Apollo 11

From NASA:

Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.” Most everyone knows these iconic words spoken by Apollo 11 Commander Neil A. Armstrong after he and fellow crewmate, Lunar Module Pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, set the lunar module, called Eagle, on the surface of the Moon 50 years ago, on July 20, 1969. Command Module Pilot Michael Collins remained in the command and service module (CSM), called Columbia, orbiting above.

Collins revisited Launch Complex 39A, the site of the Apollo 11 launch, and Firing Room 1 in the Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 2019, and reminisced about the mission with Center Director Bob Cabana.

...

The two moonwalkers left behind commemorative medallions bearing the names of the three Apollo 1 astronauts who lost their lives in a launch pad fire, and two cosmonauts who also died in accidents, on the lunar surface. A one-and-a-half inch silicon disk, containing micro miniaturized goodwill messages from 73 countries, and the names of congressional and NASA leaders, also were left on the Moon’s surface. Attached to the descent stage was a commemorative plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon and the three astronauts.



After resting for about seven hours, Armstrong and Aldrin fired the LM ascent stage to reach an initial orbit of 55 miles above the Moon on July 21, 13 miles below and slightly behind the CSM. Subsequent firings of the reaction control system helped the LM to reach an orbit of 72 miles above the Moon. The LM docked with the CSM on the CSM’s 27th revolution. Armstrong and Aldrin returned to the CSM with Collins for the trip back to Earth. The LM was jettisoned four hours later and remained in lunar orbit, until it crashed on the Moon.


The Apollo 11 crew initiated re-entry procedures on July 24, 44 hours after leaving lunar orbit. The service module separated from the crew module. Collins re-oriented the crew module to a heat-shield-forward position for the descent to Earth. Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, 13 miles from the recovery ship USS Hornet, and was retrieved. Apollo 11 was NASA’s first mission to send astronauts to step on the Moon and return them safely to Earth. Five more Moon landings would follow before the Apollo Program ended in 1972.


Now, NASA is planning to establish a foundation for sustainable human presence on and around the Moon with commercial and international partners. Through the Artemis program, the agency will land American astronauts, including the first woman and the next man, on the Moon by 2024. Then the agency will use what it learns on the Moon and take the next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars.


“I think it’s a noble goal. It’s much more extensive than Apollo. It’s part of a bigger picture,” Sieck said.

Shoot the Moon?

There is a proposal to land an astronaut on the moon again within five years.  If the motivation is to win public favor, the idea rests on a faulty premise. In most polls during the 1960s -- supposedly the height of space enthusiasm -- people did not favor spending their tax dollars on a moon shot.

Roger D. Launius,  "Public Opinion Polls and Perceptions of US Human Spaceflight,"

Space Policy 19 (2003) 163–175 

Polls in the 1960s also consistently ranked spaceflight near the top of those programs to be cut in the federal budget (Fig. 4). Most Americans seemingly preferred doing something about air and water pollution, job training for unskilled workers, national beautification, and poverty before spending federal funds on human spaceflight. The following year Newsweek echoed the Times story, stating: ‘‘The US space program is in decline. The Vietnam war and the desperate conditions of the nation’s poor and its cities—which make space flight seem, in comparison,like an embarrassing national self-indulgence—have combined to drag down a program where the sky was no longer the limit.’’

Nor did lunar exploration in and of itself create much of a groundswell of popular support from the general public. The American public during the 1960s largely showed a hesitancy to ‘‘race’’ the Soviets to the Moon,as shown in Fig. 5. ‘‘Would you favor or oppose US government spending to send astronauts to the Moon?’’these polls asked, and in virtually all cases a majority opposed doing so, even during the height of  Apollo.
At only one point, October 1965, did more than half of the public favor continuing human lunar exploration. In the post-Apollo era, the American public has continued to question the validity of undertaking human expeditions to the Moon.

Kathleen Weldon at The Huffington Post:

In a 1967 Harris poll, 54 percent said the $4 billion price tag on putting a man on the moon and exploring other planets wasn’t worth it; only a third thought it was. Fifty-seven percent in a 1965 Harris poll thought this money would be better spent on developing systems for the desalinization of water. The public in 1967 was split on the specific key goal of landing a man on the moon: 46 percent in the Harris poll opposed the project, and 43 percent supported it. 

Moonshot

President Obama has compared the search for a cancer cure to the moon shot.

PZ Myers writes at ScienceBlogs:

Everyone admires John F. Kennedy’s ambition in setting a specific goal for the space program, way back in the 1960s. It was smart to focus. But here’s the difference: we knew where the moon was. There it is, 380,000km away, in a predictable orbit around the planet, and we had these technologies to fire off rockets that already contained the basic principles we needed to get to the moon. It was a nontrivial effort, but getting from here to there was an already specified problem.

Where is “cancer”? Can you even define the problem? Do you see a solution that you can reach by just throwing a lot of money at it and telling a team of doctors to fix it?

No, you can’t. Scientists who study cancer will even tell you flat out that cancer isn’t one disease, it’s a multitude of diseases. It’s more like a pattern of collapse of a complex structure, and there’s a million different ways it can happen. A “moonshot” is a terrible metaphor for how to approach the treatment of cancer.

Ike Swetlitz writes at STAT:

Nixon, of course, also invoked a “war on cancer.” Decades later, with the war still not won, the Clinton administration turned again to that militaristic metaphor.

“We want to be the first generation that finally wins the war on cancer,” then-Vice President Al Gore told the Toledo Blade in 1998. He said science was on the verge of a breakthrough: “For the first time, the enemy is outmatched.”

It wasn’t.

In the following campaign, Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush returned to the space metaphor. He promised to “fund and lead a medical moonshot to reach far beyond what seems possible today,” to cure not just cancer but many ills associated with aging.

Moon, Cancer, Nixon, Obama

"Last year, Vice President Biden said that with a new moonshot, America can cure cancer. Last month, he worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources that they’ve had in over a decade. (Applause.) So tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done. And because he’s gone to the mat for all of us on so many issues over the past 40 years, I’m putting Joe in charge of Mission Control. (Applause.) For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the families that we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all."  -- Barack Obama, State of the Union, January 12, 2016.

Nixon said the same thing 45 years ago:

"I will also ask for an appropriation of an extra $100 million to launch an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer, and I will ask later for whatever additional funds can effectively be used. The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve this goal." -- Richard Nixon, State of the Union, January 22, 1971

Scientists and the Public

Pew polled the general public and members of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science:

[B]oth the public and scientists are critical of the quality of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM subjects) in grades K-12.

The key data:

• Only 16% of AAAS scientists and 29% of the general public rank U.S. STEM education for grades K-12 as above average or the best in the world. Fully 46% of AAAS scientists and 29% of the public rank K-12 STEM as “below average.”
• 75% of AAAS scientists say too little STEM education for grades K-12 is a major factor in the public’s limited knowledge about science. An overwhelming majority of scientists see the public’s limited scientific knowledge as a problem for science.

Despite broadly similar views about the overall place of science in America, citizens and scientists often see science-related issues through different sets of eyes. There are large differences in their views across a host of issues.

The key data:

• A majority of the general public (57%) says that genetically modified (GM) foods are generally unsafe to eat, while 37% says such foods are safe; by contrast, 88% of AAAS scientists say GM foods are generallysafe. The gap between citizens and scientists in seeing GM foods as safe is 51 percentage points. This is the largest opinion difference between the public and scientists.
• Citizens are closely divided over animal research: 47% favor and 50% oppose the use of animals in scientific research.1 By contrast, an overwhelming majority of scientists (89%) favor animal research. The difference in the share favoring such research is 42 percentage points.
• In some areas, like energy, the differences between the groups do not follow a single direction — they can vary depending on the specific issue. For example, 52% of citizens favor allowing more offshore drilling, while fewer AAAS scientists (32%), by comparison, favor increased drilling. The gap in support of offshore drilling is 20 percentage points. But when it comes to nuclear power, the gap runs in the opposite direction. Forty-five percent of citizens favor building more nuclear power plants, while 65% of AAAS scientists favor this idea.
• The only one of 13 issues compared where the differences between the two groups are especially modest is the space station. Fully 64% of the public and 68% of AAAS scientists say that the space station has been a good investment for the country; a difference of four percentage points.

Ex-Lawmakers and the Search for Extraterrestrials

The following is an actual story -- not a parody -- by Chris Moody on Yahoo News:

All the pieces of a formal congressional hearing were in place. A row of lawmakers with furled brows were seated in wide, leather chairs behind an elevated table with microphones. Water pitchers and engraved nameplates were in front of them. A second, smaller table was set up below for witnesses to deliver their expert testimonies. Chairs lined the back for spectators and reporters.

The topic of Tuesday's discussion: government suppression of alien visitors from outer space.
Despite the setup, this was not an actual hearing. It was day two of a week-long event called the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure that will be part of a documentary called "Truth Embargo." Held at the National Press Club in Washington, the hearing will include testimony from some 40 panelists.

To conduct the proceedings, six former members of Congress are being paid $20,000 each to act like they're in Congress again, and ask questions about the government's alleged role in shielding the existence of alien visits to Earth. (Their pay comes to about $666 an hour. But that's a different conspiracy theory all together.)

The former lawmakers—retired Republican Reps. Roscoe G. Bartlett of Maryland and Merrill Cook of Utah; former Democratic Reps. Darlene Hooley of Oregon, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Michigan and Lynn Woolsey of California; and former Democratic Sen. Mike Gravel—are tackling a variety of topics. They range from what "really" happened in Roswell, N.M., in 1947 and why Air Force service members aren't being treated by the Veterans Affairs hospital for injuries allegedly sustained while working with UFOs to why the U.S. government won't release more information about supposed visitors from other planets.

Lee Spiegel writes at The Huffington Post:

Day three of the Citizen Hearing On Disclosure (CHD) begins with testimony of panel members offering accounts of animal mutilations, UFOs in England and the widespread nature of UFO sightings.

The rest of the day's discussion will center around controversial government documents and the famous 1947 account of a UFO that allegedly crashed near Roswell, N.M.

Click Here For Live Updates

As seriously as the 40 witnesses and six former members of Congress appear to be treating the subject of UFOs and supposed extraterrestrial visits to Earth, many media outlets have openly criticized and ridiculed the congressional-style five-day event that aims to petition Congress to open a real investigation of UFOs.

Here is an actual video, not a Daily Show spoof:



Yes, the aliens have been meddling in US politics for  quite some time...

Asteroid Politics

NBC reports:

It is time for the private sector to aid in the search for potentially city-destroying asteroids and meteors, lawmakers said during a hearing Wednesday.

The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology made the call while hearing from NASA scientists and private-sector asteroid hunters during a hearing titled "Threats from Space," with both groups agreeing that something more needs to be done.

"Detecting asteroids should not be the primary mission of NASA," Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said at the hearing. "No doubt the private sector will play an important role as well. We must better recognize what the private sector can do to aid our efforts to protect the world."

The meeting Wednesday was the second of three aimed at understanding the threat to Earth posed by asteroids in space. The first hearing took place in late March, and addressed the ways governmental entities, such as NASA and the Air Force, are mitigating the risks posed by close-flying space rocks. The meetings were scheduled in response to a surprise meteor explosion over Russia and the close flyby of asteroid 2012 DA14 — both of which occurred on Feb. 15

The hearing is available here.

CBS reports:

Meteor Hearing

The Hill reports:

Congress hasn't stopped the sequester, but it is looking into how to stop Armageddon by meteor.

A House committee next week will hold a hearing to learn about the government's effort to stop asteroids and meteors from hitting the Earth.

The hearing comes just weeks after a huge asteroid missed the Earth by 17,000 miles, and a meteorite hit the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will testify next week before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee on "Threats from Space: A Review of U.S. Government Efforts to Track and Mitigate Asteroids and Meteors."

CNN's Fareed Zakaria reports:

Fareed speaks with the Frederick P. Rose director of the Hayden Planetarium, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, about the implications of the meteor that exploded over the Ural Mountains last month. To see this or other interviews,download the show at iTunes.

The laws of math are that the probability is one of these things will hit...

Globally, what deeply concerns you is the asteroid strong enough so you have to restart civilization. And then, at another level, you risk extinction. Fortunately, those are large and we have a plan in place. NASA has a plan in place to detect and map and track every single asteroid that’s large enough to disrupt civilization. The one that exploded over Russia was not large enough to disrupt civilization. And so they’re dangerous and they'll hurt and they can kill, but the fact that we can’t track them is not as bad as not being able to track the big ones that could really destroy us. So once you know where they are, your next question would be, perhaps, do we have a plan to do something about it?

And the answer is no. It's all just on paper how to do it.

What would be the plan? Would it be some kind of military...?

Yes...

You’d shoot a missile to shatter it in outer space and...

Yes, that’s the macho solution is you pull one of your missiles out of the silo that have been sitting there doing nothing since the Cold War and you blow the sucker out of the sky. The problem is, I mean, here in America, we’re really good at blowing stuff up and less good at knowing where the pieces land, you know…So, people who have studied the problem generally – and I’m in this camp – see a deflection scenario is more sound and more controllable. So if this is the asteroid and it's sort of headed toward us, one way is you send up a space ship and they'll both feel each other. And the space ship hovers. And they'll both feel each other's gravity. And they want to sort of drift toward one another. But you don't let that happen. You set off little retro rockets that prevent it. And the act of doing so slowly tugs the asteroid into a new orbit.

Congress and Meteors

A previous post discussed the (remote) possibility of of meteor strike and the relative absence of government plans for a response.  One House member is addressing the topic:

Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today released the following statement after reports of an unforeseen meteor exploding in the sky above Russia early this morning, on the same day that a large asteroid is scheduled to pass relatively close to Earth.

Chairman Smith: “Today’s events are a stark reminder of the need to invest in space science. Asteroid 2012 DA14 passed just 17,000 miles from Earth, less than the distance of a round trip from New York to Sydney. And this morning, a much smaller meteorite hit near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, damaging buildings and injuring hundreds.

“Developing technology and research that enable us to track objects like Asteroid 2012 DA14 is critical to our future. We should continue to invest in systems that identify threatening asteroids and develop contingencies, if needed, to change the course of an asteroid headed toward Earth.

“Fifty years ago, we would have had no way of seeing an asteroid like this coming. Now, thanks to the discoveries NASA has made in its short history, we have known about 2012 DA14 for about a year. As the world leader in space exploration, America has made great progress for mankind. But our work is not done. We should continue to study, research, and explore space to better understand our universe and better protect our planet.”

The Science, Space, and Technology Committee will hold a hearing in the coming weeks to examine ways to better identify and address asteroids that pose a potential threat to Earth.

The key is to send Bruce Willis to blow it up:

Meteor

The Russian meteor is a reminder that disaster can come suddenly from the sky. Some questions arise:

Is the US government tracking near-Earth objects (NEOs)?  NASA says yes:

In terms of the discovery efforts for NEOs, NASA's current goal is to discover at least 90% of all NEOs whose diameters are larger than 1 kilometer within 10 years. To meet the NASA goal, the rate with which new objects are discovered will necessarily be largest in the first few years. This is because during the latter years of the 10-year interval, more and more "discoveries" will actually be of objects that have been previously found. Currently, the best estimate of the total population of NEOs larger than one kilometer is about 1000. The progress toward discovering 90% of this population can be monitored under the web page entitled Number of NEOs within the section on Near-Earth Objects.

Do we have a ready-to-go plan for objects that could do catastrophic damage?  Er, not yet.  From a report to NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist:

Despite the lack of a known immediate threat from a near-Earth object (NEO) impact, historical scientific evidence suggests that the potential for a major catastrophe created by an NEO impacting Earth is very real. It is only a matter of when, and humankind must be prepared for it. During the past two decades, various concepts and techniques for mitigating the impact threats from NEOs have been proposed. Unfortunately, many of these previously proposed concepts were impractical and not technically credible. In particular, all non-nuclear techniques, including slow-pull gravity tractors and kinetic-energy impactors, require mission lead times much larger than 10 years, even for a relatively small NEO. However, for the most probable impact threat with a warning time less than 10 years, the use of high-energy nuclear explosives in space becomes inevitable for proper fragmentation and dispersion of an NEO in a collision course with the Earth. However, the existing nuclear subsurface penetrator technology limits the impact velocity to less than 300 m/s because higher impact velocities destroy prematurely the detonation electronic equipment. Thus, an innovative space system architecture utilizing high-energy nuclear explosives must be developed for a worst-case intercept mission resulting in relative closing velocities as high as 5-30 km/s.

What if a near-Earth object actually hits the United States? Is the Federal Emergency Management Agency ready?  A 2001 report by a pair of scientists is not reassuring:

We have little idea about the role that a civilian agency like FEMA might play in the NEO hazard (it has so far given essentially zero consideration to the issue at all). We know even less about the analogous entities in other countries as well as international entities that similarly need to be informed about this issue.

The Empire Strikes Back -- With a Press Release

The president's decision not to build a Death Star has drawn a reaction from the Empire.  From the Star Wars blog:

IMPERIAL CENTER, CORUSCANT – The overwhelming military superiority of the Galactic Empire has been confirmed once again by therecent announcement by the President of the United States that his nation would not attempt to build a Death Star, despite the bellicose demands of the people of his tiny, aggressive planet. “It is doubtless that such a technological terror in the hands of so primitive a world would be used to upset the peace and sanctity of the citizens of the Galactic Empire,“ said Governor Wilhuff Tarkin of the Outer Rim Territories. “Such destructive power can only be wielded to protect and defend by so enlightened a leader as Emperor Palpatine.”

Representatives on behalf of the nation-state leader from the unimaginatively named planet refused to acknowledge the obvious cowardice of their choice, preferring instead to attribute the decision to fiscal responsibility. “The costs of construction they cited were ridiculously overestimated, though I suppose we must keep in mind that this miniscule planet does not have our massive means of production,” added Admiral Conan Motti of the Imperial Starfleet.

Emissaries of the Emperor also caution any seditious elements within the Galactic Senate not to believe Earth’s exaggerated claims of there being a weakness in the Death Star design. “Any attacks made upon such a station — should one ever be built — would be a useless gesture,” added Motti.

Best Document of the Whole Obama Administration

Some 34,000 people have signed an online petition to build a Death Star.  Here is the White House response:

The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

Death Star Petition

An actual petition on the White House website:

The whimsical petition relates indirectly to a real issue.  On June 28, 2010, The New York Times reported:

The Obama administration on Monday unveiled a space policy that renounces the unilateral stance of the Bush administration and instead emphasizes international cooperation, including the possibility of an arms control treaty that would limit the development of space weapons.

In recent years, both China and the United States have destroyed satellites in orbit, raising fears about the start of a costly arms race that might ultimately hurt the United States because it dominates the military use of space. China smashed a satellite in January 2007, and the United States did so in February 2008.

The new space policy explicitly says that Washington will “consider proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies.”

In a New York Times op-ed on March 8 of this year, John R. Bolton and John C. Yoo took exception to administration policy:

 OUTER space has become the next frontier for American national security and business. From space, we follow terrorists and intercept their communications, detect foreign military deployments, and monitor a proliferation of unconventional weapons. Our Global Positioning System gives us targeting and tactical advantages, spacecraft create image-rich maps, and satellites beam data around the world.

But instead of advancing American primacy in this realm, the Obama administration has wrongly decided not only to follow a European Union draft “code of conduct” regulating outer space, but also to circumvent the Senate’s central constitutional role in making treaties.

The Obama administration recently declared that America would follow, though not sign, a European Union code of conduct for outer space — a transparent end run around the constitutional requirement that the Senate ratify all treaties. This code, drafted by Europeans who do not bear America’s global responsibilities, restricts military activities in space as well as some peaceful dual-use technologies, like the multistage rockets used to launch commercial satellites.

At Time, Jeffrey Kluger took another view:

“When they were academics,” Yoo and Bolton write, “several of [Obama’s] current advisers loudly proclaimed that simply signing treaties without the Senate’s consent helped form binding ‘customary international law.’” Put aside for the moment that the words loudly and binding are merely confections of the writers, the fact is that both international and American common law are built partly of just such broadly embraced practices and indeed always have been.

The militarization of space is not to be laughed off — and the dozens of black-box payloads carried into orbit for the Department of Defense by the space shuttles during their 30-year career attest to how deeply the U.S. is invested in protecting our skies. But making space policy also requires understanding space history — and star warriors like Bolton and Yoo seem to have little grasp of it. For more than 50 years, Presidents of both parties have, in ways big and small, committed themselves to showing the world that our aspirations in space are and will remain peaceful.

Landing on Mars

Our chapter on bureaucracy discusses some of the problems that the space program has encountered over the years.  But last night, NASA had a moment of triumph on Mars:




   
Live video for mobile from Ustream

Presidents v. Space Aliens

An actual press release:

According to a new U.S. extraterrestrial survey from National Geographic Channel (NGC), more than 80 million Americans are certain that UFOs exist. In fact, many believe in tangible proof that aliens have landed on Earth and think that government officials are involved in covering up paranormal activities. Moreover, most citizens would not mind a minor alien invasion, because they expect these space-age visitors to be friendly—like the lovable character depicted in Steven Spielberg's popular film "E.T."

...

- In regards to national security, nearly two-thirds (65%) of Americans think Barack Obama would be better suited than fellow presidential candidate Mitt Romney to handle an alien invasion. In fact, more than two in three (68%) women say that Obama would be more adept at dealing with an alien invasion than Romney, vs. 61 percent of men. And more younger citizens, ages 18 to 64 years, than those aged 65+ (68% vs. 50%) think Romney would not be as well-suited as Obama to handle an alien invasion.

Source: PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1g4RM  )

How have presidents dealt with aliens in the movies?

Bill Pullman in Independence Day:



Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks:

 

Space and Politics

CBS reports on the economic impact of ending the space shuttle program:

The Pew Research Center reports:

On the eve of the final mission of the U.S. space shuttle program, most Americans say the United States must be at the forefront of future space exploration.

Fifty years after the first American manned space flight, nearly six-in-ten (58%) say it is essential that the United States continue to be a world leader in space exploration; about four-in-ten say this is not essential (38%).

Looking back on the shuttle program, a majority (55%) say it has been a good investment for the country.

However, this is lower than it was in the 1980s; throughout the early years of the shuttle program, six-in-ten or more said the program was a good investment.

Majorities in nearly all demographic groups say it is essential that the U.S. continue to be at the vanguard of space exploration. And partisan groups largely agree that American leadership is vital, although this view is more prevalent among Republicans.

Two-thirds of Republicans (67%) say the nation must continue to play an international leadership role in space exploration; smaller majorities of Democrats (54%) and independents (57%) say this.

Challenger

In our chapter on bureaucracy and the administrative state, we discuss the organizational problems that led to the Challenger disaster. It happened 25 years ago today. Here is President Reagan's national address: