Has It Really Been 40 Years?

Exactly 40 years ago today, at 20:17:39 GMT (3:17 PM EST,) the first manned spacecraft to ever visit another world landed on the Moon. I was only four years old, but I remember my dad getting me out of bed when, almost 7 hours later, Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the Moon. I have a very vivid memory of sitting in my pajamas with my sisters on the green carpet in the den in front of the television.

To get into the mood for this anniversary, Mrs. Squirrel and I watched The Right Stuff on Friday night, and then HBO’s From the Earth to the Moon on Saturday. (Mrs. Squirrel drew the line and would not let me watch Apollo 13 today. (Well that’s not quite true, but I could tell that it would not have pleased her.))



Here are some interesting facts that you may not known about that first Moon landing:

Because Neal Armstrong diverted from the primary landing site and landed manually some distance away, Mike Collins was never able to spot the landing site from orbit.

While Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 ½ hours on the surface, they only actually walked outside for 2 hours and 36 minutes.

The "dashboard" of the Apollo 11 command module had 24 instruments, 566 switches, and 71 lights. The command module also had approximately 15 miles of wire, enough to wire about 50 houses.

Mechanical problems with the command module’s water filtration system caused hydrogen bubbles to build up in the drinking water supply, resulting in some rather odiferous “out gassing.” It affected all three crew members, so at least no one could point fingers. (From all reports, after a few days in space without any kind of shower facilities, an Apollo capsule wasn’t the most pleasant place to be. I understand that things are much better now aboard the space shuttle and the international space station.

When Armstrong and Aldrin came back inside from their moonwalk, their suits were coated with a fine powder of Moondust. Armstrong said that it smelled like “wet ashes in a fireplace” while Aldrin described it as a “spent gunpowder” smell.

Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) that directed Eagle, the Apollo 11 lunar lander, to and from the surface of the Moon, had 74 kB of memory and 4 kB of ram! Oh, and it cost $150,000+… (my cell phone has over a gigabyte of memory, and cost about $100…)

Before they left the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin threw their boots, EVA backpacks, and garbage out the hatch and left it all on the Moon.

The Apollo 11 crew only spent 21 ½ hours on the Moon. The last Apollo mission, Apollo 17, would spend the longest time on the Moon, at just over three days.

NASA's Apollo 11 40th Anniversary page
Wikipedia's Apollo 11 page
Apollo 11 Fact Funs
More Fun Facts



Mankind is visited the Moon only six times, and each time only two men walked on its surface, and all that took place in three short years 40 years ago. We haven’t been back since. In total, in the entire history the world, 12 men have spent a total of 300 hours on the Moon. That is less than two weeks.

Maybe it’s a result of such early exposure to space travel, but I’ve always been nuts for outer space. The vast majority of my recreational reading is science fiction, and I’m talking the hard, technically oriented stuff. Honestly, growing up, I figured that there would be all sorts of space based industries by now. But all that we have is one itsy bitsy collection of components without a commercial application on board; about the equivalent of a dozen or so shipping containers held together of baling twine.

But 40 years ago, expectations were much, much higher. If you watched the television coverage or read the newspaper reports from the time, it’s easy to see that they expected us to have permanent settlements on Mars by now. Even with the turmoil and social unrest of the late sixties, there was a much higher level of optimism in the future then we see today.

The space shuttle, now almost 30 years old, is slated for retirement some time in 2010. And the Constellation program, with its Ares rockets and Orion crew vehicles, essentially updated 5-man Apollo-type capsules, which is the manned space vehicle that is supposed to replace the shuttle, now faces an uncertain future due to possible NASA budget cuts.

If NASA’s budget will allow it, the Constellation program plans on returning man to the Moon by the year 2020, 48 years since our last visit. Plans are then to establish a permanent base on the Moon, and push on to Mars.

So today as we look back it that achievement 40 years ago, and salute Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins, let’s see if we get our imaginations going about the future again.

What is Wrong with Most Science Fiction Films?

“Science really doesn't exist. Scientific beliefs are either proved wrong, or else they quickly become engineering. Everything else is untested speculation.”
—James P. Hogan

It really, really drove this squirrel nuts.

Our intrepid heroes are “on the other side of the galaxy” while listening to a battle on their handy-dandy “faster-than-light” radio. The Forces of Good are losing. Suddenly, unable to stand it anymore, the captain, in violation of the orders he has been given, takes his ship, at top speed, to Earth, where they arrive just in time to avert disaster.

So, what bugged me? Instantaneous interstellar communications? Well, maybe a little; but that’s not it. Faster-than-light travel? Nope, hard to have interstellar travel without some form of FTL (Faster-than-light) flight. What bugged me was the fact that they arrived back at Earth before the battle was over!

You see, their ship, while capable of speeds much faster than those allowed by Einstein’s theories, still had to travel at a finite speed. The battle would have been long over before they could have possibly arrived at the battlefield.

Think it through with me – The fastest boat in the world has a top speed of just over 300 miles-per-hour. Let’s say that you have that boat and are floating just off of the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, listening on your radio to a battle that is taking place in Tokyo Bay. It is 4784 miles from Seattle to Tokyo in a straight line, and that’s close enough for our purposes. In the fastest boat in the world, it will take you 16 hours to get to Tokyo, far too late to help (not that that sort of speed boat would have the range to make such a journey.)

I hear the question, “Ah, Squirrel, your thinking about this all wrong! Don’t think “boats,” think “airplanes!” Ok, I’ll play…

The fastest plane in the world is Lockheed’s SR-71, and it can fly at 2,200 mph. Not counting take-off, landing, and aerial refueling times, you could go from Seattle to Tokyo in 2 ¼ hours. Fast, but not fast enough. Again, the battle would be over before you could get there.

Nobody really expects absolute realism out of Hollywood. When it only takes Jack Bauer 12 minutes to get from Fontana to Glendale, we chuckle knowingly and enjoy the show. But we wouldn’t be so willing to suspend our disbelief if he took 20 minutes to drive from Barstow to Fresno! (I’ve been waiting for the season where Jack spends 2 whole hours stuck on the 405, trying to keep up with the action on his cell phone.)

“But, wait, Squirrel! 24 takes place in the ‘real world,’ you’re talking about Sci-Fi! It’s not supposed to be real!”

I beg your pardon! We’re talking about Science fiction. It’s supposed to be scientific! You know, science. [sci·ence (noun) – the study of the physical and natural world and phenomena, especially by using systematic observation and experiment - Encarta Dictionary On-line 2009] Science fiction is supposed to be scientifically plausible. Unfortunately, the film and television industries think all you need is a few ray-guns, robots, and rocket ships to make a good science fiction film. “Who needs good writing? Heck, a pretty girl, some wiz-bang special effects, a robot or two, and we’re on our way!”

Now, I know that some things are simply the dictates of the practicality of film making. Star Trek originally came up with the transporter device because it would have been cost-prohibitive to manufacture the special effects needed to show them landing and taking off every time they visited a planet. The vast majority of space ships in film and television also have artificial gravity, because it would be cost-prohibitive to film in the zero gravity of space. (And wire work just looks really cheesy – can anybody say Moonraker?) But none of that excuses sheer nonsense in writing.

(Science fiction books, in general, don’t seem to have this problem. Most (but, unfortunately, not all) people who write books expect that their audience is, at least, literate. But really good books can be turned into really bad movies – can anyone say Starship Troopers?)

This is more than just a pet peeve with me. I see it as a symptom of a much larger problem: the lack of critical thinking skills among people. I’ve seen this trend referred to as “the dumbing-down of America.” What’s “real” doesn’t matter anymore. In a word, it’s postmodernism, and it doesn’t affect science alone, but also history, economics, politics – indeed, every endeavor of mankind.

Since Biblical Christianity is a reasonable faith, people's lack of reasoning skills are a problem.

Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not defending modernism as a worldview. There is more truth than can be ascertained by scientific reason alone. And I’m not at all prepared to get into the religion of naturalistic materialism, which masquerades as science; at least, not today. But, dagnabit, films about science should be scientific!

I like science fiction. I like it a lot. I've been a space nut since I was a kid, and science fiction is probably at the top of the list for recreational reading material. There are good books and good films out there. And I'm willing to ignore pervasive materialism, blatant atheism, and ever-present evolutionary bias in an effort to enjoy a good story. But I've got a problem with pure irrationality.

So, Hollywood! If you want to make science fiction movies, can we go for a little more realism? Please?