🚀 go-pugleaf

Thanks snarfy, I need that! 

I liked the way you started out with Newton.  Of course, the mass of the 
moon has nothing to do with its orbital properties, making this a nice 
diversionary tactic.  Until an object actually orbited the moon so we 
could observe its dynamics, estimates of its mass were based on models, 
which means guesses. 

I also liked the emphasis on the misses.  As long as your audience does 
not think about just how hard it is to hit this target even if you knew 
its mass exactly, this is also a good diversionary tactic.  The fact that 
the first russian shot came as close as it did is an indication that the 
situation was pretty well under control.  The fact that we did worse for 
some time will surprise no one who remembers those early days of the 
space race.  We stunk.  But all of this is of no significance without 
some indication of *how* we missed!  Were the misses systematic in a 
direction indicating a miscalculation, or were they random?  If it 
was just a miscalculation, we should have hit on the second try after 
feeding the trajectory data into the model.  In fact, since we could 
track the russian probe, we should have hit on our first try....

But I will add my own tidbit.  I have heard that a computer code for 
calculating trajectories for the Apollo mission actually had the *sign* 
of the moon's gravity wrong.  They caught the mistake, but anyone care 
to see how bad we would miss with that big of an error? 

So this lengthy argument boils down to numbers quoted in a newsmagazine. 
Since interviews in 1969 would coincide with plans for construction 
in space, many of which involve L5 or other lagrange points than the 
saddle point on the line between earth and moon, journalistic errors 
of one sort or another is the most likely explanation of this conundrum. 

I know plenty of people who saw the launch live, but most of them are 
'gators' so it *is* possible that there is a massive conspiracy afoot. 
As to the film, I saw the moon walk on live TV and can state that it 
looks the same in later playbacks as it did then.  But then, I could 
be part of the conspiracy too!  ;-) 

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)