Alan Bean, 4th Person to Walk on the Moon, Dies at 86
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It looks like we have 4 left:
Buzz Aldrin, age 88: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_who_have_walke...
David Scott, age 85: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Scott
Harrison Schmitt, age 82: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Schmitt
Charles Duke, age 82: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Duke
It will be a sad day for me when there's nobody left who has walked on our nearest neighbor. It feels like a turning away from possibility.
Mission Control in Houston is being restored to its 1969 look. Funding is from a completed Kickstarter.[1]
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/589813043/restore-histo...
A few years ago, XKCD did a diagram showing the rise and fall of people who had walked on another world [0]
Running slightly to the left of the '50%' mark. Unless Musk pulls his finger out we'll be hitting zero in about a decade.
It doesn't seem likely to me that that is the case. The energy/time requirements to go the closest neighbouring star aren't really that high in the grand scheme of things. Accelerating one ton to c/10 takes 125 terrawatt hours, less than 0.1% of our current annual energy usage. We could then reach the nearest star/expolanet in ~40 years (taking a similar amount of energy to decelerate).
Obviously we aren't putting that much energy into a rocket tomorrow, but give it a few hundred years of technology development and it seems pretty reasonable.
- Accelerate the ship be pointing lasers (or something that accelerates matter) at it from the launch point. Now one doesn't need to carry fuel and the rocket equation no longer applies.
- Use some form of ion engine where we accelerate particles to very high speed relative to chemical rockets. This makes the rocket equation very tame since so little of the mass (relatively speaking) is in propellant.
- Combine the above ion engine with some form of "ramjet" that takes hydrogen we collide with and turns it into fuel. This makes the rocket equation irrelevant since we don't carry our fuel (to the extent that we can get our fuel via the ramjet anyways).
Also as laumars says the 0.1% of annual energy usage was just a point of comparison because terwatts is such a foreign unit to most of us (including me) that it doesn't mean anything by itself.
The first rule of rocketry: For every ton you fire up add 10 tons to what you fire up.
There is a reason space is hard and that is that every ton you launch will require fuel to get into orbit. And now you have to accelerate the fuel for the majority of the way too so you need more fuel. But that also needs fuel ... etc.
Shooting up 0.1% of our annual energy usage will require an exponential amount of energy to get up.
The biggest rocket I ever build in KSP weighed in at 500'000 tons. With a 1 ton payload it only achieves about 250km/s acceleration. That's less than c/1000.
The Saturn V weighs 3'000 tons and has significantly less thrust (though NASA engines outperform KSP engines).
It's simply not realistic to achieve unless you manage to fire up the mentioned 0.1% of our current annual energy production PER ton of weight.
Firstly, technologically advanced species have the ability to modify their own bodies. We already do this with great success and we're barely a few generations into the era of washing our goddamned hands before doing surgery. Additionally you have to consider the difference between individuals, species, and civilizations. Can intelligent robots carry on a civilization? There doesn't seem to be any good reason why they couldn't. And once you are there, then it doesn't matter whether or not it takes 10 years, 100 years, 10,000 years, or even a million years to travel from one star to another. Intelligent, conscious beings who carry our civilization into the stars could indeed do so successfully. Even if they take many thousands of years to hop from star to star and even if they take thousands of years to build up a civilization (on a planet or in orbit of the star using resources from the stellar system) that is then in a position to send out more voyages across the stars. Even then the result will be a massive, sprawling network of our civilization spread across countless stellar systems within a time frame that's a blink of an eye in cosmological terms.
If it took 10 million years for a voyaging vessel to land, settle, grow, and send out only 2 voyaging vessels (and then stop voyaging) then they would colonize a million worlds in 100 million years. In only 400 million years they would have colonized the entire Milky Way.
The fact we don't see the galaxy teeming with life is either 1) intelligent life inevitably evolves rapidly into something unrecognisable 2) we are unique, and not just in our galaxy. Once you hit galactic scale civilisation, neighbouring galaxies don't take long 3) we are part of that expansion
It's quite possible that will never happen, depending on the next few years of spaceflight (and their health).
From another article[0]:
“Alan Bean was the most extraordinary person I ever met,” said astronaut Mike Massimino, who flew on two space shuttle missions to service the Hubble Space Telescope. “He was a one of a kind combination of technical achievement as an astronaut and artistic achievement as a painter.”
“But what was truly extraordinary was his deep caring for others and his willingness to inspire and teach by sharing his personal journey so openly. Anyone who had the opportunity to know Alan was a better person for it, and we were better astronauts by following his example. I am so grateful he was my mentor and friend, and I will miss him terribly. He was a great man and this is a great loss,” Massimino said.
I had a brief hint of that, and couldn't say it better. The world is poorer without him.
[0] https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/family-release-regarding-...
If it serves of any proof, here are the words of the second crew setting their foot on the moon (which, contrary to the first one, almost nobody knows):
"Whooopeee! That might have been a small one for Neil, but it's a long one for me..."
In EVA 1, Conrad and Bean carry on like kids at an amusement park. There is a genuine sense of joy and amazement.
Their partnership was unique in Apollo, a genuine and moving warmth and friendship. In defense of other crews, the work schedule was gruelling and hyper-competitive, with alot of people vying for seats seeking opportunity to advance their chances.
I enjoy watching recent interviews with Bean, he comes across as an 80+ year old man-child. Had Apollo 12 been the first crew to land on the moon, at the time this was a distinct possibility, then the very human aspect of how we connect with that extraordinary event in history would be markedly different to how things are. RIP Alan Bean.
https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap12fj/audio/a12a_115_15_43_to_...
RIP Alan Bean.
Source: The making of an ex-astronaut by Brian O'Leary.
And nowhere does any voice match my fluster when I phone home from the supermarket to report some item unavailable.
https://society6.com/product/apollo-12-face-of-an-astronaut_...
http://spacerockethistory.com/
I recommend this series. He covers the US and Soviet space programs, with a balance of technical detail and human drama.
My favourite episode, "That's All There Is" (#7) is told from Alan Bean's perspective.
It portrays him, and the entire crew, as an amazingly capable, funny, and tight-knit group. The entire episode has a humorous tone which, after my impression from watching several interviews with Al bean, probably fits his personality.
If you're an aerospace nerd like me, you'll love it. I probably watch the whole series several times a year.
I created this site a while back, after I had spent years going thru the Hasselblad reels. You can view great Apollo images and buy frames, iphone cases, sheets. Check out Top 20.
Check it out at http://www.projectapolloprints.com
I’ve been migrating stuff to Society6 this weekend.