50 years

[Diddlybo]

I remember those days. My dad worked at NASA and GE in Huntsville, AL in the 50's and 60's when all this stuff was being developed. We used to spend summers in Cape Canaveral when he would be sent there for temporary duty. It was an exciting time and those astronauts were like rock stars in those days.

My dad wasn't an engineer, he was one of the guys who would build things the engineers would design. They would give him a schematic and he would build it. That came in handy when I started playing guitar, as he could fix pretty much anything that went wrong with my amps. My first amp was one he had originally built in the 50's to power his homemade stereo and he made it into a guitar amp for me. It was loud and CLEAN. He didn't understand distortion and why anyone would want an amp to distort. He built me a Deluxe Reverb about 10 years ago, which was my main gigging amps for quite awhile but its now retired to a life of leisure. So is he.

[fretless]

Super cool. Yeah they were. I think we as kids ate everything they called space food back then. Going down to the space center was bigger than Disney world. Everyone went for a visit back in the day.

[Tortuga]

Been to the space center every time I've gone to FLA... F the mouse. Space is where it's at.

[Tortuga]

50 years ago yesterday.... One of the final pre-flight press conferences. Crew was in quarantine, hence the 'bubble' they're seated in and the dude wearing the gas mask at the beginning

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFo8ZmLNKDg[/youtube]

[fretless]

[Tortuga]

Can't imagine a better place to project that

[IndyWS6]

I watched a CBS special last night that I had taped a few days ago. My GF's 25-year old daughter was there and she, quite literally, knew almost nothing about it. Neither did her husband. They are both teachers and bright people, so I was stunned. I get that it happened 50 years ago, but how is it possible that people their age know nothing about one of the most defining moments in U.S. and space/science history? She would make a comment that clearly showed she was hearing the details for the first time, so I felt compelled to fill-in the blanks and provide even more information. Then my GF would look at me like - "why do you know that". BECAUSE IT WAS THE MOST DEFINING MOMENT IN SPACE/SCIENCE HISTORY AND IT'S COOL AF. That's why!

I'd bet $1,000 she could tell you the name of every Kardashian/Jenner/West, though. Priorities, people. Christ

[BroSlinger]

It's too bad they didn't send a drone to drive the lander vehicle around to celebrate 50 years of American technology. After a battery replacement, you know that bitch will still work.

I could never be a skeptic, because my mother calculated the trajectory and wrote the computer program for it.

Tell us more Hommie . The women of NASA had to endure some serious high level top down BS every single day . They deserve a medal for putting up with that shit and opened the door for all women to follow .

My mom didn't work for NASA, she worked for GE.

My mom graduated from Stetson University about a year after JFK made his moon pledge, May of 1962. She had a degree in math. She took computer programming in college because she thought it would become important in the future. She figured that there would be a lot of hiring in the Cape Canaveral area, so she got an apartment there and planned to walk in and try to interview at NASA and some of the big contractors. I don't know if her interview at GE was a walk-in, but I do know that she was hired in her first interview as she knew the programming language they were using.

GE had been involved in the feasibility studies pretty much from the outset of the Apollo program. Originally the mission was going to be unmanned. GE's job was to double check NASA's numbers, write the computer program and get that to work on the computer which GE made. I'm not sure exactly how many people were involved in the programming at GE, but it wasn't that many. My mom told me that they wrote the trajectory program on punch cards. She hated the punch cards because every time she would walk them over to the compiler she was worried that she would drop them and they would wind up out of order.

I asked her about flying through the Van Allen belt. She said that the plan was for the rocket to be going as fast as possible and for it to go through the belt at a time and angle where it was less expansive. The trajectory also involved a point when the moon was close on its elliptical orbit.

My mom married my father and moved to Texas in 1968, about a year before Apollo 11 launched. She planned to interview at NASA in Houston, but she got pregnant with my brother and my dad got a job with Texaco, so she put it on hold. I don't know too much else. I could ask her more.

Did she ever work in Fort Wayne, IN? We have a huge GE facility here.

[Ry Manchu]

No. Neither of my parents ever worked in Indiana. Both of my dad's brothers worked for GE. My dad's older brother worked in Charlottesville and Schenectady. My dad's younger brother worked in Hartford. He was laid off 1 year short of his pension.

[***1776***]

Some cool stories Rymanchu

I watched a documentary just a couple days ago (about 45 mins of it) and it was VERY INTERESTING. The black and white videos are just epic to watch and then I saw clips of Nixon, Kennedy, Kruschev, etc, etc - They spoke about the training and process of picking the contenders and a black guy who was picked but didn't make the original team (he was very gracious) etc etc

Then they picked the Houston area because of a Texas congressman who was Kennedys buddy and had a lot of influence in the space program, etc, etc

VERY INTERESTING overall, I wish I saw the whole thing

[fretless]

Raises glass

[MikeO]

Even OJ was involved in this

Awesome screen grab from Capricorn One, which ironically was the source of some of the conspiracy theories that nut jobs subscribe to.

[Zozobra]

It was also the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots last month, which I'd also argue was an exceptionally important moment in our collective history.