Because tech is always improving, his odds of surviving are higher. I hope hell be ok.
I'm just thinking that if they find aliens, the ESL opportunities will be huge. They'd skyrocket, even.
They'd skyrocket, even.
Well, do you go buy astronaut fatality rate or mission catastrophe rate? NASA has done over 200 manned space flights. There have been only two fatal missions to space for the U.S.- Challenger and Columbia. There was Apollo 1, but that took place on the ground during a test. There is also an X-15 mission that is classified as taking place in space, but this is a bit of a technicality. I think mission-rate is a better indicator of Bezos' chances than astronaut fatality rate. So it looks like the chance is under 1% that Bezos will buy it. That being said, these things seem to happen about 15-20 years apart.....I barely remember Challenger, more so vague impressions of my parents being upset about it. Columbia was sort of around the craziness of the Iraq War and 9/11 so it wasn't one of those "You remember where you were moments" like apparently Challenger was, I think it was more one of those things that steadily trickled in on the news through cable, radio and the internet. Anyone here alive during Apollo 1? Surely a few of you old-timers were kids then. I imagine that one must have been really big. Astronauts were like rock stars then. From what I understand every kid knew the Mercury Seven front and back, same with the New Nine and probably the group after them (I mean Buzz Aldrin was in that group so certainly people knew them well). It is nice to see us finally starting to do big things with space again (or just in general). One of my favorite TV shows is The Expanse and one character in the show mentions how humans used to build generational projects (i.e. cathedrals or monuments) that would sometimes take over 100 years to complete) and we don't do that anymore. Even a big project like the Space race seems beyond us now.
I was very much alive and remember Apollo 1, and all the rest of them--my Dad worked at the Cape. During launches, we could stand in the backyard and see the rockets in the distance, something like 50 miles.
I was very much alive and remember Apollo 1, and all the rest of them--my Dad worked at the Cape. During launches, we could stand in the backyard and see the rockets in the distance, something like 50 miles. I was 6,7,8 years old, but there would be various family events, during at least one of which I shook hands with several astronauts including Neil Armstrong, according to family lore and a bit of my memory.
I'm with Marti, that is pretty cool. As a kid Neil Armstrong was one of my heroes. Lucky you getting to meet him.
What a sight that must have been at night with the launchpad all lit up and everything. I sometimes wish I'd been born earlier because that would have been wild to live through.
Well, from DeLand you could only see the yellow light arcing through the sky at night, but in daytime launches, it was a bright light with smoke. They weren't always Gemini and Apollo, there were satellites and such too.
My dad was always bringing stuff home. Like pictures of rockets where to Top Secret stamp had been stamped over with Declassified.And he would make super super balls out of some kind of epoxy resin that was used to seal stuff. He was an electrical engineer in communications--started in the radio shack when he was in the navy.
You ever get to see one more up close? Dad ever record one on 8mm?I have vague memories of my dad being in the area of a shuttle launch and trying to see it, but if hazy memory serves, I think it got delayed and he missed the chance. I have to say that first SpaceX Launch was pretty fun. This should be neat too, though it doesn't have the same grandeur. It's kind of cool to think we might be on the verge of a new space race and thankfully, without the looming specter of the Cold War behind it.
How was it as a kid? Was it really cool? Or did you make the mistake I did and think it wasn't that interesting and that some guy hitting a ball was a bigger deal? When you think about everything that went into Apollo, and so much of it being done kind of from scratch, it's really amazing what engineers like your dad pulled off. From grainy black and white being broadcast to us with Apollo 11 to color video with Apollo 17 only a few years later. Geez, we may not get along great, but it sounds like our dads would have gotten along swell. My dad graduated with a degree in electrical engineering and was into computers (COBOL!), such as they were back then. Saved him from getting sent to Vietnam and instead he got sent to Germany to do computer work for the Army there. My dad had an actual radio room in our house that by the time I was born, was getting long in the tooth and I had no interest in and I couldn't for the life of me tell you what was in there, but now am filled with regret that I didn't get to fiddle with it at least little.Sounds like they would have had a lot in common.
Sometime around 2000, my school got a scanner for the computer lab that could do slides at speed, so after hemming and hawing, he went and pulled them out of storage. Ruined. Two big boxes of thousands and thousands of slides. Not just Florida, but we lived in Thailand and Zimbabwe in the 70s. Lots of adventures and pretty solid photography. Heartbreaking.
A radio room? You mean ham? My dad had 4 different callsigns that I remember, because you need a new one in a different country. He left Lockheed in fall, 1969 to become a missionary, and we moved to Thailand. His job was to build "radio stations" to broadcast the word of gahd to the hill people in the north.
