Roddy  Wrote: (07-19-2019 11:47 PM)

Old Whatshisname  Wrote: (07-19-2019 11:38 PM)

Actually, the Moon is a holatic santagram.

Lame move (let me post as a religious tard here)

But of course; you may post as any type of tard you choose.

---

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!

I mean come on everyone knows that going to space is just way too expensive, it part of the programme. Whilst spending trillions on global war machinery its just too expensive.

j

Natura Naturans  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:17 AM)

So just how did the do that complicated docking above the moon with slide rules? Calculating orbits that they probably couldn't know accurately. Hard to do with up to date tech, let alone flying in the dark with slide rules.

Not at all. The whole thing was figured out by some 23-year old college kid on vacation (although he had to invent calculus in order to do it).

Looks kinda like some 80's rock star, doesn't he?

Y'all be some fossils up in here...I was almost 6 yrs old


I remember my family of 5 crowed around a small B&W Zenith TV watching all the coverage(3 channels) ...And I was the designated Antenna "Rotor"

"A little more that way...little more, hold it...No go back the other way...Wait, No..."

I was 22 in the year 2000..

Old Whatshisname  Wrote: (07-19-2019 11:41 PM)

Mr ifnoc nli  Wrote: (07-19-2019 11:19 PM)

You gotta post a pic of you 3 nerds, or something. You know it will be asked. Like standing next to a building full of what can now be done in a small room? I'm s9me what familiar with early IBMs, I fixed a few. Nerdery Behemoths! I was -2ish years old, so can't imagine the crazy involved.
Probably makes babysitting we ignoramuseseseses, a mental crunching hiatus, no?

Back then it was plug-wiring electro-mechanical accounting machines to 1401s to System/360's in 7090 emulation if any of that means anything (NOTE: it doesn't, anymore) LOL.

Couldn't give them away in the 80s and 90s. Nothing in it was useful, to anything really. well to most people, that is. I might still have a transformer or two horded away.

LoP Guest  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:34 AM)

Y'all be some fossils up in here...I was almost 6 yrs old


I remember my family of 5 crowed around a small B&W Zenith TV watching all the coverage(3 channels) ...And I was the designated Antenna "Rotor"

"A little more that way...little more, hold it...No go back the other way...Wait, No..."

Which makes me an acolyte of dinosaurs.

I was about 2 years old when this took place

Old Whatshisname  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:30 AM)

Natura Naturans  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:17 AM)

So just how did the do that complicated docking above the moon with slide rules? Calculating orbits that they probably couldn't know accurately. Hard to do with up to date tech, let alone flying in the dark with slide rules.

Not at all. The whole thing was figured out by some 23-year old college kid on vacation (although he had to invent calculus in order to do it).

Looks kinda like some 80's rock star, doesn't he?

link to image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c...n-1689.jpg

Could be a blond Brian May, from Queen. Oh wait. He's an astrophysics.

PuddyCat  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:51 AM)

I was about 2 years old when this took place

link to image: https://i.imgur.com/61HEbKf.jpg

Ha ha! Your older than me.

Sultan of Wings  Wrote: (07-19-2019 11:17 PM)

Old Whatshisname  Wrote: (07-19-2019 10:54 PM)

I was 24 years old at the time, working second shift with Sly and Bernie as mainframe operators at the IBM-Federal Systems Division computer center in Gaithersburg, Maryland. We were the prime contractor to NASA for ground-based computer systems on all the manned programs: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and ASTP.

The three of us managed somehow to have the entire weekend of Apollo 11 off and saw just about every hour of it in real time over at Bernie's apartment. I remember we cheered when the Saturn V lifted; and sweated when Armstrong and Aldrin landed (and also when the lunar ascent vehicle -- which had never been tested -- took off. Finally, after the communications blackout at re-entry and we saw those three orange parachutes, we all three burst into tears.

If you aren't of an age to remember it, I don't think you could ever understand what most of the people around the Earth felt that week.

But how short-lived it was! Within five years, the manned missions were over, with the powers-that-be telling us that it was better to fight two wars -- in Asia and against "poverty", both of which we lost -- than to continue to the stars.

NASA squandered what little funds they had in building a series of overpriced and worthless flying buses which, when they weren't killing their crew and passengers, were taking mankind absolutely nowhere.

And what are we doing now? Re-building oversized and overpriced Apollo capsules which "may" return to the moon: and no one seems to care. Americans have lost their will, the Russians have lost their money, the Europeans never really cared, and only the Chinese have any real interest, much of which is the same political one-upmanship we and the Soviets used to flog our respective projects.

I think the sentence which best tells America's story regarding space exploration was voiced by Marlon Brando in the movie On the Waterfront:

"I coulda been a contender!"

I was 18 and some when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first steps on the Moon.

I also remember Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin's flight and Valentina, the first woman in Space.

I was geeked from a very young age.

What now?

Stupid phones for the sheep so they can post selfies on Instagram and blurb nonsense on Snapchat and Whatsapp or Facebook.

Civilization has regressed at warp speed.

Have you seen "October Sky"?

One of my favorite movies...Sputnik inspired.
So inspired was this young geek that he went on to become a NASA engineer.

"October Sky is a 1999 American biographical drama film directed by Joe Johnston, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Chris Owen, and Laura Dern. It is based on the true story of Homer H. Hickam, Jr., a coal miner's son who was inspired by the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 to take up rocketry against his father's wishes and eventually became a NASA engineer. "







October Sky
October Sky Movie Poster
October Sky (1999)
Cast

Jake Gyllenhaal as Homer Hickam
Chris Cooper as John Hickam
Laura Dern as Miss Riley
Chris Owen as Quentin
William Lee as Roy Lee
Chad Lindberg as Scott O'Dell
Natalie Canerday as Elsie Hickam

Directed by

Joe Johnston

Written by

Lewis Colick

Drama, Family

Rated PG

108 minutes

| Roger Ebert
February 19, 1999 | 3
Print Page

"Like the hero of "October Sky,'' I remember the shock that ran through America when the Russians launched Sputnik on Oct. 5, 1957. Like the residents of Coalwood, W.Va. in the movie, I joined the neighbors out on the lawn, peering into the sky with binoculars at a speck of moving light that was fairly easy to see. Unlike Homer Hickam, the hero of "October Sky,'' I didn't go on to become a NASA scientist, or train astronauts. But I did read Willy Ley's Rockets, Missiles and Space Travel three or four times, and Arthur Clarke's The Making of a Moon. I got their autographs, too, just as Homer sends away for a signed photo of Werner von Braun.




That first shabby piece of orbiting hardware now seems like a toy compared to the space station, the shuttle, and the missions to the moon and beyond. But it had an impact that's hard to describe to anyone who takes satellite TV for granted. For the first time in history, man had built something that went up, but did not come down--not for a long time, anyway. Sputnik was a tiny but audacious defiance of the universe.

"October Sky'' tells the story of four boys in a poverty-stricken corner of Appalachia who are determined to build their own rocket, and help get America back in the "space race.'' It's seen through the eyes of their leader, young Homer Hickham (Jake Gyllenhaal), who sees the speck of light in the sky and starts reading the science fiction of Jules Verne. Homer is a good student, but math and science are his weak points. He knows he needs help, and breaks all of the rules in the school lunch room by approaching the class brain, an outcast named Quentin (Chris Owen).

They talk about rocket fuel, nozzles, velocity. Two other boys get involved: Roy Lee (William Lee Scott) and O'Dell (Chad Lindberg). Their first rocket blows a hole in the picket fence in front of Homer's house. The second one narrowly misses some miners at the coal mine, and Homer's dad John (Chris Cooper), the mine supervisor, forbids further experimentation and confiscates all of the "rocket stuff'' from the basement. But the kids labor on, in an isolated patch of woods, building a shelter to protect themselves from exploding rockets. They talk a machinist at the mine into building them a rocket casing of stronger steel, and they use alcohol from a moonshiner as an ingredient in the rocket fuel.

The tension in the movie is not between the boys and their rocket, but between the boys and those who think that miners' sons belong down in the mines and not up in the sky. Homer's father is not a bad man; he fights for the jobs of his men, he rescues several in a near-disaster, he injures his eye in another emergency. He wants Homer to follow in his footsteps. The mine may seem an unhealthy and hateful place to some, but when John takes Homer down for his son's first day on the job, his voice glows with poetry: "I know the mine like I know a man. I was born for this.'' The high school principal (Chris Ellis) sees the job of the school to send miners' sons down to the coal mine. But a young teacher (Laura Dern) tells Homer she feels her life will have failed if some of the kids don't get out and realize their dreams. Then there's a crisis (did a rocket set a forest fire?), and a scene in which Homer and his friends use trigonometry to argue their innocence.





Perhaps because "October Sky'' is based on a real memoir, Homer Hickam's Rocket Boys, it doesn't simplify the father into a bad guy or a tyrant. He understandably wants his son to follow in his footsteps, and one of the best elements of the movie is in breaking free, he is respecting his father. This movie has deep values.

Mr ifnoc nli  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:55 AM)

PuddyCat  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:51 AM)

I was about 2 years old when this took place

link to image: https://i.imgur.com/61HEbKf.jpg

Ha ha! Your older than me.

Then show some respect and fetch me a beer from the fridge

PuddyCat  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:58 AM)

Mr ifnoc nli  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:55 AM)

Ha ha! Your older than me.

Then show some respect and fetch me a beer from the fridge

lol

..and me too while yer at it

LoP Guest  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:53 AM)

Old Whatshisname  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:30 AM)

Not at all. The whole thing was figured out by some 23-year old college kid on vacation (although he had to invent calculus in order to do it).

Looks kinda like some 80's rock star, doesn't he?

link to image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c...n-1689.jpg

Could be a blond Brian May, from Queen. Oh wait. He's an astrophysics.

Sir Isaac Newton to you commoners

I think this link is rather appropriate

https://www.ducksters.com/biography/scie...newton.php

Coolchick  Wrote: (07-20-2019 01:04 AM)

PuddyCat  Wrote: (07-20-2019 12:58 AM)

Then show some respect and fetch me a beer from the fridge

lol

..and me too while yer at it

Pardon me CC

Message to Mr ifnoc nli

Fetch a beer for CC while I throw stones at you.