[HN Gopher] The most famous carbon dioxide absorber
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The most famous carbon dioxide absorber
Author : bemmu
Score : 98 points
Date : 2025-04-14 23:56 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.howequipmentworks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.howequipmentworks.com)
| jrflowers wrote:
| > On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder of his
| spacecraft and became the first human to walk on the Moon. The
| first words spoken by him on the Moon that day are still
| remembered.
|
| >[img that misquotes Neil Armstrong]
|
| is a hilarious way to start
| rolandog wrote:
| To be fair, they did not say they were remembered correctly.
| jrflowers wrote:
| Or who remembers them (not the person that made the image)
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I believe Neil Armstrong said that is the correct quote, it
| just dropped the "a" in the transmission.
| nrds wrote:
| Until recently I believed that too. However, I came across
| some discussion which made me realize I was mixing up the
| sequence. The transmission interruption, which can be clearly
| heard, didn't happen at that point in the quote; it happened
| a moment later, after the word "man". The critical part of
| the quote seems to come through clear. It's more of a
| linguistic question about how "for a" and "for" may sound
| almost indistinguishable in Armstrong's accent.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| I have a similar accent and we would say it like "furrah-
| man". For me, the "ah" becomes a lot weaker going into the
| "m", so I can easily see it.
|
| I'm also intrigued by the idea that it was a flub which he
| realized instantly (if you listen to the recording):
|
| ... step for man <pause> (dammit) ... one giant leap...
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| There is a whole controversy and analysis about that
| particular syllable:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong#First_Moon_walk
|
| Also, the blog post in the submission omits a major detail:
| the on-orbit docking maneuvers for the CSM to mate with the
| LM. A minor detail is that the Saturn V's third stage
| performed TLI (trans-lunar injection) and it actually
| impacted the Moon. After this TLI, the LM and the CSM were
| flying free in space, with a bit of separation, and it was
| the CSM pilot who needed to turn 180deg and nose-in to the LM
| in order to be in the proper configuration for the
| hypothetical Moon landing.
|
| It was an unusual configuration for Apollo 13, to say the
| least, because of course they did not land on the Moon, but
| also because the "base/legs" part of the LM wouldn't be "left
| behind" on the lunar surface, so they sort of lugged it
| around awhile. I don't know the exact sequence of jettisoning
| that base, but they certainly relied on the LM "head" as a
| lifeboat and a source of additional life-support functions.
| mandevil wrote:
| At one point they discussed jettisoning the landing stage
| of the LM, for less mass so that the PC+2 burn would get
| them home faster, but most of the batteries and O2 tanks on
| the LM were in the descent stage (4 of the 6 batteries, I
| don't remember the distribution of the tanks) so dropping
| the landing stage made their other problems even worse. The
| landing stage stayed attached to the ascent stage for the
| entire life of Odyssey, and was dumped into a deep trench
| in the Pacific Ocean because there was a nuclear RTG to
| power the ALSEP attached to one of the legs of the lander.
| userbinator wrote:
| _There is a whole controversy and analysis about that
| particular syllable_
|
| Oh FFS... this guy _went to the Moon_ and all people can
| argue about is what he said? How far we 've fallen...
| krapp wrote:
| Be glad people still believe anyone ever went to the moon
| at all. That may not be the case in a few more years.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Pretty soon it will be possible for tourists to visit the
| moon and see the litter we left with their own eyes.
|
| In fact, job 1 needs to be building fences around the
| landing sites so people don't trample all over them.
| krapp wrote:
| We're still in the "millionaire celebrity ego-trip to
| nudge against the Karman line" stage of commercial space
| travel. "Pretty soon" is nowhere near a likely timeframe
| for crowds of tourists clomping around on the moon.
| euroderf wrote:
| IIRC Armstrong said some years later that he had
| unintentionally left out the "a".
| breakyerself wrote:
| It's a fun read. It does seem to imply that the parachutes slowed
| them down from 25,000 mph, but the heat shield smashing through
| the atmosphere would have slowed them down first.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That would be one helluva parachute.
| wolfi1 wrote:
| and I thought the most famous carbon dioxide absorber would be
| caustic potash solution
| fph wrote:
| Myself, I was thinking
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Sherman_(tree) .
| Angostura wrote:
| I was thinking 'Amazon rainforest' or perhaps 'ocean'
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Many of us knew the story from books, or even the Tom Hanks
| Apollo 13 film, but the detail here is fascinating.
| hinkley wrote:
| The triumph of the movie, as described at the time, was making
| people care about a story they already knew the ending to. Opie
| sure turned out good.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > The triumph of the movie, as described at the time, was
| making people care about a story they already knew the ending
| to.
|
| One could, I think, argue the same about any movie about a
| historical event. I think that it would seem strange, for
| example, to say that that was the main achievement of _Sands
| of Iwo Jima_.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think it's different when you're talking about an army
| versus three people in that army.
|
| We don't know if Private Ryan or any of the other
| characters make it. We can assume most of the actors make
| it off the beach at the beginning, but that's about it.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| I mean it was also way better than the first 12 prequels
| tenpies wrote:
| Also for anyone interested, some of Flight Director Gene
| Kranz's recordings are available online. Here's the first part:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWfnY9cRXO4
|
| The comments have time stamps for some particularly interesting
| moments, but the incident occurs 8 minutes in, and the infamous
| "Houston, we've had a problem" remark happens at 9:20.
|
| The blog post talked about how everything had to be
| communicated verbally because you could not share images, but
| since we're so used to Hollywood adaptions or documentaries, I
| find the recordings really drive the point home.
| hinkley wrote:
| PSA: Apollo 13 is currently marked as "Leaving Soon" on Netflix.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| The scenes where they identify the square peg/round hole
| problem and where John Aaron and Ken Mattingly get the power
| draw down are some of my favorite in any movie. Must watch for
| any engineer
| schiffern wrote:
| I love how their solution was _not_ to fit the square peg
| into the round hole, but to use the suit air hose system to
| pull air through the filter instead.
|
| They achieved the important function ("flow cabin air through
| the filter") in a totally different way.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/ap13fj/15day4-mailbox.html
|
| https://spacecenter.org/apollo-13-infographic-how-did-
| they-m...
| userbinator wrote:
| It's worth remembering that this is 1960s technology.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Wait did they really launch apollo 13 at 13:13 local time lol. I
| think of myself as not particularly superstitious but that's
| pushing it.
| timewizard wrote:
| No. Local time for the vehicle was 14:13. Local time for
| mission control was 13:13.
| breput wrote:
| We shake our heads at round vs. square filter in the distant 1970
| past, but flash forward 55 years and we have that a very similar
| situation in the active American space capsules - none of the
| spacesuits are compatible with any of the other ships.
|
| The Boeing spacesuit isn't compatible with the SpaceX capsule,
| which was recently an issue with the Crew 9 mission. And neither
| are compatible with the NASA Orion capsule.
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