bobwysiwyg

There was a custom built (think big $$$'s) color TV camera on the command module but only B/W made it to the surface on the Apollo 11 mission.

McBTC

Maybe Woodstock was a big deal at the time because thousands of young women were giving it up to long-haired dropouts with a Chevy van and a bag of weed. Most all of the artists were 10-years older than their audience and the entertainers loved a counter-culture that served to revitalize their careers. John Lennon was almost 10 years older than me when I graduated from H.S. and I'm nearly 70 now... that difference in age is about how long it takes to become a doctor, e.g., four years of undergraduate study, four years of medical school and a year or more in residency. For many, Lennon probably had more impact on a 17 or 18 year old H.S. graduate than a 28 year old medical doctor.

I-Like-To-Bike

Everything was custom built for big $$$'s on the Command Module, as well as the Lunar Excursion Module and Saturn Rocket.

rseeker

Wasn't there a problem with the video downlink from the lunar surface where what people saw broadcast was from pointing a TV camera at a screen showing the scene from the moon? Or was that just in a movie about the people running the dish in Australia?

About Woodstock, I'm sure the documentary (Scorsese edited) helped make it famous too. One of my fave movies.

bobwysiwyg

Gee, ya think?

genec

Only B/W was broadcast due to the bandwidth and power available. It was known as a "slow scan" signal. Consider the transmitter power available from the LEM and the distance the signal had to go. And bear in mind that electronics at that time was quite crude compared to your smartphone of today. The signal was then converted to a standard broadcast TV scan signal. The conversion also added "noise." That "conversion," may indeed have been a standard TV camera looking at the received signal on a NASA monitor. That arguably would be the easiest way to do it.

This was all "pre-microprocessor," the first microprocessor came out in 1971, as a 4 bit 4004 chip. Everything done for Apollo was based on individual IC gates... the "computer" that kept sending alarms during the luner descent was about the equivalent of a hand held calculator.

50 years ago. Think about that. Most home TVs used vacuum tubes at that point. My family only had a B&W TV.

spinnaker

Or it could have simply been about getting high, having sex and listening to rock music,

genec

Yeah, but doing so with about a "half a million" people and not blowing anyone up. There was surprisingly little violence, considering the lack of crowd control, and the utter chaos of the event. It was, in effect, a "magic moment."

bobwysiwyg

My apologies for a somewhat snarky reply, I hadn't had my coffee yet.

I was merely trying to focus on the color TV camera simply because the early, primitive color cameras were anchors weighing hundreds of pounds. The one developed for NASA for use in the command module weighed less than ten pounds! Can't recall if it was RCA or Westinghouse that had won the contract for it.

genec

I believe even the still photograph cameras were custom... and let's not forget the space pen. "writes at any angle..."

I-Like-To-Bike

Just like the Russian low tech 2 Ruble/10¢ space pencil.

spinnaker

The drugs and the sex made them mellow. No energy for anything else.

spinnaker

Take the pen!

genec

You know, I wondered why they didn't use a pencil... but then I thought about all the bits and dust that would result from trying to sharpen the darn things.

On the other hand, ordinary pencils work quite well underwater, writing on a simple "slate" of slightly sanded white PVC sheet. I had a pencil tied to my SCUBA diving "console" for decades. (I never used dive computers... just simple, mechanical gauges)

That made me think about SCUBA... which I have not done for about 15 years... I just read this on a SCUBA chat room...
When I taught SCUBA, (NAUI Instructor) not knowing how to work the tables was a "fail."

Oh yeah, this conversation is related to space... every Astronaut practiced for weightlessness, underwater. That's probably as close as I will get to "space."

genec

Yeah, sex makes me mellow too... glad I grew up pre 80's.

spinnaker

Just think of all of those fish you must have killed with your graphite dusts.



I would like to know in accidents increased with the dive computer. When I was diving we always used the tables and errored on the side of caution. The new dive computers push the limits and give you more bottom time. Not a good thing IMHO.

Stadjer

Like just having fun without any violence does need an explanation. Maybe back then and maybe Woodstock or the hippies in general have set the standards for music festivals, but they all still seem to be very friendly, even when they are more about beer than drugs and a lot of guys won't get any and they know it.

no motor?

Yes, that was on the BBC this morning. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-au...h-moon-landing

genec

I have a feeling that the companies making the things are liability cautious... and likely set the algorithms to be conservative.

I know when I taught, I expressed it like this: I never used a dive calculator as when they first came out, they (like my damn Nikonos) had a tendency to flood and fail. So I always used redundant other methods. A bottom timer and a watch, two depth gauges (one capillary) and I stayed situationally aware.

But I also tended to "push" things in my own diving. For instance, when I was teaching, I really did not a dive partner... I had 6 inexperienced students. When I dove for abalone, I would often take off my tank to get under rocks that I could be wedged into. And as an instructor, I often dove multiple times in the same day to take out different groups... and I myself used the tables like "a young healthy Navy diver." I was in my 30s when I did most of my teaching... and I have not been on SCUBA in the last 15 years, but I do continue to swim and free dive. (and yes, I know the dangers of shallow water blackout... just like I know the dangers of cycling on public roads... I still do it)

genec

I love that damn movie. I have a copy of it queued up right now. I did loads of satellite work back in the late 70 and 80s, and all that test equipment in the background at Parkes just brings back memories.

No, I wasn't a rocket scientist. I was a technician helping engineers do research. So I had a lot of hands on with that sort of old analog gear. Every now and then I see something for sale in one of the local "old equipment surplus shops," and I have HAM radio friends that have shacks full of the stuff.

bobwysiwyg

That may be the only technology still working after a apocalypse.

I-Like-To-Bike

The space pen did come through though, but not for its ability tom write at any angle
https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?d...&section_id=4#

"How a felt-tipped pen saved the Apollo 11 mission

Buzz Aldrin wasn't the first to McGuyver a solution to a difficult problem, but his use of a felt-tip pen to activate a broken circuit breaker to enable the Eagle to blast off from the moon surely ranks as one of the most dramatic.

As recounted in his book, Magnificent Desolation, Aldrin and his moon-walking companion Neil Armstrong were gathering themselves into the landing module to start the return home when he noticed something lying on the floor. It was a circuit breaker switch that had gotten bumped and had broken off in all the too-ing and fro-ing in the cramped environment.

As luck would have it, this wasn't just any old switch: it was the switch to the circuit breaker that activated the ascent engine that would lift them off the moon to rendezvous with Mike Collins, who was orbiting overhead in the Columbia. If they couldn't get that breaker pushed back in, they'd have to figure something else out, or there'd be no ascent.

They told mission control and then tried unsuccessfully to catch some sleep. The next morning, no solution was forthcoming so as Aldrin relates in his book:
Mike Collins donated his own felt pen to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum which he helped found.

Aldrin held on to his—and keeps it with the broken breaker switch."

no motor?

Hmm, that wasn't the clip I thought it was going to be. There was one online this morning that featured the son of one of the engineers who was small enough to grease up a bad bearing allowing the equipment to work then. And now I can't find it, do you know more about what I remember seeing this morning?

bobwysiwyg

Just curious, but with all the hoopla about the 50th anniversary, wow was here to see it , one of the photos I saw today was of the recovered astronauts waving to the press from quarantine inside what appears to be an Airstream on the USS Hornet. I wonder what became of that Airstream?

Edit: Never mind may have found the answer, "now on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center."

Zinger

I've always liked Tom Wolfe's account in film: "The Right Stuff". Though I'm one of Wolfe's readers I'm afraid I haven't read this one.