Captain Al - 03 January 2006 12:15 AM

It’s hard to talk about Australians without mentioning beer.

You obviously don’t talk about the non-beer-drinking Australians, then!

I’ve always believed they had landed,BUT,FOX really had changed my mind to some degree.
What about the ODDs.
7 missions without any casualties.Give me a break!
I am not convinced.
On the the other hand,when they came back safe and sound,
some of them died in all kind of accidents.
Don’t know what to think.Confused!

And I also have a problem,with pres.J.Kennedy’s plan"to send man to the Moon by the end of the 60-s”.
What are the ODDs,that it actually would had come true right on the target in 1969.
I am talking about the ODDs only here.
Russians didn’t have technology those days to prove anything in deep Space this way or another.

“Why didn’t Russia even bother to land a cosmonaut on the Moon after the
Americans beat them to it??? Many people would say that its because it was too
late, but if you want to look at it like that, why didn’t this apply to NASA
when
the Russians beat America in putting the first satellite, animal, man, woman
and space station into orbit? Russia would not have thrown in the towel just
because America had beaten them at one single thing in Space!”

http://www.maar.us/nasa_mooned_us.html

I have to add to the list also the “first spacewalk”.

But I guess soon we all will know the truth.Was it really possible?:

http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/379/16686_moon.html

And more:

http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/377/15876_tourism.html

Has anybody found my comments helpful?

Seven missions without a casualty?  Tell that to Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.  Granted they weren’t actually in space, but they were killed in the Apollo 1 fire.  To say that it’s impossible because nobody died in space is ludicrous.  Astronauts were pilots first, and often test pilots.  Even after traveling in space, they still tended to enjoy this or other risky behavior.  They weren’t timid people, after all, and so they tended to die in accidents.  I’m not sure if their death rate at a younger age was appreciably higher than the average though, but I tend to doubt it.

As for getting to the moon just at the tail end of 1969, it didn’t just work out that way.  There were tens of thousands of people working their asses off to get it done before 1970.  It was a deadline that everyone desperately wanted to make, and the fact that they did it is a testament to all of their determinations.

As for why the Russians didn’t do it, there’s a big difference between reaching space and landing on the moon.  The cost of landing on the moon was many, many factors higher than getting a man inTO space.  Russia just couldn’t justify the expense if there was nothing to be gained from it politically.  Even America only did it for the prestige, there was nothing else to be gained from it. 

Russians didn

Smerk - 03 January 2006 08:49 AM

Captain Al - 03 January 2006 12:15 AM

It’s hard to talk about Australians without mentioning beer.

You obviously don’t talk about the non-beer-drinking Australians, then!

There are Australians who don’t drink beer? 

Captain Al - 03 January 2006 04:47 PM

Smerk - 03 January 2006 08:49 AM

Captain Al - 03 January 2006 12:15 AM

It’s hard to talk about Australians without mentioning beer.

You obviously don’t talk about the non-beer-drinking Australians, then!

There are Australians who don’t drink beer?

The dead ones don’t, or so I’ve heard.

Ray Bradbury.

“What are the ODDs,that it actually would had come true right on the target in 1969.”

BlackHole,

What’s so odd about that? I’m sure JFK had his science and engineering people do a lot of work on the feasibility of a moon landing before making that historic challenge. After the announcement, it was just a matter of executing a carefully laid out plan (and having a blank check from Congress). In fact, if it wasn’t for the Apollo 1 tradgedy they probably would have accomplished it two years early.

As for those astronauts who died after returning, like Chary said, the lifestyle of fighter pilots and test pilots gives them a good chance of dying young and in unusual ways. Some died in jet crashes (surprise!), car and motorcycle accidents, the same as the ones who never flew in space or were in training. I heard a statistic, which I haven’t been able to confirm, that claims, of all military pilots who are in the service for 20 years or more, 25% are killed. And that doesn’t include wartime. It’s a dangerous business.

I’m guessing you were born after the Apollo missions. For those of us that were around, it was an exciting time. Sorry you missed it.