posted 10-04-2008 08:43 PM               

A British study, commissioned by NASA, has concluded that many of the world's greatest expeditions, including the Apollo moon missions, were either short-term or long-term failures - or both. Although hailed as heroes, Raleigh, Shackleton and other explorers made less of an impact on world affairs than previously thought, says the report.

...Apollo achieved its goal of putting men on the moon before the Russians, but the equipment used had no application for other projects. The programme cost £70bn in today's money. NASA has since struggled to find a reason to put men into space; hence the interest [in the study by] executives setting up the Constellation programme which will take astronauts back to the moon next decade and later to Mars.

While Apollo did fail at pushing humankind further into the solar system, a fault that even von Braun recognized as it was happening (which in turn led to his own proposal to cancel the latter Apollo missions in favor of an immediate refocus on Mars), it would be hard to sustain an argument that Apollo didn't change the world in other ways ("...made less of an impact on world affairs than previously thought.")

posted 10-04-2008 08:55 PM               

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Originally posted by E2M Lem Man:
But by their definition, Columbus's missions to the new world were failures also.

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Only Columbus's and John Franklin's 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage - on which all his 129 crewmen died - had any strategic merit, it was found.

...With Columbus and Franklin, the failures were mitigated by long-term beneficial results; the former discovered the New World, while ships sent to find Franklin made key discoveries that led to the finding of the Northwest Passage.

posted 10-05-2008 12:03 AM            

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
per the article...

...Columbus....discovered the New World

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posted 10-05-2008 12:17 AM               

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Originally posted by FFrench:
I wonder how the approximately 15 to 20 million residents (some anthropologists estimate higher) of North America in 1492 would respond to this tired old reportage that Columbus "discovered" anywhere.

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Most would argue that it was a failure of funding to create and use more equipment, not the equipment itself, that lead to Apollo's demise.

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posted 10-05-2008 12:53 AM               

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Originally posted by FFrench:
Most would argue that it was a failure of funding to create and use more equipment, not the equipment itself, that led to Apollo's demise.

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The Apollo missions achieved their initial goal of putting men on the moon but failed to fulfil NASA's long-term hopes of opening the solar system to human exploration.

A multi-purpose spacecraft design might have, for example, ruled out any need for the space shuttle, as supporting Earth orbit operations would be included with the larger context of a modular vehicle architecture.

posted 10-05-2008 01:15 AM            

I certainly agree with you about the context of the wider points in the article about the report. I was referring to the specific sentence (which may of course be the misreading of the journalist, rather than anything stated in the report itself) which states:

"By contrast, Apollo achieved its goal of putting men on the moon before the Russians, but the equipment used had no application for other projects."

That's simply not true. Skylab actually demonstrated its successful application for other projects.

And additionally, if could be argued, Apollo hardware - particularly the Saturn V heavy-lift rocket with all its launch pad, assembly and manufacturing infrastructure - would have been an ideal starting point for further outward human space exploration. It certainly had far more capability to do so than the manned systems before and after it - and is being replicated in many vital aspects for NASA's future plans.

posted 10-05-2008 07:05 AM               

I apologise for the ridiculous report from the UK. Here we have trouble putting a man on a train so the report was probably born out of envy,

posted 10-05-2008 01:55 PM               

It's been a while since elementary school but wasn't Columbus trying to find a 'shortcut' to India and ended up on the opposite side of Earth?

posted 10-06-2008 06:16 AM               

That word should be retracted from the article. I'm with Poofacio...this country should keep a very low profile at the moment. We are lucky if we can find a train that works, let alone put a man on the train...

Shame on the author.

posted 10-06-2008 11:48 AM               

Cheers,

posted 10-06-2008 12:47 PM            

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Originally posted by poofacio:
Here we have trouble putting a man on a train.

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posted 10-06-2008 01:28 PM               

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Originally posted by robsouth:
The goal of Apollo was to put a man on the moon and get him home safely... job done in my books.

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I agree. One must compare the stated goals for the Apollo program against the actual results. When that comparison is made, the Apollo program can only be viewed as a tremendous success.

In fact, Apollo gave us more than what was originally outlined. We got multiple missions, extended stays, multiple scientific experiments, and dedicated geological explorations.

If there was any failure, it was a failure to foresee in 1961 that a moon landing would be viewed more as an "end" rather than another step towards greater exploration beyond the moon. The thinking in 1961 had to be that the Russians would also likely land on the moon (either before or after the US landings). And then, the space race would take us forward to the next step, and so on...with each country vying for the prize of the next "first" to be had.

posted 10-07-2008 04:06 PM               

Historical Exploration: Learning Lessons from the Past to Inform the Future (PDF)

This report examines a number of exploration campaigns that have taken place during the last 700 years, and considers them from a risk perspective. The explorations are those led by Christopher Columbus, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Franklin, Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Company of Scotland to Darien and the Apollo project undertaken by NASA. To provide a wider context for investigating the selected exploration campaigns, we seek ways of finding analogies at mission, programmatic and strategic levels and thereby to develop common themes. Ultimately, the purpose of the study is to understand how risk has shaped past explorations, in order to learn lessons for the future. From this, we begin to identify and develop tools for assessing strategic risk in future explorations.

posted 10-09-2008 01:06 AM               

Yesterday I was handed a paper to read which was commissioned by the Constellation Program to see if there was anything we could learn from historical exploration as a lesson for NASA. That was a great idea. I was excited to see that the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland was the scholarly organization which produced this paper. I was just there! I had walked across the campus! wow, small world!

I had great hopes for this paper.

After I read it, I felt disappointment. I slept on it. I read it again this morning. I am still disappointed.

Probably it is not fair; the attempt to learn lessons from history is always a noble one. Perhaps this is just too big a topic to address in a short academic paper. So rather than criticize, lets take a look beyond the Venn diagrams and explore for the golden nuggets of wisdom that come with a deep understanding of the lessons that history of exploration can teach us.

The Strathclyde study said that Columbus's voyages were a tactical ("program") failure and a strategic success. Really?

posted 10-15-2008 02:35 PM               

And let's not forget Asrtonuts Wallace & Gromit. They did fly to the moon and discover it is made of cheese after all.

Let's chalk up that mistake to NASA's short sighted space program.

How could the Apollo Astronauts not have known that? I guess they wasted their time on the moon's surface picking up rocks.

They could have enjoyed a piece of sharp cheddar.

posted 12-06-2008 12:44 PM               

I know the original post was about Apollo hardware, but one could possibly argue that the program overall, if we look beyond a manned-flight perspective, certainly propelled the unmanned exploration of the solar system, which has been brilliant.