116 replies to this topic

[DONTEATUS]

Like they say ! Every Landing you can walk away from is a Good Landing ! THey all came back with Great Landings ! Now we need to plan more trips of the Imagination,to become Reality !

[MID]

DONTEATUS, on 01 September 2012 - 08:40 PM, said:

Like they say ! Every Landing you can walk away from is a Good Landing ! THey all came back with Great Landings ! Now we need to plan more trips of the Imagination,to become Reality !

Well, D, rthere's a difference between flying a craft through the atmosphere to a nice landing (i.e Apolllo v. shuttle), and not doing so.   We never failed during Murcury, Gemini, or Apollo.

We'll succeed, again!

[DONTEATUS]

I know I know the drill ! by the numbers 5 by 5 on the marks. shinny side up as always !

[MID]

DONTEATUS, on 05 September 2012 - 03:39 AM, said:

I know I know the drill ! by the numbers 5 by 5 on the marks. shinny side up as always !

Yes, and, the rubber meets the road...or,


Re-enter BEF  (blunt end forward), and put the blunt end in the water...nice and easy, under a few large chutes that inflated some  3 3/4 miles up!

[DONTEATUS]

MID, on 05 October 2012 - 11:26 PM, said:

Yes, and, the rubber meets the road...or,


Re-enter BEF  (blunt end forward), and put the blunt end in the water...nice and easy, under a few large chutes that inflated some  3 3/4 miles up!

The Good news is were back to this type of re-entry in the future missions ! Beats the heck outta a Dirt slpash down I say !

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Let's try to show a bit of respect here please and don't take this thread off topic. This is a thread to remember those that have passed on, NOT  a thread for general chit chat.

Thank you.

[flyingswan]

RIP Patrick Moore, astronomer, writer, TV presenter and de-bunker of nonsense.

He was an inspiration.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Here is the statemnent announcing Sir Patrick's death:

www.banguniverse.com said:

Statement from Julia Knight, Peter Cattermole, David McCahearty, Brian May, Iain Nicolson, and Patrick’s staff and friends.

We are sad to announce that the distinguished astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore passed away peacefully at 12.25pm this afternoon, at his home in Selsey, at the age of 89.   After a short spell in hospital last week, it was determined that no further treatment would benefit him, and it was his wish to spend his last days in his own home, Farthings, where he today passed on, in the company of close friends and carers and his cat Ptolemy.

Over the past few years, Patrick, an inspiration to generations of astronomers, fought his way back from many serious spells of illness and continued to work and write at a great rate, but this time his body was too weak to overcome the infection which set in, a few weeks ago.  He was able to perform on his world record-holding TV Programme  “The Sky at Night’ right up until the most recent episode.  His executors and close friends plan to fulfil his wishes for a quiet ceremony of interment, but a farewell event is planned for what would have been Patrick’s 90^th birthday in March 2013.

Patrick’s executors do not wish to make any further statement for the time being, but are setting up a website for well-wishers to post tributes to Patrick:

The Sir Patrick Moore Memorial Website.

www.banguniverse.com/sirpatrickmoore

In addition, it was Patrick’s wish, as a great animal lover, for donations to be made to Cats Protection on his behalf.

http://www.cats.org.uk/

enquiries@catsprotection.co.uk

0845 371 2734

Queen member Brian May, a close friend of Sir Patrick Moore, and along with astrophysicist Chris Lintott  co-author of two books with Sir Patrick, ‘Bang! The Complete History of the Universe’ and most recently, ‘The Cosmic Tourist’, has posted his own personal message, which can be be viewed at his website: www.brianmay.com

In his message, May refers to Sir Patrick as ‘a dear friend and a kind of father figure to me,’ and paid tribute to Sir Patrick writing:

‘Patrick will be mourned by the many to whom he was a caring uncle, and by all who loved the delightful wit and clarity of his writings, or enjoyed his fearlessly eccentric persona in public life.  

‘Patrick is irreplaceable. There will never be another Patrick Moore.  But we were lucky enough to get one.’  

Source

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Jesco von Puttkamer: 1933-2012

www.nasa.gov said:

Jesco von Puttkamer.
Image Credit: NASA

Jesco von Puttkamer, who began his NASA career in 1962, when he worked on Wernher von Braun's rocket team as an engineer at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., during the Apollo Program, has died, following a brief illness. He was 79.


Von Puttkamer most recently worked in the International Space Station Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington as a technical manager. For more than a decade, he authored the ISS Daily Report, which chronicled the lives and activities of the crew members living aboard the International Space Station. He also was instrumental in advancing U.S. and Russian cooperation in human spaceflight. His personal relationships in Russia and the U.S. allowed him to bring both communities together in dialogue and activities. The space station program still is benefiting from his work.


Von Puttkamer arranged the translation from Russian to English of the Boris Chertok series "Rockets and People" that chronicled the history of the Russian space program. He also was instrumental in Russian exhibitions of U.S. accomplishments in space, including museum series on von Braun, Apollo 11 and the Hubble Space Telescope.


"Jesco was an institution at NASA," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "His time here spanned almost the entire breadth of the agency's human spaceflight programs. He was a direct link from von Braun's efforts to get people off the ground to the International Space Station and 12 years of continuous human presence. We lost an outspoken advocate for NASA's efforts to explore farther than we ever have gone before."

Jesco von Puttkamer stands beside a
model of the Saturn V rocket in this
image taken in 1969.
Image Credit: NASA

Von Puttkamer received numerous awards during his 50 years at NASA. Among those honors was NASA's prestigious Exceptional Service Medal in 2004. In 2007, he received a NASA Honor Award for successful initiatives of advancing American-Russian cooperation in spaceflight. In December 2008, the U.S.-wide German-American Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia honored von Puttkamer with its “Distinguished German-American of the Year” award. For this honor, he received congratulatory letters from President George W. Bush, then-NASA Administrator Michael Griffin and the Governors of the states of Pennsylvania and Virginia.


He is the author of more than a dozen books on spaceflight. His novelette, "The Sleeping God," was published in the anthology "Star Trek: The New Voyages 2." His diary/book on the first lunar landing by Apollo 11 was published in Beijing in 1982 in a Chinese translation. A revised edition of this book was published for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission in July 2009.


Von Puttkamer lived in Huntsville beginning in 1962 when he worked at Marshall with von Braun in the aeroballistics division. He came to NASA at von Braun's personal invitation. In 1974, von Puttkamer transferred to NASA Headquarters.


Von Puttkamer is survived by his wife, Ursula.


Below is a segment from "This Week @ NASA" from March 23, 2012 in which von Puttkamer was featured.

Source

[Waspie_Dwarf]

In Memoriam: Carl Woese

astrobiology.nasa.gov said:

The astrobiology community deeply mourns the loss of Dr. Carl Woese, the University of Illinois microbiology professor credited with the discovery of a “third domain” of life. He died on Sunday, December 30th at his home. He was 84.

In 1977, Dr. Woese and his colleagues overturned a universally held assumption about the basic structure of the tree of life. Microbes known as archaea are as distinct from bacteria as plants and animals are, they wrote in a published paper. Prior to this finding, scientists had lumped archaea together with bacteria and asserted that the tree of life had two main branches — bacteria (called prokarya), and everything else (eukarya). Their discovery added archaea as a third main branch of the evolutionary family tree.

Dr. Woese was born on July 15, 1928, in Syracuse, N.Y. He earned bachelor’s degrees in math and physics from Amherst College and a Ph.D. in biophysics at Yale University. He studied medicine at the University of Rochester, was a postdoctoral researcher in biophysics at Yale and worked as a biophysicist at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, N.Y. before he joined the microbiology faculty at the University of Illinois in 1964. He was also a professor at the UI’s Institute for Genomic Biology.

“Carl was truly a man of vision, creativity and passion, with a deep love of this university,” said Gene Robinson, director of the UI’s Institute for Genomic Biology in a statement. “Carl not only rewrote the textbook in evolutionary biology, but his discovery also has given us the tools today to study the human microbiome, the incredibly diverse and complex assemblages of microorganisms in our bodies that contribute so much to both health and disease.”

Woese received a number of awards for his research: a MacArthur Foundation grant in 1984, election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1988, the Leeuwenhoek Medal (microbiology’s premier honor from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) in 1992, a National Medal of Science in 2000 and many more.

Source: [University of Illinois]

Source

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Dyer Brainerd Holmes, former NASA manned flight director, dies at 91

The Washington Post said:

Dyer Brainerd Holmes, who directed NASA’s manned space flight program in the early 1960s and who was instrumental in developing the plan that sent the first astronauts to the moon, died Jan. 11 at a hospital in Memphis. He was 91.

He had complications from pneumonia, said a stepson, Pierce Ledbetter.

Source

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Reg Turnill: Veteran BBC aerospace correspondent dies

www.bbc.co.uk said:

Reg Turnill, the BBC's aerospace correspondent from the beginning of the space age through to the shuttle era, has died aged 97.

After being sent to Moscow to cover the first manned space launch, he regularly reported from Cape Canaveral and Houston on the Apollo Moon missions.

In 1970, he broke the story to the world that Apollo 13 was in trouble.

Mr Turnill's eldest son confirmed the news of his father's death to BBC Radio Kent.

Read more...

First Patrick Moore, now Reg Turnill.

Like Sir Patrick, Reg Turnill taught me much and fuelled my love of all things space when I was young. His appearances on TV were always worth watching and several of his books still sit on my shelf.

Unlike Sir Patrick I never got to meet him.

Edited by Waspie_Dwarf, 12 February 2013 - 04:53 PM.
corrected link.