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Post by gwiz on Nov 9, 2007 15:09:54 GMT -4
Today's the 40th anniversary of a major step to the first manned lunar landing. The Apollo 4 mission was the first test of the Saturn V launch vehicle, by a fair margin the largest ever launched. The first and second stages were making their first flight, while the third stage had been previously tested as the second stage of the Saturn 1B. This mission saw the sthird stage re-started, as it would be on the lunar missions, taking the Apollo CSM payload out to 18000 km from Earth. The Apollo propulsion system was used to increase the return speed to match that required for a lunar mission, thus giving a full test of the re-entry process. The mission set several records. Apart from the obvious ones associated with the largest ever rocket, these included payload mass to earth orbit and altitude for a recovered payload.
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Post by gwiz on Nov 10, 2007 10:18:27 GMT -4
Another anniversary today, 40 years from the landing of Surveyor 6 on the moon in Sinus Medii. Like Surveyor 5, it carried a system for chemical analysis of the soil. The main innovation for this mission came a week later, when its motors were re-ignited for a brief hop across the surface. This moved it some two metres, allowing the TV camera to view the surface disturbance caused by the initial landing and also giving a stereo baseline for measuring the distance to the visible landscape features.
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Post by Kiwi on Nov 11, 2007 6:06:32 GMT -4
It's not Surveyor 6, but... Manawatu Evening Standard, Monday 25 September 1967, page 1 Moondust no problem [/b] NZPA-Reuter - Copyright. Washington, Sept. 24.[/center] Space ship exhausts are not likely to raise enough dust on the moon to be a hazard to astronauts, according to tests carried out by America's Surveyor V spacecraft. National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said no appreciable dust cloud had been created when three small rocket engines under the spacecraft, which landed on the moon earlier this month, were fired. The test was made to observe the effect of the rocket exhaust as it hit the lunar surface. Had a dust cloud been raised, it might have seriously impaired the visibility of astronauts returning to earth after a moon mission. Photographs of the surface immediately under the rocket showed that no craters were made nor any dust raised when the engines were operated. A picture taken before the rocket firing showed four or five "clumps" of lunar soil in the area. After the firing only one remained, and only a small "blob" of dust was detected on the outer surface of the Surveyor. "This information indicates there will be no problem associated with the effects of the rocket exhaust," the officials said. More pictures under different light conditions are still to be taken to see whether a mirror under the spacecraft was fitted or otherwise obscured by scattered lunar soil particles. [Hoax-believers, who usually know nothing about things like the Surveyor craft, like to claim that the lunar surface was completely untested before the Apollo 11 landing, which was faked in any case. They don't know that at the beginning of the NASA movie, "Apollo 12: Pinpoint for Science", they can view TV images from Surveyor 3 and see it digging a trench in the lunar surface back in 1967.]
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Post by gwiz on Nov 22, 2007 15:19:23 GMT -4
It's 40 years today since the first operational Zond mission, following two test missions earlier in 1967. It was a Russian attempt to fly a spacecraft round the moon and return it to earth. Unfortunately, the one of the six motors in the first stage of the Proton launch vehicle failed to ignite. The vehicle veered off course and gave the launch escape system an unscheduled test. The second Zond launch failed 40 years ago today. Apart from the problem being in the second stage instead of the first, the outcome was a repeat of the first launch.
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Post by Ginnie on Dec 8, 2007 12:27:10 GMT -4
Yesterday was the 27th anniversary of the death of John Lennon, when he was gunned down by that b*stard Mark David Chapman.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Dec 8, 2007 16:30:25 GMT -4
It was also the 56th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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Post by Czero 101 on Dec 8, 2007 16:39:53 GMT -4
It was also the 56th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 66th, actually Cz
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Post by Ginnie on Dec 8, 2007 17:21:22 GMT -4
Jason is always ten years behind the times... ;D ;D
That was also a very dastardly deed wasn't it? I don't know how they could have thought it would be that effective. By drawing the Americans into the war, they basically gave over victory to the Allies. No matter what people think of Americans - in WWII they rescued a LOT of people from the clutches of Nazism. I don't think the Germans would ever have conquered Canada, but thanks America nontheless!
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Dec 8, 2007 18:09:13 GMT -4
Oops.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Dec 9, 2007 17:51:06 GMT -4
I don't know how they could have thought it would be that effective.! Not that I want to threadjack, but to answer this question, they believed that if they did significant damage to the US Fleet it would set the US back enough that they would be reluctant to enter the Pacfic War, thus allowing the Japanese to establish a strong foothold. They thought that by the time the US recovered, they would have that foothold and be in to strong a position to be challenged. Obviously history shows us they were wrong, that while the damage was significant, the US managed to get the fleet repaired and sailing within a very short time, and with the carriers not there, they were able to mount a defense and then an attack far faster than the Japanese could ever have anticipated. This was seen time and again through out the war, such as the carrier USS Yorktown which was crippled during the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Japanese considered it out of action and so when they discovered it during the battle of Midway they thought it was one of the other two. In reality, the US had turned it around in 72 hours in port, and had her back into battle, seaworthy enough that the Japanese attackers mistakenly reported her sunk twice during the Battle of Midway. Even then she still survived until the battle was over, when the decision was make to abandon her and she was finally sunk during salvage operations when she and her attendant destroyer, the USS Hammann were sunk by a Japanese submarine. Pearl Habour was a result of the Japanese under-estimating the US industries, something they would continue to do there after.
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Post by Halcyon Dayz, FCD on Dec 9, 2007 19:38:17 GMT -4
They also misunderstood the American character. Which might have been the bigger mistake.
The US had a reputation for being pretty pacifistic (in the non-ideological sense), and turned inward. Compared to the European powers it had a relatively small military. Little did they realise that Pearl Harbor itself would turn these Americans in to the war-machine they became. A de facto military dictatorship overnight. The draft-boards drowning in volunteers. And a bigger industrial output, now geared for war, then the rest of the world put together.
Big mistake.
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Post by gwiz on Dec 13, 2007 8:35:43 GMT -4
40 years today from the NASA launch of a small (20 kg, 0.3 metres) satellite called TETR 1. It carried an S-band radar tracking transponder powered by solar cells and its purpose was to serve as a TEst and TRaining target for the stations that were to track Apollo during the low earth orbit phases of the mission. It operated successfully until atmospheric drag brought it down into the atmosphere on 28th April 1968.
For some strange reason HBs like Bart Sibrel and Cosmic Dave have latched onto the launch as somehow associated with the hoax theory. To make this work, the satellite has to have been in orbit at the time of the manned missions, so the HBs claim that NASA lied about the decay date. As NASA is only one of many organisations worldwide that keep track of what's in orbit, this claim is implausible. The claim is also unnecessary, as if the HBs had done their homework, they would have found that NASA subsequenty launched two more TETR satellites.
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Post by Count Zero on Dec 13, 2007 10:42:22 GMT -4
The claim is also unnecessary, as if the HBs had done their homework...
[Mythbusters voice] Well there's your problem! [/Mythbusters voice]
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Post by Czero 101 on Dec 14, 2007 8:46:48 GMT -4
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Post by gwiz on Jan 7, 2008 7:59:28 GMT -4
It's 40 years today from the launch of Surveyor 7 to the moon. The last of the Surveyors was targeted to a landing in the lunar highlands, near the crater Tycho. It carried the system for chemical analysis of the soil previously flown on Surveyors 5 and 6, and also the mechanical arm like Surveyor 3. This proved a mission-saving feature as the analyser failed to deploy and the arm was used to free it. In addition to its soil-sampling tasks, the arm was also used to move the analyser to work at different locations. As with the earlier Surveyors, many TV pictures of the surroundings were taken, and a TV picture of earth detected two laser beams directed at the probe, in a test of the laser ranging experiment later flown on Apollo.
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