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Space

Man Conquers Space 164

Posted by timothy from the canberra-we-have-a-problem dept.
dirtyhank writes "Half a century ago space exploration was the ultimate adventure and a team headed by Wernher von Braun dreamed about it for Colliers Magazine. Their vision of the future to come was too optimistic though and we haven't made to Mars yet. Now the dreamers are some people in Australia trying to produce Man Conquers Space, a documentary based on the premise that all that had been proposed in the early 1950's in Colliers actually came to pass - and sooner than they expected."
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Man Conquers Space

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  • Tomorrow's follow-up story (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Man wants bigger welfare check, retreats from space"

  • Man Conquers Space (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What, all of it?
  • Isn't that what Star Trek, Red Dwarf, and Star Wars is for?
    • Star Trek, Red Dward, and Star Wars is nothing but opera. Only the most pessimistic of people can even begin to tender the idea you just did. The people over in Australia are not about story telling, they're about realization.
      People may not realize it, but over the course of the past 50 years; we have accomplished what science fiction novels merely speculated about not as far back ago as the 1970's.
      Being only 16, I'm not as knowledgable about it as you elder slashdotters; but American and Russian accomplishments in space are more monumental than we realize. Being a firm believer in the theory that we actually did put a man on the moon; I am one to pay attention at the tremendous problems and obstacles that the folks at NASA and the Russian Cosmonauts ran into.
      These people are doing the same, but in a more intricate and viable manner. One that teaches others exactly what we are and have been capable of, as long as we put our heads together. One could argue that the step from putting a dog in space and a man on the moon is one so tremendous it makes the evolution of the internet look like nothing more than a grade school game of "Telephone."

      Keep that in mind before you toss aside these people's efforts as nothing more than a redundancy.

    • Re:Yet another Sci-Fi (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Syre ( 234917 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @06:06AM (#4092085)
      I dunno about you, but I was all choked up just watching the teaser trailer (I was also amazed I *could* watch it and it hadn't been /.ed yet).

      Maybe you had to grow up then. I remember staying home from school to see the Gemini flights, when they were spacewalking for the first time. And then watching the moon landing on the neighbor's TV (we were in the country in Vermont and didn't have one there).

      People were astonished that it had happened. Even people who intellectually knew it was possible somehow on some level never expected it to really come true.

      And then after the moon landings, and after JFK's promise (to put a man on the moon "in this decade")had been fulfilled... nothing.

      Sure there was Spacelab, made from leftover Saturn V parts, and there was Apollo/Soyuz, which I never saw the point of, even though it was very politically significant, because nothing *new* was being done there in terms of space travel.

      But after Apollo, the space program was cut back. Way back. The fact that the Shuttle program got going at all was nearly a miracle. And the shuttle design we have now, the one with the horrible semi-reusable solid fuel boosters and the ultra-expensive non-reusable tank was a political compromise due entirely to budget cuts and funding limits. The real shuttle design was fully reusable and much safer: no uncontrollable solid boosters to blow up.

      The reason seeing this preview choked me up was because it brought back to me the thought that, yes, we could have done it. We could have put those space stations up, we could have gone to Mars. We could have done so much more than we did in space. Instead, the money was spent on military hardware.

      • I dunno about you, but I was all choked up just watching the teaser trailer (I was also amazed I *could* watch it and it hadn't been /.ed yet).

        Maybe you had to grow up then. I remember staying home from school to see the Gemini flights, [...]

        Lucky you. But for a lot of us, it was all over before we were born.

        Idiot/Savant

      • Damn Right! (Score:3, Funny)

        by ZigMonty ( 524212 )

        The reason seeing this preview choked me up was because it brought back to me the thought that, yes, we could have done it. We could have put those space stations up, we could have gone to Mars. We could have done so much more than we did in space. Instead, the money was spent on military hardware.

        Yes, I agree completely. All those who complain about NASA's $14.8 billion budget [spaceflightnow.com] should take a long, hard look at the US military's $369 billion budget [cnn.com]. There was a good line that I heard that went something like "Imagine what the world would be like if schools got all the moeny they needed and the military had to hold a cake sale to raise funds for a new bomber."

        • "Imagine what the world would be like if schools got all the moeny they needed and the military had to hold a cake sale to raise funds for a new bomber."
          what really it makes me wonder is that some people find this post "funny"
          • It is funny.

            Kind of like "imagine what the world would be like if schools got all the money they needed, and then the Wahabis came and killed you [usyd.edu.au].".

            :P

        • Those bombers and big expensive crap aren't IN the military budget. Congress gets together and says "We need more pork. We're going to put out a contract for something big and expensive. We don't have the budget to give you for maintaining it so find room."

          They get the money to buy huge hardware systems that no one asked for from somewhere else.

          There's a reason so many people in the military are using food stamps.
      • And if the billions had been spend to put a man
        (or permanent base) on mars, or launch a fleet
        of space stations .. what would that have
        achieved for the average person on earth?
        Bugger all.

        The entire apollo program was about as useful
        as the construction of the pyramids.
        Technically amazing, but totally useless in
        practical terms. Maybe NASA should have faked
        the moon landings - would it really have made
        any difference?

        ( Not that the billions spent on military hardware
        were a good idea either .. )
        • The single most important thing that humanity can do is get off this planet. Do we have problems in society that could use the extra money gained by dismantling the space program? Probably. But all the money in the world isn't going to help when (not if) the next asteroid comes along and blows us all to kingdom come. If humanity intends to survive on the long term, our absolutely highest goal must be to spread somewhere else.

          No, it doesn't help the average person. But if it isn't done, sooner or later there will BE no more average people.
        • Thats right! Completely useless! I don't need the superglue that they used to put my car together, or the weather proof materials they make huge buildings out of, or that make my airplane rides safer and swimming pools last long enough to be worth having. And I wish my computer only had the power of a calculator. All of these things are just worthless crap: technically amazing, but totally useless in practical terms.

          And FORGET all the processes we have developed to package and freeze food for long trips as a result of NASA. Refrigeration was good enough, and when people go into the deserts of third world countries, they can just eat raisins and rice.

          Do you know why the government started putting much more money (than before that) into Universities after WWII? Because they realized that the atomic bomb was the result of "silly physicists" working in labs on things that were "technically amazing, but totally useless in practical terms." Good ideas abound when there is a way to cultivate them, and sometimes they are very fruitful. Also, necessity (of getting the job done, in this case) is the mother of invention.
      • I dunno about you, but I was all choked up just watching the teaser trailer.

        If you're hungry for more, read Voyage. [amazon.com] It's the story of a manned Mars mission conceived after the moon landings, and finally coming to fruition in 1986, championed by JFK (who was only wounded in Dallas in 1963).

        ~Philly
      • And the shuttle design we have now, the one with the horrible semi-reusable solid fuel boosters and the ultra-expensive non-reusable tank was a political compromise due entirely to budget cuts and funding limits. The real shuttle design was fully reusable and much safer: no uncontrollable solid boosters to blow up.

        Slashdot has proved to be an excellent resource for links to the Buran's design [dmoz.org]. Thanks slashdotters!

        Well, I have this question about the American shuttle's design compromises. I have heard that political pressure from the USAF, and the military-industrial complex, resulted in a larger shuttle, capable of carrying larger, military payloads. I read that a smaller shuttle would have been cheaper to build and run.

        True?

        Safety? The Burans had four ejection seats.

        The Buran could have carried five times the payload of the American shuttle.

  • We live in a money-centered world... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by matusa ( 132837 ) <chisel@gm a i l.com> on Sunday August 18, 2002 @05:20AM (#4092032) Homepage
    ...and unfortunantely we will not be venturing into space until it is commercially viable to do so.

    There's a whole slew of phrases like 'when in rome, do as the romans do' or 'the best way to change a system is from the inside'

    I'm afraid we're just going to have to accept this fact (that space exploration won't get another kick 'til it makes people money), and work towards making new propulsion systems, more efficient systems, etc. until we get to this point, then hopefully awareness will increase and people will get excited about space exploration for the sake of space exploration again (after it has blown up again for the sake of money).

    Of course, a miracle (or a disaster) could cause this to go another way

    Call me a pessimist, or even a defeatist, but this is how I see things.

    Kind of like when a bacterial culture gets week strains weeded out in a tough time, maybe this can be good... if it doesn't kill everything.
    • Okay: Pessimist! Defeatist!

      What I want to believe with all my heart is that there are, and will be, generations of hackers to work on such a project "Because We Can"(TM). Back in the cold war days these hackers received a lot of public funding. Right now they are on their own. But that doesn'tstop [armadilloaerospace.com] them [rocketguy.com] from trying.
    • ...and unfortunantely we will not be venturing into space until it is commercially viable to do so.

      It could be, right now. Some people are already paying millions of dollars for a seat in the ISS, more would shell out a few tens of thousands for a suborbital parabolic flight, which a few companies are working towards. "Real" access to space is currently viewed as "way too expensive" because it's the way NASA does it, and people use it as a reference. It's not the technology, see Rand Simberg's recent column, We Don't Need No Stinkin' Technology [foxnews.com].

      As for why NASA (and some other government agencies) does it that way, beyond the near-mythical "why have one when you can have one for the price of two", the previous one, Pork Versus Vision [foxnews.com], could be interesting. Or Stephen Baxter's "Voyage [sffworld.com]", which describes an alternate reality in which the US go all the way up to Mars as early as 1986, but (as opposed to this documentary) with a realistic view about politics. (You want Mars? OK, scrap this Space Shuttle thing, Apollo 15-20, and you have just enough Saturn V rockets for a single mission; what more do you want? A space station? Get real, Vietnam is expensive, we need the money for serious things!)

      • Re-read Asimov's "The Caves of Steel" to get the
        answer why space exploration stopped.

        What we (I mean the world economy) need from
        space technologies - GPS, InMarSat, Satellite TV.
        It is almost all. For town-centric civilisation
        it is cheaper to build cellular phone base-station
        in every town and connect every TVset with broadcast-station via cable, than launch projects
        like Iridium, which uses satellite technology.

        If world population would spread more evenly (and welfare would spread more evenly among it) various space-based communication systems like Iridium
        would be more viable.

        Then they would bring hundreds of launches per year just for maintainance, and these hundreds of
        launches would become cheap enough to make orbital production of certain materials (say semiconductor cristalls) commercially viable.

        Then and only then space technologies would become cheap enough to allow individuals or private companies to think about interplatnetary flight.

        Communication sattelittes are already part of world economy. I don't know how it is in America, but in Russia, where space technology is one of few high-technologies we can trade out, various sattelite projects are often mentioned on the first pages of financial newspapers.
        • Re-read Asimov's "The Caves of Steel" to get the answer why space exploration stopped.

          I wasn't aware that Spacers were already hampering us... <g>

          What we (I mean the world economy) need from space technologies - GPS, InMarSat, Satellite TV. It is almost all. For town-centric civilisation it is cheaper to build cellular phone base-station in every town and connect every TVset with broadcast-station via cable, than launch projects like Iridium, which uses satellite technology.

          Sure, if you look at current markets, we don't need space. But if you look back a few years, we didn't need cell phones or the Internet either.

          The point is, if costs drop enough, new markets will appear, be it on Earth (joyrides? New materials?) or directly in space (mining asteroids for materials doesn't make much sense - unless, that is, there are space stations and lunar colonies ready to buy them...)

          And the point in my previous message is that dropping costs is possible now, without fancy new tech. The latter can and will be useful, but there is no need to wait for it to be finalized, instead of developing a market where it will develop all the faster.

      • Stephen Baxter's "Voyage", which describes an alternate reality in which the US go all the way up to Mars as early as 1986

        Or you could try Allen Steele's The Tranquility Alternative, an alternate history in which the dreams of Ley and von Braun were realised (and described in loving detail by the author).

        Idiot/Savant

    • ...and unfortunantely we will not be venturing into space until it is commercially viable to do so.

      Don't give up hope yet - there's always the Chinese. The US DoD estimates that they're only 18 months away from a manned flight (they're on the verge of their fourth test of the Shenzhou capsule [bbc.co.uk]), and their putting a man in space may force the US into a second space race.

      But absent that sort of international pissing contest, yes, we'll have to wait till it's profitable - whenever that may be.

      Idiot/Savant

      • An international pissing contest with the Chinese, if it took the form of a new space race, might actually be productive. Much more useful in terms of advancing our technology (if we could avoid giving it to them for free/letting them steal it) than squabbling with them over a plane that one of their hotdog pilots crashed into. China has big plans and their military talks like they have big balls... let them take a shot at space. If they try to militarize it, and they say that they want to develop anti-sat technology and deploy it, that would force the U.S. to follow suit. NASA with a military scale budget? New arms race in space? I bet that would give the space program a big boost. And no, I'm not saying that militarizing space is a good thing, but I personally think that's what is going to happen. If you think that the only reason the Chinese are interested in space is research and prestige you should read some of their military's views on unconventional warfare, space, and the United States.

  • Time for... (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Perdo ( 151843 )
    A good old fashioned barn raising...

    I mean server raising...

    Or is that razeing...

    Heck with it, let the slashdotting [netbreak.com.au] commence!

  • Wernher von Braun (Score:2, Interesting)

    by JanMark ( 547992 )
    Should Wernher von Braun be honored like this? I think he was an opportunist, he new what his work was used for by the Germans during WWII.
    • Don't call him hypocritical
      Say rather `apolitical'
      "Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down,
      It's not my department" says Werner von Braun.
      -- Tom Lehrer
      • ... who cares where they come down?

        I guess the (approx) 2700 killed and 6500 people seriously injured might ...
      • "Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down, It's not my department" says Werner von Braun.

        He would make a great large-org PHB.

        "Who cares if the customers cannot use our new memory enhancements because the software won't manage it right. Software is not my department."
    • some estimates say 20.000 died during the production of the 6.000 V2 rockets, by accidents, desease, death marches and mass executions. that does of course not include the people that were hit by the rockets.

      the nasa biography of his somehow misses that page.

    • Actually, my mom knew von Braun when she was a girl. After her father died in '52 she spent a lot of time living with her uncle and his family. He was an Air Force colonel involved with rocket research and was something of a liason between the Air Force and captured German rocket scientists. She said they were over at his house pretty regularly and that she personally liked von Braun, for what that's worth; that he used to do little magic tricks with coins for her and her cousins.
  • quoting the Tom Lehrer tune as found at http://members.aol.com/quentncree/lehrer/vonbraun. htm

    Wernher von Braun:
    And what is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? And what is it that will make it possible to spend twenty billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it was good old American know how, that's what, as provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher von Braun!

    Gather 'round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
    A man whose allegiance
    Is ruled by expedience.
    Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown,
    "Ha, Nazi, Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun.

    Don't say that he's hypocritical,
    Say rather that he's apolitical.
    "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
    That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

    Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
    But some think our attitude
    Should be one of gratitude,
    Like the widows and cripples in old London town,
    Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.

    You too may be a big hero,
    Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
    "In German oder English I know how to count down,
    Und I'm learning Chinese!" says Wernher von Braun.
    • What would happen if US military aerospace workers stopped working on something because they did not like the president's armament deployment decisions?

      You pretty much have to be apolitical to be in the weapons business.

      Curious, though. I wonder if anybody interviewed victims of Nazi rockets during the Apollo 11 celebrations.
      • Well, I can imagine what it might have been like. An interview with my Mum could have gone something like this:

        "So what do you think about Werner von Brown's team having got to the moon?"

        "Oh, very impressive, a marvellous achievement. Werner who?"

        "The guy who invented the V2, the one that landed in your back garden when you were at school."

        "Oh, doodlebugs."

        "No, not doodlebugs, the other kind."

        "What was that then? We only saw doodlebugs."

        "Well, that's because the other ones were travelling so fast you couldn't see or hear them."

        etc.

        Basically

        a) W von B isn't that notorious as a Nazi villain with her generation because his rockets came so late in the war and there was some secrecy and confusion about what they were.

        and

        b) NASA kept pretty quiet about W von B's contribution. As a 6 yr old I tried to read a lot about it but don't remember seeing a mention of him.
        • (* W von B isn't that notorious as a Nazi villain with her generation because his rockets came so late in the war.... *)

          Hitler was known to spend lots, perhaps too much, on high-tech gadgetry. His final tank was an expensive Edsel because he kept trying to top the prior one with size and power and went overboard.

          If the war went on longer, then a lot of these "toys" may have been much more dangerous if perfected.

          Perhaps von-B actually *saved* lives by making them spend effort on rockets rather than something with a sooner "payoff".

          If you did the war accounting, I bet rockets were not a good expenditure in hindsite.

        • a) W von B isn't that notorious as a Nazi villain with her generation because his rockets came so late in the war and there was some secrecy and confusion about what they were.
          No. Von Braun is not a notorious Nazi villain because he was neither a Nazi, or a villian. Nor was there any secrecy or confusion about what the V2 was.
          b) NASA kept pretty quiet about W von B's contribution. As a 6 yr old I tried to read a lot about it but don't remember seeing a mention of him.
          No. In the late 1950s and through the 1960's Von Braun was widely known, and widely mentioned, and widely interviewed. Either your memories are wrong, or you read the wrong thing as every single contemporary account of space travel and exploration I have in my collection (80+ volumes) mentions Von Braun.
          • Anybody who worked for the Nazis could reasonably be considered a "Nazi villain". These days, we have a pretty flexible notion of terrorist, for example.

            V2 attacks were initially described as gas explosions by the British government in order not to ascribe high-technology prowess to the Nazis. This didn't fool the public for long though, and they became known as 'flying gas mains'.

            Exhaustive and infallible though your sources of knowledge may be, as specialist publications they do not necessarily reflect what appeared in the mainstream media.
  • The phrase "Houston we have a problem" was never actually spoken except in the movie. What was actually said was:

    55:55:20 (9:07 PM CT) - Swigert: "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here."

    Which is slightly different. You can read the transcript here [accessus.net].

  • Man Conquers Space (Score:3, Funny)

    by nzhavok ( 254960 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @05:32AM (#4092048) Homepage
    Man Conquers Space

    yeah...

    Kinda like how I conquered the mighty oceans last week when I went for a little paddle in the surf.

  • wait... (Score:2, Funny)

    by taernim ( 557097 )
    ... I thought the moon landing was faked! Now we're going to go to Mars?! Why do you people keep rocking my world?!?!!? ;)

  • New business-model? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1: Write free software
    2: ?
    3: Conquer space.
    4: Profit!

  • Other links (Score:2, Informative)

    by countach ( 534280 )
    There are some other interesting Mars mission links. There is a planned British mission here [space.com]. The 2001 odyssey mission to mars is here [space.com]. And info about the NASA missions here. [nasa.gov].
    • "So I put it to a vote -- either we try for a 200-gram sample of core in 2009 or wait a lot longer to get documented samples from individual sites by moving around on the surface. The vote was unanimous, except one person voted against," Pillinger said.

      titter

  • Documentary? (Score:4, Funny)

    by shoppa ( 464619 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @06:06AM (#4092084)
    a documentary based on the premise that all that had been proposed in the early 1950's in Colliers actually came to pass

    Oh, yes. One of my favorite documentaries is by Steven Spielberg and is based on the premise that an alien was stranded on earth and befriended a human boy to help him get back home. Man, that documentary footage of those flying bikes is still vivid in my head.

  • Space... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Rellik66 ( 596729 )
    The final frontier. Consider how big our own galaxy is, and imagine a beowolf cluster of 'em, how long it would take to explore it let alone conquer it?
  • Is there a Space Exploration equivalent of Moore's Law? If not, I hereby claim one, and call it "Hugesmile's Law". Something to the effect of: Every decade, Man will extend its reach into outerspace by a factor of 100. (ok, I still need to work out the details, but I bet if you examined the Eurpoean exploration of the earth over the past millennium, you could come up with an earth-bound equivalent.)
    • Based on a whole three data points- I came up with a law: cost to enter space goes down by a factor of 2 every 5 years.

      The current cost to LEO is about $2600/kg. I predict it will be $1300/kg in 2006.

    • that could be true, as the voyager space probe is leaving our solar system is speed is slowly increasing, our old stuff is a lot further out that people think
      • that could be true, as the voyager space probe is leaving our solar system is speed is slowly increasing, our old stuff is a lot further out that people think

        To boldly place junk where no-one has placed junk before

        "Increasing"? I don't think so. The sun's gravity is pulling at it. Some other force would have to be acting on it to be accelerating, and unless you found the stealth deathstar, there is not much out there.

  • You can look at it, you like it, you wish you have it, but you never really get it.
  • The excursion will require a LOT of software.

    By the time all the hardware technology becomes available, the whole space of software - languages, algorithms, protocols, data structures etc - will be completely patented and owned by warring corporate interests.

    The royalties on all the software patents will exceed, by orders of magnitude, the costs of hardware, training, admin etc. NASA will never be able to afford it.

    Worse, if NASA just goes ahead and codes like they did in the '50s and '60s. Imagine sitting in the spacecraft, just entering the red planet's atmosphere, and hearing on the radio:
    "Aries, this is Houston... we have a problem... we've been prosecuted under the DMCA for using patented navigation algorithms... we've got no choice but to shut down your guidance and propulsion systems... DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CIRCUMVENT THE SOFTWARE - EVEN IF YOUR SAFETY DEPENDS ON IT - OR YOU WILL BE ARRESTED UPON RETURN TO EARTH!

  • Can't click on the link (Score:5, Funny)

    by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @07:19AM (#4092149) Homepage
    I realize it's harmless, but ManConquersSpaceEnter.html is abbreviated MCSEnter, and the MCSE doesn't get past the firewall here.

  • Irony. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mr_Icon ( 124425 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @07:29AM (#4092158) Homepage

    Is it just me, or does anyone else find the headline "Man conquers space" ironic coupled with the news of a half-mile-wide asteroid nearly missing Earth?

    • Is it just me, or does anyone else find the headline "Man conquers space" ironic coupled with the news of a half-mile-wide asteroid nearly missing Earth?

      What are you talking about? It missed didn't it? As some other people have already pointed out, the efforts to find and deflect Earth striking asteroids has been a complete success! After all, during the couple of decades spent looking for them not ONE asteroid has successfully struck the Earth!

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • uh, lots of asteroids have struck earth, thousands (millions?) Just none big enough to cause mass extinction or similar.

          Mr P understands gravity. Yes, gravity sweeps a lot meteors to strike the Earth all the time. If I was a grammar nazi I would argue over the dividing line between a small asteroid and large meteor. Life is too short for that however.

          Instead I will give you some friendly advice.

          Mr P, you understand gravity perfectly. But Mr P, it is not enough to understand gravity. Sometimes you must understand the opposite of gravity -- comedy!

          The use of lots of exclamation points should have been your first clue.

  • Space Travel, Internet Changing the Nation-State (Score:3, Insightful)

    by reallocate ( 142797 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @07:43AM (#4092172)
    The Internet and the development of manned spaceflight capabiity have in common perhaps the most important political and economic trend of the last 100-plus years: creating, illustrating and accelerating the diminished relevance of the nation-state. Just as the Internet creates and exposes new forms of behavior and economic exchange that cannot reasonably be supported or regulated within the sphere of a single nation-state, a viable effort to put humans in space will further create and sustain the changing nature and increasing irrelevancy of the traditional nation-state.

    It is dismaying that so many posters here, and also in response to similar stories, criticize and deny the need for space travel (it is as natural and necessary as humanity's migration from th Great Rift Valley). Their imaginations and aspirations seem bounded by the limits on their credit cards.

  • How can you have a documentary that documents something that didn't happen? I've already read and seen this. It's called "science fiction". It's not new. Can you explain what makes this piece of science fiction more worthy of interest than any other?
    • How can you have a documentary that documents something that didn't happen?

      As usual, hardly anyone bothers to read the cited article. The film makers don't call it a "documentary".

      This film is based on an alternative timeline to the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo era of reality - it is based on the premise that all that had been proposed in the early 1950's in Colliers actually came to pass - and sooner than they expected.

      Through the expert use of special visual effects and computer-generated imagery (CGI), the world of wonder and imagination expressed though Collier's has become real. The film Man Conquers Space looks like a documentary from the 1960's, complete with varying grades of film quality, scratches and lab marks, and a tinny soundtrack - just the way it would appear today if it had indeed been made over 30 years ago on the limited budget afforded to documentary makers of that era.

  • The NASA Von Braun biography skips over much of his war contributions. [nasa.gov] It leaves out that the rocket facility used slave labour to dig the tunnels. That aside, my favourite Von Braun quote was :

    When the first V-2 hit London von Braun remarked to his colleagues, "The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet.

    • The NASA Von Braun biography skips over much of his war contributions. It leaves out that the rocket facility used slave labour to dig the tunnels.
      It's rather usual for biographies to leave out things that the subject person didn't do. The biography is 100% accurate regarding his war contributions, which amounted to R&D, not production, not targeting, not *anything* but R&D.
  • There's the space up there,
    the space down there,
    and the space between your ears!
  • A funny quote from von Braun:

    Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.

    And one that's less than funny:

    I aim for the stars, but sometimes I hit London.

    Unless von Braun was sarcastically mocking Oscar Wilde's comment:

    We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Manned space exploration such as the Apollo program was more cultivated art based on engineering principles than any other single endevour set forth by man. Think about what people learn from the development of enterprise level projects that are never discussed in the textbooks or the classrooms. It requires a human experiential knowledge base that is passed on directly from engineer to engineer to maintain technology of that level.

    We couldn't even go back to the moon again today because we have lost that knowledge base. Sure it was recorded, but the engineers that wrote it down have retired or died. There is a knowledge and experience gap with the following generation of engineers after the Apollo program who never had the opportunity to work under the masters because we stopped the big adventure and chose to stay in earth orbit.

    The DoD will build a new fighter aircraft every 10 to 15 years whether they need one or not just so the next generation of engineers will know how to do it. It doesn't matter if it actually ever results in a procurement. The design process itself serves the purpose of training our engineers and keeping us technologically viable in that arena.

  • "The Moon of Earth." Narrator: The moon. For several years, she has fascinated many. But will man ever walk on her fertile surface? [cut to a shot of Adlai Stevenson at some sort of press conference] Democratic hopeful Adlai Stevenson says so. Stevenson: I have no objection to man walking on the moon. [photographers snap several pictures] [cut back to the moon where a family plays on the moon's fertile surface] Narrator: By 1964, experts say man will have established twelve colonies on the moon, ideal for family vacations. [a man fishes a comely moon maiden out of a crater.She winks at the audience] [a chart shows the difference] Once there, you'll weigh only a small percentage of what you weigh on Earth. [cut to a shot of a chubby boy eating pie] Slow down, tubby! You're not on the moon yet! [cut to a shot of the moon, with an American flag superimposed on it. The camera pulls back to reveal some men in spacesuits] The moon belongs to America, and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astro-men. Will you be among them? [fini. The film runs off the reel] Ralph: Miss Hoover, the movie's over. Lisa: Where's Miss Hoover? Janey: [looks out the window] Hey, her car's gone. Ralph: Maybe she drove to the moon.
  • Come on now peoples, get it together! Where's the obligatory Simpsons quote relating to the time when Homer posed as a reporter for Colliers magazine so that Mr. B could be in that months Star Snoop? Then as Burns was being hauled off by the FBI/IRS? he shouts to Homer to let the people of Colliers Magazine know of his injustice???
  • A recent American Heritage of Invention & Technology article, To Boldly Paint What No Man Has Painted Before [americanheritage.com] is a fascinating read about Chester Bonestell, the painter who, among other things, illustrated the Collier space-flight series and collaborated with Wernher von Braun on the US space program. His realistic, scientifically-founded paintings apparently were a huge inspiration to scientists and sci-fi writers alike.
  • Another documentry from Australia:
    Geeks Conquer Females, a documentary based on the premise that all that we dreamt of as adolescents actually came to pass - and sooner than we expected.

    -
  • ;)

    This sentence is random filler to get past slashdot's random filter.

  • I remember when I was a child I was taught in school that von Braun was a great scientist and an admirable man. I repeated this in front of my father (who had met and worked with the man) and his face turned hard as he told me, "Von Braun is a Nazi. He was always a Nazi, and he's been rewarded for being a Nazi, and he'll always be a Nazi."

    Since then I've read stories from slave-labor survivors about the atrocities at Thuringen and Peenemunde. It appears that my father's judgement was sound; von Braun was a cold-hearted slave-driver at the very least - and if the most extreme of the stories that eyewitnesses have told are true, then he was a sadistic monster.

    If we are to honor von Braun for his contributions to science, we should equally decry his history of racism, slave labor exploitation, and possibly torture. At the very least our government should stop trying to cover it up, and NASA's biography of the man should include the testimony of the workers at Peenemunde.
    • Since then I've read stories from slave-labor survivors about the atrocities at Thuringen and Peenemunde. It appears that my father's judgement was sound; von Braun was a cold-hearted slave-driver at the very least - and if the most extreme of the stories that eyewitnesses have told are true, then he was a sadistic monster.
      Simple fact is.. Your father was wrong, and you are wrong. von Braun had absolutely *nothing* to do with slave labor. (Nothing, Nada, Zero) He designed the rocket(s) and worked in R&D. He had nothing at all to do with the slave labor at the production facilities, (in fact he had nothing to do with production at all), nor did he have any thing to do with the labor battalions at Peenemunde.
  • That was my dream, to walk the Red Planet.

    We were told this as children, that we would travel space, the legacy for those of us who were born on the year men first walked the Moon. We watched reruns of Star Trek and marveled at the possibilities.

    We dreamed.

    Instead, we have the truth of a fucked up world were the Welfare State is the reality, and War is the only truth.

    Help me dream again...
    • Help me dream again...
      Why dream? Why not *do*? Get up and vote, write to your congresscritters, get an education and go to work for some of the companies trying to make the dream a reality.

      Or are dreams and the easy road of blaming others and inactivity your preference?
  • You know, regardless of how the real world happens to be in regard to actual space travel, I think NASA's optimist's conquest of space film would make a cool basis for a story series.

    If written well and produced well, it would be fun!

    Especially the part where greed, human stupidity and war-mongering don't get in the way of progress and exploration.

    I guess that's where ol' Gene R. came from. . .

    -Fantastic Lad
  • The only way that future "men" conquer space will be as frozen sperm in a tube, waiting to assist the female crew of intergalactic, multi-generational spacecraft. To save resources, and ensure the ability of the crew to replace themselves as needed, real men are not really needed - a plastic turkey baster should work just as well... *sigh*

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