John Glenn has died
dispatch.com
dispatch.com
I was lucky enough to meet John Glenn on 3 separate occasions.
The first time, I discussed Plutonium 238 and my worries for satellite power given decommissioning of mission critical battery fodder for satellites on earth.
The second time, the viability of a colorblind astronaut.(I have deuteranopia and he explained to me the structure of the consoles and the switching costs of changing out colors and the follow on risk/reward of color confusion).
The third time, how we could keep more funding for NASA scale projects without having to keep offices in 50 different states for political pressure. He said he could go on for hours about this.
All 3 times, he was sharp, inspiring, and a pleasure to be around.
Today, humanity has lost the Lee Iacocca of Space.
One of my favorite quotes by him that I think is incredibly relevant right now: "The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel."
I used to visit JSC several times a year in the 80's and 90's ... until they locked it down and opened Space Center Houston. It never seemed that far 'out there' coming from the north side outer loop (610) compared to The Woodlands.
OT but it was a pleasure to be able to park and roam the campus and enter most buildings (including Mission Control) on a self guided tour. Space Center Houston is terrible in comparison.
Perhaps you could explain the comparison to a somewhat famous car company executive ...
Lee Iacocca was an engineer.
Elon Musk is not an engineer.
No profession has a monopoly on competence.
https://youtu.be/UKT2tKmVk6g?t=16m52s
I at one time thought Elon Musk was monstrously good engineer, but I found out he was a physicist recently.
The horror.
maybe not, but pretty technical.
A better example of a non-tech CEO of a tech company is Jack Ma, who was an English teacher.
Saw that we humanity needed to transition from fossil fuels if we are to combat global warming, targets the transportation sector and bam, Tesla, is born produces the first highway legal serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells, and the first production all-electric car to travel more than 200 miles (320 km) per charge. Basically, the first practical all electric vehicle. Problem solved.
Saw that humanity needed to switch from fossil fuels for home energy. Devised the original idea for Solar City, which his cousins implemented ( and he eventually took over). Certainly, there may not even be a main player in this story as this problem is evident. However, was instrumental in this effort. Solar is now on par with domestic natural gas production for cost efficiency and will likely supplant it moving forward (Natural gas companies operate on very thin margins)(I'd say it's more efficient if one factors in the negative externality of fossil fuel into the efficiency comparison). Problem solved.
Saw that if humanity is to survive, we need to be multi-planetary. No one else is seriously doing it. He forms SpaceX and likely in the next 10 years will put the first human on another planet and has also devised an economical interplanetary travel network Problem solved (To be continued).
An engineer at its core is one who solves problems. He seems to have a good track record of solving some of the biggest problems facing all of humanity today. That's a pretty kick ass engineer in my book. Perhaps you don't regard him as such because you think of engineeers at the product or component level. Looking at the trees, you get lost in the forest. He's engineering at a higher level than most.
Also, I called Elon Musk the rockstar of the automotive world.
After leaving Ford, I guess he needed a challenge and took on the ordeal of turning around Chrysler, which was about to go out of business in the late '70's. He personally secured cash from Congress for a bailout (Yeah I know, this sounds familiar). In the 80's after turning Chrysler around, he would appear in commercials saying something like "You can't find a better car. If you do, buy it." Since he saved my Dad's job and livelihood, he kinda worshipped him and that reverence trickled down a bit to me.
EDIT: I do find it a bit sad that fewer of us work for CEO's that we personally look up to. This is probably one major factor in what inspires the entrepreneurial spirit in many of us. The main reason that I want to work for an Elon Musk company is that I'm tired of being a cynic in a post-modern world and want to be a part of a vision greater than 140 characters or self-driving cars.
Unexpected personal reflection: As I'm writing this, I'm beginning to empathize with the coal miners and manufacturing workers who believe in Trump. I know people aren't fans of bailouts and as a student of Economics I'm generally opposed to them as well. However, The automotive industry was and is still so deeply intertwined with the fabric of Detroit and Southeast Michigan in general that losing those companies, once the shining example of American manufacturing exceptionalism, would be a crippling blow to the collective consciousness of all the residents there.You don't simply see it as some efficient restructuring and reallocation of capital if they go out of business. Those automotive roots run deep and when Chrysler faced bankruptcy again after the financial crisis, even though he was retired at the time, we both felt like an extension of ourselves was on life support. If it had cratered, it would've been a massive blow to our psyche similar I guess to how one would feel if an army had razed your city. When an industry is so closely related to your community, it becomes a part of your identity. Chrysler basically allowed for me to attend an elite private high school and university. In principle, I still disagree with trying to revive the coal industry (that American manufacturing strength is dead is complete fiction. I would argue that the USA is still the leader in global manufacturing because it's done without polluting the shit out of the environment), but I guess now I'm willing to listen to their side with an open ear and am open to some sort of environmentally responsible compromise.
That's the thing about heroes, even in death they can inspire change. Godspeed, John Glenn.
Inspirational things are usually illogical and are more rooted in emotion and ideas formed during childhood and the myths we internalize at that age. It will save a great number of lives, decrease commute times and be beneficial for the environment for sure. But it will mostly be of benefit to people with the highest standard of living on the globe.
Honestly, I was looking forward to a world in which technology enabled a world to become more classically liberal, a world that encouraged the free flow of goods, services, capital, culture, people, and ideas where a person's identity isn't so wrapped up in the idea of the nation-state and the stupid games they play. So yeah, this year has been kind of dissapointing. If you can't tell, I'm a huge Star Trek.
For example, John Glenn's effort towards nuclear non-proliferation leading to global disarmament (save for a few emergency nukes...never know when an asteroid could be headed this why and we need to send the world's best fracking crew...Hollywood should totally do a sequel with frackers and it'd get the thumbs up from Trump)
I digress. Society in general don't find automonous cars inspirational. there was no ticker tape parade when Uber completed its first ride in PA. And if there were a live stream, not many people were interested. Although fundamentally it is a human accomplishment, it's not that exciting to see a machine run code.
I think self driving cars are a MAJOR leap forward for man kind, and something we all SHOULD be having parades for. If it reaches the market, it will be the most widespread, and profound application of artificial intelligence that mankind has developed yet. Without argument, it will be the first time a machine learning application has saved lives on a grand scale. It may well mark the dawn of the Machine Learning age, welcoming in a new era where software transcends the trivial 'app' in a big, practical way. Think about that.
We can argue all day about why people aren't inspired by self driving cars. In truth, there are probably hundreds of reasons. But, if you ask me they are extremely exciting and invigorating. Uber's PA event was one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
I agree completely with this line of thought, but humans aren't wired that way. The rise in ubiquity of machine-learning powered software will improve our lives greatly....and do so mostly behind the scenes while the average person isn't giving it much thought. In fact, unfortunately, eventually and inevitably, even with self-driving cars, people will still find new reason for road rage.
> We can argue all day about why people aren't inspired by self driving cars. In truth, there are probably hundreds of reasons.
There's really just one. People aren't interested in watching machines execute code. For example, would you really want to watch two AI's play LoL, DotA2, or chess against each other. Many kids aren't going to watch. Similarly, I've learned this the hard way. Perhaps 95-98% of users will not care about how you implemented an app even if you revolutionize the field of Algo's and Data Structures. They will just look at it and say, I guess it's pretty fast, but I really like this parallax when you scroll down.
Even though I found it hugely inspirational that we made an object that has now left the solar system (and it was created 40 years ago with all the processing power a modern, ChiFi pedometer), most people are only going to find it inspirational if a human leaves the solar system.
For better or worse, that's what we prioritize.
RIP sir.
John Glenn was very influential on me as a student. He gave a talk at my high school about how learning as much as you could prepared you for the unexpected. He certainly put that to the test (as all of the astronauts then and now) do. The stakes are high, the resources limited, and time for a solution is finite. God speed John Glenn.
I've never seen the orange bar being blacked out recently (since I've been a member).
Glenn does seem like a swell guy!
Edit: fix typos
https://web.archive.org/web/20111006184954/http://news.ycomb...
My uncle gave me a crystal radio shaped like Glenn's Friendship 7 capsule that ignited a fierce passion into radio that led to a ham radio license and a lifelong interest in science.
It was a time in America when the future seemed endless, anything was possible. A lot has changed since then but that sense of optimism has never completely left me and may be the reason despite one crash and burn that I am still an entrepreneur. Still hopeful for a better future.
Radio is awesome because of how awesome it is. Check out the new startup, google.com, if you want to find some more material about why.
PS:Not to preach, but just saying.
Then I got interested in communicating, talking to people all over the world. With the net that seems perfectly normal, but it was a different world back then. I made friends from all over, some of whom came to visit me.
For a while I got really interested in contesting which is a competition to talk to as many people as you can in a single weekend. That progressed when I got to Michigan State into working with others in a special group of contesting called multi-multi (multiple operators with multiple transmitters) where you'd work with a group of people at one location. This produced some difficult technical challenges and helped me become a leader.
After school I became interested in the public service aspect where hams provide communications during disasters or events like marches or marathons.
I think my original interest in communication is why I purchased a modem for my first computer and became fascinated with BBS's and later the net. Really its just another form of communication.
Somewhere between "We choose to go to the moon" and "if you see something, say something" we traded all of our hope and optimism for fear and suspicion.
I'm just hoping for hope again.
The red scare continued through the late 1950s (and the cold war continued for decades -- there was no lack of fear and suspicion).
John Glen orbited the earth in 1962, in the middle of all this.
The nation doesn't wake up, flip and coin and decide it's either optimistic or fearful one day. You can be scared of some things and optimistic about others. Or both at the same time. Or some people are optimistic, and others have more fears.
It's complicated, but pithy quotes ("I'm just hoping for hope again") are stupid.
And almost entirely because of it; the U.S. space program didn't evolve independently of, or in tension with, the fear of Communism.
We chose to go to the moon because we were afraid (afraid of Communism, afraid of the Russians, afraid of the Cold War).
That doesn't mean great things can only come about as the result of fear and suspicion, but it's not like the Space Race was a great example of hope and optimism in contrast with fear and suspicion.
I wish we still lived in a science fiction world.
Fun fact: the most popular years for babies named Glenn and John was 1962 and 1963 respectively [0,1], and you can see a little spike in births for both around the time John Glenn orbited the earth. Glenn entered the NASA test program without the required degree in a scientific field. He was the oldest man to fly in space, at age 77, and one of the last people to receive a ticker tape parade (the last one to receive multiple ticker-tape parades)
IMHO if he qualified as one of a handful of people to get a ticker-tape parade, he definitely qualifies for a black bar.
My (then teenaged) brother had a change to meet John in the early 90s. He asked him, "Why don't you go back to space?" and suggested he go back up if the opportunity presented itself.
We'll never know if that had any bearing on John Glenn's decision to return (maybe he already planned to I don't know), but I like to think it certainly did. Maybe just hearing the idea out loud, even from a teen, made the thought of it less crazy.
Godspeed, Sen. (Col.) Glenn. It's an honor to work at your namesake NASA facility.
I have to wonder, these first missions, did the astronauts have any assurance they would make it back to earth? What was it like to say goodbye to family, not knowing if you would return or not.
Am I way off here? Was this mission uncertain or did NASA have reasonable assurances?
Well to be fair RP1/LOX is fairly tame when compared with H2/LOX or Hydrazine derivatives.
He flew a firecracker over the speed of sound. That thing could have easily exploded when it hit that velocity due to unpredicted aero loading.
Test pilots are made of sterner stuff than just about everyone else on the planet, but they're not ignorant of the risks.
If that didn't drive the point home, the occasional Soviet space disaster certainly would have.
More importantly, everyone of them expected 'You're going to burn-up and die in launch/re-entry/all your air vents in space/your engines will misfire, and you won't return home' as big, serious risks of their work.
Nobody expected 'You're going to burn-up and die as a result of getting into a closed room, and pushing a few buttons', to be in their top-ten expected causes of death. Planning around unknown unknowns, and all that.
As a sidenote, it wasn't a Saturn V.
Going to space involves strapping yourself into a tiny capsule on top of something that's filled with explosives. There's nothing safe about it.
Any fair assessment would have put the odds of death on a pre-shuttle flight to be at least that.
I'd also recommend Chuck Yeager's autobiography[2] as another fantastic read that gives you a feel for what life was like for elite test pilots.
1: https://smile.amazon.com/Right-Stuff-Tom-Wolfe/dp/0312427565...
2: https://smile.amazon.com/Yeager-Autobiography-Chuck/dp/05532...
https://smile.amazon.com/Failure-Not-Option-Mission-Control/...
"No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution."
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz#.22Failure_is_not_a...
https://www.amazon.com/Flight-My-Life-Mission-Control/dp/052...
https://twitter.com/GenChuckYeager
For those that don't know, he is a WWII P-51 Mustang fighter ace and famous test pilot. He was the first pilot to break the speed of sound. Really amazing guy.
Kayne West - 26 Million
That tells me everything I need to know about Twitter.
Q: @GenChuckYeager How big a deal was it that Hughes flew the spruce goose by himself?
A: Wasn't to me
For me, one of Wolfe's most troubling "creative interpretations" is his portrayal of Gus Grissom. He heavily implied that Grissom "screwed up" by taking a prevalent media theory and running with it because Grissom was already dead and couldn't tell his side of the story.
"""
Even after his death, perhaps because he was an easy target and could not defend himself, the public opinion of Gus was still questionable. In the book and the movie, "The Right Stuff," Tom Wolfe portrays Gus as "the goat among the astronauts, a hard-drinking, hard-living type who courts the favors of barmaids with gewgaws he promises to carry into space. He is also held up to the world as a man who screwed up, who panicked, blew the explosive hatch off his capsule and allowed it to sink to the ocean floor after reentry."
Wolfe described the scene at Edwards Air Force Base after Gus's Liberty Bell 7 flight as such: "And at Edwards . . . the True Brothers [test pilots who were not selected for the astronaut program]. . . well, my God, as you can imagine, they were . . . laughing! Naturally they couldn't say anything. But now - surely! - it was so obvious! Grissom had just screwed the pooch!"
Gus Grissom vs. the Media: Victim or Hero?
http://datamanos2.com/apollo1/grissom-media.html
"""
None of this ever happened. NASA's own internal investigations cleared his name and he later led an extremely successful Gemini mission and the ill fated Apollo 1. [2] He was the first member of the Astronaut Corps to fly in space twice and would have arguably led Apollo 11 had it not been for the fire. [3]
Tom Wolfe wanted to write a dramatic story about a group of people explicitly chosen for being preternaturally calm. So he resorted to creative devices (there are "composite characters" within the book) and fiction to spice things up.
If you'd like to get an accurate view of space history, then I'd suggest these books by astronauts and flight controllers.
Jim Lovell's 'Apollo 13' https://www.amazon.com/Apollo-13-James-Lovell/dp/0618619585 (which takes a very interesting systemic approach to the failure and views it from the perspective of the engineering and other ground crew as well as the astronauts)
Gene Kranz's 'Failure Is Not an Option' https://www.amazon.com/Failure-Not-Option-Mission-Control/dp...
Michael Collins' 'Carrying the Fire' https://www.amazon.com/Carrying-Fire-Astronauts-Michael-Coll... (he wrote a part of this in orbit around the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin made their historic landing)
Eugene Cernan's 'The Last Man on the Moon' https://www.amazon.com/Last-Man-Moon-Astronaut-Americas/dp/0...
Shepard, Glenn, Cooper, Grissom, Schirra, Carpenter, and Slayton's 'We Seven' https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Astronauts-Themselves-Scott-Car... (written in 1962 by the astronauts themselves)
John Young's 'Forever Young' https://www.amazon.com/Forever-Young-Life-Adventure-Space/dp...
Together I find these books to be much better than any other compilation, because they were written by the people who were actually there. Some are technical. Some aren't. A few are even poetic. But together they represent a thorough look at the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.
[1] "In other words they were like Everyman—except for Alan Shepard. He hated the whole thing, down to the paper it was printed on."
http://www.chipublib.org/interview-with-tom-wolfe/
[2] http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/with-every-splashdown...
[3] According to Deke Slayton the "chief astronaut" who made flight selections, Grissom was on track to be a moonwalker. He was the key decision maker who pushed Armstrong forward as the first person on the moon.
http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~oard/apollo/poss_moonwalkers.html
And that's just of the top of my head, sitting in traffic.
"Gagarin wrote a 10-page memo and gave it to his best friend in the KGB, Venyamin Russayev, but nobody dared send it up the chain of command. Everyone who saw that memo, including Russayev, was demoted, fired or sent to diplomatic Siberia. With less than a month to go before the launch, Komarov realized postponement was not an option. He met with Russayev, the now-demoted KGB agent, and said, "I'm not going to make it back from this flight."
Russayev asked, Why not refuse? According to the authors, Komarov answered: "If I don't make this flight, they'll send the backup pilot instead." That was Yuri Gagarin. Vladimir Komarov couldn't do that to his friend. "That's Yura," the book quotes him saying, "and he'll die instead of me. We've got to take care of him." Komarov then burst into tears.
On launch day, April 23, 1967, a Russian journalist, Yaroslav Golovanov, reported that Gagarin showed up at the launch site and demanded to be put into a spacesuit, though no one was expecting him to fly. Golovanov called this behavior "a sudden caprice," though afterward some observers thought Gagarin was trying to muscle onto the flight to save his friend. The Soyuz left Earth with Komarov on board.
Once the Soyuz began to orbit the Earth, the failures began. Antennas didn't open properly. Power was compromised. Navigation proved difficult. The next day's launch had to be canceled. And worse, Komarov's chances for a safe return to Earth were dwindling fast.
All the while, U.S. intelligence was listening in. The National Security Agency had a facility at an Air Force base near Istanbul. Previous reports said that U.S. listeners knew something was wrong but couldn't make out the words. In this account, an NSA analyst, identified in the book as Perry Fellwock, described overhearing Komarov tell ground control officials he knew he was about to die. Fellwock described how Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin called on a video phone to tell him he was a hero. Komarov's wife was also on the call to talk about what to say to their children. Kosygin was crying."
Not sure how valid Gizmodo is as a source, but I have heard many variations of that similar story over the decades.
Prior to Soyuz, six cosmonauts flew on the Vostok, all of them returning to Earth safely.
What's really interesting to me are how little they really knew about the basics. Stuff like the rocket and the heat shield are pretty obvious, but for example they had no way to be sure that humans could even survive being in orbit at all. They sent animals first so they had some confidence, but they couldn't really be sure until they tried it.
The USSR was not making a habit of mindlessly sending cosmonauts on certain-to-be-doomed missions. They did have immense political pressure to make a launch on time, and hope for the best. Note that of the many design defects Soyuz-1 had, only one of them killed Komarov. Almost everything else worked out 'fine'. They wouldn't have sent him if he had no chance of returning alive.
Soyuz-1 was a wake-up call that this culture wasn't good enough.
And yet, they still go.
For example, my father was a B17 navigator. 80% of the group he went to England with became casualties. He was convinced he would not survive his tour due to the inevitable mathematics of the B-17 loss rate.
But he went anyway.
He kept a Cessna, flying it until his 90th birthday.
I didn't really know who he was at the time but it's not often I've seen my dad look up (no pun intended) to someone. Left an impression on me and is probably no small part of the reason my own 4 year old son was running round with a rocket and a model astronaut ("Tim Peake") this morning.
RIP.
(Also, all episodes of Frasier are great...)
His marriage lasted longer than global average life expectancy! Truly a remarkable man.
He was one of the many NASA astronauts interviewed.
Nope, he's from Ohio. He passed over the valley (El Centro, specifically, IIRC) when he re-entered the atmosphere, it was just a claim to fame to attract tourists to the middle of nowhere.
Godspeed.
I also highly commend and greatly respect him for his efforts in nuclear non-proliferation. I imagine when you've seen earth from the view he had, you can't help seeing how small our differences actually are. That said, he wasn't perfect. His testimony in favor of excluding women from the astronaut program kept them from going on a mission until the 80's. To his credit, by the 1970's he had changed his mind and began supporting a female astronaut (Judith Resnick...interestingly she was recruited into the program by none than Lt. Uhura/Nichelle Nichols ) in her endeavors to join the astronaut program. Ultimately and unfortunately, she was a member of the ill-fated Challenger crew. Glenn gave a touching and inspirational speech at her memorial service that is worth reading: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/memorial.html
Off topic rant: As I hear this news, I'm reminded of the whole Buzz Aldrin dustup. While I'm no advocate of violence, I was inspired when he decked that looney conspiracy theorist who claimed the moon landings were faked. Despite the fact that you can literally shine lasers on the pieces of spacecraft left on the Moon and see the reflections, there are still those forces of ignorance who refuse to accept reality even as it stares them right in the eye. Most people in his position and especially at his age would simply try to avoid that confrontation and be content to let charlatans spread their destructive, nonsensical fictions. John Glenn was not that man. For some reason, that incident is what truly sticks out in my mind about him and I always associate him with this image: http://www.themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/3779149... It's probably because I associate him with being the last of a dying breed, a modern hero in an increasingly cynical, post-modern society.
thanks for spending time with us.
rest in peace.
My grandmother used to lead the Indianapolis Aero Club and somehow managed to get him as a speaker. My parents made the 2ish hour drive up just for me to hear one of my heros, Col John Glenn, talk for ~30 minutes (I was maybe 12-13 at the time?). While I did not ultimately achieve my dream of being an astronaut like him, I did however find my way into aerospace engineering and engineering in general as a result. He really inspired me on to greatness by being so down to earth and matter of fact.
And now I'll say something a bit controversial. The world needs more people like him, and less people like Zuckerberg. While building the next $web_thing or unicorn startup is cool, inspiring an entire generation is a whole lot cooler. Rest in peace John!
I also highly commend and greatly respect him for his efforts in nuclear non-proliferation. I imagine when you've seen earth from the view he had, you can't help seeing how small our differences actually are. That said, he wasn't perfect. His testimony in favor of excluding women from the astronaut program kept them from going on a mission until the 80's. To his credit, by the 1970's he had changed his mind and began supporting a female astronaut (Judith Resnick...interestingly she was recruited into the program by none than Lt. Uhura/Nichelle Nichols ) in her endeavors to join the astronaut program. Ultimately and unfortunately, she was a member of the ill-fated Challenger crew. Glenn gave a touching and inspirational speech at her memorial service that is worth reading: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/memorial.html
Off topic rant: As I hear this news, I'm reminded of the whole Buzz Aldrin dustup. While I'm no advocate of violence, I was inspired when he decked that looney conspiracy theorist who claimed the moon landings were faked. Despite the fact that you can literally shine lasers on the pieces of spacecraft left on the Moon and see the reflections, there are still those forces of ignorance who refuse to accept reality even as it stares them right in the eye. Most people in his position and especially at his age would simply try to avoid that confrontation and be content to let charlatans spread their destructive, nonsensical fictions. John Glenn was not that man. For some reason, that incident is what truly sticks out in my mind about him and I always associate him with this image: http://www.themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/3779149.... It's probably because I associate him with being the last of a dying breed, a modern hero in an increasingly cynical, post-modern society.
He was a U.S. Marine fighter pilot who flew 59 combat missions over the South Pacific during WWII and 63 combat missions during the Korean War. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism or extraordinary achievement six times! In Korea, he got the nickname "magnet ass" because he attracted so much enemy flak on his missions.
Oh yeah, and then he went on to become a test pilot, the first American to orbit the Earth, a five-term U.S. senator, and the oldest man to ever enter space.
If you're ever looking for someone for your kids to look up to, this is the man.
I teared up at this bit. The right stuff, indeed.