Apollo 11 - 50 years on.

[Slap Shot]

Not sure if this was shared here yet or not but it's very cool. Apollo 11: The Complete Descent

[gfmorris]

I would love to know what Buzz thinks about us recycling about 85% of our wastewater (urine, perspiration) back into potable water (this is about 30% of my wife's job). It's pretty crazy, and no, I haven't tried it.

GFM

[alfablue]

I would love to know what Buzz thinks about us recycling about 85% of our wastewater (urine, perspiration) back into potable water (this is about 30% of my wife's job). It's pretty crazy, and no, I haven't tried it.

GFM

Happened to see a show about that last night- it seems that some of that water is more than just pure, it's created from O2 and H2- as it's separated, and then used for something (which they didn't mention, but I suspect fuel cells), which results in water. Which is more effective at purifying water than distillation could ever be.

Did I see that right?

[gfmorris]

Happened to see a show about that last night- it seems that some of that water is more than just pure, it's created from O2 and H2- as it's separated, and then used for something (which they didn't mention, but I suspect fuel cells), which results in water. Which is more effective at purifying water than distillation could ever be.

Did I see that right?

There are a variety of ways to do it. That's one.

GFM

[gfmorris]

I found out at work that Chris Kraft died today.

GFM

[Slap Shot]

I found out at work that Chris Kraft died today.

GFM

Chris Kraft will make you, "JUMP! JUMP!"....

[aparch]

So sad to hear about Chris Kraft.

So we're still 40 hours out from Apollo 11 (50 years ago) returning to the surface of the Earth. Another tid-bit that has been talked about recently is a *GIGANTIC* whoopsie that almost killed not only the Apollo 11 crew, but 8, 10, and 12 on re-entry. During the re-entry procedure, the service module is jettisoned from the command module, with the SM set up to perform one final burn upon separation to push it away from the CM, and into slightly different trajectory where it would re-enter at a different time/spot than the CM.

Unfortunately, the computer program was programmed wrong and the burn that was supposed to push the SM away, actually just rotated itself right back into the flight path the CM was on.

The plan to avoid it was simple: the Service Module, post-separation, would perform a series of thrust maneuvers to take it safely away from the re-entry path of the Command Module. By shifting the Service Module to a significantly different trajectory, it wouldn't even re-enter at the same time as the Command Module, but would skip off the atmosphere this time. The re-entry of the Service Module should have only come much later, after performing another orbit (or set of orbits) around Earth.

But that didn't happen at all. To quote from Nancy Atkinson's book, pilot Frank A. Brown, flying about 450 miles (725 km) away from the re-entry point, reported the following:

I see the two of them, one above the other. One is the Command Module; the other is the Service Module. . . . I see the trail behind them — what a spectacle! You can see the bits flying off. Notice that the top one is almost unchanged while the bottom one is shattering into pieces. That is the disintegrating Service Module.

There was a fault in how the Service Module was configured to jettison its remaining fuel: a problem that was later discovered to have occurred aboard the prior Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 missions as well. Instead of a series of thrusters firing to move the Service Module away from the Command Module, shifting it to a different trajectory and eliminating the possibility of a collision, the way the thrusters actually fired put the entire mission at risk.

The problem was that there were two types of thrusters on board the Service Module: the Minus X RCS jets and the RCS roll jets. And while the roll jets fired in bursts in an attempt to stabilize the Service Module, the Minus X jets fired continuously.

[gfmorris]

Space is hard. Luca Parmitano is back for his second stint on ISS. I'm betting he's going to be nervous about that first EVA. (This crew will do 11.)

Some days, I still can't believe that we pulled that one off.

GFM

[aparch]

Space is hard. Luca Parmitano is back for his second stint on ISS. I'm betting he's going to be nervous about that first EVA. (This crew will do 11.)

Some days, I still can't believe that we pulled that one off.

GFM

Holy sh*t!

"About half an hour into the EVA [spacewalk], 45 minutes maybe, Chris and I were ahead on our tasks so we were starting our third task and I felt some water on the back of my head," Parmitano said in a video after the incident. "I realized that it was cold water, it was not a normal feeling, so I told ground [control]."

"I started going back to the airlock and the water kept trickling," Parmitano said. "It completely covered my eyes and my nose. It was really hard to see. I couldn't hear anything. It was really hard to communicate. I went back using just memory, basically going back to the airlock until I found it."

No wonder astronauts don't show emotion, their training beats it out of them. After an hour out and about the ISS, he returned to the airlock *BY MEMORY*.

[gfmorris]

They train and train and train and train for a reason.

Let me tell you, the in-cabin video and space-to-ground audio for that whole event are pretty harrowing. I've done this for four years now and it freaks me the hell out.

The final move in that EVA was to bring him inside, have one person rip his helmet off, and two people tackle his face with towels to get the fluid away from his nose and mouth.

All right, I'm going to go outside now and scream.

GFM

[WeAreNDHockey]

Flight controllers, as a whole, are pretty young. The stress is pretty crazy, and the home life is hard. I work ISS, which has been 24/7 since 2000. I worked 11p-7a on my first Christmas as a married man. My wife was ... not happy but very understanding. I'm almost 41 and am easily in the oldest 25% of the ISS flight controller cadre in Huntsville. (I'm probably also older than half of the ISS flight directors.)

My favorite are the two ETHOS flight controllers in Houston who're married to each other. They often hand the console over to each other, which I'm guessing is the kindness of their flight lead to assign them a time every day for a week where they'll see each other.

GFM

I did not know you were a flight controller, which in my book makes you one of the coolest people I have ever met, if only for a brief minute or two.

[dxmnkd316]

They train and train and train and train for a reason.

Let me tell you, the in-cabin video and space-to-ground audio for that whole event are pretty harrowing. I've done this for four years now and it freaks me the hell out.

The final move in that EVA was to bring him inside, have one person rip his helmet off, and two people tackle his face with towels to get the fluid away from his nose and mouth.

All right, I'm going to go outside now and scream.

GFM

Can you explain that final move a little more?

[RaceBoarder]

Can you explain that final move a little more?

I'd guess it's probably because of zero gravity inside the ISS. Moisture would just form small droplets and can probably be inhaled quite easily.

[gfmorris]

I did not know you were a flight controller, which in my book makes you one of the coolest people I have ever met, if only for a brief minute or two.

I've only done this since 2015. I've done some ISS thing or other since 1999.

Can you explain that final move a little more?

They didn't know what the fluid was, but you can think of it as water with stabilizing stuff in it. Water has surface tension, which is what makes it form drops, etc. In microgravity, the drops don't fall, and if they come in contact with a wettable/hydrophilic surface — cotton, wool, skin — it adheres to the surface and spreads out across that surface if the adhesive forces on the surface are more attractive than the internal attraction of the water. As such, as you would when you get a good sweat on, his face was covered in fluid.

Then, consider that it was a large volume of fluid, enough to fill his helmet! So instead of just floating off, that layer of water was mostly a spheroid around his freaking face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxFdfk35_K0

Those last 20 seconds or so, with three of his crewmates looking right at him, knowing that they were going to get him out, knowing that he was holding his breath ... sorry, gotta go outside and scream again.

[Not kidding: my heart rate went up 20 beats writing this post.]

GFM

[WeAreNDHockey]

I've only done this since 2015. I've done some ISS thing or other since 1999.

Yup, still one of the coolest! I've been watching that thing move across the sky for many, many years now. To think you may have been communicating in whatever fashion with someone on board as I tracked it in the sky is really kind of neat to think about.

[Not kidding: my heart rate went up 20 beats writing this post.]

GFM

Apparently if you were Neil Armstrong that means your heart rate went all the way up to about 60!

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

Yup, still one of the coolest! I've been watching that thing move across the sky for many, many years now. To think you may have been communicating in whatever fashion with someone on board as I tracked it in the sky is really kind of neat to think about.

This is a really neat website that tracks the ISS as well as a bunch of other satellites. Gives you lots of info to satellite spot. I flipped out when I saw my first Iridium flare. I've logged hundreds of satellite sightings using this website.

https://www.heavens-above.com/

[gfmorris]

Yup, still one of the coolest! I've been watching that thing move across the sky for many, many years now. To think you may have been communicating in whatever fashion with someone on board as I tracked it in the sky is really kind of neat to think about.

There was a time when you could about 2/3 staff a skeleton control room at POIC with folks with direct ties to the UAH program (me, one of my old radio partners, the official scorer, and a Pep Band guy).

GFM

[alfablue]

Re-entry and splashdown. I didn't realize that it was upside down for so long. Stable, but mostly upside down in the water.

It was also interesting to see the booster part of the CM come down at the same time, and burn up in the atmosphere. Scary to think that a small mistake like that could have been really bad.

[Kepler]

Just saw this on the NASA channel. They have fully restored it. This is the first time in my life I have wanted to go to Texas.

[SJHovey]

Just saw this on the NASA channel. They have fully restored it. This is the first time in my life I have wanted to go to Texas.

I saw a news story about this a couple of weeks ago. As I recall, everything is identical to the way it was in 1969, with one exception. I think it was a plaque or something hung up to commemorate their work on getting the crew back to earth on the Apollo 13 mission, which obviously occurred after Apollo 11. I assume that will be the big "aha" moment for the tour guides to quiz tourists.