Tag: history

Repeating moonquakes on Moon found to be caused by remaining sections of Apollo 17’s LM

10:41 am

Scientists reviewing the archive seismic data produced by the seismometers placed on the Moon by the Apollo missions have discovered that repeating small moonquakes in that data were actually caused by base of Apollo 17’s Lunar Module (LM) that provided a launchpad for the part of the LM that lifted the astronauts off the Moon.

Triangulating the origin of the mystery quakes, researchers surprisingly realized they came from the Apollo 17 lunar lander base, which expands and vibrates each morning as it becomes heated by the sun.

“Every lunar morning when the sun hits the lander, it starts popping off,” Allen Husker, a Caltech research professor of geophysics who worked on the project, said in a statement. “Every five to six minutes another one, over a period of five to seven Earth hours. They were incredibly regular and repeating.”

That the extreme range of temperatures experienced by the LM could cause detectable quakes as the LM base expanded suggests strongly how difficult it is for a spacecraft to survive the lunar night lasting 14 Earth days. For all we know, that base has now literally fallen apart due to these stresses. This in turn suggests it is highly unlikely that India’s Pragyan rover will come back to life when the sun rises on September 22, 2023.

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The actual truth behind the so-called “hidden figures” of the early space race

9:57 am

It is Monday, and thus the news in the morning is somewhat slim. With this in mind I offer my readers some worthwhile history, a long review dubbed “The Portrayal of Early Manned Spaceflight in Hidden Figures: A Critique. The actual review is available here [pdf].

The review uses primary source material, the actual words of the engineers and managers who worked next to black mathematician Katherine Johnson at NASA in the 1960s (both new and old writings and interviews), assessing the historical accuracy of Margot Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures, which essentially claimed that Johnson was a central figure making possible the entire American effort land on the Moon, and whose credit was purposely squelched because she was black, and a woman.

Not surprisingly, you will find that claim to be absurdly false. Not only was Johnson only one of many who did the work, she was treated then fairly and with respect. If anything, her place at NASA was proof that the agency was a forceful part of the civil rights movement, working to give qualified people of all races a fair chance.

Thus, the effort of modern leftist revisionists, led by Barack Obama when he gave Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, to smear America and NASA in the 1960s as racist and bigoted in supposedly suppressing Johnson’s participation is not only unfair, it is an outright lie. If anything, her magnification to star status by today’s politicians, historians, and the entertainment industry has acted to discredit the work done by the many others who worked side-by-side with her, as co-workers.

If you’ve got the time, read the critique. It will not only teach you something about the behind the scenes effort that made the lunar landing possible, it will help you recognize the bigoted dishonesty that is so rampant in today’s intellectual and political culture.

Hat tip to reader Chris Dorsey for letting me know of this review.

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Marilyn Lovell, wife of Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell, passes away at 93

11:18 am

Marilyn Lovell, holding son Jeffrey, watches the Saturn 5 lift-off with daughters Susan, right, and Barbara, left
Marilyn Lovell, holding son Jeffrey, watches Apollo 8 lift-off on
December 21, 1968 with daughters Susan, right, and Barbara, left

On August 27, 2023, Marilyn Lovell passed away at the age of 93 in Lake Forest, Illinois, where she and her astronaut husband had lived since he had retired from NASA following his last space mission, Apollo 13.

Jim Lovell of course is the famous one. In the 1960s space race he was the leading space cadet, spending more time in space than any other person, with flights on Gemini 7 (the longest mission yet), Gemini 12 (proved it was possible to do work on a spacewalk), Apollo 8 (first mission ever to another planet), and Apollo 13, which was supposed to be Lovell’s crowning achievement, a walk on the Moon. Unfortunately an explosion in the Apollo service module on the journey out to the Moon forced the crew to use its Lunar Module as a lifeboat so that the three astronauts could get back home safely. That failure meant Lovell would never step on the Moon, despite a life dedicated to taking the first tentative steps in the exploration and the eventual settlement of the solar system by the human race.

It could however be argued that none of that laudable career would have happened had he not had Marilyn Lovell for a wife.
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The utter ignorance of modern educators on proud display the last two days in Colorado

3:32 pm

Jaiden and school official
Click to watch the video

In the last few days a story about a 12-year-old boy who was banned from classes because he had a Gadsden flag sticker on his backpack has gone viral, with the school, The Vanguard School, forced to cancel its parents night because of the outrage.

School officials had claimed that the Gadsden flag was not allowed at the school because it had “its origins in slavery and the slave trade,” a false statement of such utter ignorance of American history it leaves anyone with any education breathless with astonishment. The picture to the right shows the student Jaiden reacting in bemused disbelief at the moment that school official (in the background) made this absurd claim. He clearly knows more about American history than this brainless school official.

Not surprisingly, the uproar quickly caused the school’s board of directors to call an emergency meeting in which they backed down, especially as Jaiden had said he intended to continue to come to classes with the sticker on his pack, and would even do a sit-in if they dared try to kick him out again.

My purpose in mentioning this story however is to show how it illustrates so completely the bankruptcy of our education system today. Educators simply do not know American history, even though they are the people we expect to teach it. And when that ignorance is discovered, as in this case, they can’t just admit error and apologize, they have to equivocate and add more lies to their foolishness.
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Movies when our culture was not run by barbarians

2:58 pm

Today’s essay will in a sense be part two of an essay I wrote earlier this week, entitled “We are becoming a nation of barbarians”. Then, I tried to show the decay in the western civilization by describing the accepted — almost encouraged — crudeness of modern language. While public cursing could easily be consider only a small and trivial issue, I think the increased use of obscene language in normal discourse is equivalent to the “broken windows theory” of psychology, which posits that minor visible signs of disorder and misbehavior encourage further and worse disorder and misbehavior, eventually leading to collapse.

Today I’d like to instead give some examples of the much more civilized nature of popular entertainment from only a half century ago, in order to contrast this with the present. To do this I will cite just four movie examples, and challenge everyone today who is a passionate fan of modern films to watch them (all of which are available for free on the internet) and recognize the differences that I will describe. If you like movies, you will enjoy the experience, but I warn you, modern popular entertainment films do not compare well with these mid-twentieth century pop movies.
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Rosie Hodgson & Rowan Piggott – Dancing At Whitsun

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I was listening to a different recording of this song by Gordon Bok, Ann Muir, and Ed Trickett from 1978 and thought it gives us a window into a gentle culture that is now dead. As the youtube webpage for the performance below states, the song was written as “a tribute to the women who took up morris dancing during the First World War, when the male mortality rate in some English towns and villages approached seventy percent.”

It is the gentle quality of this song, its words and its sound, that is generally dead in today’s culture. Almost all modern music must be loud — shouted more than sung — with a rock beat that while energetic and enthusiastic is also somewhat harsh. Curse words are normal. It is rare to hear new popular music dedicated to expressing gentle soft love.

I post this as a memorial to that lost civilization.

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Why we really celebrate the Fourth of July

9:50 am

I posted this essay last year on July 4th. Time to repost it. I must add that my hopes for the November 2022 election were not realized, and we are now on the brink of losing our free country, forever, a fact that horrifies me beyond words.

—————-
Why we really celebrate the Fourth of July

The Declaration of Independence

If you really want to know why the Fourth of July has been the quintessential American holiday since the founding our this country, you need only return to the words of the document that became public to the world on that day.

Below the fold is the full text of the Declaration. Read it. It isn’t hard to understand, even if the style comes from the late 1700s. Its point however is clear. Governments that abuse the rights of the citizenry don’t deserve to be in power. The most important quote of course is right near the beginning:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed — that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [emphasis mine]

What a radical concept — a nation founded on the principle of allowing its citizens to pursue happiness.

Right now, however, we have a federal government in America that more fits the description of King George III’s Great Britain in 1776 in the Declaration. The corrupt elitist uni-Party of federal elected officials and the federal bureaucracy in Washington has for too long run roughshod over the general population. If you take the time to read the full text of the Declaration, you will be astonished at the remarkable conceptual similarity between the abuses that Jefferson describes coming from Great Britain and the many abuses of power that are now legion and common by the uni-Party in Washington.

When November comes the American public will likely have its last chance to overthrow the political wing of the uni-Party, led by the Democratic Party. The Republicans are no saints, but at least that party contains within it many decent politicians who honor the Constitution, the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights. Many are right now campaigning on those ideals. Based on the past six years, we now know that no one in the Democratic Party honors those values. What they honor is blacklisting, racism, segregation, anti-American hate, and above all power. If they are not removed from office, they will ramp up that power, in league with quislings like Romney and Cornyn in the Republican Party, to further corrupt our Constitutional government.

These people do not like losing power. The longer they hold it, the more they will work to undermine the election system to make sure they do not lose. The corruption and election fraud in 2020 election was merely a dress rehearsal of what these goons will do if they have the chance next year.

In fact, November 2022 might very well be the last election that has any chance of producing legitimate results. Americans had better not waste this last chance.
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Forgotten Weapons – Girardoni Air Gun

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The air rifle that Lewis & Clark took on their expedition to impress the American Indians they met. When I recently read their memoirs, I was baffled that an air gun existed in the early 1800s. This video shows it in detail, noting that it was actually invented in 1780 for the Austrian Army.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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Sinking the Bismarck

6:01 pm

An evening pause: For Memorial Day, let’s have some history recounting one of the most important Atlantic naval battles of World War II, which took place 82 years ago this weekend. If the Bismarck had been successful in getting out into the Atlantic to attack convoys, Great Britain could very well have been starved into submission.

Hat tip Mike Nelson, who adds, “The ravages of WWII have faded from memory but we should never forget. Too many paid the price for the freedoms we so blithely take for granted.”

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NASA now demolishing the obsolete mobile launch platform used during Apollo

9:42 am

The second of three mobile launch platforms that were used during the Apollo program to transport the Saturn-5 rocket to its launchpad but are all obsolete and no longer in use is finally being demolished for salvage.

The first has already been scrapped, while the third is still in use for “servicing the crawlerway between SLS launches.”

NASA has been storing the platform in the Vehicle Assembly Building, but there was no longer room there, with Boeing taking over more space for assembling SLS core stages. The platform itself was deemed unsafe for display at any museum, with the cost of making it safe too high.

Better to salvage it than have it sit in the way of future space operations. After all, when you get down to it, it is simply some metal and hardware. The history was accomplished by the humans who built it, and who would be appalled if later generations used their work as a club to prevent new achievements in space.

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The only rocket stage recovered during the 1960s space race returns to Florida

9:00 am

A section of the Gemini 5 Titan rocket first stage that was recovered by chance right after its launch on August 21, 1965 has now been moved from storage in Alabama to be put on display at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Museum.

The artifact, which encompasses the upper portion of the Titan II rocket’s first stage, flew with the vehicle from Launch Complex 19 at Cape Kennedy (today Cape Canaveral) in Florida for the first two and a half minutes of flight, reaching about 50 miles high (80 kilometers) before its two-nozzle engine exhausted its propellant supply. Unlike most rockets, which jettison their first stage before firing their second stage engine(s), Gemini-Titan “fired in the hole,” igniting the upper stage before separating from the first.

The Titan II first stage then plunged back to Earth, impacting the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Bermuda with no plans for its recovery. It was only by happenstance that a U.S. Air Force plane spotted the segment floating in the water, which led to a U.S. Navy destroyer, the U.S.S. Du Pont, hauling it out of the ocean and back to shore.

Whether the surviving segment, which housed the booster’s oxidizer tank, tore apart from its fuel tank and engine section during the tumble back to Earth or on contact with the ocean is unknown. The lower section of the stage presumably sank to the seafloor.

Until the shuttle started flying in 1981, this booster section was the only first stage recovered from any American rocket launch. The rocket itself had lifted Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad into orbit, where they spent a then record eight days, proving humans could survive in space long enough to get to and from the Moon.

Lots of pictures at the link. More pictures here.

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Alabama roadside rest stop about to lose its Saturn-1B rocket

9:02 am

Due to decay and rust, an Alabama roadside welcome center is about to lose the Saturn-1B rocket that has greeted visitors for the past 44 years.

The Welcome Center opened in 1977. In 1979, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center donated the Saturn 1B rocket, 168 feet high and 22 feet in diameter, to stand as a symbol of Huntsville’s role in the space program. The rocket was painted in 2006 and more maintenance was done starting in 2014, but it has steadily deteriorated since then.

“It was starting to fall apart,” [said Lee Sentell, director of the Alabama Tourism Department.] “We’ve gotten complaints for years about it.”

The cost to refurbish it appears to be too high. Maybe Sentell can get NASA to donate an SLS rocket for display, since it is very possible that several of those will become available at some point in the future when SpaceX’s much more efficient and cheaper Starship/Superheavy begins flying.

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The same region on Ganymede, as seen by Voyager-1 in 1979 and Juno in 2021

11:30 am

Ganymede compared between Voyager-1 and Juno
Click for full image.

When the Jupiter orbiter Juno did a close pass of the moon Ganymede on June 7, 2021, it took four pictures, covering regions mostly photographed for the first time by Voyager-1 in its close fly-by in 1979.

Scientists have now published the data from this new fly-by. Though Juno’s higher resolution pictures revealed many new details when compared with the Voyager-1 images from four decades earlier, the scientists found no changes. The comparison image, figure 2 of their paper, is to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here.

A flicker comparison between the registered JunoCam and Voyager reprojected mosaics revealed no apparent new impact features. Given the high albedo of fresh craters on Ganymede, with high albedo ejecta deposits two or three times the diameter of the craters themselves, we argue that new craters as small as 250 m diameter would be detectable in images at these 1 km per pixel scales. Extrapolating Ganymede cratering rates from Zahnle et al. (2003) below 1 km, the probability of JunoCam observing a new crater over 12.2 million km2 in 42 years is 1 in 1500, consistent with none being observed.

In other words, at these resolutions finding no new impacts is not a surprise.

Of the new features detected, the Juno images could see more details in the bright rays emanating from the crater Tros (in the lower center of both images), and thus found “…terrain boundaries previously mapped as ‘undivided’ or as ‘approximate’, several large craters, and 12 paterae newly identified in this region.”

Paterae resemble craters but are thought to be a some form of volcanic caldera. Their geological origin however is not yet completely understood.

The paper’s conclusion is actually the most exciting:

The insight gained from this handful of images makes it likely in our opinion that new observations from the upcoming JUICE and Europa Clipper missions will revolutionize our understanding of Ganymede.

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Could the Apollo 11 lunar module still be orbiting the Moon?

11:55 am

According to one researcher, at least two of the Apollo lunar modules that took astronauts up and down from the Moon could still be in lunar orbit, though their location is presently unknown.

His paper outlining the possible survival of the Apollo 11 LM Eagle can be found here. From his abstract:

The Apollo 11 “Eagle” Lunar Module ascent stage was abandoned in lunar orbit after the historic landing in 1969. Its fate is unknown. Numerical analysis described here provides evidence that this object might have remained in lunar orbit to the present day. The simulations show a periodic variation in eccentricity of the orbit, correlated to the selenographic longitude of the apsidal line. The rate of apsidal precession is correlated to eccentricity. These two factors appear to interact to stabilize the orbit over the long term.

More details here.

Hat tip to reader Mike Nelson, who sent me this story today. I am certain I reported it previously, but searching on Behind the Black failed to find it, so I decided to post again. As the researcher concludes:

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could find this amazing little vessel and bring her back to Earth!!!!

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Remembering Apollo 17, fifty years after the last manned mission to the Moon

9:37 am

LRO oblique view of Apollo 17 landing site
Click for full image.

Link here.

The article comes from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team, and includes a number of LRO photos of the landing site, including the oblique annotated image to the right, reduced to post here. As the article notes:

The Apollo 17 crew was the last of an era in human space exploration and the last to set foot on the Moon. Fifty years later, the landing sites, hardware, and footsteps remain delicately preserved on the lunar surface. Join the LRO team as we commemorate their inspiring achievements with additional images, research, maps, interactive sites, and a dedicated video. LRO continues to image the Apollo sites whenever possible, under multiple lighting conditions, and combine these images into interactive sites, like the Apollo 17 Temporal Traverse. The Lunar QuickMap 3D tool can be used to preview the Apollo landing sites and search for LROC images of the areas. For downloadable maps of the Taurus-Littrow Valley, visit the Map Sheets section on our downloads page here. Finally, the Apollo 17 fiftieth anniversary video below presents highlights of the mission with landing site views reconstructed using LROC images and topography.

I have embedded that video below. It does a marvelous job summarizing this mission, which in many ways remains the most daring human exploration mission since Columbus dared cross an ocean in a tiny ship only slightly larger than many lifeboats.
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Last 747 rolls off assembly line

8:58 am

Boeing earlier this week completed assembly of its very last 747 airplane, the 1,574th such plane built in the past half century.

Still in its iridescent green protective coating, the giant aircraft was towed out of the widebody aircraft factory in a low-key exercise without any fanfare. Once the 747 has been cleared, it will be flown to another Boeing facility where it will be painted in the Atlas Air livery in anticipation of final delivery to the customer next year.

The 747 was born out of a failed bid by Boeing to market a large jet transporter to the US military in the 1960s. That contract for what became the C-5A Galaxy eventually went to Lockheed, but Boeing was convinced that its basic design, with its high-bypass turbofan engine, could be reworked for the civilian market, which was booming at the time.

On January 9, 1969, the first 747 prototype took to the skies over Washington state. It was a staggering 225 feet (68.5 m) long, had a wing area larger than a basketball court, and the tail was as high as a six-story building.

Without question the 747 was one of the safest and well designed airplanes ever built. It was years after that first flight before one was involved in an accident, and that was not due to a failure of the plane itself. It also flew like a dream, its large size making it look like it was lumbering slowly in the air. Its retirement is almost entirely related to fuel cost-savings, since the 747 has four engines and thus more fuel than more modern planes.

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Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike

6:01 pm

An evening pause: For tonight, the anniversary of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, I think this documentary created by Frank Capra for the U.S. government in 1943 is most appropriate.

Though created to rally Americans to the war effort, the film is not propaganda. It is a remarkably accurate telling of the history leading up to Pearl Harbor in detailing how Hitler was able to gain control of almost all of Europe, through lies, force, and the weak-kneed opposition of his opponents. Only with Soviet Russia and its secret pact with Germany to divide up Poland does the film fail to tell the facts thoroughly, but here it fails by omission, not lies. In the end, however, it is accurate, because the Soviet Union’s pact, intended to bring it security from German invasion, failed. Hitler had lied once again, and the U.S.S.R. became only another victim of his greed for power.

It is worthwhile for Americans to watch it now, because the same lies and greed for power is eating away at our own country from within. Any honest open-minded viewing of this mid-20th century history cannot help but see the parallels.

I should add that Capra knew how to make movies, and he made sure this history was told in a riveting and compelling manner. You will not be bored.

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The steep interior rim of Aristarchus Crater

11:30 am

Aristarchus Crater
Click for larger image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is a just released image taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, looking across the top of Aristarchus Crater on the Moon from a height of only 60 miles, with the dark surrounding plateau in the foreground contrasting sharply with the bright crater interior. For scale, the distance from the floor of the crater to the top of the rim is about 9,000 feet. The bright central peak is about 1,300 feet tall. The contrast in brightness inside and outside the crater is explained thus:

Adjacent to Aristarchus crater is the Aristarchus plateau, one of the largest volcanic centers on the Moon. Here we find one of the largest rilles [on the Moon, dubbed Vallis Schröteri], a massive pyroclastic deposit, and the source of extensive flood basalts.

These volcanic materials are considered relatively young (for the Moon) – 1.5 to 2.5 billion years. The pyroclastic deposit formed when magma was explosively ejected from the vent and broke into small droplets quenched as glass in the cold vacuum of space as they fell back to the surface. Due to their high glass content, the pyroclastic deposits are distinctly low in albedo (relatively dark), providing a dark background for the bright Aristarchus crater. Within the crater, some of these pyroclastic deposits may be visible as the darkest areas on the far wall, and glassy impact melt is moderately lower in reflectance than the bright, rocky materials exposed on areas of the crater floor and walls.

The overview map below shows both the crater and the vent from which Vallis Schröteri belched.
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