One small step for man...

Toxick

Toxick

Splat
In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, [they've] added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing.


http://moon.google.com/


Bonus fun: Zoom all the way in.
 
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bennydafig

Guest
My HERO, my mentor, was on Apollo 14, and he's passed away in the last couple of years, and yet other then a picture in the officers club. NOTHING on base to memorialize his accomplshments.

Freedom 7, Apollo 14 Alan Shepard Jr.
 
Tonio

Tonio

Asperger's Poster Child
bennydafig said:
My HERO, my mentor, was on Apollo 14, and he's passed away in the last couple of years, and yet other then a picture in the officers club. NOTHING on base to memorialize his accomplshments.

Freedom 7, Apollo 14 Alan Shepard Jr.
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Some of the streets on the base are named for the astronauts who went through the Test Pilot School. But you're right, there needs to be a more visible tribute to them. How about statues or displays at the new Naval Air Museum when it's built?
 
Toxick

Toxick

Splat
I'm not sure but I've heard that there's 3D terrain data for the moon, and some lo-res 3d terrain for Mars. I don't know if anyone's familiar with Google Earth or Blue Marble, but I think that Moon based or Mars based databases like those would be the coolest thing ever.
 
itsbob

itsbob

I bowl overhand
Tonio said:
Some of the streets on the base are named for the astronauts who went through the Test Pilot School. But you're right, there needs to be a more visible tribute to them. How about statues or displays at the new Naval Air Museum when it's built?
Click to expand...
Agreed, the NTPS has had a HUGE impact on the space program, and I especially think they should recognize the original TPS grads from the Mercury program.. heroes in every sense of the word, when they volunteered they didn't even know if a human body could survive space flight or even if it would implode on re-entry into a cool red mist inside the capsule.
 
vraiblonde

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
Space is cool. That's why I never go to the Hubble site anymore - because I can spend countless hours in there, reading articles and watching videos.
 
jazz lady

jazz lady

~*~ Rara Avis ~*~
PREMO Member
vraiblonde said:
Space is cool. That's why I never go to the Hubble site anymore - because I can spend countless hours in there, reading articles and watching videos.
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:yeahthat: I completely lose track of time when I go there or NASA's site.

I used to be a junkie of the Smithsonians, especially the Air & Space Museum. It's all so very, very fascinating to me. :nerd:
 
Toxick

Toxick

Splat
tomchamp said:
I myself believe that we did, but there are the sceptics. Like that TV show about how it was all a hoax!
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Didn't we leave some junk on the moon? Flags, footprints, et al.

Surely we have telescopes powerful enough to look at those from here. I live right near Kitt Peak... I'll pop on over an take a look. I'll let you all know what I find out.
 
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tomchamp

New Member
You didn't scroll down very far on that first link! If you read any of it!

7) Why doesn't the Hubble Space Telescope provide proof?

This argument runs along the lines that as the HST can provide images of galaxies millions of light years away, why can't it provide images of a lander on the Moon, which is on our door step?

Bit of a funny question really, anyone with normal eyesight can see the Andromeda Spiral Galaxy easily with the naked eye, and that's over 2 million light years away, yet cannot see a lander on the Moon! As an amateur astronomer of some 40 years standing I have always understood why the HST could not provide images of the lunar landers on the surface of the Moon, but to get the correct figures I checked out the HST site at Hubble Space Telescope Its all down to the size of Hubble's main mirror, which is 2.4 metres. One of the factors of the worth of a telescope is its resolution, the smallest amount of detail it can see, and this depends on the size and quality of the mirror. Hubble's resolution is an amazing 0.048 arc seconds. This is how I calculate the minimum size object that HST can image on the Moon, in as simple a way as I could devise.

HST resolution = 0.048 arc seconds (formula for this is 116 divided by aperture in mm. = 116 divided by 2400)

Visual maximum diameter of full Moon = 31'40" = 1900 arc seconds (a fraction over 1/2 a degree)

Therefore HST can resolve an object on the Moon of (1900 divided by 0.048 ) = 1/39,583 of the Moon's diameter

Actual diameter of Moon = 3476 km

Therefore resolvable object size = 3476 km divided by 39,583 = 87 metres

As the landers are only around 9 metres across it is not possible for the HST to resolve them, they just wouldn't show up on any image of the area under examination. I emailed the HST site to make sure I had got my sums right, explaining why I needed it for this site, and their reply was as follows:
(et cetera)
 
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