A Sad Look-Back At Project Apollo
Sat Feb 14, 2009 5:24 am
An interesting retrospective/interview with one of the project engineers, Jack Crenshaw, of Project Apollo. Here's a bit:
Resonance: We are now 30 years past the Armstrong-Aldrin moonwalks of 1969. What feelings do you have when you view the films of the Apollo astronauts walking on the Moon?
Crenshaw: Mostly sadness. It seems to me such a terrible waste. The Apollo launch complexes, built at such huge costs, sit on Cape Canaveral, slowly decaying back into dirt. Our abilities to repeat the feat get worse with every passing year. Worst of all, all that incredible effort, all that hard-earned knowledge, all those careers spent learning the skills, all those marriages, careers, and even lives sacrificed for the goal to make Apollo a success, are mostly gone. Most of us who worked on Apollo are either dead, retired, or senile now. The knowledge is gone, possibly forever. I’m one of the lucky ones; I was young enough when Apollo began to still be able to remember how to do it. Even so, too few remain who do. If, today, we were given another Presidential mandate to return to the Moon in another eight years, I don’t think we’d have a snowball’s chance in Hell of doing it. Even if we simply tried to build another Apollo/Saturn V system, with no changes at all, I still don’t think we could do it. Apollo brought together thousands of the country’s best minds, all concentrating on a single goal. It’s the kind of thing that comes along only rarely in history.
I hope I may be forgiven feeling a bit of personal loss as well. I devoted some good years to the effort of learning how to steer a rocket to the Moon and back safely. I still have that knowledge (much of which was never written down – we were too busy doing, to write) rattling around in my head. Over the last 30 years, I’ve hoped someone would ask me again to show them how to do it. No one has.
For the full article/interview:
http://www.resonancepub.com/interview3.htm
Resonance: We are now 30 years past the Armstrong-Aldrin moonwalks of 1969. What feelings do you have when you view the films of the Apollo astronauts walking on the Moon?
Crenshaw: Mostly sadness. It seems to me such a terrible waste. The Apollo launch complexes, built at such huge costs, sit on Cape Canaveral, slowly decaying back into dirt. Our abilities to repeat the feat get worse with every passing year. Worst of all, all that incredible effort, all that hard-earned knowledge, all those careers spent learning the skills, all those marriages, careers, and even lives sacrificed for the goal to make Apollo a success, are mostly gone. Most of us who worked on Apollo are either dead, retired, or senile now. The knowledge is gone, possibly forever. I’m one of the lucky ones; I was young enough when Apollo began to still be able to remember how to do it. Even so, too few remain who do. If, today, we were given another Presidential mandate to return to the Moon in another eight years, I don’t think we’d have a snowball’s chance in Hell of doing it. Even if we simply tried to build another Apollo/Saturn V system, with no changes at all, I still don’t think we could do it. Apollo brought together thousands of the country’s best minds, all concentrating on a single goal. It’s the kind of thing that comes along only rarely in history.
I hope I may be forgiven feeling a bit of personal loss as well. I devoted some good years to the effort of learning how to steer a rocket to the Moon and back safely. I still have that knowledge (much of which was never written down – we were too busy doing, to write) rattling around in my head. Over the last 30 years, I’ve hoped someone would ask me again to show them how to do it. No one has.
For the full article/interview:
http://www.resonancepub.com/interview3.htm
Sat Feb 14, 2009 9:58 am
I thought it was amazing that they had a little story in the latest Air and Space mag about NASA folks going to the NASM to find out at how the Apollo heat shields were built...
Personally I am a bit angry.
When i was five years old I was "promised" a trip to the hotel in space on a Pan Am flight...when I grew up. I know I am blending hollywood with NASA but it was the idea at the time that we would forever be going faster and farther...I still haven't had my space flight and now I can't even fly on the supersonic airliner to Europe....we are regressing.
Personally I am a bit angry.
When i was five years old I was "promised" a trip to the hotel in space on a Pan Am flight...when I grew up. I know I am blending hollywood with NASA but it was the idea at the time that we would forever be going faster and farther...I still haven't had my space flight and now I can't even fly on the supersonic airliner to Europe....we are regressing.
Sat Feb 14, 2009 11:22 am
I see the regression in skills and knowledge every day at my "job". I see a day in the not-too-distant future when the only people who can do a simple sheetmetal or composite repair on a transport category aircraft will be a manufacturer or their hand-picked representative. If it weren't for a few individuals and small companies, we couldn't recover a fabric flight control, much less build a Saturn V.
Scott the Pessimist
Scott the Pessimist
Sat Feb 14, 2009 12:23 pm
You see the same thing happening in way too many industries. The rush to computerize and automate virtually everything in our world has pushed us to the point that most stuff can't be fixed by a decent mechanic or tech. It's reduced most repairs, when they can be done, to doing a box, board or system changeout. You can't even maintain a car these days without a computer or scanner. It takes a special cable, a 300$ piece of software and a laptop or desktop computer to do some of the typical maintenance on my New Bettle TDI. Add in the new DSG automatic trannys and you HAVE to have to software just to check the transmission fluid level. While a lot of automation and computerization is wonderful, I think is causing an overall dumbing down of the average person.
Couple that with the drive by the MBAs running virtually everything these days and it's build the product as cheap as you can get away with so that the company will make the maximum amount of money in as little time as possible. I would rather buy a product at a bit higher price, that is built from a quality design and componets that can be maintained over the long term instead of a cheap product that will be dead and trashed in just a few years.
Couple that with the drive by the MBAs running virtually everything these days and it's build the product as cheap as you can get away with so that the company will make the maximum amount of money in as little time as possible. I would rather buy a product at a bit higher price, that is built from a quality design and componets that can be maintained over the long term instead of a cheap product that will be dead and trashed in just a few years.
Sat Feb 14, 2009 12:40 pm
Saw this cartoon in the paper this week...it seems appropriate.
