NASA ‘Snoopy’ lunar module likely found 50 years after being jettisoned

From a cursory look, they all look the same. I remember the LM went through lots of iterations before it was practical (and it's entirely possible Snoopy was too heavy) but it's hard to see too many differences between the versions that actually flew. What changed seemed to be landing weight and life support for the crew (later versions allowed multiple EVAs and remained landed much longer than Eagle).

Still, no EVA suits is one thing, but having no operable ascent engine is really terrible because, if something goes wrong with the descent engine (which is the thing being exercised here) the crew has no backup whatsoever in case they have no option but landing (maybe a guidance issue that requires the LM to stop - in general emergency landings in places with no breathable atmosphere are a mistake).

Amazing story if true.

"[T]he crew were alleged to have stopped working. Gibson spent his day on Skylab's solar console, while Carr and Pogue spent their time in the wardroom looking out at the window."

> different freaking planet

The moon is just a moon though; I'm sure NASA wouldn't mind.

Huh. That's even stranger.

I mean, why would they switch from a primary source to a secondary source? I wonder if there's some sort of relationship between TechCrunch and Newsweek.

Thank you. Above his funeral, another P-51 driver gave him a spectacular sendoff.

They're the claimed enemy airplanes shot down. Some of those kills were shared with other airplanes. There were several gunners on the B-17, so the number there represents all of their work.

The painted bombs above it represent the number of combat missions.

My father was the navigator, which was up front. His gun pointed out the side, which made for rather difficult deflection shots. He said the favored attack by the Luftwaffe was head on, which made deflection shots as they passed that much harder. The nose of the B-17 is a plexiglass hemisphere, and he could see the Me-109's firing straight at them, and wondered how they could miss. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, no armor.

Millions of people have looked to the moon for tens of thousands of years, and wondered if someday, a human being might walk on it.

A truly transcendent category of goal, even if a large part of the underlying motive was pretty obviously demonstrating American superiority over the Communist 'other'.

I don't really put retrieving the 'Snoopy' module in this same category.

> might be a great opportunity to develop and test robotic retrieval missions in space

Hubble was fixed so it can perform its mission: it was uniquely qualified to send high resolution images of the universe, which proved invaluable to our understanding of space.

If testing tech is your aim then Snoopy is just as good as anything else. In the end it may be more valuable left in space for future space archaeologists.