Did an Unnamed MIT Student Save Apollo 13? 258
lukehopewell1 writes "When the Apollo 13 reported an explosion on board, NASA started a marathon effort to get the three astronauts home. Several options were considered, but history tells how flight director Gene Kranz ordered a slingshot around the moon. The story stayed that way for over 40 years, until this weekend when an ex-NASA press secretary came forward and said that an unnamed MIT grad student came up with the idea to slingshot the spacecraft around the moon. NASA reportedly buried his involvement at the last minute when it was discovered that he was a long-haired, bearded hippie-type.' Now the internet has gone on the hunt to find out who this unnamed hero really is."
GNU/Apollo (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks RMS!
Hippies... (Score:5, Funny)
Always there to save the world.
Laslo? Was that you? (Score:5, Funny)
Wondered where he'd gone off to...
OMG (Score:5, Funny)
It was Bill Gates.
Think about it: They needed to cover it up, so he was made (against his will) to shave his beard and start wearing suits.
Gates vowed revenge for this, and what better way than to take over the world with computers and make the Curiosity rover run off a modified version of Windows Vista.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Funny)
Spock time travels only rarely. It was obviously the doctor.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Funny)
The Doctor only saves British space missions.
That's why no Englishman has ever died in Space.
Re:If True: Shameful (Score:5, Funny)
No, you've got it all wrong! NASA buried the hippie's involvement to protect him...
Do you know how awkward it would have been to return to his commune if the others learned that he'd been bailing out the military-industrial complex, man?
Re:and steve jobs invented everything and da vinci (Score:4, Funny)
every famous person in history has had lots of people working for him/her. Lots of da vinci's and Michelangelo's work was done by their students
Ahh, that's my problem. I do my own work!
Re:Duh (Score:2, Funny)
That means that it was either Bill, Ted or a young Dr. Emmett Brown.
Re:If True: Shameful (Score:4, Funny)
I worked there at the time. I remember it, like it was yesterday
It was a young mathematician, his name was Ted Kaczynski.
The Onion, 10/4/68 "Hippies, NASA Race for Moon." (Score:5, Funny)
The space race between NASA and the hippies is more heated than ever, with both of the astronautic super-powers vying to be the first to land a man on the moon. "NASA will win the race to the moon, and the world will see a United States astronaut, not a longhair, walk on the moon before the turn of the decade," Apollo 10 Mission Director Gus Lance said Thursday.
Despite NASA's confidence, hippie-space-program sources report that the moon will be within their reach in mere months. "Freakonauts have already outdistanced NASA in their high rate of success with manned missions throughout the Tibetan Book of the Dead and cosmic voyages Beyond Total Awareness," said Freedog Osmosis, head of the prestigious Haight-Ashbury Center for Astraldynamic Research.
"And current missions are flying higher than ever. Take me, for example. I'm sitting right in front of you. Yet, even as we speak, I'm orbiting at tremendous altitudes." "We are 12 to 16 weeks away from having all the vibes in place to launch, orbit and land a hippie on the moon," Osmosis said, "as well as to return him safely to a big oversized floor pillow after wear-off and subsequent crashpad re-entry burn."
Re:what a load of bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
Shhh, he is pretending to be old enough to remember.
Re:The Book said it (Score:2, Funny)
What the hell is a "cum lifeboat"?
Pervert.
Re:what a load of bullshit (Score:0, Funny)
That's right. Many nerds are filthier, fatter, uglier, and smellier. For some reason these congregate around a site named Slashdot.
Re:GNU/Apollo (Score:5, Funny)
It is just a load of carp.
I thought something about this smelled fishy...
Re:Loop Around the Moon (Score:3, Funny)
His fan club was all: "Not so Faust!"
Re:Loop Around the Moon (Score:3, Funny)
I'll bet he's not German, rather a Scientist from the Eighteenth Century, posting from a Machine of his own Invention, a marvelous Object of Wonder which allows the trained Operator to post to Slashdot across the vast Distance of the Centuries.