This week’s strip was one of those times when I overheard a snippet of a conversation and a situation popped into my head. I fully expect most people to be like “wha…?”, but it worked in my GRATE BRANE when I came up with it.

I thought I would try a less time-demanding inking method – fast brushy swooshes instead of my usual OCD solid line with many overinks. I think it worked ok, although I might try a slightly thicker brush next time. Saved me a whole mess of time though, and also made inking fun again.

Apply for this week’s strip right here. No previous experience necessary.

We interviewed Sara last year about her work on the Apollo Space Program.  Apollo was  the greatest achievement in the history of mankind and planet Earth and its remarkable story is dramatically told by Sara, one of two women to have worked on the Saturn V as an aerospace engineer. This uplifting story documents the race to space that first sent Americans to the moon in 1969 from the viewpoint of those people actually building the dream.

Facebook readers click here for the video.

We endeavor to cherrypick the best examples of current thinking and put them into your immense and powerful BRAIN  to enhance your world view. To bring to you enlightenment without the hassle of going to a university and being all socially inadequate around girls and that.

Okay, well, let’s be honest, we don’t do that much, But when we see an article or a news story about THE SCIENCE! that is the equivalent of waking up and finding dinosaurs in your car, then we have to pass it along as best we can.

But, I am afraid, dear, sweet gentle readers, for the first time we have totally failed. We have today found an article of THE SCIENCE! that is so staggeringly obtuse, we have not been able to break it down. More after the jump.

We came across an article at New Scientist that, frankly, even though we have read it several times, does not go in. It does just not go in. We have tried with and without glasses, with lab coats, and we even ran it through the Google translation thingy to see if it would tranlsate it into English or something. But we were bested. The article is made up of lots of little paragraphs that, in of themselves, make sense. But considered as a whole, it makes our BRAINS shut down in a flop-sweat.

Anyhoo. As far as we can tell, the article relates to a current idea that, based on evidence gathered from the  GEO600 experiment in Hanover – a observational project designed to detect and analyse gravitational waves – our world may be nothing more than a holographic projection. Or possibly we are real, and the universe is a 2 dimensional projection. Or something. On the details, we are fuzzy, very fuzzy. But it is weird-ass SCIENCE! thinking, so we are intrigued.

It seems to also include black holes, storage of information about the black hole and its 3 dimensions in the 2 dimensions of the event horizon (that’s the hologram part) and possibly dinosaurs with lasers.* 

As an example of how fucking mind-futzing the article is, even the teaser paragraphs – the bits in the middle in a massive font that are designed to attract your attention with a simple, subject-revealing tease and HUGE quotation marks  - make your brain fart. For example:

“Incredibly, the experiment was picking up unexpected noise – as if quantum convulsions were causing an extra sideways jitter”  

Buh? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN IN ENGLISH? Are we talking timey-wimey spacey-wacey here?

So, anyway, as we have no hope of offering any kind of useful brief summary of the article in any meaningful way, here is a totally random excerpt:

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time – the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into “grains”, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. “It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time,” says Hogan.

If this doesn’t blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: “If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”

[dogsounds comment: that has to be one of the most awesome and random quotes ever uttered by a scientist: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram." This scientist would give Slartibartfast a run for his money at a party.]

The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.

The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard ‘t Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

The “holographic principle” challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the holographic principle are true.

Go read the full article at New Scientist here. If anyone can break this down for us, comment below. We’ll take all the help we can get.

And if you like the image above, it’s from wearscience.com who sell all sorts of awesome SCIENCE! themed apparel.

*Actually, the whole “dinosaurs with lasers” part may have just been us projecting to find something familiar and comforting to latch on to. Which we totally didn’t.

These, I am afraid, are mere irritants. Nothing major. How about an event that would guarantee 100% extinction, with no notice whatsoever until it actually happened? How about something that may have already taken place? Worried?

Meet WR 104. More after the jump.

Pretty isn’t it? This is a picture of WR 104 taken from the Keck infrared telecope. WR 104 is a binary star system, located, it is thought, about 8000 light years out from Earth, towards the center of the Milky Way. Two stars, locked in a graceful dance, one an 0-type star, one possibly a Wolf Rayet type star. Both are super-massive, and both super luminous, and both (if our assumptions about their type and makeup are correct) the kind of stars that die in tremendous super or even maybe hypernovae.

The type 0 star poses no real threat, at that distance it will merely be something bright and pretty to look at in the night sky. The other, though, does not seem quite as appealing – there is the slim chance that this star, when it dies, could generate what is the most powerful event known to exist in the universe – a gamma-ray burst.

As is well postulated, when a star dies the slow breakdown of its material leads to a shrinking and a tremendous increase in density. Finally, when the matter within the star can be reduced down no more, and there is no more nuclear fuel to be spent – the core of the star containing only the inert heavy element remnants of past nuclear activity – the star dies in a huge explosion – a supernova - the central remnants crushed by increasing gravitational force to a single point of infinite gravity and infinite mass forming a singularity (a black hole). Matter and gas blown outwards wend their way across space, seeding the formation of new stars and planets. It’s how we came to exist – all matter in the universe came from such destruction – it’s the only place the heavy elements are made. We are all made of start stuff. These things are pretty tame – you’d have to be within, say, 20 light years of a regular supernova to suffer any adverse effects from it.

But, just occasionally, instead of this more typical supernova, something else can occur: sometimes, when a star is massive enough, as well as the outburst of material and the crushing of the inner core the explosion can unleash a torrent of gamma radiation – a gamma-ray burst.

Since their existence was first observed and origins suggested, astronomers, cosmologists and astrophysicists have studied gamma-ray bursts. They are incredible things: they last anywhere from seconds to a few minutes, and the energy unleashed by the star in such an event  can be far greater than our Sun will put out in its entire lifetime. The energy is released in two pencil-thin streams, one from each of the stars’ poles – and they utterly destroy anything that lies in their path.

Well, yeah. But what are the odds that we would even be in the path of such a burst?

Well, as it turns out, the odds ore actually pretty good. See, the image above shows the gases around the stars in a familiar pinwheel shape. The gas and material ejected by the star moves outwards, and as the stars spin around their axis, the material is pushed out into a flat plane about the equatorial area – like the old ice-skater’s arms analogy. So, what does the image tell us? It tells us that if we see the star as a pinwheel, then we can only be facing one place - one of the poles. We are lined up with the axis, more or less. The pole. We could be staring right down the barrel of a loaded gun.

So, let’s assume for a minute that Earth is lined up exactly, and that a gamma-ray burst occurs. What would happen? Well, it is suggested that at the very least, the gamma radiation would destroy ozone  in our atmosphere and create a smog of nitrogen dioxide. Not so bad then.

Not quite. It is thought that it could burn off up to 50% of the Earth’s ozone by ripping apart the ozone molecules in the atmosphere. When you think that the issues we are having now with regards to global warming are caused by a mere 5% depletion of the ozone layer, 50% sounds like a bad thing. And the nitrogen oxide could be a thick blanket that would not only block out the sun – putting a supervolcano’s feeble efforts to shame – but would also be water soluble, precipitating out as acid rain. And this is the best-case scenario. Add to that the theory – still hotly debated at this stage – that the incredible numbers of cosmic rays beating down could lead to mass extinctions  (this is radiation – there is a reason the Apollo missions were scheduled during periods when it was assumed solar activity was at a minimum) and it begins to seem that this may not be a good thing at all, and there would be no way to “escape” the effect.

Now, it is not known for sure that the second star will emit such a burst. Heck, astronomers cannot even really agree on how far the binary system really is from Earth. Maybe 5000 light years, maybe 8000 (any astronomer will tell you that  distance is one of the hardest things you can try to measure). And there is also some evidence that perhaps we are not quite so perfectly lined up with the poles – the burst could, as physicist Michio Kaku puts is, “graze the earth“. And, it has to be said, we have no way to know if this will happen tomorrow, next week, or in a milllion years. But it certainly gets you thinking.

And the best bit? the burst would travel at the speed of light, The same speed as the light from the explosion. So that would, basically give us no warning at all. We would only know it happened, when it happened. For all we know, it happned many years ago.

Maybe even 8000 years ago.

But Carl Sagan set to music and auto-tuned? Fucking awesome.

Facebook readers, as always,  click here to see the videos.

The songs were created by The Symphony Of Science 

And to round off this little collection of awesome, something silly:

(and yes, I know, but “weasels” worked better in the title…)

Continuing its celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo lunar landings, dogsounds has an exclusive interview with aerospace engineer Sara Howard, who worked on the Saturn V launch vehicles used in the Apollo missions and who may have been the world’s first female aerospace engineer. Catch the interview after the jump.

With the 40^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landings well underway, many people around the world are remembering a time when the world joined up as one in hope for a future that held many promises. For others who were not there at the time it is a chance to learn about what can only be described as mankind’s greatest achievement – the first human exploration on another world, and eventual safe return.  

But for most, the Apollo project is just some apocryphal memory that they learned in school and never really gave much thought to. Today, space exploration is almost routine. In this high-tech age of satellite communications and GPS, technology is just “stuff”, and things like the shuttle and the ISS are relegated to small snippets on the news, if at all. Whilst the fields of physics, astronomy and cosmology have seen a small resurgence over the years with personalities such as Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku thrusting esoteric science into the public eye, space exploration has yet to find a figurehead to re-introduce the wonder and awe that was rife in the sixties and early seventies. Then, everyone wanted to be an astronaut. Now, folks just want to get the latest mobile phone.

 Since Apollo shut down in the face of waning public interest, mankind has stepped away from the kind of exploration that unites continents in wonder. Budgets and financial pressure has relegated man’s activities in space to mostly remote activities. The Hubble space telescope is one of our finest technological achievements. But, despite breathtaking images that get astronomers and space buffs fired up, to the public it is not exciting.

 But there are some who fully understand the importance of Apollo, and what it means for humanity. And not just the people who manned the vehicles that left the earth, or those who sat in CAPCOM monitoring every readout and managing every crisis. There are those who worked to create the technology and the hardware that made it all possible. Those who, directed by John F. Kennedy to “…go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”, set about creating technology that simply didn’t exist, in an industry that simply didn’t exist, with a vision that seemed almost impossible. For these people, these unsung 400,000, despite the questionable true political motivations behind the space race, the importance of Apollo and its directive was the promise it held as the gateway to a whole new future. One that, sadly, would not come to be.

 One of these people – one of 400,000 contractors that worked on the Apollo project – was aerospace engineer Sara Howard. At the time, NASA itself was a tiny setup, ad pretty much all of the actual engineering, design and construction work was carried out by contractors such as Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and even Chevrolet. One of only two women working at Boeing on the Apollo project, and probably only a handful more across all the people involved, Sara also has the honor of being the first known female aerospace engineer.

 I asked Sara a little about what it was like being involved with Apollo, what it meant, and how being a woman in a particularly manly man’s world went down.

 DB: For readers who may not know, you are an aerospace engineer, and amongst other things you worked at Boeing, for NASA, from 1965-1967 on the Saturn V launch vehicles (BIG-ass rockets) that launched astronauts into orbit and, eventually, to the moon. How did you become interested in engineering, and what led you to end up at NASA working on the coolest project in history?

 Sara Howard: First of all, I didn’t work for NASA. There were close to 400,000 of us who did not work for NASA. Back in the 1960′s NASA was a teeny pipsqueak. They had to hire 23,000 contractors of which there were four main ones: Boeing, North American Aviation, McDonnell Douglas and IBM. The contractors won bids from NASA so maybe they did work for NASA. In the three years I worked for Boeing I never saw any NASA person. The contractors hired the 400,000 of us. Our paychecks came from the contractors.

 I always have been interested in science and math. There were no aerospace engineering classes in any colleges or universities [at that time]. It didn’t exist. We engineers majored in math, period. I saw President Kennedy’s speech and knew I had to be part of this.

 DB: At Boeing, you worked on the testing of the S1-C stage of the Saturn V rockets. The Saturn V’s as a whole were and still are the largest and most complicated machine ever built by man. Can you give us some background  factoids about the Saturn V that will make the kids go “wooooow” and amaze them into having perhaps a slight trouser-accident?

 Sara Howard: Ha! Ha! That is funny. The S1-C stage is the biggest rocket stage ever built in history. It still is. Our stage was the largest part of the Saturn V. The Saturn V is bigger than the Statue of Liberty. We had five engines on our stage which still are the biggest rocket engines in history. We used two fuels: liquid oxygen and kerosene. Empty weight of our stage is 300,000 pounds, diameter 33 feet, height 138 feet. Loaded weight is 4,792,000 pounds. Thrust (power) is 7 1/2 MILLION pounds. We boosted the Saturn V up to 38 miles in 2 1/2 minutes at 6,000 MPH. No one in the world can surpass this.

S1-C stages under contruction at the Michoud plant

DB: I remember you telling me that anything near the engines would quickly become a crispy critter – that sounds about right! Tell us about the part you worked on  – your baby – the S1-C stage of this massive machine. This was the first stage of the rocket that, amongst other things, held the BIG-ASS F-1 rocket engines that started the whole rocket on it’s journey. What part did you play and what did you do in your work on this stage of the rocket? Incidentally, the word “rocket” really doesn’t do the Saturn V justice at all. It makes it sound small!

 Sara Howard: You’re right that “rocket” is a small word for such a huge vehicle. We were called System Test Engineers and we took the pulse of the stage. We measured and analyzed telemetry.  We analyzed data from many transducers. They transmit in a range of 0-5 VDC.  There were over 800 measurements but our team only monitored about 100.  The data was transmitted in Single Sideband (SS/FM), FM/FM, Pulse Code Modulation (PCM/FM) and Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM/FM). We tested mechanical movements, atmospheric pressure, sound level, temperature, vibrations, fuel flow, and other systems’ performance. This stage had to be perfect! Lives depended on how we did our jobs. 

F-1 engines on the S1-C stage of the Saturn V

DB: Now, a little background. The whole “space race” in the U.S. was kicked off in reaction to the successful placing of the Russian satellite Sputnik into orbit around the earth in 1957. Control of space would mean pole position in the battle of wills between the U.S. and the USSR. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy gave his famous speech announcing that the United States would not only take to space but in fact land a man on the moon before the decade was out. This was an incredible statement and placed incredible pressure on the newly-formed NASA to deliver the goods, whilst keeping things safe for those involved. Can you give us a feel for what this mindset was like at the time? How did you view your Russian counterparts and their efforts, and what was it like to be under so much pressure?

 Sara Howard: There was no pressure on my part or anyone in our plant, Michoud. Pressure was beyond our pay grades! We joked around a lot. We didn’t even think of the Russians. They weren’t Russians. They were “the Communists”. If one had an ingrown toenail, acne, a bad hair day, a flat tire, got sick or any bad thing, it was a “Communist plot”. Humor is a great reliever of stress.

 DB: Now, to many of our younger readers, technology for the average Joe in the early 1960′s seems like it was pretty basic. To my generation, when they think of the sixties they think that transistors and electronic circuits were relatively new, most electrical equipment used valves, computers were the size of Dallas, clothing generated electric fields like they it was designed by Nikola Tesla, cars pretty much fell apart the moment they left the factory and everyone was black and white. Obviously Kennedy’s promise to reach the moon before 1970 meant that redonkulous amounts of money were passed to NASA and its contractors and you had access to the very latest technology, some far ahead of its time. But, that said, it is often claimed that the total computing power of the Lunar Lander (LEM) was comparable to that of a 1980′s basic calculator. With all that in mind, what kind of technological difficulties did you encounter, and what kind of innovations were you forced to come up with to get around some of the challenges?

 Sara Howard: Sorry, I am going to burst your bubble. I don’t know where you got your info but there are lots of errors. We NEVER had access to the latest technology. There were no calculators. We used slide rules. If there were transistors or electric circuits we or anyone we knew did not know or have them. Any electrical equipment we knew never used valves. Unheard of. Clothes were mostly cotton and never generated any electric fields! Later polyester had static cling out of the dryer  Cars did not fall apart. I owned a 1965 baby blue Ford Mustang convertible and it gave me many years of safe and comfortable driving.

Sara Howard and Dr. Wernher von Braun

Dr. Wernher Von Braun designed the entire Saturn V. He and his team were based at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He brought his team to Michoud and they built the first S1-C stage. Please read about him and how he and his team designed the most perfect rocket of the time. There were no technical difficulties. If any occurred, Dr. Von Braun and his team solved them.  Our team was a test team. Design engineers would have created innovations. As to the LEM, I never heard of that. It did not have computing power of a 1980s calculator.

 There is one thing I know: a cell phone has more computing power than the entire Saturn V.

 DB: What was it like to watch your first manned launch? Were you able to be there in person?

 Sara Howard: I never saw a live launch. I never got to see one in person either. Think about it: there were close to 400,000 people working on Apollo. We were scattered from sea to sea and border to border. Could we all go see a launch? I know a few people who saw launches of the Saturn V and they all lived and worked on the Cape.

 DB: What was life like in the NASA extended family at the time?

 Sara Howard: I don’t know – I never saw or met anyone from NASA. NASA was a tiny unknown entity to most of us 400,000. Today NASA touts itself as the be all and end all of Apollo. Irks us who worked for the Contractors. Extended family? Bah!

From the minute the NASA idiots put the guys of Apollo 11 into quarantine [after they returned to Earth], I thought it was the stupidest move I’d ever seen. I am also an amateur astronomer and built my own telescope around 1959 or so. I have studied astronomy most of my life and it was my minor in University. I know Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. He is one of the foremost Astrophysicists in the world. Here is what we all know: the moon has been bombarded with cosmic rays, gamma rays, meteors, micrometeorites and all particles from the sun for BILLIONS of years. It is STERILE!  We astronomers were saying “Ggrrrrr”…stupid!
 
I bet you didn’t know that the Astronauts were totally miserable in that damned trailer. When NASA realized there was no danger, they let them out. I bet the air was turning blue! 
 
I forgot to tell you that we called NASA “Never A Straight Answer”. 

DB: How did people react when you told them what you did for a living?

 Sara Howard: When? For the past 40 years, indifference. No-one cares.

 DB: Now something very interesting: it has been said that from start to finish, over 400,000 people in total worked on the whole Apollo project. Your own research has led you to the conclusion that you were perhaps the first female aerospace engineer, and only one of two women that worked on the Saturn V. That’s an incredible thing. Given that life at the time was very male-oriented – women were the home-makers, women’s lib was still a far off event, and without a doubt your field of expertise was the remit of men with pipes, curly-wurly hightower engineer-hair and, needless to say, the “right stuff” (it was essentially boys and their toys) – how were you perceived by your male colleagues? Were you judged purely on your expertise and skill, or was there always that “pretty good…for a woman” mindset?  Did you have to battle to be heard or was the culture on the project such that it didn’t matter who or what you were, you were just one of the team?

 Sara Howard: All of the guys were great. No problems. I was just “one of the team”. I have worked for many companies for 25+ years in technical jobs. I was the only woman in many. I was treated with respect and courtesy. I have lots of self-esteem! Also, the guys realized I was good at everything I did and was very productive. There is no conflict in any job if you don’t act like a jackass.

The Saturn V. A big chicken indeed.

 DB: It cannot be denied that during the Apollo project, a big chunk of the world came together as one. For a brief moment, may differences were forgotten and the world united in gluing themselves to the TV to watch the adventure unfold. For a lot of people, the message was clear: this wasn’t simply an American achievement; it was a human achievement. But, as with all things, it also cannot be denied that over the life of the project, public attention waned, everyday issues such as Vietnam, civil rights and all manner of hardships and political wranglings took front stage again and what was mankind’s greatest achievement slipped off the front pages. How did this brief moment of unity feel, what did it make you think of the future? And how does the ambiguity about Apollo today make you react?

 Sara Howard: Unity was exciting. It gave us all a sense of pride. We really didn’t give a damn about public opinion. Still don’t. I didn’t really think of the future. I was having babies.

 I have never seen the ambiguity of today. Either people like Apollo, refuse to talk about it or hate it. I will never change people’s opinions and I don’t care what they think. My friends and I know what we did.

 DB: Regular readers of this blog will know that I view the tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorists that believe the Apollo missions were all a big hoax (despite the mounting evidence to the contrary) as idiots. From your writings it is clear that you are passionate about what you did and what you took part in, and what it meant. Following on from the last question, how do these people make you feel, and what would you like to say to them?

 Sara Howard:  These people need to be blasted to the moon so they can see our equipment.  To the unbelievers: Get a life.

 DB: Do you think we will return to the moon someday? 

 Sara Howard: Of course.

 DB: Doubtless you often get caught in discussions with people who say “we should stop doing all this space stuff and solve the problems on Earth here first. It’s a waste of money”. How do you respond to this argument? Why should we continue to push out from Earth, what benefits does it bring to the human race, in your mind?

 Sara Howard: I haven’t heard this argument in 20 years!

 Look at the spin-offs of our space programs. There is tons of stuff that has made life easier for all of us. No one can argue with an idiot about a waste of money. If we all thought that, we would still be naked and eating raw mammoth.

 Technology developed by scientists and engineers all over the world has brought us civilization. I have news for those who think that throwing money at poor people will solve anything: there are people that a famous writer has called “People of the Fringe”, who will never grow, never have a civilization, starve to death and kill each other. This has existed for thousands of years.  Why do they think they can solve these problems?

 Dr. Stephen Hawking (whom I greatly admire) has announced that the human race had better start searching for another habitable earth-like planet. We are. Planetary scientists have discovered several things, [one of which is that] among the great extinctions of the past our own planet was the culprit. The asteroid may not have killed the dinosaurs. Our universe is a dangerous place, as I show in my book, “The Biggest Explosions in the Universe”.

 And the benefits? Safety. More great technology. Advancement.

 DB: Describe the sound of an F-1 firing up. Would I need to bring spare pants?

Sara Howard: One does not just fire up one F-1! Maybe where they were built in California. I have a video of testing the F-1′s. It is very loud. But what is so cool is you can hear the harmonics of the engines. That is when the sound comes together. It is vroom! Vroom! Vroom! on and on. Everyone that hears it is really enthralled. The folks who watched a launch of the Saturn V told me that the noise is deafening.

 DB: Do you have a moon rock?

 Sara Howard:  No. I wish! Moon rocks are locked up. Some are in the Smithsonian. Even the Astronauts do not have any.

 DB: Did you somehow ever get to ride the vomit comet (this is the plane that was flown in parabolic arcs to simulate zero-g)?

 Sara Howard: That is only for Astronauts. I did have my own plane (I am a pilot) and I flew hammerhead stalls which causes zero-g.

 DB: Tell us about your career after Apollo. Did you work on other NASA projects, or was your future work more earthbound? Did anything you worked on afterwards ever come close to giving you the sense of pride and accomplishment as your beloved Saturn V?

 Sara Howard: After Apollo I had lots of great jobs. I worked on the Trident Nuclear Missile Submarine (in a building – not in a ship yard). I worked for some guys analyzing data, who turned out to be the CIA

 I worked for Utility companies. I turned to business computer programming. There was not much call for aerospace engineering after Apollo.

 DB: What are your fondest memories of your time with the Apollo project?  

 Sara Howard: All of them. I loved every minute. Every year was precious and a gift. The people were the very best that I have ever worked with. How does one describe nirvana? Paradise?

 DB: Sara, thank you for your time!

 For the hidden contractors like Sara, they know what they wrought. They saw the potential of the future that their work enabled, and felt the dismay when that future, for the greater part, faded away.

 So, whilst we remember the legends of the astronauts and the folks in CAPCOM, the tension and drama, the heroics and adventure, we should also remember that none of this would have been possible without the hard work, vision and dedication of a lot of people whose names you will likely never know.

 About 400,000 of them.

 Sara Howard runs her own blog over on http://apolloproject.wordpress.com/ and http://www.insidetheapolloproject.com/ and you can follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/sara1861.

 She has also written a delightful book entitled “The Biggest Explosions in the Universe” which looks at the wonders of our universe in a way that is perfect for younger readers. From stars that sing to those that throw temper tantrums, the book looks at many of the most phenomenal things to be found in our backyard. You can buy “The Biggest Explosions in the Universe” from Amazon here

NASA, 17/7/09: Finally, after many years of myth and tin-foil conspiracy, NASA has released the first ever post-Apollo images of the equipment the astronauts left behind on the lunar surface.

Taken by the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter, the series of images – although not the sparkly close up beauty passes that show every little detail that the conspiracy nuts would like – show the presence of all the lunar landers (save Apollo 12) on the surface of the moon – and in one low pass, scientific equipment and even the trails left behind by the boots of the astronauts in the lunar dust.

It is important to note that these are “first pass” images – lower pass flights are scheduled that should give more detailed images:

The satellite reached lunar orbit June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. Though it had been expected that LRO would be able to resolve the remnants of the Apollo mission, these first images came before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit. Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution.

The future can only bring better images from the orbiter – we hope – but these images are the first of hopefully many that will prove once and for all that, yes, we did fucking go there.

To read the full NASA article and see all the images close up, click here.

Whoa, wait, what? The strip up on a Friday? What’s this?

Well, today (sort of) is a very special anniversary. The day the world came together almost as one, more than ever before, or since. The day Mankind started on its greatest endeavor, and the world watched with baited breath.

A day that held a potential that eventually would slip away only due to the fickle triteness of the human race.

To quote John F. Kennedy:

“We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Shame we lost that spirit, really.

Click here for this week’s out-of-this-world comic strip.
Posted in art, artwork, astronomy, avoid spikes, cartoons, comics, cool stuff, furry, science, space, thought provoking stuff, web comic Tagged: anthro, anthropomorphic, Apollo 11, apollo moon landings, avoid spikes, Buzz Aldrin, comic, dogsounds, mart, Martin & Wolf, moon, NASA, Neil Armstrong, science ]]> http://blog.dogsounds.com/2009/07/17/new-avoid-spikes-comic-now-online-31/feed/ 0 dogsounds Moon, Apollo 11, NASA, dogsounds, Avoid Spikes, furry, webcomic, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin http://blog.dogsounds.com/2009/06/15/nixons-failed-apollo-moon-landing-speech/ http://blog.dogsounds.com/2009/06/15/nixons-failed-apollo-moon-landing-speech/#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:21:53 +0000 dogsounds http://dogsounds.wordpress.com/?p=1541 ]]> So, we all know that the Apollo astonauts landed on the Moon and did their astronauty stuff there (playing golf, pulling donuts in the car, singing, all very pioneering).

Unless you are some half-witted tinfoiler who is convinced it was all complete fakery (despite fucktons of hard, physical, scientific and reprodcible evidence to the contrary), you’ll know that the Moon landings were, one of mankind’s greatest,  if not the greatest, achievements.

But when you look at the seat-of-your-pants technology involved, it’s a miracle the astronauts got there at all. The whole world watched in anticipation and prayer as the mission neared its goal. But even the powers that be knew that, should it have all gone horribly wrong the consequences would be felt the world over.  So much so that, should the worst have happened, President Richard Nixon would have delivered a very moving speech. Find out what that would have been right after the jump.

Records from the Whitehouse at the time show the following speech, drafted by Bill Safire and forwarded to H. R. Haldeman:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

Fortunately, this was never read aloud to the public. Who knows where we would be now had it been.