their own mission.[49]
... and after a long discussion, decided that he could not work with Borman.
This I wish was (still?) acceptable. It's like somewhere along the way we decided that everyone must be able to cooperate effectively and efficiently with everyone, and largely (do our very best to) ignore all the problems that brings.
I've only been at one company where they tried to address this, and actually let us form our own teams. It worked better than expected.
Not working together in a situation where character differences can mean life-or-death in a high-stakes mission that depends on a few souls ...
... is not the same as refusing to work with someone in an office doing low-stakes work.
That said, humans cooperate better when they get along, but the lines are in totally different places and the degree to which character differences matter in those two settings is radically different too.
Assembling a team, I would take care to pick people who get along, just to lower day-to-day friction. But if two people can't leavesomeof their emotional baggage at the door to write some code ... well, they need help frankly.
The office isn't and shouldn't be a high enough stress environment that character flaws are involuntarily amplified, therefore different rules of thumb apply.
Be an adult.
Be an adult.
Funny. That was the EXACT advice / instruction we got from management when I was in such a team. It had already been going on for years when I went there, to the point where half of the team (the ones not involved in the clashes) rotated out on a yearly basis.
AAUI an airline captain can refuse his/her first officer assignment if there is a history of them not working well together or, boiling it down, they just don't get along. IDK how often it actually happens.
Jeffrey Kluger also wrote Lost Moon, about Apollo 13, in collaboration with Jim Lovell. That is also an excellent read.
So sad. We really need to get back to the moon, not just for the adventure, but for the technology. There was a lot of technology that came out of the space program that wouldn't exist, even today.
Can you give examples and explain why? BTW, integrated circuits are not such a technology.
A general problem with all such claims is establishing that without the space program, the technologies would never have been invented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies
It's a decently long list, though not all of them from Apollo obviously.
Again, the problem with all those is establishing they would not have arisen without NASA.
Another problem is the transition from "NASA was involved with this technology somehow" to "NASA is entirely responsible for this technology".
Behind all this is the presumption that technological advancement is limited by the availability of inventions rather than the availability of markets.
Ah in that respect I'm sure just about all would have been invented eventually, just like aviation or calculus were by different people during the same time period, albeit a lot later and likely tied to a corporation with exclusive rights for 20 years (like FDM 3D printing was for example, which I still kinda consider almost a crime against humanity) instead of being freely available for licensing.
There are a few that are completely space dependant however, like GPS, orbital weather monitoring, communications, satelite imagery, knowledge about other planets, etc. the kind of thing that has space travel as a prerequisite. Before GNSS and satelite maps navigation was pretty much hell, detecting tropical cyclones early and evacuating has certainly saved a lot of lives.
Of course if NASA hadn't done these, then ESA or Roscosmos or whoever would've, but in terms of argument I think we're talking about space agencies in general.
Behind all this is the presumption that technological advancement is limited by the availability of inventions rather than the availability of markets.
This is one of the biggest advantages of spending lots of money on ambitious projects. It has the potential to creates a market where none currently exists, because the market doesn't realize there is potential. Also, there are situations where the barriers to entry are so high, and the potential risk so great, that no private investment would likely have ever done it.
Apollo 8 was the greatest of all the Apollo missions. The greatest leap into the unknown with the greatest number of unknowns!
For me, Borman and his crewmates never quite got the kudos they deserved.
A true loss.
Borman and his crewmates never quite got the kudos they deserved.
It’s worse than that. Indiana named a horrible stretch of perpetually under construction interstate after him.
Does it go near Gary?
Talk about adding insult to injury...
I read this book,https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Men-Odyssey-Astronauts-Journey...and Apollo 8's accomplishments were way under-rated.
Michael Collins—who was bumped from Apollo 8 due to a medical issue and of course ended up flying Apollo 11 instead—became increasingly convinced with time that it was Apollo 8, more so than 11, that represented the true landmark in human history.
Apollo 11 was when we first arrived somewhere new, yes, but it was Apollo 8 when we first dared to venture out into the dark. For the first time we surrendered the ability to quickly return to Earth in a matter of minutes or low-single-digit hours.
Collins’ autobiographyCarrying the Fireis easily the best of the astronaut memoirs, and is written purely by Collins without a ghostwriter. It wasn’t one of the talents NASA was looking for, but I’m glad they sent an excellent writer to the moon.
Michael Collins was also CAPCOM (capsule communicator - the one who was actually talking to the astronauts) when they initiated TLI (translunar injection - leaving earth's orbit for the first time). He was the one who said "Apollo 8, go for TLI".
... and in the book hilariously laments how, for something so momentous, he should've thought of something more profound to say haha.
I get what he means, but I have a hard time thinking of three words that give me more chills than “go for TLI”!
Collins’ autobiography Carrying the Fire is also an excellent book to get a feel of the 1960ies. Like four (out of twelve?) people dying during training because, well it's a really hard training. In 2023 if so much as one person gets an injury then the project is suspended for years until a committee decides it is safe again.
Can't more emphatically recommend Collins' book. Having read my fair share of Apollo stuff, this, and the Blye Cox Apollo books are easily the best.
Also, I'll add that apparently Charles Lindbergh spoke with Jim Lovell at the 11 launch and also expressed that, in his mind, the most significant leap was also 8, which I have sympathy for. There's something about being on that spacecraft for the first TLI, having nothing but the math to trust, that is deeply exhilerating, incredibly scary, and awe-inspiring.
i remember apollo 8 so well. how brilliant.
is anything that good ever going to happen again? often these days i think not.
Artemis and Starship.
pretty clever mission patch:
The Mars rover landings, Pluto flyby and SpaceX successful returns have been pretty exciting. Feels like we’re building to more exciting times with the beginning of return to human space flight past LEO now.
When Crew1 launched, I watched it and the landing like it was an Apollo mission. The US sent people to space, again, finally. It's sad that we had to get back tojustthat capability.
I've been listening with my kid to the excellent BBC podcast "13 Minutes to the Moon"[1]. It does a great job describing both the astronauts' experience (including Frank Borman and Apollo 8) and the scale and speed of efforts on the ground. I highly recommend it.
I listened to the first episode and it seemed to have what I call "Ted radio hour syndrome": an excess of quick cut audio, sound effects, and drawn out narration that had me, an enthusiast of manned spaceflight, bored.
Maybe it was like season 1 of a TV show where you gotta give it a few shots.
The book "A Man on the Moon" was quite well written though, and some day I may read "failure is not an option".
The Brady Heywood podcast had a great series on Apollo 13 that covered parts of the earlier missions. Unfortunately they "remastered" and rereleased it with the same awful pacing and music, but the originals are still available in the feed.
Unfortunately the entire thing is cut like that but I do think the actual content of the podcast is good.
Rocket Men by Robert Kurson tells the Apollo 8 story in a captivating manner. Some of the passages are quite dramatic but it's justified given the litany of firsts accomplished by the mission.
I read it recently. I came away amused by Borman being such a no-nonsense person. He would warn the other guys on his crew if they joked too much or goofed off. He was a straight shooter, and didn't mind telling NASA when something wasn't being done right.
When Apollo 11 landed on the moon he considered the job done. He thought they had beaten the Russians to the moon and why would anybody want to go back?
He was devoted to his wife, who suffered from addictions due to the frazzled life of her husband's career.
Seems to go hand-in-hand too with his later recounting that he had no further interest to go back to the moon to walk on it; he was there to "beat the Russians" and loved his family too much to risk his life to "go pick up some rocks." From all accounts, he was clearly an extremely brilliant man with a sense of purpose, skill, and courage aplenty to go along with it. Glad the US put his talents to good use!
Two interesting facts about Apollo 8 beyond the whole first-flight-to-the-moon thing:
* Two of its three astronauts became CEOs of Fortune 500 companies: Borman at Eastern Airlines, and William Anders at General Dynamics. (The third, Jim Lovell, stayed with NASA and survived the Apollo 13 explosion.)
* Borman (command pilot) and Lovell (pilot) had flown together on Gemini. Borman again commanded Apollo 8, despite Lovell having more experience in space as he had flown again on Gemini as commander.
...And Jim got into the Telecommunications business before all the consolidation stuff and made himself a significant sum of money along with it!
We are approaching a time when there will be no one alive who walked on the moon.
Last time someone walked on the Moon I could barely walk at all.
I’m going to be pissed if I don’t get to see somebody walk on the Moon again before I die.
Official statement from NASA:https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-administrator-honors-...
There’s a display in the Air & Space Museum here in DC with a succinct quote from Mr. Borman: “Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty! “
Godspeed Frank. Thanks for your service.
Somewhat off-topic, but did anyone notice:
Apollo
The "A" could symbolize a rocket, the both "o" would stand for earth and moon (also in the official logo), the "ll" could represent break lines, symbolizing the vast distance between the two bodies and "p" could mean impulse (like the symbol in physics) or propulsion which brings the rocket from one place to the other.
Ken Mattingly also died recentlyhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Mattingly
I only know this because he worked at my company. And I only found that out the day after he died. A little sad I never got to meet him.
Seems Jim Lovell is now the oldest living Apollo astronaut.
Oh no. A really sad moment. My condolences are with him. RIP.
This video of the Apollo 8 launch along with commentary from the astronauts always gives me goosebumps:
Colonel Borman, may you rest in peace. For those reading this, check his wikipedia page. He has a very inspiring legacy.
I still haven't recovered from Ken...
I think there are now only eight men still alive that flew to the moon and only four that walked on it. I hope there'll be some still alive to see the next person walk on the moon.