Apollo 11 moonwalk...enhanced film

Apollo 11 Moon Walk

1969

I don't think it will make much difference for the conspiracy theorists.

Release 69-36

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CLEVELAND, Ohio, July 14 -- The Apollo program has been described at various times by astronauts, engineers, space agency officials and newspaper editorials as a magnificent "team effort." Indeed, the team which is accomplishing this complex program to explore the Moon comprises hundreds of thousands of government and contractor employees throughout the nation.

One member of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration team, the Lewis Research Center, provided important early research as well as subsequent direct technical support to the Apollo program.

The Center's contributions included:

* Pioneer research in rocket tests with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen systems;
* Engineering studies of tanks, lines, and liquefiers for liquid hydrogen;
* Wind tunnel tests of Saturn vehicles and of the Launch Escape Subsystem;
* Studies in the Zero Gravity Research Facility for settling propellants in fuel tanks;
* Technical consultation and advice in such areas as safety, fuel cell performance, rocket engine combustion, propellant pump design and thrust chamber fabrication.

Among the shapers of history in the early years of the space program was Lewis' present Director, Dr. Abe Silverstein. In 1958, when he was Associate Director of Lewis, Dr. Silverstein was called to Washington to help organize NASA, which was, as the Successor of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), to be the nation's civilian agency for meeting the challenge of space.

Within the new agency, Dr. Silverstein was appointed the Headquarters Director of Space Flight Programs with responsibility for developing and initiating all space missions. Many of those missions are going on today, others such as Ranger and Mercury have ended.

Among the many missions conceived at that time was a manned journey to the Moon and back. Dr. Silverstein himself named it "Apollo" after one of the most versatile of the Greek gods. Dr. Silverstein recalls he chose the name after perusing a book of mythology at home one evening, early in 1960. He thought that the image of "Apollo riding his chariot across the Sun was appropriate to the grand scale of the proposed program."

When did the program originate? The idea of a lunar mission was first officially introduced at a meeting of NASA program planners in Nov. 1959 at Wallops Island, Va. However between that time and President John F. Kennedy's historic space commitment of 1961, much of the basic mission remained to be worked out. During this time Dr. Silverstein chaired the committee that determined the characteristics of the Saturn family of launch vehicles, including the use of liquid hydrogen-oxygen propellants.

Long before Apollo was ever planned or named, the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland was advancing the propulsion technology which would help make the mission possible.

As early as the latter part of the 1940's, Lewis had begun research on high energy liquid and solid propellants under the direction of Dr. Walter T. Olson, now an Assistant Director of Lewis, and by 1952 this work included studies of liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen.

Initial Lewis investigations used very small thrust chambers in the range 100 to 1000 lbs. thrust. Over the course of the next decade, rocket engineers and scientists experimented with a variety of thrust chamber designs to achieve high combustion efficiency and smooth burning; and they measured heat transfer rates within the thrust chamber and demonstrated how to cool the chamber and nozzle with liquid hydrogen. Since hydrogen, the lightest of the elements, in its liquid state boils at -423 deg F, and the oxidizer, liquid oxygen, is stored at -29 deg F, another major concern was how to handle the cryogenic propellants themselves.

By 1958, as the United States entered the space business the Lewis Research Center had tested a fully cooled, liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen thrust chamber at the, then large scale of 20,000 lbs. thrust.

The experience Lewis propulsion experts gained in the field of high energy propellants later led to the development of the 15,000 lb. liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engine designated RL-10. Two of these engines power the upper stage of the Atlas-Centaur launch vehicle that has been under Lewis management since 1962. (Atlas-Centaur launched the Surveyor spacecraft that landed on the moon, and the Mariner space craft that will fly by Mars on July 31 and Aug. 5.

Much of the same technology developed by Lewis for Centaur was particularly applicable to the J-2 liquid hydrogen-oxygen engines of the Saturn second stage (S-II).

Consequently, a number of Lewis staff members -- men by then well experienced in high energy propulsion systems -- were called upon by NASA Headquarters to serve on the technical assessment teams which recommended the contractor to build the F-l and J-2 engines. Dr. Silverstein chaired the Source Board which made the final selection of the F-l contractor. Work began on the F-l engine, the nation's largest, in 1958 and on the J-2 in 1960.

During the course of development of these engines, Lewis continued its technical support in the form of consultation with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. Melvin Hartmann and Ambrose Ginsburg, Lewis fluid systems engineers, served on a Marshall committee to review problems being experienced by the F-l turbopump. These and other specialists served as consultants on a J-2 review committee. Among the topics discussed and of particular interest to the Lewis men was the inducer, that component which draws the boiling cold hydrogen into the pumps. Previous research conducted on this component at Lewis' Plum Brook Station near Sandusky, O., helped verify data of the Marshall Center that showed the inducers would permit a desired low pressure in the fuel tank.

Lewis also assisted a Marshall task group in achieving combustion stability in the F-l engine. Dr. Richard Priem, experienced in advanced rocket combustion, was one of this group studying the "rocket screaming", a phenomenon caused by strong resonant pressure waves and which can destroy a rocket engine in seconds. One other area of consultation with Marshall during the F-1 develop- ment was on fabrication of the thrust chamber. Walter Russell, a fabrication specialist served on the committee to review the materials and processes for the fabrication of the furnace-brazed thrust chamber and its jacket.

Staff members also lent their technical knowledge to other areas of the Apollo propulsion systems. Early studies were conducted at Lewis on the type of storable propellants to be carried on the upper stage of the Saturn V vehicle and on the spacecraft.

The Center's unique Zero-Gravity Facility was called upon to do two jobs for the Apollo program. In mid-1960, engineers used this facility to help solve the problem of problem of re- starting the Service Module's propulsion system in space. Using surface tension phenomena observed during these studies, Lewis engineers assisted in designing a retainer for the propellant in the fuel tank. This retainer would keep enough propellant at the bottom of the tank to ensure that propellant would enter the pump and re-start the engine.

The Zero-Gravity Facility was used to help solve a similar problem in the S-IVB third stage of the Saturn V for the Marshall Center. In flight when the S-IVB engine shuts down, auxiliary hydrogen-peroxide thrusters are turned on to settle the sloshing propellants. During the coast phase the propellants are maintained in the bottom of the fuel tank by the thrust obtained when boiled off hydrogen gas is ducted through a small thruster system. Studies in the Zero- G Facility were able to determine the proper size of these various thrusters.

One of the astronaut's concerns about how weightlessness in space might affect fuel cell performance drew helpful information from Lewis too. Fuel cells are carried aboard the Service Module to provide electric power to spacecraft systems. Consequently, Lewis researchers investigated this area and made known to the Manned Spacecraft Center that the condenser of the fuel cell did not depend on gravity to operate properly. Lewis also was asked by MSC to determine the heat transfer characteristics of the condenser; this information was used in a computer simulation of the spacecraft's electrical power subsystem.

During 1967 Lewis engineers were consulting on the overall combustion and system stability of the Lunar module ascent engine, the critical propulsion system for the Ascent Stage which returns the astronauts from the moon to lunar orbit. John Wanhainen, a chemical rocket expert, was part of a task group to overcome the high frequency combustion instability noted in the engine. Two other engineers, Robert Dorsch and Leon Wenzel, ran analog computer analyses of low frequency combustion instability characteristics.

The Center's 8 x 6-foot transonic and 10 x 10-foot supersonic wind tunnels were used in extensive tests on models of Saturn booster stages.

The first such tests were made in the late 1950's when engineers studied base flow and heating tests on the SIB booster, the eight-engine first stage of the Saturn I. The 1/45th scale model had real, working rocket engines of 250 lbs. thrust each. Data were taken over a range of speeds from takeoff to Mach 3.5 and of altitudes from sea level to 150,000 feet. This simulation of actual flight conditions provided valuable information on the pressure and heat loads experienced on the base and engines' compartment of the SI vehicle. By varying the size and location of flow deflectors and shroud air scoops-- devices to channel the air to best advantage--engineers were able to minimize the pressure and heating loads. Another study on the SI helped optimize vehicle flight stability and air pressure distribution.

In the 1964-1966 period base flow and heating also were studied in both wind tunnels for the SI C first stage of the Saturn V. Also, the force required to move the engine nozzles for directional control had to be measured. These measurements helped determine the size of the actuators required to gimbal the engines. In all manned missions, safety of the public, the astronauts, and the operating crew, is a major concern to the NASA. In case a mission must be terminated early, one of the first options the astronauts have is to employ the Launch Escape Vehicle and Tower which stands atop the Command Module. This escape system propels the Command Module out and away from the Saturn V. During 1964 tests were made on the system in the Lewis Research Center's 8 x 6 tunnel at the request of the Manned Spacecraft Center. In the tunnel, a model of the escape system attached to the Command Module was released at various angles to determine its stability under simulated flight conditions.

Safety was the subject that brought I. Irving Pinkel, now Lewis' Assistant Director for Aerospace Safety, to serve as a consultant to the Apollo 204 Review Board. In that capacity and as a member of the team which investigated the causes of the spacecraft fire which took the lives of three astronauts early in 1967, Pinkel helped to recommend changes in the capsule to prevent a future tragedy.

Through extensive consulting on fracture mechanics, Lewis professionals have assisted in improving both the more than 140 pressure vessels of the Saturn V, and the SII fuel tank. Particular contributions by Lewis materials scientists to the construction of pressure vessels included improved test methods, and methods of design and analyses used on new concepts in fracture mechanics technology. Other materials scientists and engineers provided fracture research data on the critical weldments of the SII fuel and on the tank material itself; they also recommended cryogenic proof tests, and suggested flight conditions to reduce wind loads on the vehicle.

Thus, Lewis scientists and engineers, like thousands of others who have served the Apollo team, have their hopes riding high with Apollo 11.

-end-

AND...

PRESS RELEASE

Date Released: Monday, July 13, 2009

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a media briefing at 11 a.m. EDT on Thursday, July 16, at the Newseum in Washington to release greatly improved video imagery from the July 1969 live broadcast of the Apollo 11 moonwalk.

The release will feature 15 key moments from Neil Armstrong's and Buzz Aldrin's historic moonwalk using what is believed to be the best available broadcast-format copies of the lunar excursion, some of which had been locked away for nearly 40 years. The initial video released Thursday is part of a comprehensive Apollo 11 moonwalk restoration project expected to be completed by the fall.

The Newseum is located at 555 Pennsylvania
Ave. N.W. The news conference will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's Internet homepage.

Participants in the briefing will be:

-- Richard Nafzger, team lead and Goddard engineer
-- Stan Lebar, former Westinghouse Electric program manager
-- Mike Inchalik, president of Lowry Digital, Burbank, Calif.

For NASA TV downlink information, schedule information and streaming video, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

The Newseum is a 250,000-square-foot museum of news. The exterior's unique architectural features include a 74-foot-high marble engraving of the First Amendment and an immense front wall of glass through which passers-by can watch the museum fulfilling its mission of providing a forum where the media and the public can gain a better understanding of each other. More information about the Newseum is available online at: http://www.newseum.org

Dust jackets

I suppose that anything is subject to collecting. I was directed to a website displaying thousands of dust jackets [ book covers] for sale...no books...just the covers. Here are some samples.

ACS chemistry journals...no longer in print

I am not so sure that this is a good idea.

"Chemistry Journals Go Digital-Only"

by

Josh Fischman

July 10th, 2009

The Chronicle of Higher Education

The American Chemical Society, which publishes several dozen academic journals, is moving to end print editions and produce journals only online. The move was noted by the journal Nature in late June after someone sent it a copy of a memo from a chemical-society official, but unfortunately you can’t read the complete report unless you pay a fee to subscribe or buy one-time access.

And that's precisely the issue—making money online, and losing it in print—that drove the chemistry society's decision, according to a recent story in Ars Technica.... The Web site notes that the journal publisher said, in the memo, that "printing and distribution costs now exceed revenues from print journals." Plus, scientists seem happier reading online, the society thinks. So this summer, all but three of its journals will become digital-only. No word on whether the society will pass on to subscribers the savings it realizes from buying less paper and fewer stamps. But don't hold your breath.

Deceased--Samuel M. Genensky

Samuel M. Genensky
July 26th, 1927 to June 26th, 2009

"Samuel M. Genensky dies at 81; mathematician invented tools for the near-blind"

by

Elaine Woo

July 12th, 2009

Los Angeles Times

Samuel M. Genensky, a former Rand Corp. mathematician and inventor whose near-blindness led him to help others cope with limited eyesight and become more self-sufficient, died June 26 at his Santa Monica home. He was 81.

The cause was complications of heart disease, said LaDonna Ringering, president and chief executive of the Center for the Partially Sighted, a West Los Angeles facility that Genensky founded in 1978.

Genensky was best known for developing a kind of closed-circuit television that became the prototype for the video magnifiers sold around the world today that enable people with severe visual impairments to read books, magazines and other conventionally printed materials.

"Sam is universally known as a pioneer of assisted technology for people with partial vision," said Tony R. Candela, a deputy director in the California Department of Rehabilitation who oversees services for the blind and deaf. Genensky's magnification machine "ended up revolutionizing the ability of people with partial vision to read printed material," Candela said.

The positive reaction to the invention persuaded Genensky to become an advocate for the partially sighted, who number about 14 million in the United States.

"When the partially blind went out in the world, they found that they either got no services at all or services that were appropriate for people who were totally blind," Genensky told an interviewer this year. "Neither of these alternatives made much sense to me."

Genensky, who was born in New Bedford, Mass., on July 26, 1927, was determined not to be treated as a blind person, even though he met the legal definition. His eyes were burned shortly after birth when a delivery-room nurse accidentally administered the wrong eyedrops to guard against infection. No sight remained in his left eye and he had only 20/1000 vision in his right eye.

Hardworking and exceptionally bright, he completed the first eight years of school in seven years. After elementary school, he was sent to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Watertown, Mass., where he refused to use Braille even though he knew it. He preferred to use what little sight he had, even if it meant holding a book up to his nose.

Frustrated by teachers' demands that he "act like a well-behaved blind child," he left Perkins for a regular public high school in New Bedford. To keep up with his normal-sighted peers, he took his father's World War I-era binoculars to geometry class one day and was delighted to discover that he could see what the teacher was drawing on the board.

With the help of a doctor, he added another lens to one side of the binoculars, essentially creating a bifocal system that allowed him to read the blackboard in the distance as well as the book on his desk. He began to earn A's.

This contraption, though cumbersome, worked well enough to get Genensky through high school, as well as four years at Brown University, where he graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in physics in 1949. He earned a master's in pure mathematics from Harvard in 1951 and a doctorate in applied mathematics from Brown in 1958.

In the late 1950s, not long after joining Rand, a colleague, Paul Baran, noticed how Genensky had to work slumped over his drawing board with his nose to the paper. Baran suggested that there had to be a way to improve the mathematician's ability to see.

With Baran and other scientist and engineer friends, Genensky hooked up a closed-circuit TV with a camera. It not only magnified the type on a page but had controls for brightness and contrast. Genensky didn't have to slump over his desk anymore.

When the device was publicized as "Sam Genensky's Marvelous Seeing Machine" in a 1971 issue of Reader's Digest, the Rand mathematician was flooded with thousands of requests a week from partially sighted people who wanted to try it. Many of them said the magnifying machine enabled them to read printed matter for the first time. "I couldn't turn my back on them," he said in 1994, recalling his decision to devote himself to working for the partially blind.

Another innovation from Genensky's two decades at Rand sprang from his experiences looking for the bathroom. The signs marking Rand's restrooms were too small for him to read unless he put his face right up to the door. All too often he was peering at the wrong door when it opened and a startled woman came out.

When a Rand guard asked why he was smelling restroom doors, Genensky knew he had to find a solution to the dilemma.

"He's the guy responsible for the triangle and circle," Baran said, referring to the widely adopted system of a triangle-shaped sign to identify the men's room and a circle-shaped one for the women's room. Genensky's brainstorm eventually became the standard for marking public restrooms in California, years before similar federal requirements were introduced in the 1990s.

In 1993, when fragments of scar tissue began to cloud his "good" right eye, Genensky underwent a cornea transplant, as well as cataract removal and pupil reshaping. When the bandages were removed, a new world opened, especially in his perception of color. For instance, he saw that his wife was a redhead, not a brunet as he had thought.

The visual improvements lasted for more than a decade, until other age-related health issues rendered him completely blind.

Genensky is survived by his second wife, Nancy Cronig; daughters Marsha and Judy; stepchildren Andrea Cronig Mindell, Mitchell Cronig and Adam Cronig; and four grandchildren.

"T-Minus: The Race to the Moon"...new book

T-Minus: The Race to the Moon

by

Jim Ottaviani

Illustrated by

Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon

ISBN-10: 1416949607
ISBN-13: 978-1416949602

"From Laika to the Lunar Module"

by

Jack Shafer

July12th, 2009

The New York Times

The early space race was really a chase, with the United States trailing its superpower rival — the So­-viet Union — badly. The Soviets took a strong lead by tossing Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit in 1957 and smacking the moon in the face with the Luna 2 probe in 1959. Although the United States launched its first Earth satellite in 1958, its less powerful rockets had a tendency to detonate on the launch pad like short-fused bombs or break up after takeoff and sizzle like Fourth of July fireworks, or veer off course.

"T-Minus: The Race to the Moon," a graphic novel written by Jim Ottaviani, tells the story of America’s come-from-behind victory in the space race's main event — a manned moon landing. Ottaviani takes minimal liberties with the actual events to compress the great race into 124 pages: he deftly reimagines and expands the roles played by a few real-life aerospace engineers and contractors and imagines plausible dialogue for places where the historical record is ­incomplete.

The illustrations by Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon (no relation) capture both the inky vastness of space and the glory of the big flying machines, but the book's primary subject is human emotions, not rockets or the heavens. Again and again, "T-Minus" — rocketeer lingo for time until takeoff — relies on close-ups to dramatize the life work of rocket visionaries from both nations' space programs, like Robert Goddard, Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev. It's about time the people who designed and built the spacecraft got top billing over the flyboys.

The Soviet Union's first firsts were followed by still more: first to put a live animal into orbit (Laika the space dog in 1958); first to put a man into orbit (1961); first to put a woman into orbit (1963); first to conduct a space walk (1965). By the mid-1960s the Soviets owned all of the space endurance flight records, too.

The gap between the two programs seemed to widen in 1967 after Gus Grissom and his two crew mates died in a fire during a launch-pad practice session of their Apollo 1 capsule. NASA, which ran the space program, suspended Apollo flights while it made the craft safer, and President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing on the moon by the end of the 1960s appeared unreachable. But then the Soviets stumbled. Korolev, a top rocket designer, died unexpectedly during surgery in 1966, and the Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed during the emergency landing of the Soyuz 1. These events helped to sidetrack the Soviet program and create an opening for the Americans.

A series of successful Apollo missions in the late 1960s restored confidence at NASA and provided the steppingstones for an American moon landing. Just before Christmas 1968, in a preview of what was to come, the re-engineered Apollo 8 left Earth’s gravity and orbited the moon. "T-Minus" treats this flight to as many pages as the moon landing mission itself. In March 1969, Apollo 9 practiced docking with the lunar landing vehicle in Earth orbit; two months later Apollo 10 did the same in moon orbit; and on July 20, 1969 — 40 years ago — Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon at Tranquillity Base while Michael Collins orbited above in the mother ship that would ferry them back home.

"T-Minus" captures the optimism and courage of both countries' space pioneers, making it an ideal entry point for new readers intrigued by the topic. Space know-it-alls will learn something, too. Who knew that the Apollo’s Saturn V launcher was delivered from Huntsville, Ala., to its Florida launch pad by barge?

This is a well-researched book. In its constellation of useful facts, dates and figures, I found just one error: it wrongly states that John Glenn's Friendship 7 orbited the Earth in 1961. As the authors know, Glenn's flight came in 1962.

Elements and accelerators

The following article is quite interesting in discussing the most important elements used to make an atomic accelerator function.

"deconstruction: periodic table"

by

Kristine Crane

July 9th, 2009

Symmetry

Look at the periodic table of elements, and you’d be hard pressed to find an element that is not used in physics. But what are the most important elements for building accelerators, detecting particles, and solving the mysteries of the universe? The search for answers takes us on a winding journey that includes ancient shipwrecks, trendy earrings, and the sound of dark matter. symmetry intern Kristine Crane asks Fermilab physicists about the elements they could not live without.

Left to right: superconducting cavities made of niobium; germanium crystal of the CDMS experiment; ATLAS silicon detector.

[Click the charts to enlarge for better reading.]

Rapamycin and longevity

Methuselah

Juan Ponce de León's dream in medications? I guess this quest will never go away. The ethics still remain though.

"Longevity pill on the horizon?"

by

Leila Gray

July 10th, 2009

University of Washington

UW scientists Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, assistant professor of pathology, and Dr. Brian Kennedy, associate professor of biochemistry, study factors that control aging. They were asked by Nature to write a commentary on a paper published in the July 9 issue showing that dietary supplementation with rapamycin increases the life span of mice. They observed that, until recently, compounds that slow the hands of time were in the realm of science fiction, but with this finding may be closer to reality.

"The possibility that such compounds might exist, and might perhaps even be within reach," they wrote, "has gained scientific credibility."

Their News & Views editorial, "Ageing: A Mid-Life Longevity Drug?" noted that the study, co-led by Dr. David Harrison at the Jackson Laboratories in Maine, Dr. Richard Miller at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Randy Strong at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, used a specially formulated, time-release rapamycin supplement in their laboratory mouse chow. Interestingly, the mice were not exposed to rapamycin in the diet until they were middle-aged, or, as the study reported, "roughly the equivalent of a 60-year-old person." Even so, the drug had a profound effect on lifespan.

Rapamycin was originally discovered in soil samples on Easter Island (Rapa Nui), famous for its towering, long-faced, stone Moai statues. Rapamycin already has a clinical role in reducing rejection of transplanted organs, in treating advanced kidney cancer, and in preventing narrowing of the heart's arteries after corrective surgery.

The study of rapamycin's longevity effects was part of the National Institute on Aging Interventions Testing Program. It accepts nominations for compounds from members of the scientific community, and selects the most promising to undergo parallel testing at three different institutions. Several compounds have been tested, but rapamycin is the first to significantly increase lifespan at all three centers in both male and female mice.

Rapamycin, which Kaeberlein, Kennedy and Dr. Stanley Fields, professor of genome sciences, had previously shown increases life span in yeast, is know to inhibit an enzyme called TOR. TOR activity is regulated by nutrient availability. Prior work by these UW scientists indicated that reducing TOR activity is central to how dietary restriction slows aging in yeast. Dietary restriction has long been known to slow aging in mice and to protect animals against age-related disorders like cancer, obesity, and heart disease. In the commentary, the authors suggest that the possibility that rapamycin is mimicking the effects of dietary restriction in mice merits further study.

The commentators also warn that healthy people shouldn't take rapamycin to slow aging because it can suppress the immune system. However, they don't rule out the possibility that rapamycin -- or more sophisticated interventions to reduce TOR activity -- might someday prove useful against age-related diseases. They also speculate that drug strategies might be discovered in the relatively near future to provide similar disease-fighting and longevity benefits without unwanted side effects.

The authors concluded: "Although extending human lifespan with a pill remains the purview of science fiction for now, the results of the study by Harrison and his colleagues provide reason for optimism that, even during middle age, there's still time to change the road you're on."


Longevity...why?