I remember watching the Apollo 13 movie for the first time in 1995 and thinking at the time how modern they were in those far off days of 1970.
Now the same length of time has passed since 1995 (in the blink of an eye) and it still hasn't dated.
The internet is huge but it feels like the only thing we've done since 1970.
I understand that space fanbois find manned space exploration romantic. But it's not all about entertaining you.
Manned space flight has been a complete waste of resources and money, and likely will remain that way for the next 100 years.
Since 1970 far more influential events:
- 747 (early 1970)
- Intel 4004 (1971)
- GPS (1980s)
- Internet (1990s)
But aside from that, there have been incremental improvements of 1%/year in areas like fuel efficiency, medicine and metallurgy. That really adds up over 50 years.
The Space Shuttle literally ate America's space exploration budget, and didn't even go past LEO. Everybody knew this, yet nobody did anything about it.
The US needs to adopt space policies that actually advance science and technology, not manned spaceflight just for feel-good PR shots.
A good start would be de-orbiting the ISS ASAP - the final manned space flight should be to send somebody to the ISS with a chain saw.
Not directly related to the article, but I would like to point out that Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, is a fantastic public speaker, have a look at this talk he gave at MIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUUgTavzgSk.
Anybody else who got curious as I did at which pre-Sony Walkman portable tape recorder the Apollo program used, it's probably the Sony TC-50.
My search brought me to this excellent techmoan video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJXRVyszFbo
When reading the title, I first thought NASA found microbes or other forms of life on pictures of the spacecraft. That would have been an insane level of enhancement. Still a very interesting read though.
Yeah, I was imagining they had used image enhancement to see thermal signatures of the astronauts from exterior terrestrial photographs during the radio blackout.
[+] [-] tenant|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhh__|6 years ago|reply
Technologically the internet is probably the biggest event, yes.
[+] [-] redis_mlc|6 years ago|reply
Manned space flight has been a complete waste of resources and money, and likely will remain that way for the next 100 years.
Since 1970 far more influential events:
- 747 (early 1970)
- Intel 4004 (1971)
- GPS (1980s)
- Internet (1990s)
But aside from that, there have been incremental improvements of 1%/year in areas like fuel efficiency, medicine and metallurgy. That really adds up over 50 years.
The Space Shuttle literally ate America's space exploration budget, and didn't even go past LEO. Everybody knew this, yet nobody did anything about it.
The US needs to adopt space policies that actually advance science and technology, not manned spaceflight just for feel-good PR shots.
A good start would be de-orbiting the ISS ASAP - the final manned space flight should be to send somebody to the ISS with a chain saw.
[+] [-] conistonwater|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillyquiet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nayuki|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dr-detroit|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Lukas_Skywalker|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] singlow|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AA-BA-94-2A-56|6 years ago|reply
:D
...on stricken spacecraft...
:|