by MarkBour » Sat Aug 06, 2016 2:10 am
Ann wrote:If for any inconceivable reason I were to find myself on the Moon, I would stare and stare and stare at the sky to find some relief from the terrible grayness.
Ann
Truly, there's no place like home!
Not that you were talking about this, but if you had grown up on the Moon ... or rather your whole species had grown up on the Moon, perhaps you would have color perception which brought the surface of the Moon into a variety of beautiful shades. However, that same eye may well have left most of Earth's colors in the IR and UV, so the Earth would not look nearly as nice in the sky as it does to us. ("What pale blue dot?" you would say) Continuing such a speculation, perhaps as a color commentator among moon-dwellers, you'd be great at distinguishing light and properties in the range of 600-700 nm.
Dad is watching wrote:Getting lost on the moon would be a serious problem. What did they use to navigate? Some sort of inertial navigation system or radio beacons? After you are out of site of the landing site, things get a little problematical. What if they 'got lost'? And if the rover had a 'breakdown', could these guys have made it back to the lander on foot? And yes, we already know that this kind of exploration involves risk to life; but somebody had to already thought it all out before blast-off.
The Lunar Rovers were indeed awesome. I remember the astronauts were rather gutsy drivers, there's a well-known video of Young driving it like a race car (I think he holds the speed record). As to what they would have done if one had broken down, you have to realize that among these guys, the term world-class explorers is actually an understatement. And they were in constant radio contact with NASA, for whom the term world-class support is an understatement. I have read that they were out of line-of-sight from the LEM at times, but they had detailed maps. (Which they actually used in a famous duct-tape repair for one of the rovers on Apollo 17 ... not that it had "broken down" at all.) I guess there was some complaint about how well the maps resembled what they were seeing, but I just can't imagine they would ever have been lost enough that they would have actually needed to retrace steps. The final EVA was a nice circle, crudely speaking. If they were 2/3 of the way around it and were planning to drive it, why would they not have felt they knew where they were going if they had to walk it instead? (
http://space.stackexchange.com/question ... it-relaxed).
[quote="Ann"]If for any inconceivable reason I were to find myself on the Moon, I would stare and stare and stare at the sky to find some relief from the terrible grayness.
Ann[/quote]
Truly, there's no place like home!
Not that you were talking about this, but if you had grown up on the Moon ... or rather your whole species had grown up on the Moon, perhaps you would have color perception which brought the surface of the Moon into a variety of beautiful shades. However, that same eye may well have left most of Earth's colors in the IR and UV, so the Earth would not look nearly as nice in the sky as it does to us. ("What pale blue dot?" you would say) Continuing such a speculation, perhaps as a color commentator among moon-dwellers, you'd be great at distinguishing light and properties in the range of 600-700 nm.
[quote="Dad is watching"]Getting lost on the moon would be a serious problem. What did they use to navigate? Some sort of inertial navigation system or radio beacons? After you are out of site of the landing site, things get a little problematical. What if they 'got lost'? And if the rover had a 'breakdown', could these guys have made it back to the lander on foot? And yes, we already know that this kind of exploration involves risk to life; but somebody had to already thought it all out before blast-off.[/quote]
The Lunar Rovers were indeed awesome. I remember the astronauts were rather gutsy drivers, there's a well-known video of Young driving it like a race car (I think he holds the speed record). As to what they would have done if one had broken down, you have to realize that among these guys, the term world-class explorers is actually an understatement. And they were in constant radio contact with NASA, for whom the term world-class support is an understatement. I have read that they were out of line-of-sight from the LEM at times, but they had detailed maps. (Which they actually used in a famous duct-tape repair for one of the rovers on Apollo 17 ... not that it had "broken down" at all.) I guess there was some complaint about how well the maps resembled what they were seeing, but I just can't imagine they would ever have been lost enough that they would have actually needed to retrace steps. The final EVA was a nice circle, crudely speaking. If they were 2/3 of the way around it and were planning to drive it, why would they not have felt they knew where they were going if they had to walk it instead? ([url]http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/8453/apollo-17-lunar-roving-vehicle-walkback-limit-relaxed[/url]).