[HN Gopher] The machines that paved the way for Apollo
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The machines that paved the way for Apollo
        
       Author : samizdis
       Score  : 30 points
       Date   : 2021-03-07 12:21 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.airspacemag.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.airspacemag.com)
        
       | tabtab wrote:
       | Re: "The first six Ranger missions failed, but Rangers 7, 8, and
       | 9 returned thousands of photos"
       | 
       | That would make a great TV miniseries. The stress kept building
       | as the Ranger probes kept failing and failing. Discussions and
       | office politics got heated as the "space race" intensified. The
       | success of Mariner 2 at Venus added to the pressure.
       | 
       | They gradually dropped most of the science instruments to make
       | room for redundancy for the cameras. Clean-room procedures were
       | also developed to prevent cigarette smoke, hair, etc. from
       | getting into the works. Rumor has it a frustrated manager was
       | just staring at the parts, pondering, when they realized there
       | was a lot crud on them because of the long hours spent by staff
       | in the labs. Overtime and heavy work was ironically making the
       | problem worse.
       | 
       | Ranger 7 must have been ecstasy to the team.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-03-08 23:01 UTC)