April 12

Russell.Martin.RemoveThis@wdn.com wrote:
> BMJ wrote:
>
>>1961: Yuri Gagarin flies Vostok 1.
>>
>>1981: John Young and Bob Crippen fly STS-1/Columbia.
>>
>>In twenty years, spaceflight progressed from "spam in a can" to walking
>>on the moon to a reuseable spacecraft and research in science and
>>engineering progressed accordingly. In the twenty-five years after
>>STS-1, rather than returning to the moon, we've got MTV, iPods, and
>>outsourcing. Ah, the progress of civilization....
>
>
> But we've got special effects in movies that make it
> look like we can travel through interstellar space at
> warp speed!

Assuming, of course, that such is possible.

Without the electronics miniaturization
> pushed by the space program that made advances
> in computers possible, we'd still be using models on
> strings.
>
> Cheers,
> Russell
>

When I was younger, I watched whatever TV coverage of the Apollo
missions that was available where I lived. The network made extensive
use of animations and actors in mockup. The latter, I thought, was a
good substitute for seeing what was actually going on.

It also made use of models and I remember, during Apollo 15, one of the
lunar rover with two astronaut figurines. The rover model drove over a
sand table or papier mache scenery to depict what Dave Scott and Jim
Irwin were doing at the time. It got stuck on something and from
off-screen, a human hand reached down and got it going again. I thought
it rather amusing and took it in stride.
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