Trivia: Jim Lovell is the only person to fly to the moon twice without landing on it (scheduled "test flight" on Apollo 8, unscheduled emergency on Apollo 13).
12 people flew to the moon without landing on it, now only 1 is still alive (Fred Haise).
12 people walked on the moon, 4 are still alive (Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, Charles Duke, Harrison Schmitt).
The effect is 1.75/1.2 ~= 1.5 standard errors from zero, thus not significant by common thresholds. You would find Fisher's exact test in agreement, but I like the (vepry slow) party trick of doing this all in my head. Techniques:
Very neat! Just one comment: For square root of 1.47 you don't need to take the log, half it, and exp it again. It's just sqrt(147/100), or a bit more than sqrt(144/100) = 12/10 = 1.2.
(If you like mental math you can then run an iteration of Newton's method: you take the remainder between the number and the square of your guess, 1.47-1.44 = 0.03, and divide it by twice your current guess, and add it to the current guess: 0.03 /(2x1.2) = 3/2.4 / 100 = 1.25 / 100 = 0.0125, so the next guess would be 1.2 + 0.0125 =1.2125. And the actual sqrt of 1.47 is 1.2124355653..., so that's pretty close. Newton's method roughly doubles the number of accurate digits at each iteration.)
Oh. That's actually very helpful. I hadn't realised Newton--Raphson could be that easy to use in practice. The closeness between 1.47 and 144 did strike me.
I did this in high school when we weren't allowed a calculator during tests and got into an argument with a teacher who told me that it is impossible to do this in your head so I must have cheated. A short demonstration on random numbers sufficed. I've taught my kids the method and they are now set up for similar arguments ;)
The hardest part if you want to generate more digits is to keep track of the intermediary sum during the multiplication, that's why I never got past three significant digits. That would be an interesting little contest though!
Indeed - taking the square root of numbers iteratively is very satisfying, because of the super fast convergence.
Sqrt 10: Guess 3, then residual is 10 - 33 = 1, so next guess add 1/(23) = 1/6, so now we're at 3.166..., and the square of that is 10.0277..., so you're very close already.
NASA vetted the Apollo astronauts for those who did not have medical problems, so it would be more accurate to say they walked on the moon because they were healthy.
For Apollo, the backup crew became the main crew two missions later (politics intervened on the last couple of missions, but this generally held true for all the manned Apollo missions).
I think there is one more variable in play: conscientiousness, a second nature to astronauts. In the earlier times, they were often chosen from among test pilots, who really cannot disregard things because reasons, because the feedback could be immediate and fatal.
If this conscientious attitude translates to health, that would mean "going to all your yearly checkups" and "don't pooh-pooh any small symptoms because you are macho and true men don't care". I know far too many men who died of something treatable by ignoring it until it was too late. (Women, at least around me, tend to be a lot more careful about themselves.)
I am now reading Michael Collins' biography - a talented writer btw. - and basically, they were used to very intrusive and systematic health checkups. I can see them developing a good habit out of this.
With due respect, in practice it's essentially the exact opposite of what you're describing.
During the Apollo program any sign of weakness or vulnerability would be a reason to ground an astronaut, very likely permanently. So they regularly concealed absolutely anything and everything that wasn't directly expected or related to the mission. This included various forms of sickness or injuries, space adaption sickness, psychological issues, and more. Alan Shepard even managed to conceal symptoms of what would later turn out to be Meniere's disease.
Aldrin was friggin touring around Antarctica in his 80s where he ended having to get on an emergency evac! It's not exactly a caution first attitude to life. In general the secret to longevity is healthy living, good diet, and a positive outlook on life. Even the Ancient Greeks had countless people living into their 80s and beyond.
Weren't some people saying that yearly check-ups for healthy people with no symptoms are bad because they lead to overdiagnosing and thus worsening of outcomes?
I mean it's not so much that they lost momentum as there's just... not a ton of good reasons to go to the moon. It's a long, incredibly dangerous trip and there's just not much there.
Same reason we've never sent people to Mars, it's even more complicated, magnitudes more dangerous, and what exactly are we accomplishing in doing so...? Nothin there.
There are multiple seasons of a really good show called For All Mankind that basically has a rebuttal to your argument for every single decade in history since the first moon landing. You should check it out as it is really well written.
The timeline is pretty entertaining and a bit depressing, if you wanted to see the plan succeed:
...
By 2014: The first manned mission for the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
By 2015: Astronauts will land on the moon using the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
By 2020: The United States will have established an extended human presence on the moon, using it as a launching pad for other manned exploration missions.
As for why, 1) to ensure the survival of humanity, 2) to drive scientific development and 3) because it's there.
1) no base on the moon (or mars) has the potential to be earth independent. If earth loses the ability to resupply the base dies.
2) science on earth drives scientific development. The fields of science best done on the moon are insanely narrow. All of the scientific advancements from Apollo etc were from building stuff to get there, not being there.
Yes we could collect, and study, more moon rocks. But outside of that theres not much to study (that can't be better studied on earth or in LEO).
The cost of study on the moon is a few orders of magnitude higher than LEO which in turn is a few extra zeros from study on earth.
I'll add that right now budgets for study on earth have been slashed. There's a lot more value to be gained spending that moon money here.
3) this argument is irrefutable. It's also pretty weak when appropriations are discussed. Apollo got killed because "been there, done that" with next to no reoccurring value.
Space has given us huge value. Mostly in LEO. GPS, Weather, Communications, satellite TV. Plus further out, Hubble, James Web, and probes like Voyager et al feed us data. This is the legacy of Apollo. Moon bases? Mars Bases? They make no scientific or financial sense.
no base on the moon (or mars) has the potential to be earth independent.
I see no reason that a Mars base couldn't eventually be entirely self-sustaining. More importantly, the challenges drive the innovation necessary to make humanity a spacefaring species, which is necessary to ensure the survival of humanity.
The fields of science best done on the moon are insanely narrow.
Nobody said anything about science on the moon. Again, the challenge drives innovation.
All of the scientific advancements from Apollo etc were from building stuff to get there, not being there.
So you already understood the point I was making, yet you decided to argue against a complete straw man instead?!
The point of a moon base as a stepping stone to Mars habitation -- again, from 20 year old memories of articles -- is in studying the real-world, long-term effects on humans of living off-Earth, as well as a low-gravity environment in which to assemble the sort of large ship required to move humans such a long distance.
> I see no reason that a Mars base couldn't eventually be entirely self-sustaining.
Seriously?
Problem 1: The atmospheric composition and pressure is trying to kill you at all times. Anyone who lives on Mars will either do so under massive domes to maintain breathable atmosphere at a pressure humans can survive at. Any breach in this dome is fatal to all inside. If we can't make a dome work somehow, we're now all living in tiny, pressurized shelters and any outdoor time at all requires a full EVA suit and is treated as life-threatening.
Problem 2: The law of thermodynamics is also trying to kill you at all times. Average temp is -81 degrees Fahrenheit. You must not only pressurize and condition air for human life, you must also heat it, continuously. If anything happens to your heating system, you are dead within a day.
Problem 3: To grow food will require all the atmospheric support the people already do, plus a reliable source of clean water. Mars has ice caps, but you're nowhere near them unless you land there, and then you better have an even bigger heater to solve Problem 2 with.
> The point of a moon base as a stepping stone to Mars habitation -- again, from 20 year old memories of articles -- is in studying the real-world, long-term effects on humans of living off-Earth, as well as a low-gravity environment in which to assemble the sort of large ship required to move humans such a long distance.
Any humans who live on Mars right now are guaranteed to die there, for the simple fact that it's logistically all but impossible to not only get people there, but to do so in such a way where they have the supplies for a trip home, including fuel for vehicular re-ascent and earth return. Not to mention food, water, living space, and the sort of space vehicle that can travel for 6-8 months, land/remain in orbit for mission duration, then return 6-8 months. If you want to live on mars for a week, you're committing to a year and a half in space, aboard a craft that cannot resupply at any point, no can anything go wrong that requires help from Earth. At our current technology, again, basically suicide.
And again, we could PROBABLY solve these issues, you're right. But we come back again to: why? Mars doesn't have anything we need, and even what could be useful, we have ample supplies back on Earth. A moon base I'll grant would be better for low-G construction, perhaps even of something that could make the journey to Mars itself, but that's a lot of money and risk to use one dead rock to leapfrog to a second dead rock.
And none of this touches on the psychological issues people will deal with being locked in a pressure vessel 270 million miles from home with about 4 sources of imminent death within reach at all times.
In addition to the problems you outline, I'll toss in the lack of a magnetic field (for both Mars and the moon.)
While not as glamorous as the lack of, you know, water, air, heat etc it makes solar and cosmic radiation pretty deadly. Which means the bases need to be underground. So, um, the first thing to ship to both should be a big heavy digger...
Check out dV by Daniel Suarez (actually the sequel, Critical Mass, is about a Lunar Base).
SPOILERS AHEAD
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To say it briefly, a base on the moon could solve the climate and energy crisises.
Longer version. Think of Earth's gravity well. It's the obstacle to any significant space infrastructure. Anything of matter can't be built on LEO, with resources shot from , because it would destroy Earth's atmosphere.
Unlike resources in Lunar regolith (sand on moon). Moons gravity is much lower and there is no atmosphere. Harder to land than on Earth, It's just that we would need a significant amount of mass to jumpstart Moon excavation.
I'm not sure how galactic cosmic rays, other forms of radiation, and a small fraction of Earth's gravity (1.62 m/s²) could make it healthy and contribute to longevity.
I'll go with NASA vetted the hell out of the health of their astronauts.
Read Lost Moon where Lovell explained how he was rejected because he has had a flu in the past tense. It was couple of steps above hell out. They really got the creme de la creme.
I don't doubt that the people selected to walk on the moon were indeed fit and healthy, but it seems like a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier Apollo missions were selected to less stringent criteria. The selection effect should be just as strong for the people who "merely" got to fly around the moon. So out of two sets of people selected for being healthy, one group seems to be much more alive than the other.
(Also yes obviously the sample size is too low to draw meaningful conclusions)
If anything, it would be even more so. If a person on the moon had a medical emergency, this would be a serious problem but there's another person there to help and/or fly the lander back to the capsule. If the person in the capsule had a medical emergency, it's hard to see how any of the crew survive.
More likely though, as you suggest, the same astronomical standards (pun intended) applied to all crew members.
> I don't doubt that the people selected to walk on the moon were indeed fit and healthy, but it seems like a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier Apollo missions were selected to less stringent criteria.
It's not a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier missions could have been older on average, though. Just looking at some of the ages, 2 of the still alive crowd are younger than all of the Apollo 8 astronauts. All of them are younger than two out of the three Apollo 8 astronauts.
Even a few years difference in age can make a huge impact when we're talking about people in their 90's.
He spoke at my school, too, and I got a chance to shake his hand. It was only a brief personal encounter, but I also came away with the impression that he must be one of the kindest people walking around on this rock.
In the movie "Apollo 13", when the astronauts board the Navy ship after being recovered at sea, Lovell, played by Tom Hanks, is greeted by and shakes the hand of the captain of the ship. The captain was played by Jim Lovell.
And David Scott, commander of Apollo 15, was the technical consultant. As Ron Howard explained this to me, he sees reality as more interesting and detailed than any fiction. No one would grasp the details were correct, but he felt they would contribute an irreplaceable texture to the film.
I became the math consultant for A Beautiful Mind in part because I was such an Apollo 13 buff. In my first call with Todd Hallowell, the executive producer, we spent an hour's aside discussing Apollo 13. This actually was part of the interview: Making a movie is intensely boring unless you're really engaged, and I demonstrated the required interest in detail.
Lovell, as Pilot, flew with Frank Borman as Command Pilot on Gemini 7. They spent two very unpleasant weeks in space.[1]
Borman commanded Apollo 8, the first manned flight to the moon, again with Lovell. However, Lovell had by then commanded Gemini 12. So the odd situation resulted in which the person with more spaceflight experience was not commander.[2]
Lovell has another distinction besides the whole "survived almost certain death in space on Apollo 13" thing: He is the only one of the three Apollo 8 crewmen to have not become a Fortune 500 CEO. (Frank Borman ran Eastern Airlines, and Bill Anders ran General Dynamics.)
[1] TIL that NASA's Gemini 7 space mission lasted for 14 days. After rendezvousing with Gemini 6 on the 11th day, the two astronauts had nothing to do other than read books in the very cramped cockpit. Frank Borman, the commander, said that the last three days were "bad".<https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ccpszs/til_...>
[2] This has happened a few more times, including the current Crew-11 to ISS, in which a rookie is commander while the other three have all flown in space before
I was lucky enough to hear him tell the story of Apollo 13 when I was at Purdue University.
In my second year, he came to the Electrical Engineering lecture hall and told the story of Apollo 13 to a packed crowd, standing room.
I believe it was during the events of the opening of Armstrong Hall in 2007
Unfortunately no one had smartphones then and I doubt it was recorded.
I barely remember the details but I still remember the feeling of watching someone deeply confident and caring who gave so much credit to the broader team he worked with. He remembered all the details including specific equipment and model numbers of switches. He spoke in that confident tone a lot of astronauts have but somehow still very humble and empathetic and answered so many questions.
He was 70+ at the time I guess so energetic he looked 40.
I honestly think this was the one time I met a "hero" who more than lived up to the hype.
I don't get that emotional when watching movies. I cried a little when the parachutes opened in Apollo 13.
As a kid I had a book detailing hundreds of space missions—mostly probes, obviously—but my favorite mission to read about was Apollo 13. Just incredible.
Maybe when Jim got to heaven, the first place the angels took him to was where he would have landed on the moon.
That, plus the way the scene is set, you cut to the family not knowing if the astronauts survived. And then the movie cuts out about 4 minutes of waiting between when Apollo 13 regains contact, and when the main chutes are deployed and unreefed - when things seem 100% safe, and everyone starts cheering.
It's a really good decision in a movie that made a lot of them, as it made the relief hit all at once.
And then you see Jim Lovell's cameo as the captain of the Iwo Jima, just to cap the movie off.
> Some of the space race was driven by Cold War politics.
Is it fairer to say, initiated by? Listen to Michael Collins speak on the first episode of “13 Minutes to the Moon.” “We did it.” The “we” being humanity, not nationalism.
Yes, it started with rivalry, but it lifted humanity’s ceiling. There is a lot wrong with the Apollo story (race, gender), but these issues were a symptom of the time, less a cause. These issues were reckoning against a legacy.
The goal was to show superiority, not leverage it. I wish this was the case for a nation capable of going to the moon today. Instead of leverage against shared and common issues, the goal was to better.
Probably one of the more famous astronauts in pop culture given the movie Apollo 13. As someone who grew up near NASA that is one of my favorite films.
I recommend "A Man on the Moon" for anyone interested in that era.
An utter shame that he never got a chance to actually touch down on the moon. IMO, he, and everyone involved with Apollo 13 after it left the ground, truly represent the peak of NASA personnel. Listening to the calm, cool manner in which Jim and everyone else conducted themselves with while their spacecraft was literally falling apart around them give me chills.
> IMO, he, and everyone involved with Apollo 13 after it left the ground, truly represent the peak of NASA personnel.
Agreed. One of the best books I've read on Apollo was 'Apollo: Race to the Moon', by Murray and Cox. It spends a lot of time on the engineering and management challenges behind what they accomplished then. One of the book's best chapters was on the enormous team(s) on the ground behind the troubleshooting and problem-solving for Apollo 13.
They were also the only Apollo crew not to have a divorce amongst them. It's an interesting contrast to the happy, proud, and thrilled 'All-American' stereotype they and their wives were presented as.
I recall the intense frequent media reports about this event (Apollo 13 accident and return to earth ) at the time.
We had a small transistor radio and the daily newspaper at our remotish farm in Australia. (Not many people had BW tv at the time)
What is really amazing is that three astronauts flew to the Moon TWICE! Unfortunately Jim Lovell was unlucky and only orbited because after Apollo 8, 13 didn't make it, as we know.
John Young and Gene Cernan orbited, and landed.
If you subscribe to a religion that not only assigns a physical known location to God, but puts that location at a significant distance away from humanity either in a specific direction, or in a general “anywhere except where those people are” sense. Is that a common belief structure?
I think it is common. In that religion heaven is in the clouds above, and someone going very high up into the clouds but not reaching it then got closer than others did.
Since we're talking about the actual astronaut, not the movie, I feel I should point out Swigert and Lovell both say "Houston, we've had a problem", not have.
Elon started SpaceX for this specific purpose. I'm not aware that NASA has ever had that as a goal. Every fan of sci-fi has similar fantasies, nobody owns it. furthermore, I provided an actual link to the xkcd, and quoted the hover-caption. I think my comment made sense, and contributed, and I think Elon has contributed, and I was downvoted by you-know-exactly-who, the triggerypuffs, and this comment will probably be downvoted for coming even close to mentioning it, the free speech brigade will be here to let us know what is free and what is restricted.
> I'm not aware that NASA has ever had that as a goal.
The only thing on the graph is NASA not making the sensible economic decision by sending people to the moon (starting 2 years before Elon was born) and the guy went to work at NASA while still in college, yet he still "went full Elon" despite:
> Every fan of sci-fi has similar fantasies, nobody owns it.
It's clear you really want to talk about Elon instead, just not why. Well, at least until you start saying things like "triggerypuffs"... at which point why bother arguing good faith?
and if you're skeptical, read his first biography, where he enumerated numerous things he'd never ever do -- specifically, using spacex for anything other than mars, explicitly he says the government would have to take it from him.
Trivia: Jim Lovell is the only person to fly to the moon twice without landing on it (scheduled "test flight" on Apollo 8, unscheduled emergency on Apollo 13).
12 people flew to the moon without landing on it, now only 1 is still alive (Fred Haise).
12 people walked on the moon, 4 are still alive (Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, Charles Duke, Harrison Schmitt).
(Conclusion: walking on the moon is healthy?)
Log-odds difference from contingency table: ln (4×11) - ln (1×8) = ln (44/8) = ln 5.5 ~= 2.3 × lg 5.5 ~= 2.3 × 0.75 = 1.75.
Standard error of log-odds difference: √(1/1 + 1/11 + 1/4 + 1/8) ~= √(1 + 0.09 + 0.25 + 0.13) = √(1.47) = 1.47^0.5 = 10^(0.5 × lg 1.47) ~= 10^(0.5 × 0.16) = 10^0.08 ~= 1.2.
The effect is 1.75/1.2 ~= 1.5 standard errors from zero, thus not significant by common thresholds. You would find Fisher's exact test in agreement, but I like the (vepry slow) party trick of doing this all in my head. Techniques:
- Poor man's logistic regression: https://entropicthoughts.com/contingency-table-for-poor-mans...
- Mental logarithms: https://entropicthoughts.com/learning-some-logarithms
Very neat! Just one comment: For square root of 1.47 you don't need to take the log, half it, and exp it again. It's just sqrt(147/100), or a bit more than sqrt(144/100) = 12/10 = 1.2.
(If you like mental math you can then run an iteration of Newton's method: you take the remainder between the number and the square of your guess, 1.47-1.44 = 0.03, and divide it by twice your current guess, and add it to the current guess: 0.03 /(2x1.2) = 3/2.4 / 100 = 1.25 / 100 = 0.0125, so the next guess would be 1.2 + 0.0125 =1.2125. And the actual sqrt of 1.47 is 1.2124355653..., so that's pretty close. Newton's method roughly doubles the number of accurate digits at each iteration.)
Oh. That's actually very helpful. I hadn't realised Newton--Raphson could be that easy to use in practice. The closeness between 1.47 and 144 did strike me.
I did this in high school when we weren't allowed a calculator during tests and got into an argument with a teacher who told me that it is impossible to do this in your head so I must have cheated. A short demonstration on random numbers sufficed. I've taught my kids the method and they are now set up for similar arguments ;)
The hardest part if you want to generate more digits is to keep track of the intermediary sum during the multiplication, that's why I never got past three significant digits. That would be an interesting little contest though!
Indeed - taking the square root of numbers iteratively is very satisfying, because of the super fast convergence.
Sqrt 10: Guess 3, then residual is 10 - 33 = 1, so next guess add 1/(23) = 1/6, so now we're at 3.166..., and the square of that is 10.0277..., so you're very close already.
> (Conclusion: walking on the moon is healthy?)
NASA vetted the Apollo astronauts for those who did not have medical problems, so it would be more accurate to say they walked on the moon because they were healthy.
They also vetted the people who didn't walk on the moon (because they apply the same testing to all astronauts).
The average lifespan of the astronauts that did not walk on the moon might be even longer than the ones that did.
I mean, you don't have any data (or evidence) on that one way or the other; do you?
ADDED. Oops: the comment 3 levels above gives data. I regret wading into this thread.
What about backup crews as a control?
For Apollo, the backup crew became the main crew two missions later (politics intervened on the last couple of missions, but this generally held true for all the manned Apollo missions).
Incredibly small sample size, but aren’t they all
I also didn't walk on the moon, so therefore I'm healthy.
I think there is one more variable in play: conscientiousness, a second nature to astronauts. In the earlier times, they were often chosen from among test pilots, who really cannot disregard things because reasons, because the feedback could be immediate and fatal.
If this conscientious attitude translates to health, that would mean "going to all your yearly checkups" and "don't pooh-pooh any small symptoms because you are macho and true men don't care". I know far too many men who died of something treatable by ignoring it until it was too late. (Women, at least around me, tend to be a lot more careful about themselves.)
I am now reading Michael Collins' biography - a talented writer btw. - and basically, they were used to very intrusive and systematic health checkups. I can see them developing a good habit out of this.
With due respect, in practice it's essentially the exact opposite of what you're describing.
During the Apollo program any sign of weakness or vulnerability would be a reason to ground an astronaut, very likely permanently. So they regularly concealed absolutely anything and everything that wasn't directly expected or related to the mission. This included various forms of sickness or injuries, space adaption sickness, psychological issues, and more. Alan Shepard even managed to conceal symptoms of what would later turn out to be Meniere's disease.
Aldrin was friggin touring around Antarctica in his 80s where he ended having to get on an emergency evac! It's not exactly a caution first attitude to life. In general the secret to longevity is healthy living, good diet, and a positive outlook on life. Even the Ancient Greeks had countless people living into their 80s and beyond.
Weren't some people saying that yearly check-ups for healthy people with no symptoms are bad because they lead to overdiagnosing and thus worsening of outcomes?
It might be different at 35 and 75.
Staying not depressed, active, and social is probably HUGE in terms of long lifespan.
Someone that walked on the moon is probably feeling pretty dang good for a long time about themselves. And people want to talk to them.
Someone that flew but didn't probably doesn't have that same advantage.
Do the moon viewers skew slightly older as a group because the earlier missions did not include space walking, and the walkers skew slightly younger?
Could also be impacted by fame / levels of personal income from being in one of the two distinct groups.
Long flights without getting up to stand are dangerous after all.
I have a dream that another human will walk the Moon while at least one of the Apollo astronauts is still alive to watch.
I bet a couple will see it it on their deathbeds in the same way that Adams and Jefferson refused to die until the country hit a key milestone.
I'm wondering if the surviving Apollo astronauts are kinda like the surviving '72 Dolphins ;)
This would be so great - a "changing of the guard" of sorts ...
If only Apollo hadn't lost momentum ...
I mean it's not so much that they lost momentum as there's just... not a ton of good reasons to go to the moon. It's a long, incredibly dangerous trip and there's just not much there.
Same reason we've never sent people to Mars, it's even more complicated, magnitudes more dangerous, and what exactly are we accomplishing in doing so...? Nothin there.
There are multiple seasons of a really good show called For All Mankind that basically has a rebuttal to your argument for every single decade in history since the first moon landing. You should check it out as it is really well written.
George W. Bush called for a permanent moon base back in '04. The primary motivator, from what I recall, was as a launching point for Mars exploration.
https://www.npr.org/2004/01/15/1597182/bush-calls-for-manned...
The timeline is pretty entertaining and a bit depressing, if you wanted to see the plan succeed:
...
By 2014: The first manned mission for the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
By 2015: Astronauts will land on the moon using the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
By 2020: The United States will have established an extended human presence on the moon, using it as a launching pad for other manned exploration missions.
As for why, 1) to ensure the survival of humanity, 2) to drive scientific development and 3) because it's there.
I like the optimism of 1970:
https://i0.wp.com/newspaceeconomy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024...
https://i0.wp.com/newspaceeconomy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024...
1) no base on the moon (or mars) has the potential to be earth independent. If earth loses the ability to resupply the base dies.
2) science on earth drives scientific development. The fields of science best done on the moon are insanely narrow. All of the scientific advancements from Apollo etc were from building stuff to get there, not being there.
Yes we could collect, and study, more moon rocks. But outside of that theres not much to study (that can't be better studied on earth or in LEO).
The cost of study on the moon is a few orders of magnitude higher than LEO which in turn is a few extra zeros from study on earth.
I'll add that right now budgets for study on earth have been slashed. There's a lot more value to be gained spending that moon money here.
3) this argument is irrefutable. It's also pretty weak when appropriations are discussed. Apollo got killed because "been there, done that" with next to no reoccurring value.
Space has given us huge value. Mostly in LEO. GPS, Weather, Communications, satellite TV. Plus further out, Hubble, James Web, and probes like Voyager et al feed us data. This is the legacy of Apollo. Moon bases? Mars Bases? They make no scientific or financial sense.
no base on the moon (or mars) has the potential to be earth independent.
I see no reason that a Mars base couldn't eventually be entirely self-sustaining. More importantly, the challenges drive the innovation necessary to make humanity a spacefaring species, which is necessary to ensure the survival of humanity.
The fields of science best done on the moon are insanely narrow.
Nobody said anything about science on the moon. Again, the challenge drives innovation.
All of the scientific advancements from Apollo etc were from building stuff to get there, not being there.
So you already understood the point I was making, yet you decided to argue against a complete straw man instead?!
The point of a moon base as a stepping stone to Mars habitation -- again, from 20 year old memories of articles -- is in studying the real-world, long-term effects on humans of living off-Earth, as well as a low-gravity environment in which to assemble the sort of large ship required to move humans such a long distance.
> I see no reason that a Mars base couldn't eventually be entirely self-sustaining.
Seriously?
Problem 1: The atmospheric composition and pressure is trying to kill you at all times. Anyone who lives on Mars will either do so under massive domes to maintain breathable atmosphere at a pressure humans can survive at. Any breach in this dome is fatal to all inside. If we can't make a dome work somehow, we're now all living in tiny, pressurized shelters and any outdoor time at all requires a full EVA suit and is treated as life-threatening.
Problem 2: The law of thermodynamics is also trying to kill you at all times. Average temp is -81 degrees Fahrenheit. You must not only pressurize and condition air for human life, you must also heat it, continuously. If anything happens to your heating system, you are dead within a day.
Problem 3: To grow food will require all the atmospheric support the people already do, plus a reliable source of clean water. Mars has ice caps, but you're nowhere near them unless you land there, and then you better have an even bigger heater to solve Problem 2 with.
> The point of a moon base as a stepping stone to Mars habitation -- again, from 20 year old memories of articles -- is in studying the real-world, long-term effects on humans of living off-Earth, as well as a low-gravity environment in which to assemble the sort of large ship required to move humans such a long distance.
Any humans who live on Mars right now are guaranteed to die there, for the simple fact that it's logistically all but impossible to not only get people there, but to do so in such a way where they have the supplies for a trip home, including fuel for vehicular re-ascent and earth return. Not to mention food, water, living space, and the sort of space vehicle that can travel for 6-8 months, land/remain in orbit for mission duration, then return 6-8 months. If you want to live on mars for a week, you're committing to a year and a half in space, aboard a craft that cannot resupply at any point, no can anything go wrong that requires help from Earth. At our current technology, again, basically suicide.
And again, we could PROBABLY solve these issues, you're right. But we come back again to: why? Mars doesn't have anything we need, and even what could be useful, we have ample supplies back on Earth. A moon base I'll grant would be better for low-G construction, perhaps even of something that could make the journey to Mars itself, but that's a lot of money and risk to use one dead rock to leapfrog to a second dead rock.
And none of this touches on the psychological issues people will deal with being locked in a pressure vessel 270 million miles from home with about 4 sources of imminent death within reach at all times.
In addition to the problems you outline, I'll toss in the lack of a magnetic field (for both Mars and the moon.)
While not as glamorous as the lack of, you know, water, air, heat etc it makes solar and cosmic radiation pretty deadly. Which means the bases need to be underground. So, um, the first thing to ship to both should be a big heavy digger...
Check out dV by Daniel Suarez (actually the sequel, Critical Mass, is about a Lunar Base).
SPOILERS AHEAD
To say it briefly, a base on the moon could solve the climate and energy crisises.Longer version. Think of Earth's gravity well. It's the obstacle to any significant space infrastructure. Anything of matter can't be built on LEO, with resources shot from , because it would destroy Earth's atmosphere.
Unlike resources in Lunar regolith (sand on moon). Moons gravity is much lower and there is no atmosphere. Harder to land than on Earth, It's just that we would need a significant amount of mass to jumpstart Moon excavation.
"We choose NOT to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
xkcd 893
I'm not sure how galactic cosmic rays, other forms of radiation, and a small fraction of Earth's gravity (1.62 m/s²) could make it healthy and contribute to longevity.
I'll go with NASA vetted the hell out of the health of their astronauts.
Read Lost Moon where Lovell explained how he was rejected because he has had a flu in the past tense. It was couple of steps above hell out. They really got the creme de la creme.
Walking is good exercise!
Conclusion: the people selected to walk on the moon were fit and healthy
I don't doubt that the people selected to walk on the moon were indeed fit and healthy, but it seems like a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier Apollo missions were selected to less stringent criteria. The selection effect should be just as strong for the people who "merely" got to fly around the moon. So out of two sets of people selected for being healthy, one group seems to be much more alive than the other.
(Also yes obviously the sample size is too low to draw meaningful conclusions)
If anything, it would be even more so. If a person on the moon had a medical emergency, this would be a serious problem but there's another person there to help and/or fly the lander back to the capsule. If the person in the capsule had a medical emergency, it's hard to see how any of the crew survive.
More likely though, as you suggest, the same astronomical standards (pun intended) applied to all crew members.
>If the person in the capsule had a medical emergency, it's hard to see how any of the crew survive.
They could spacewalk and open CM hatch from the outside. Wrench for opening the hatch was stored in the lunar module.
> I don't doubt that the people selected to walk on the moon were indeed fit and healthy, but it seems like a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier Apollo missions were selected to less stringent criteria.
It's not a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier missions could have been older on average, though. Just looking at some of the ages, 2 of the still alive crowd are younger than all of the Apollo 8 astronauts. All of them are younger than two out of the three Apollo 8 astronauts.
Even a few years difference in age can make a huge impact when we're talking about people in their 90's.
He came to speak at a small awards ceremony at my university. He came into the room and said "sorry, I know you were all expecting Tom Hanks!"
Really seemed like a great guy, shame to hear about his passing.
He spoke at my school, too, and I got a chance to shake his hand. It was only a brief personal encounter, but I also came away with the impression that he must be one of the kindest people walking around on this rock.
Movies about men who survived despite incredibly long odds will never be the same once Tom Hanks dies.
In the movie "Apollo 13", when the astronauts board the Navy ship after being recovered at sea, Lovell, played by Tom Hanks, is greeted by and shakes the hand of the captain of the ship. The captain was played by Jim Lovell.
And David Scott, commander of Apollo 15, was the technical consultant. As Ron Howard explained this to me, he sees reality as more interesting and detailed than any fiction. No one would grasp the details were correct, but he felt they would contribute an irreplaceable texture to the film.
I became the math consultant for A Beautiful Mind in part because I was such an Apollo 13 buff. In my first call with Todd Hallowell, the executive producer, we spent an hour's aside discussing Apollo 13. This actually was part of the interview: Making a movie is intensely boring unless you're really engaged, and I demonstrated the required interest in detail.
> I became the math consultant for A Beautiful Mind in part because I was such an Apollo 13 buff.
Cool, awesome job, as far as i can tell as a fan of the movie!
So you did what was best for yourself... and the group.
Lovell, as Pilot, flew with Frank Borman as Command Pilot on Gemini 7. They spent two very unpleasant weeks in space.[1]
Borman commanded Apollo 8, the first manned flight to the moon, again with Lovell. However, Lovell had by then commanded Gemini 12. So the odd situation resulted in which the person with more spaceflight experience was not commander.[2]
Lovell has another distinction besides the whole "survived almost certain death in space on Apollo 13" thing: He is the only one of the three Apollo 8 crewmen to have not become a Fortune 500 CEO. (Frank Borman ran Eastern Airlines, and Bill Anders ran General Dynamics.)
[1] TIL that NASA's Gemini 7 space mission lasted for 14 days. After rendezvousing with Gemini 6 on the 11th day, the two astronauts had nothing to do other than read books in the very cramped cockpit. Frank Borman, the commander, said that the last three days were "bad".<https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ccpszs/til_...>
[2] This has happened a few more times, including the current Crew-11 to ISS, in which a rookie is commander while the other three have all flown in space before
I was lucky enough to hear him tell the story of Apollo 13 when I was at Purdue University.
In my second year, he came to the Electrical Engineering lecture hall and told the story of Apollo 13 to a packed crowd, standing room.
I believe it was during the events of the opening of Armstrong Hall in 2007
Unfortunately no one had smartphones then and I doubt it was recorded.
I barely remember the details but I still remember the feeling of watching someone deeply confident and caring who gave so much credit to the broader team he worked with. He remembered all the details including specific equipment and model numbers of switches. He spoke in that confident tone a lot of astronauts have but somehow still very humble and empathetic and answered so many questions.
He was 70+ at the time I guess so energetic he looked 40.
I honestly think this was the one time I met a "hero" who more than lived up to the hype.
Rest in Peace Commander Lovell.
I was lucky enough to have met and spent some time with Jim Lovell. An absolute gentleman, and it was a joy to have been in his company.
Ad Astra ...
Per aspera
I don't get that emotional when watching movies. I cried a little when the parachutes opened in Apollo 13.
As a kid I had a book detailing hundreds of space missions—mostly probes, obviously—but my favorite mission to read about was Apollo 13. Just incredible.
Maybe when Jim got to heaven, the first place the angels took him to was where he would have landed on the moon.
> I cried a little when the parachutes opened in Apollo 13.
Thanks in no small part to Horner's score, at least in my case.
That, plus the way the scene is set, you cut to the family not knowing if the astronauts survived. And then the movie cuts out about 4 minutes of waiting between when Apollo 13 regains contact, and when the main chutes are deployed and unreefed - when things seem 100% safe, and everyone starts cheering.
It's a really good decision in a movie that made a lot of them, as it made the relief hit all at once.
And then you see Jim Lovell's cameo as the captain of the Iwo Jima, just to cap the movie off.
I’m not crying, you’re crying!
First of all that remark is incredibly touching, thank you for that
Apollo 14 (after they diagnosed the 13 issues and beefed up the spacecraft a bit with a few redundancies) actually did land where 13 was supposed to
Homeboy deserved someone to weep for him at least a little bit.
Not so much the fact that he was gone - the fact that he was here.
Jim Lovell made us all better just for existing.
For an astronaut, it has to be a triumph to die of old age or natural causes. Doubly so for the crew of Apollo 13.
I thought it was interesting that astronauts live longer than the general population: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20240001373/downloads/IW...
Multiply that by having also been a Naval Aviator in early jet aircraft then a test pilot.
I know some of the space race stuff was driven by cold war politics, but I think it was still pretty cool. Big, difficult goals can be inspiring.
>Big, difficult goals can be inspiring.
So true.
> Some of the space race was driven by Cold War politics.
Is it fairer to say, initiated by? Listen to Michael Collins speak on the first episode of “13 Minutes to the Moon.” “We did it.” The “we” being humanity, not nationalism.
Yes, it started with rivalry, but it lifted humanity’s ceiling. There is a lot wrong with the Apollo story (race, gender), but these issues were a symptom of the time, less a cause. These issues were reckoning against a legacy.
The goal was to show superiority, not leverage it. I wish this was the case for a nation capable of going to the moon today. Instead of leverage against shared and common issues, the goal was to better.
RIP to one of the greats.
The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation wrote up a great tribute: https://www.astronautscholarship.org/assets/2025-asf-lovell-...
Houston, I have a problem with my eyes.
Unrestrained onions in command module.
The movie was released 25 years after the incident. It has been 30 years since the movie was released.
There should be a national day of mourning.
There won't be, but there should be.
Remember that Trump doesn't like losers, so because of that "logic" Lovell shouldn't be mourned or remembered.
Probably one of the more famous astronauts in pop culture given the movie Apollo 13. As someone who grew up near NASA that is one of my favorite films.
I recommend "A Man on the Moon" for anyone interested in that era.
Rest in Peace! Time to read up on him again.
That movie turned 30 about 5 weeks ago.
That makes me feel really old.
An utter shame that he never got a chance to actually touch down on the moon. IMO, he, and everyone involved with Apollo 13 after it left the ground, truly represent the peak of NASA personnel. Listening to the calm, cool manner in which Jim and everyone else conducted themselves with while their spacecraft was literally falling apart around them give me chills.
Godspeed sir
> IMO, he, and everyone involved with Apollo 13 after it left the ground, truly represent the peak of NASA personnel.
Agreed. One of the best books I've read on Apollo was 'Apollo: Race to the Moon', by Murray and Cox. It spends a lot of time on the engineering and management challenges behind what they accomplished then. One of the book's best chapters was on the enormous team(s) on the ground behind the troubleshooting and problem-solving for Apollo 13.
My favourite book of all time. It also covers how audacious Apollo 8 was....the other Lovell mission. Blue skies and tailwinds Capt Lovell.
> cool manner in which Jim and everyone else conducted themselves
I find it interesting that the argument briefly depicted in the 1995 film was added for dramatic effect. The real crew didn't even raise their voices!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13_(film)#Technical_and...
"We" [0] need to get back up there before they're all gone.
[0] I say "We" but I'm not American...
Human works too, or earthling :)
One strange aspect about Apollo 8 is that all three astronauts have passed away on the 7th day of the month.
Frank Borman Nov 7, 2023 William Anders June 7, 2024 James Lovell Aug 7, 2025
They were also the only Apollo crew not to have a divorce amongst them. It's an interesting contrast to the happy, proud, and thrilled 'All-American' stereotype they and their wives were presented as.
I attended his high school. The foyer had a panoramic display of the Apollo 13 story. He spoke at our 1982 graduation.
I recall the intense frequent media reports about this event (Apollo 13 accident and return to earth ) at the time. We had a small transistor radio and the daily newspaper at our remotish farm in Australia. (Not many people had BW tv at the time)
What is really amazing is that three astronauts flew to the Moon TWICE! Unfortunately Jim Lovell was unlucky and only orbited because after Apollo 8, 13 didn't make it, as we know. John Young and Gene Cernan orbited, and landed.
Not about Lovell, but still relevant https://youtube.com/shorts/SorOtTc69lI
As a member of Apollo 13, he flew farther from Earth than any other human being ever has.
He was literally closer to God and the Heavens than anyone else before or since.
RIP and ad astra to a great American
> He was literally closer to God
If you subscribe to a religion that not only assigns a physical known location to God, but puts that location at a significant distance away from humanity either in a specific direction, or in a general “anywhere except where those people are” sense. Is that a common belief structure?
I think it is common. In that religion heaven is in the clouds above, and someone going very high up into the clouds but not reaching it then got closer than others did.
So sort of the projective real line?
> He was literally closer to God and the Heavens than anyone else before or since.
How so?
Because… what does god need with a starship?
God has a summer home on Tau Ceti f
I met Captain Lovell at his restaurant in Illinois around 2003 or so. He was a happy man, friendly greetings for all his guests.
I highly recommend his book with Jeffrey Kluger, “Apollo 13”, originally published as “Lost Moon” in 1994.
I'd fly anywhere with Jim Lovell.
hasn't even reached the top of Google News. The world is completely consumed in its own mess.
Godspeed, Captain Lovell. o7
My son and I met him once. He was a very down to Earth, kind person.
RIP. QEPD.
A true inspiration
Godspeed.
This seemed black bar worthy, but it's Day 2 and not yet .
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/893/
"Houston, we have a problem" RIP Jim Lovell.
Since we're talking about the actual astronaut, not the movie, I feel I should point out Swigert and Lovell both say "Houston, we've had a problem", not have.
Only to have the Apollo 13 movie unnecessarily invent a fake argument in which Haise accuses Swigert of screwing up the oxygen tank stir
Decent movie, but that scene ruins it
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We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44842294 and marked it off topic.
Randall started out at NASA before doing XKCD full time.
Elon started SpaceX for this specific purpose. I'm not aware that NASA has ever had that as a goal. Every fan of sci-fi has similar fantasies, nobody owns it. furthermore, I provided an actual link to the xkcd, and quoted the hover-caption. I think my comment made sense, and contributed, and I think Elon has contributed, and I was downvoted by you-know-exactly-who, the triggerypuffs, and this comment will probably be downvoted for coming even close to mentioning it, the free speech brigade will be here to let us know what is free and what is restricted.
> I'm not aware that NASA has ever had that as a goal.
The only thing on the graph is NASA not making the sensible economic decision by sending people to the moon (starting 2 years before Elon was born) and the guy went to work at NASA while still in college, yet he still "went full Elon" despite:
> Every fan of sci-fi has similar fantasies, nobody owns it.
It's clear you really want to talk about Elon instead, just not why. Well, at least until you start saying things like "triggerypuffs"... at which point why bother arguing good faith?
elon claimed he started spacex for...
there, fixed that little glitch for ya!
and if you're skeptical, read his first biography, where he enumerated numerous things he'd never ever do -- specifically, using spacex for anything other than mars, explicitly he says the government would have to take it from him.
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“He {something}, only to die anyway.”
Sure, this is true for all of humanity. What’s your point?
It's a joke. It's what we on Earth call humor.