Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Apollo

Help me find a half-remembered Asimov quote!

LarryC — Sat, 11 May 2013 14:35:45 -0800

I can faintly remember once reading something by Isaac Asimov about the moon landing. He was making a point about the predictive power or lack thereof of science fiction. He wrote that of the dozens of hundreds of stories written pre-1969 about the first moon landing, not a single one featured the event being televised live back to earth. So where did he write this? Or was it someone else who made the point?

Lunar Modules and cellphones

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:34:09 -0800

1) How much memory did the Apollo Lunar Module (LM) have and 2) when was the first cellphone with the same amount of memory introduced to the public? 3) Where there any other publicly available products that had the same amount of memory? 4) If so, when were they introduced to the market? This may be a bit of a tricky question in terms defining what computer memory and the fact that that the Apollo Flight Guidance Computer (AGC) had two kinds of memory, fixed and erasable.

My understanding is that the software to run the LM was in the fixed type of memory on the craft. So I'm specifically looking for which cellphone had a similar amount of memory to run its OS. It may have had more for the user to store numbers or later photos, but I'm just interested in the amount of memory that would be needed to store the OS that ran the phone.

3..2..1.. Blog name!

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:18:51 -0800

What would be a good name for a blog/site about the Apollo space program? Specifically, the site would be covering the missions, technology, politics and people (designers, engineers, mission control and astronauts) of the program. It would be written as an adventure story in the sense of "hey, this is amazing and here is how this amazing thing came about, began and ended and here are the incredible people, technology and groups that made it happen."

But the blog needs a name and I'm stumped on that point. What do you suggest?

Was Wernher von Braun asked "How does it feel to be aiming rockets at the moon rather than London?"?

Coobeastie — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:57:07 -0800

I was told a possible apocryphal story by my father, that at a press conference about the Apollo missions a British reporter stood up and asked Wernher von Braun something like "How does it feel to be aiming rockets at the moon rather than London?", at which von Braun stormed out. Googling has failed me. Did this happen? If not, is there a likely source for it?

Which Apollo program documentary did I watch?

snorkels — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:13:58 -0800

Please help me identify a specific documentary regarding the Apollo program. Last summer, during the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, I saw a documentary regarding the Apollo program on TV. In one scene that I'd like to find again, landing parachutes swing back and forth in a shot looking up from the capsule. I think it's silent, but it might have music. I don't know which mission's landing is shown.

It wasn't In the Shadow of the Moon.

Apollo HD

run"monty — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 06:01:05 -0800

Where on the internets can I find HD raw footage of the Apollo programme? (for free) ...particularly footage of the LM leaving the CSM.

There's plenty of video around but it all seems to be low res, low quality tape transfer.

HOW IMAXED THE WATCHMEN IS

mwhybark — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:00:25 -0800

Has anyone seen both the IMAX and general-release versions of Watchmen? -> I'm trying to decide which version to see and searching Google for direct comparisons, clearly stating how the IMAX version differs from the large-release version, is, well, let's just say it's not something that runs like clockwork.

SPECIFICALLY:

was the IMAX version recomposited to fit the IMAX aspect ratio (a la Apollo 13 IMAX)?,

OR

was the film been treated more like the recent Dark Knight film?

The Dark Knight II Electric Boogaloo (or whatever the official title may be) was shown in the standard wide screen ratio until certain set-piece FX sequences were presented in the IMAX format and once the set-piece sequence was completed the film returned to the standard ratio.

Please to hope me, film geeks!

Help me see a web page that's blocked in the U.S.

Chinese Jet Pilot — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:46:42 -0800

May I trouble someone in the U.K. to search the BFI download page and store, and tell me if they offer Project Apollo: Manned Flight to the Moon for sale or download? The site doesn't permit access to those pages from the U.S. I'm not looking to commit some kind of international copyright conspiracy; I just really want to see that movie. I'll expand on this question by mentioning that the film's director, Ed Emshwiller, was a noted science fiction illustrator and experimental animator.

Question about D 'n A...

Squid Voltaire — Fri, 12 May 2006 11:16:08 -0800

Iconic Dionysus / Apollonian imagery (i.e., for a tattoo)? I'm looking for clean, nice iconography for Dionysus and / or Apollo, but I'm not having much luck. There are plenty of things that are associated with them (the lyre, wine, &c.) but nothing that seems iconic. If I showed you a perfect circle, for example, you might not say, "Oh, Apollo!" even if I explained that it represented the rising sun...

To put it another way, if you were a devotee of either of those fine fellows, what would you get tattooed on you arm?

Follow up question: There's crescent moon, the reversed swastika, and then Christ has both the cross (best logo evar!) and the fish (which is also nice). Is this sort of easily-recognizable branding a modern (within the last two thousand years) thing for organized relegion? Or have religious orders always had such symbols, but they've been lost in time? Was the Star of David intimately connected with Judaism three thousand years ago?

Where are the 'moon trees' located?

jwells — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 07:18:33 -0800

'Moon trees' were trees grown from seeds that orbited the moon onboard Apollo 14. Two trees were given to each US state to honor the bicentennial festivities in 1976 but no list of locations was kept. Now a NASA scientist is trying to track them down. I'd like to find one in Rhode Island but he's missing quite a few. Anyone know of one not on his list?

Why was the rocket to go to the moon so big? How do they get home?

scarabic — Tue, 18 May 2004 11:06:02 -0800

Something I've never understood. It takes a giant rocket to achieve escape velocity and leave the Earth. The Apollo mission made it all the way to the moon. But in all the pictures I've ever seen, the only thing they've got on the moon is a lander, a small capsule on legs. Where's the rocket they used to get off the moon? How did they get off the moon? I know the moon is much smaller and has almost no atmosphere, but is leaving it really as easy as firing a few booster rockets? Why is the rocket to leave the Earth so much bigger?