DSKY-DSKY Him Sad: Official ILB Thread For The Heroic Age of Manned Spaceflight

I find it hard to believe he didn't.

It seems to be named after a song by a recent Nobel-prize recipient.

blowing in the wind -- an inexplicable late-life turn to conspiracy

Eh, not quite.

Mentioned third post in

Hello, space-nerd checking in finally

I got "We Seven" for Christmas, haven't started it but timing turned out bittersweet with Glenn's passing.

that's the one that reprints the life magazine articles from the time of the mercury missions right? always meant tog et around to reading that one but i haven't yet, so looking forward to seeing what you think about it

gene cernan's passing has reminded me that i don't think we've talked about the last man on the moon anywhere else on ilx have we? i watched it when it came to netflix and thought it was a decent overview of the man and his career but it could have done with being longer - there was lots of stuff i'd have liked to have seen more on, and i wish there was more input from jack schmitt. i'm fascinated by the amount of important work he and cernan did on the moon during apollo 17, and their justified frustration that their discoveries were never followed up by other missions.

in other space-dork news i'm going to see chris hadfield lecture on friday. saw him (and met him!) last year and it was fantastic - he's such a charismatic ambassador for space

exciting! i enjoy him in the interviews & other stuff i've seen - full report plz

I'm ashamed that I haven't posted more in this thread - (long story, all IRL nonsense) but James Redd nagged me over here after Gene Cernan's passing was noted on the obit. thread.

It worked like this - my mom was a mid-level apparatchik in the O.C. political establishment - somewhere in the early 70s she met Skylab astronaut (and O.C. resident) Jerry Carr at a function and got us (mom, dad, & me) VIP passes to see the launch of Apollo 17. I was seven years old and liked NASA more than ice cream - nevermind that we also flew on a Pan Am 747, my dad and I hung out at the plane upstairs bar. We also went to Disney World, but fuck that shit compared with a Saturn V launch.

After the mission was over the A17 crew took a meet-and-greet around the states and somehow my mom got us into the California stop. I can't really remember what I asked Cernan - I was way too self-conscious. Nevertheless everyone signed my stuff. I just unpacked everything at my new place and have to get it framed.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2U1aSWUoAAkm5r.jpg

I watched The Last Man on the Moon - it's not necessarily a memorable documentary, but it is worth watching. It's entirely possible that the only answer to "what was it like to walk on the Moon and how did it change you?" will be whatever we can piece together from what these guys say and I'd watch it for that reason alone.

wow.

Yeah, wow, thanks.

holy shit elvis, that's amazing. that's gonna look fantastic in a frame.

We also went to Disney World, but fuck that shit compared with a Saturn V launch

seeing the saturn v on its side at kennedy space centre last summer was one of the more stunning things i've ever set eyes on in real life - i can't even imagine how incredible it must have been to see one of those things take off.

http://www.earthtothemoon.com/apollo_10.html
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR4U0J4RDIVNqhCva25E8vmuJCk0q05EQ9rUkOyyCQuHIekYHEA
Houston, this is Snoopy! We is GO and we is down among 'em Charlie!

thanks elvis! what an incredible experience.

in other news: 50th anniversary of Apollo 1 tragedy today :/

thanks elvis! what an incredible experience.

in other news: 50th anniversary of Apollo 1 tragedy today :/

Very envious and impressed

http://hackaday.com/2017/05/29/re-creating-the-apollo-dskys-display/#more-258907

weirdly tempted to chip in some cash for that

Greatly enjoyed the first four stories I read this weekend in The Dream Life of Astronauts, which are set on Merritt Island and read like a mix of New Yorker stories written by a Southerner like, say, Padgett Powell, with Ballard's Memories of the Space Age. Which may not be quite accurate and will probably put you off reading it but perhaps I can describe better upon reading the rest of the stories.

Did not know of that book, but now i want

RIP John Young

;_;

dammit :(

Crap

Curious about this new Apollo 8 book

One of the most haunting radar images I think we'll ever see...the Space Shuttle Columbia debris field, 15 years ago today. pic.twitter.com/5Ba8IdBFLZ

— Matt Lanza ⛄️ (@mattlanza) February 1, 2018

oof :(

fuck that’s a real gut-punch

the OPEN DSKY thing i mentioned above launched on kickstarter last week (and is already at 250% of goal)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/438986934/open-dsky-apollo-50th-anniversary-make-100

why do i want that

Why wouldn’t you?

tru

RIP Al Bean :(

RIP

O bum

He was top of my list of Apollo astronauts I would have loved to meet. Such a quirky, enthusiastic, genuine-seeming person.

There’s a lovely quote in the obituary about how he & Walt Cunningham were bffs & ate cheeseburgers together once a month <3

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/astronaut-footprint-moon-warming-180969362/

That is mental.

wow

There's some great stuff in NASA's historical archives, my fave is the oral history project - long interviews with everyone before they pass away A recent fave of mine are the 2004 interviews with Joe Engle - the X-15 pilot who got bumped from Apollo 17 by geologist (and later Senator and climate-change denier) Harrison Schmitt. More to the point, Engle talks about the life of being a badass-casual Air Force fighter/ test pilot - dogfighting & partying with Yeager, hand-wringing over stick-and-rudder vs. spam-in-a-can space travel, flight-testing every goddamn thing at Edwards, rolling the X-15, having to pee while you're in the middle of an abort, getting the phone call from Slayton, training for not going to the Moon and then finding a place in NASA and picking the Space Shuttle because it had wings and a stick-n-rudder.

ooo cool, thx elvis!

kinda heartbroken to hear harrison schmitt is a climate change denier, he and gene cernan are maybe my favourite apollo duo

:/

Hadn't noticed that this came out: https://iansales.com/2016/11/18/apollo-quartet-5-a-visit-to-the-national-air-and-space-museum/

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-hidden-figure-space-program-20190101-story.html

Oceanside resident Shelby Jacobs, 83, is responsible for one of the most iconic video images of NASA’s race to put a man on the moon in the 1960s.

It’s the oft-seen, slow-motion color footage of a ringlike section of the Saturn V rocket separating from the Apollo 6 spacecraft and spinning slowly away toward Earth, 200,000 feet below.

Yet for all of his 40 years working his way up to the executive level on the Apollo and space shuttle programs, Jacobs, who is black, faced near-constant discrimination from his white colleagues and was never paid as well as other engineers doing the same work.

To avoid rocking the boat, Jacobs kept a low profile in his working life. But in recent years, he has stepped into the spotlight to serve as a role model for minorities and women who face workplace discrimination.

Shel-by! Shel-by! Shel-by!

"Taschen teams up with NASA for an archival look into the great beyond"

https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/taschen-nasa-archives-publication-060219

ooooh

hell yes

preordered a copy

speaking of which, have we talked about this astonishing-looking apollo 11 doc anywhere else on ilx? cuz i am fucking psyched

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Co8Z8BQgWc

me & mr veg are going to see it in IMAX