space travel
So 40 years ago this week, 2 blokes landed on the moon in nothing more then a aluminium can full of oxygen, while a bloke floated over their heads in another with nothing more powerful then a digital wrist watch to calculate life saving decisions on how to get back home.
Warning this devolves into a rant of lenghty proportions
Watched by the population of earth - 40 of whom sat behind green and black screens that had trouble doing 2d graphic interpretation let alone 3d (i slightly exagerate) ensuring that the fuel tanks had been filled cos the next gas station wasn't 'round the corner'.
This was stage 2 of the greatest road trip ever.
Because just getting off the planet was an engineering feat all in itself. The 'candle' as one of the astronauts spoke of, was the biggest rocket ever made, it was all done without the precision computer modelling done today to make sure your car is aerodynamic and fuel efficient, it was drawn piece by piece by hand and made. To ensure the engines didn't fall apart from something called combustion instability they detonated bombs in the combustion chambers.
The computer i wrote this on, given the correct software could 'land' a virtual me on a virtual moon after virtually travelling the 3 days to cross the expanse of nothing that is the 250,000 or so miles from earth to the moon (in montage format of course)
So why are we still looking up - the astronauts are right, Mars is next, the moon has been done, yes lets visit to finish off some of the experiments but we need something to capture the imagination of those following in our footsteps. We know that there is a very small chance of life (even the most basic forms) on other planets in our solar system, but how cool would it be to look out across the plains of red dust of Mars, watching both the sun rise and in the distance a twinkling little planet called Earth, as you stand shoulder to shoulder to 6 billion people on Mars and just wave to the 6 billion people on Earth, nothing more, nothing less.
I'm waffling now, and to be honest I don't care. I know people out there will say but we need to go back to the moon and set up a base of operations, a staging post. Could someone run some numbers on that, cos i get reminded that it takes 3 days to get to the moon and something like 18months to Mars?
Isn't that like driving across america and putting the one and only service station at the end of your garden?
Why can't we push the ISS out a little further? Ok shielding and the structure might not hold but we can build a Space station, there's your staging post and the european ATV is completley automated to dock with it, so that works. And then comes the money factor, yes the Apollo program cost $60billion or something, but hey if we just said to all the financial bankers that screwed up, and took their bonuses off them for the next 5 years and said, you want to put this right, you want to make right and be remembered for something, we'll put your name on a piece of the space station and you'll be associated with putting man on mars. Unfortuantley the people who would need to give up their money will be callous twerps who would rather spend it on a big empty house and fast cars, then push forward the boundaries of mankind's endeavours.
And so we look out across the world on another day, the ninth year of this century and think how much more advanced are we going to be in 2109?, cos back in 1909 the car was still in its infancy and the Wright brothers had flown 6 years earlier. To think 66years after the first plane flew a rocket would land man on the moon, was pure science fiction. Although it only happened 100years or so after Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon.
It just annoys me that the techonology behind the Xbox, the PS3 and other computer consoles could easily be used to calculate travel and oxygen levels needed, instead of polygon rates. Money makes the world turn has never been a truer statement then now, if only money could make other worlds turn, Space 1999 might not have been just a tv series..........
Warning this devolves into a rant of lenghty proportions
Watched by the population of earth - 40 of whom sat behind green and black screens that had trouble doing 2d graphic interpretation let alone 3d (i slightly exagerate) ensuring that the fuel tanks had been filled cos the next gas station wasn't 'round the corner'.
This was stage 2 of the greatest road trip ever.
Because just getting off the planet was an engineering feat all in itself. The 'candle' as one of the astronauts spoke of, was the biggest rocket ever made, it was all done without the precision computer modelling done today to make sure your car is aerodynamic and fuel efficient, it was drawn piece by piece by hand and made. To ensure the engines didn't fall apart from something called combustion instability they detonated bombs in the combustion chambers.
The computer i wrote this on, given the correct software could 'land' a virtual me on a virtual moon after virtually travelling the 3 days to cross the expanse of nothing that is the 250,000 or so miles from earth to the moon (in montage format of course)
So why are we still looking up - the astronauts are right, Mars is next, the moon has been done, yes lets visit to finish off some of the experiments but we need something to capture the imagination of those following in our footsteps. We know that there is a very small chance of life (even the most basic forms) on other planets in our solar system, but how cool would it be to look out across the plains of red dust of Mars, watching both the sun rise and in the distance a twinkling little planet called Earth, as you stand shoulder to shoulder to 6 billion people on Mars and just wave to the 6 billion people on Earth, nothing more, nothing less.
I'm waffling now, and to be honest I don't care. I know people out there will say but we need to go back to the moon and set up a base of operations, a staging post. Could someone run some numbers on that, cos i get reminded that it takes 3 days to get to the moon and something like 18months to Mars?
Isn't that like driving across america and putting the one and only service station at the end of your garden?
Why can't we push the ISS out a little further? Ok shielding and the structure might not hold but we can build a Space station, there's your staging post and the european ATV is completley automated to dock with it, so that works. And then comes the money factor, yes the Apollo program cost $60billion or something, but hey if we just said to all the financial bankers that screwed up, and took their bonuses off them for the next 5 years and said, you want to put this right, you want to make right and be remembered for something, we'll put your name on a piece of the space station and you'll be associated with putting man on mars. Unfortuantley the people who would need to give up their money will be callous twerps who would rather spend it on a big empty house and fast cars, then push forward the boundaries of mankind's endeavours.
And so we look out across the world on another day, the ninth year of this century and think how much more advanced are we going to be in 2109?, cos back in 1909 the car was still in its infancy and the Wright brothers had flown 6 years earlier. To think 66years after the first plane flew a rocket would land man on the moon, was pure science fiction. Although it only happened 100years or so after Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon.
It just annoys me that the techonology behind the Xbox, the PS3 and other computer consoles could easily be used to calculate travel and oxygen levels needed, instead of polygon rates. Money makes the world turn has never been a truer statement then now, if only money could make other worlds turn, Space 1999 might not have been just a tv series..........