Sorry, but I think that this would be disrespectful to both Hugh Dryden and Neil Armstrong. Leave the name as it is, and come up with something else to name after Neil, that would be worthy of him. Like the first lunar base. Assuming NASA ever builds one. Which seems doubtful.
Category Archives: Space History
Fifty-Five Years Of Space Age
I’d almost forgotten that today is the anniversary of Sputnik.
Here’s a post from the fiftieth anniversary, with links galore, and here’s what I wrote last year.
Note that today is also the eighth anniversary of the winning of the X-Prize. If Virgin Galactic hadn’t made so many bad decisions in the aftermath of that event, they’d probably be flying passengers by now.
An Alternate History Of The Space Program
From Mike Griffin.
I wonder what color the sky is on that planet? I’d fisk it, but I’m trying to finish up my space safety paper, and I’m getting ready to go to the AIAA conference in Pasadena tomorrow (and possibly Wednesday and Thursday, depending on how useful it seems).
Burial At Sea?
That’s the rumor about the disposition of Lt. JG Armstrong’s earthly remains.
I think it would be more appropriate to inter him on the moon, but that’s still a little pricey right now.
Missile History
Here’s what I have for my space safety paper:
ICBMs were never designed to be highly reliable, because to do so would have dramatically increased their costs (many hundreds of them were built), and it wasn’t necessary for their mission. They were designed to be launched in massive numbers, and if a few out of a hundred didn’t make it through, that was all right, because they were often redundant in their targeting (that is, more than one missile would be aimed at a key target). Some estimates at the time of the reliability of the Titan II was only 80% or so (that is, one in five would not deliver its payload to the designated target), based on the fact that eight of its initial thirty-three test launches were failures. The early manned spaceflights were performed on modified versions of them (specifically, the Redstone and Atlas for Mercury and Titan II for Gemini). But what was good enough for a weapon as part of a fusillade of dozens or hundreds wasn’t perceived to be for a single flight carrying a human, particularly with recent memories of nationally televised ignominious failures of rockets on the launch pad. Thus was born the pernicious (and now obsolete) concept of “man rating,” which confuses the space industry and obfuscates policy down to this very day.
Is there anything inaccurate in that?
First Man
My thoughts on Neil Armstrong, over at PJMedia.
End Of An Icon
That’s a shame — he was only 82, which isn’t that old these days. No word of the cause of death. I’d heard that he’d been doing well since his recent heart surgery, so either there were later complications, or he just happened to succumb to something else.
The irony, of course, as it notes in the bio, is that he never wanted to be an icon, and generally shunned the publicity. In any event, ad astra, and resquiescat in pace.
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, my Facebook wall is all Neil, all the time.
Saving The Lunar Artifacts
A story with quotes from Roger Launius and Glenn Reynolds over at NPR.
The Hippy MIT Geek
…who saved Apollow 13?
Geoff Landis is skeptical. So am I. It’s hard to believe that this wouldn’t have been the first thought to almost everyone in Mission Control.
[Via Geek Press]
Sally Ride
Will ride no more.
Rest in peace. I hadn’t even known she was sick. Among other things, I thought she did yeoman’s work on the Augustine panel.