Apollo 50 years later

alfadriver said:

In reply to Floating Doc :

Technicaly, Hamilton was not part of mission control, so she would not have been counted as the only women engineer in mission control.  That would be Poppy Northcutt, who was a guidance specialist.  She was very key in the calculation in getting Apollo 13 safely back home.

And the third woman, Joanne Morgan, I suppose was not an engineer, either.  But she was there, at one of the consols, during liftoff.  

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/apollo-11-launch-meet-women-behind-historic-nasa-mission-to-the-moon-2019-07-16/

And that does not count the many women who were computers for NASA Langley.  

Or the many who worked to manufacture the various space suits.

Still, the total lack of diversity in NASA at the time was rather stark.

Actually, speaking of diversity - this is a quote from Northcutt (from an Ars Technica article). It's worse now, at least in the male-female ratio. 30% of comp sci staff in the 50s was actually pretty impressive given the way society worked at the time. Unless that's skewed by a lot of data entry positions that were a logical extension of secretarial work.

"I'm just sad there aren't more women now," said Northcutt, noting that while 30% of computer science staff were women in the late 1950s and early 1960s, today that has dropped to just 18 percent. The culprit? "Hostile work place," she said. "The Internet has spawned this really ugly thing for women. Yes, I experienced sex discrimination [at NASA], but it was not anonymous. I knew at least who the hell it was being a pig." That's often not the case in today's social media-dominated world, where women frequently receive abusive comments, including threats of rape or death, merely for daring to exist in a traditionally male-dominated space. (Needless to say, you won't find Northcutt—now a Texas-based attorney—on Twitter: "I think it's a sewer.")

In reply to alfadriver :

It's better to be lucky than good.

Landing is coming up. It’s a good time to be watching the live feed. 

Neil just asked for a map. Buzz offered to trade it for a stick of gum.

Then Buzz chewed Neil out for bringing CSM trash into the lander.

This is serious.

Getting close to decent burn.

Woooooooo!

I’m going to be watching this over and over. 

Adding more to my viewing- watching the CBS live feed on TV and the Apollo live feed on my computer- lucky to have the synced.  

Very captivating.

While waiting for the walk, CNN is showing the doc Apollo 11. Which is really good 

I was at the SCCA Trans Am race at Bryar Motorsports Park in NH ( now I think it's called NH Int'l Speedway, whatever) when this monumental event happened. It was unbelievable. But at the time as a young jerk only interested in motorsports, I relished the b&w pic I took in pit lane after the race of Mark and Roger deep in conversation. Mark was wasted after the 2-1/2 hour race because of the intense mid-summer New England heat. Roger looked impeccable, as usual. To me, that image meant more. Well, priorities at the time ...

Incidentally, I developed that roll of film myself because I was taking a class at the time. I still have all the negatives from the race. Someday I will print that photo and frame it. (E36 M3, why haven't I done it yet? Why haven't I done a lot of things yet?)

Then there are those that believe it never happened.

We watched "Hidden Figures" last night; pretty good.

"Buzz" don't take no crap. 

Keith Tanner said:

Actually, speaking of diversity - this is a quote from Northcutt (from an Ars Technica article). It's worse now, at least in the male-female ratio. 30% of comp sci staff in the 50s was actually pretty impressive given the way society worked at the time. Unless that's skewed by a lot of data entry positions that were a logical extension of secretarial work.

"I'm just sad there aren't more women now," said Northcutt, noting that while 30% of computer science staff were women in the late 1950s and early 1960s, today that has dropped to just 18 percent. The culprit? "Hostile work place," she said. "The Internet has spawned this really ugly thing for women. Yes, I experienced sex discrimination [at NASA], but it was not anonymous. I knew at least who the hell it was being a pig." That's often not the case in today's social media-dominated world, where women frequently receive abusive comments, including threats of rape or death, merely for daring to exist in a traditionally male-dominated space. (Needless to say, you won't find Northcutt—now a Texas-based attorney—on Twitter: "I think it's a sewer.")

I've looked into this a bit as I've had a bunch of management postions with hiring responsibility, and my understanding is that the percentage of women computer scientists was indeed considerably higher during the mainframe era. The change really seemed to happen during the hobbyist era in the late 70s/early 80s as it was mostly "the boys" who started playing with computers back then. That's my generation, and I remember distinctly that in my first semester we probably had around 10 women in my CS class. Out of 400+...

Interestingly enough, something I see in my current job as a consultant is that companies that may still have a mainframe or three hiding in the basement (even if they wouldn't admit to it in polite company) tend to have a higher percentage of women on their IT staff, too.

IMHO it wasn't the Internet that made things bad for women in CS and other engineering disciplines, but it made it worse.

Sorry for the detour, back to the regularly scheduled moon landings.

DeadSkunk (Warren) said:

"Buzz" don't take no crap. 

Guy was being a douche.

Public Broadcasting has some great shows on the subject right now:

https://www.pbs.org/video/8-days-to-the-moon-and-back-bnqvna/

and

https://www.pbs.org/video/chasing-the-moon-part-1-kpyzvq/

plus some on more of the early efforts that led to the Space Race:

https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-space-men/

James May had a couple of great shows on the subjects as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_May_on_the_Moon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_May_at_the_Edge_of_Space

Re-entry in an hour on the live stream, folks.

Interesting to see the debris that is burning up during re-entry- and from what I've heard, that was the remaining parts of the booster that was supposed to bounce off the atmosphere.  But a small error meant that it and the actual command module entered at almost the same place at the same time.  yes, they almost ran into each other.

I also launched 50 years ago. Coincidence or conspiracy? 

I've always been fascinated by the speech William Safire wrote for Nixon in case the mission failed and the astronauts were unable to return. Obviously, I'm glad it wasn't needed, but it's so good I wish it were better known.

For anyone that missed it in theatres earlier this year and have prime, Apollo 11 is streaming on there and it's worth watching. Hopefully you have a quality tv and sound system to do it justice.

Adam