From Saturn 5 to the Airbus
Some time back I was window shopping while waiting for the Disco to be serviced when I found a Lifeline shop with a second-hand book section. As usual I went straight to the hardback, older looking offers and found two classics. One, Rise up to Life, is a biography of Howard Walter Florey, an Aussie, who took Flemings discarded discovery of penicillin and developed it for every-day use and the other, Arthur C Clarke’s The Promise of Space.(1st edition, 1968)
The cost? $4.50 for the two.
In July, 1969 I was on exercise with the 7th Battalion in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. Training us to fight in the tropical jungles of Vietnam the Army had chosen the training ground well. It was bloody freezing.
I remember the night the Eagle landed as some of us gathered around the hand-set of an ANPRC 25 radio and listened to Astronauts Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin talking as they maneuvered in Moon orbit. When Neil Armstrong and ‘Buzz’ Aldrin actually landed I was manning a piquet post and couldn’t listen but from then I have taken a great interest in space.
I’m now reading Arthur C Clarke’s book and find it fascinating. Printed a full year before the famous July 69 Apollo moon landing he has the ability to make the technological leap of space travel understandable to us non ‘rocket scientist’ type punters.
As the fuelled up Saturn rocket sat on the pad at Cape Kennedy it weighed 3,000 tons, which is just a little bit lighter and about the same length as the current ANZAC Class frigates in service in the RAN. On lift-off 7,500,000 pounds of thrust lifted this frigate sized rocket vertical, consuming fuel at 15 tons per second with the fuel pumps generating a total of 3,000 hp. As Clarke says, 3,000 hp is twice the power of the largest ocean liner (circa 1960s).
Well I find that fascinating.
Yesterday we were all agog at the Airbus 380 making her inaugural flight. With her Rolls Royce and GE/Pratt & Whitney engines expected to produce 75,000 pounds of thrust, a mere tenth of Saturn V, she is the peak of today’s aeronautical engineering and yet a Sopwith Camel by comparison.
None of my children were born when the Eagle landed but I’m sure, in due course, one of them, or even my wife and myself, will fly Airbus. I note that Qantas has put in an order for several so the chances are we will be sitting in an aircraft designed to carry up to 800 passengers that Qantas has cunningly re-engineered to carry 900 in abject discomfort.
And if I do fly, I will reflect that I’m doing so in less seat space than Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin had, in an aircraft carrying less fuel that feeds smaller engines, albeit with a virtual guarantee of landing safely.
Brave men and exciting times. The Apollo success will stand forever as a tribute to engineering, science, courage and man’s ability to realize dreams.
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Interesting and exciting times indeed. Space, near and dear to my heart! My brother, just last week, retired from NASA as a deputy director, starting his career when he was an engineering student in 1969. He was at the liftoff of the Apollo 11 moon shot. He later was on the original design team of the Space Shuttle and subsequently director of Mars Exploration.
Thru him I’ve had some special treats, tops among them being in attendance at 3 space shuttle launches, in the VIP stands just 3 miles from the pad. It is something that everyone should experience at least once in his life…so incredible hearing all that power that it is hard to describe. At a night launch, with the eyes alone we could watch the shuttle for 9 minutes after launch…as it passed over Europe and into space.
Just recently I rec’d through my brother an autographed copy of Eugene Cernan’s book, “Last man on the moon”. A great history of the early space program, his life and the sad fact that he was the last to walk there, and so many years ago.
Here’s a picture of me and Bill Anders, who flew on the Apollo crew that were the first three humans ever fly around the moon and to see the back side With Bill Anders
Forgot to add: in the linked picture, the photo inset in the upper left corner, “Earthrise” was taken by Bill…probably one of the most famous space photos ever.
I have searched a little and have founf only one reference to “piquet post” that might be the same as the one you are referring to. Unfortunately there was not enough context to determine meaning. What is it, Kev?
I remember as a twelve year old, standing at my bedroom window in the wee small hours listening to the ABC radio’s broadcast of the Apollo mission. Why at the window? Because we’d been told that the Trans Lunar Insertion burn would take place as Columbia-Eagle crossed the Queensland coast near Townsville. If we looked really carefully some seven degrees above the northern horizon, from Brisbane, we’d see it. And I did. A brilliant cone-shaped orange flare. One of my enduring memories of those times.
George:
Picquet Also spelled ‘picket’. A stand-alone guard post or small detachment of troops placed in advance of a position to give early warning of attack.
Or as in use in Australian Infantry during my years: to man the machine gun or simply used as a synonym for sentry
I remember seeing the first moon landing live on TV. The teachers herded all us kids into the hall so we could watch it.
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