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I just keep thinking about atari's lunar lander... damn i loved that game.

>> ^flechette:
Why is this marked w/ Video games?
Nevermind! Just realized I didn't read the whole tag. Anything with John Carmack should instantly being videogames tagged.



Not to mention * geek

>> ^Fusionaut:
I heard that Armstrong casually carried on with his day after this like nothing happened at all.


But only after he called a worried Chuck Norris to tell him he was ok.

>> ^Fusionaut:
I heard that Armstrong casually carried on with his day after this like nothing happened at all.


After one biiiig "WHEW!"

>> ^Fusionaut:
I heard that Armstrong casually carried on with his day after this like nothing happened at all.


You're correct, they talk about it in "From the Earth to the Moon", as mentioned above. Buzz came into work and everyone was talking about it, and he ran to Neil's office, burst through the door, and there was Neil doing paperwork. Buzz asked him, and Neil just looked up and said "Yeah.", then went back to work.

Check my response... or just read this: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-026-DFRC.html

In reply to this comment by Raaagh:
Wow.

So I assume he was struggling to get the trainer oriented so he could eject safely?

And what on earth was that thing? Was it dropped from a high altitude? or was it tethered

NASA built LLRV (lunar lander research vehicle) and later the LLTV (lunar landar training vehicle). They were not tethered. They used a jet engine, oriented vertically on a gimbal to lift the vehicle so that it would behave as the actual lander would over the moon. (The moon's gravity is about 1/6 of Earth's.)

Neil Armstrong said that the moon landing would not have been possible without these test vehicles. More info here: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-026-DFRC.html

If you want to see one, I know they have one on display at NASA Dryden in Southern California. I think they only do tours ever other Friday, though.

Your video, Neil Armstrong Ejects From Lunar Lander Testflight, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Where's Fox news?

... saying how it's a complete waste of money by the Obama administration, and how it's irresponsibly bringing the cold war with Russia the the brink of killing us all?

How the lunar lander will push the moon out of orbit and it will be all the fault of liberal moon shifting democrats!

Oh, and as it's long and incase some of you dont read to the end:
-----
Manned Suborbital Vehicle Development


http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=26813



I thought that making a public announcement with the governor of New Mexico at the Lunar Lander Challenge about a new venture between Rocket Racing Inc, Armadillo, and the state of New Mexico while we were flying an experimental flight was a bad idea – too many things could go embarrassingly wrong. However, it turned out perfect, with the governor watching as we made the winning flight.


All the terms aren’t final, but this is a big deal. We’re going to space, sooner rather than later. Some of you can come, too.

>> ^Duckman33:
I'm referring to NASA's own pictures after the landing has taken place. Not the footage of the landing. You tell me where the blast crater is, or any disturbed dust under the thruster of the lander for that matter in these pictures


You want to check those pictures again professor, on pictures 2 and 4 you can clearly see the scorch marks under the lander. The engine at approach was not powerful enough to create any big crater in the surface of tightly packed regolith, neither is it expected to.

badastronomy.com sums it up rather nicely:

"Bad: In the pictures taken of the lunar lander by the astronauts, the TV show continues, there is no blast crater. A rocket capable of landing on the Moon should have burned out a huge crater on the surface, yet there is nothing there.

Good: When someone driving a car pulls into a parking spot, do they do it at 100 kilometers per hour? Of course not. They slow down first, easing off the accelerator. The astronauts did the same thing. Sure, the rocket on the lander was capable of 10,000 pounds of thrust, but they had a throttle. They fired the rocket hard to deorbit and slow enough to land on the Moon, but they didn't need to thrust that hard as they approached the lunar surface; they throttled down to about 3000 pounds of thrust.

Now here comes a little bit of math: the engine nozzle was about 54 inches across (from the Encyclopaedia Astronautica), which means it had an area of 2300 square inches. That in turn means that the thrust generated a pressure of only about 1.5 pounds per square inch! That's not a lot of pressure. Moreover, in a vacuum, the exhaust from a rocket spreads out very rapidly. On Earth, the air in our atmosphere constrains the thrust of a rocket into a narrow column, which is why you get long flames and columns of smoke from the back of a rocket. In a vacuum, no air means the exhaust spreads out even more, lowering the pressure. That's why there's no blast crater! Three thousand pounds of thrust sounds like a lot, but it was so spread out it was actually rather gentle."

Still doesn't explain how the Lunar Lander touched down on the face of the moon without it's thruster both creating a crater, or disturbing one single iota of moon dust underneath it....

There, I said it!!

anyone remember the Lunar Lander game back in the old-school arcade days??? Loved landing that green stick-pod on those @-d cliffs.....