President Kennedy Was Not Too Smart-Part 3

A computer-generated illustration shows the trajectory of the Apollo 11 mission and the stages of the spacecraft from launch to orbit and return. (Claus Lunau / Science Source)

Is It Possible the Mission To The Moon Was Easy?

Looking back at all the slick footage about the Moon Landing it seems to have been a Well-Oiled Machine. It was Well-Oiled and the Good Ole USofA landed on the Moon several times but it was Not Easy.

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Ten Thousand Problems Had To Be Solved To Get Us to the Moon

Every one of those challenges was tackled and mastered between May 1961 and July 1969. The astronauts, the nation, flew to the Moon because hundreds of thousands of Scientists, Engineers, Managers and Factory Workers unraveled a series of puzzles, often without knowing if the solution they came up with to their particular puzzle was a workable solution. 

In retrospect, the results are both bold and bemusing but because President Kennedy was so smart (Or was he?) and because he could see into the future (Or could he?) this is what happened…

Ø The Apollo spacecraft ended up with what was, for its time, the smallest, fastest and most nimble computer in a single package anywhere in the world. 

Ø That computer navigated through space and helped the astronauts operate the ship. 

Ø In actuality, the computer was the equivalent of a 1990s Lap Top.

Ø But the astronauts also traveled to the Moon with paper star charts so they could use a sextant to take star sightings—like 18th-century explorers on the deck of a ship—and cross-check their computer’s navigation. 

Ø The software of the computer was stitched together by women sitting at specialized looms—using wire instead of thread. 

Ø Actually an arresting amount of work across Apollo was done by hand…
>The heat shield was applied to the spaceship by hand with a fancy caulking gun.
>The parachutes were sewn by hand and then folded by hand.
>The only three staff members in the country who were trained and licensed to fold and pack the Apollo parachutes were considered so indispensable that NASA officials forbade them to ever ride in the same car, to avoid all of them being injured in a single accident.

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Today Most of Us Have No Idea How Expensive the Moon Landing Really Was

 (This is a repeat of part of President Kennedy Was Not Too Smart- Part 2)

I warn you ahead of time that you ought to read these cost figures slowly to let them sink in and many of you will go back and read what you just read again because these are Really Big Numbers!…

Ø Three times as many people worked on Apollo as on the Manhattan Project to create the Atomic Bomb. 

Ø In 1961, the year Kennedy formally announced Apollo, NASA spent $1 million on Apollo for the year. 

Ø Five years later NASA was spending about $1 million every three hours on Apollo, 24 hours a day. 

I’ll read it again for you…

Ø $1 million every three hours!

Ø 24 hours a day!

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At Least the Moon Landing Had the Full Support of the American People

What made it all work was that everyone in the Good Ole USofA was in Full Support of the endeavor and believed that the sacrifices needed to be made were worth the Time, Effort and the Money Being Spent on the Mission…Or did they?

Ø On the eve of the launch of Apollo 11, civil rights protesters, led by the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Marched on Cape Kennedy.

Ø Americans constantly questioned why we were going to the Moon when we Couldn’t Handle Our Problems on Earth.
>Were they really saying mankind should never move ahead toward New and Better and Different until all Existing Problems Had Been Solved?

Ø As early as 1964, when asked if America should “go all out to beat the Russians in a manned flight to the Moon” and only 26% said Go All Out. 

Ø During Christmas 1968, NASA sent three astronauts in an Apollo capsule all the way to the Moon, where they orbited just 70 miles over the surface, and on Christmas Eve, in a live, prime-time TV broadcast, they shared pictures of the Moon’s surface, as seen out their windows. Then the three astronauts read aloud the first ten verses of Genesis to what was then the largest TV audience in history.  >Four weeks after Apollo 8’s telecast from lunar orbit (see the underlining above), the Harris Poll conducted a survey and asked Americans if they favored landing a man on the Moon and only 39% Were In Favor.
>Then they were asked if they thought the space program was worth the $4 billion a year it was costing and only 55% said It Was Worth It.

Ø In 1961, a U.S. Senator released his own poll of U.S. Space Scientists. The question was: Was sending astronauts to the Moon, at the earliest feasible moment, of great scientific value?
>He polled the membership of the American Astronomical Society and received 381 written replies from Astronomers and Space Scientists.
>36% said a manned Moon mission had Great Scientific Value.
>35% said it had Little Scientific Value.
>He also asked about unmanned, robotic missions to the Moon and 66% of Space Scientists said they would have Great Scientific Value.
>This Senator, a member of Kennedy’s own party, had gone to some trouble to establish that America’s Actual Space Scientists judged that the race to the Moon Wasn’t Worth It. 

Ø In an interview in late 1961 a professor and legendary mathematician at MIT, dismissed Apollo as a “moondoggle”. (The critics of the program loved the invention of this play on words.)

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A Bit of Golly Gee About All of This

Ø We were flying to the Moon in an era when Batch-Processing Machines took up vast rooms of floor space but the Apollo spacecraft had real-time computers that fit into a single cubic foot of space. This alone was a stunning feat of both engineering and programming. 

Ø The Apollo spacecraft—command module and lunar module—flew to the Moon at almost 24,000 miles per hour. 

Ø That’s six miles every second. 

Ø The astronauts couldn’t wait a minute for their calculations; in fact, if they wanted to arrive at the right spot on the Moon, they couldn’t wait for a second because in that second they had traveled another 6 miles. 

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I’ll finish with a bit of Silliness

As Neil Armstrong was stepping onto the Surface of the Moon he said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. 

There are Modern Mental Midget walking among us who think Neil Armstrong should not have said “Man” or “Mankind”.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

A computer-generated illustration shows the trajectory of the Apollo 11 mission and the stages of the spacecraft from launch to orbit and return. (Claus Lunau / Science Source)