The End of the Era ...

[GHT]

Owing to that solid background and my career in financial markets, I can do math in my head faster than most people on a computer. It's not a particularly valuable skill as the computer is more than fast enough for what is needed, but it is a nice parlor trick to spit out a number ahead of someone clicking away on their IPhone.

You and me both. Some years ago I bought my wife a brand new car. The young salesman had made both a substantial cash discount price as well as a good trade in on her old car. The salesman had to remove the percentage tax off the price, discount the new balance, add the now lower percentage price then deduct the trade in of the old car. He used some calculator program on his supersonic, all whistles and bells computer. He was tap-tap-tapping away, finger jabbing, scribbling numbers on a piece of paper, checking and double checking.
Meanwhile, having told me that the discount cannot include the tax, I realised that the discounted price would create a lower tax too, so while he was doing all his calculating, I took a slip of paper from his desk, wrote a figure on it and left turned down so that he couldn't see it.
After a good five minutes he triumphantly produced the new price. "Turn that piece of paper over," my wife said. He did so, our numbers matched perfectly. He looked crestfallen. "How did he do that?" he asked my wife. "He paid attention at school," she said with a knowing smile.

 

[GHT]

"Lookit that! How obviously fake! MOON LANDING FRAUD -- CONFIRMED!"

Nonsense, we Brits have been there too, so how can you say it's a fraud?

 

[Fading Fast]

You and me both. Some years ago I bought my wife a brand new car. The young salesman had made both a substantial cash discount price as well as a good trade in on her old car. The salesman had to remove the percentage tax off the price, discount the new balance, add the now lower percentage price then deduct the trade in of the old car. He used some calculator program on his supersonic, all whistles and bells computer. He was tap-tap-tapping away, finger jabbing, scribbling numbers on a piece of paper, checking and double checking.
Meanwhile, having told me that the discount cannot include the tax, I realised that the discounted price would create a lower tax too, so while he was doing all his calculating, I took a slip of paper from his desk, wrote a figure on it and left turned down so that he couldn't see it.
After a good five minutes he triumphantly produced the new price. "Turn that piece of paper over," my wife said. He did so, our numbers matched perfectly. He looked crestfallen. "How did he do that?" he asked my wife. "He paid attention at school," she said with a knowing smile.

That's awesome. Good show.

 

[2jakes]

"Lookit that! How obviously fake! MOON LANDING FRAUD -- CONFIRMED!"

Darn it Lizzie...and I paid .25¢ for them.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I'll bear the scars of "new math" for the rest of my life. When I go to the bank to pay in the deposits from work, I have to write out the calculations -- "carry the one, etc" -- to figure out how much change I'm going to need. If you ever get a twenty dollar bill with a lot of scribbled subtraction problems that look like they were done by a grade-school kid, it's one of mine. I was a D student in math from Grade 4 thru the end of high school, and nothing I could do ever changed that. I took two years of algebra in high school, but I didn't retain a single bit of it.

I was listening to "The Quiz Kids" the other night, and Joel Kupperman was on there doing some fancy math problem in his head and I wanted to reach back thru the time vortex and punch him in the face. Bah.

It wasn't until I was in college and after I had taken a philosophy course that dealt with logic/ syllogisms that I finally "got" algebra, in the sense that the cranial light bulb illuminated and I had the "aha moment." I think that it really boils down to the teacher: to not only communicate the concept but inspire the student to concentrate and grasp it.

My three closest high school friends all became engineers: I think that can be traced to quality public grade school teachers who were enthusiastic about the subject and imparted that enthusiasm. Contra, I had to deal with nuns who didn't even possess a baccalaureate in math education and were known for getting the answers from the teacher's edition of the textbook. You cannot expect someone who can't solve the problem herself to teach the skills of problem solving.

Thus, I believe that teachers can actually be mathematics savants themselves.. but know nothing about conveying that to a kid. And once that kid builds up walls in their head around the notion that math is "too hard," the battle may be lost forever. But I don't think that it can never be overcome. Merely that mustering the will to be inspired diminishes with age.

 

[MikeKardec]

I'm just thinking out loud here- Wouldn't technology created in the 1960s, no matter how advanced at the time and no matter its accomplishments, be completely obsolete today anyway?

You know, you'd hope that was true but, while I haven't researched it other than to just talk casually to a few people and read an article or two, it does seem that the basic "get out of the gravity well" technology hasn't progressed much. A friend of mine (actually I bought her a shuttle part at Norton because she worked at NASA during the early part of the shuttle program) interviewed to be a Space Plane (NASP) test pilot and that sounded like there might be some post shuttle potential there but I think the brute force needed to go higher than the shuttle, basically break earth orbit, is still something that require sitting on a tower of fuel. It's kind of humbling.

The rocket itself wasn't especially complicated by rocket standards, and didn't use any mysterious, ultra-advanced technology. The first stage was simply a cluster of five very large engines that burned kerosene -- bought from Esso -- and the upper stages burned liquid hydrogen. It wasn't a very efficient system -- the first stage got about four *inches* per gallon -- but a rocket is a rocket is a rocket. It was the guidance system that was ultra-sophisticated by the standards of the 1960s and was the real heart of the Apollo system.

As far as I know you are right in the roughest sense but missing some of the very important details. It was very impressive how finally machined everything was and the materials from which a lot of the systems I saw a Norton (and this is just one medium sized warehouse that contains a limited selection of parts) were made. Rocket engines are somewhat simple from a distance but they are made to VERY tight, like watchmaker tight specifications and out of fascinating combinations of materials. They have to wear perfectly, balance perfectly, expand and contract (often at the same time) perfectly. I wish I'd brought back more pictures but as the owner showed me around it was obvious that there was a lot more to it all than I had appreciated and I'd gone in knowing the detail work that went into some of it.

A person can poo poo it all from a distance because it really IS all about brute force but when you think about the size of a Saturn V and the relatively short time it is under thrust it's amazing that they could build systems and materials that could withstand the sort of chaos inflicted on it without the whole pile tipping out of balance and tearing itself apart (as many test rockets did). Imagine what happens when you simply throw a balancing weight from an automobile wheel. The precision that went into some of the simplest components that I saw was amazing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some years ago, China proclaimed, that they want to start moon-missions the next years, to photograph the moon completely.

Anyone still heared something about it?

If anyone can do it, they can. They're as much interested in doing it to prove a point as they are for the science, and as we saw with the US program, that's a very big motivator.

 

[Fading Fast]

If anyone can do it, they can. They're as much interested in doing it to prove a point as they are for the science, and as we saw with the US program, that's a very big motivator.

I agree, they have the money (in debt up to their eyeballs like we are, but enough overall wealth to do it) and political will (top-down nationalism has increased in the last few years in China) and, we where there in the '60s, is what they want to do a real advance: go there and take comprehensive pictures?

Maybe it is a great technological advance, but it doesn't have the high-profile, spirit-capturing, Kapow! of a being the first country to put a man on the moon.

 

[HudsonHawk]

My brother in law is fond of saying "there are two kinds of nations...those who use the metric system and those who put a man on the moon."

 

[2jakes]

Sitting on the living room couch, with special permission to stay up late. I was the only one in the house who saw the first moonwalk live -- my sister was two years old and oblivious, and my mother was fast asleep in the next room. She couldn't have cared less about it. But I stayed up far into the night and watched as much of it as I could. Decades later a friend with "contacts" slipped me archival video recordings of the original CBS coverage of most of the moon missions, and I've watched them many times since. Cronkite playing with his model rockets never gets old.

I was doing the math (also not a favorite subject in school)
and I believe you must’ve been six at the time of the first moonwalk.

So what motivated, inspired, or jump-start your fascination for the “spirit of ’37”
and all the other things from the past before your time?
Things which we all have enjoyed over the years here on the forum.

btw:
Thanks for sharing your day of that event.
I know that I also would’ve been there sitting and watching this as well.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A significant part of my upbringing came from my grandparents, who had been adults in the 1930s, and maintained a 1930s worldview, and it rubbed off. As for the Spirit of '37, that was inculcated by the year I spent working in a non-union factory, watching a co-worker get maimed by unsafe machinery.

The thing I liked most about the space program was Tang. I'd sit in front of the TV eating it straight out of the jar with a spoon. I was also fond of "Space Food Sticks," which are indescribable to anyone who never ate them, but will never be forgotten by anyone who did.

 

[Trenchfriend]

A significant part of my upbringing came from my grandparents, who had been adults in the 1930s, and maintained a 1930s worldview, and it rubbed off. As for the Spirit of '37, that was inculcated by the year I spent working in a non-union factory, watching a co-worker get maimed by unsafe machinery.

The thing I liked most about the space program was Tang. I'd sit in front of the TV eating it straight out of the jar with a spoon. I was also fond of "Space Food Sticks," which are indescribable to anyone who never ate them, but will never be forgotten by anyone who did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_(drink)

This?

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q...a576455b1f3eab82f33d22aa95078437o0&ajaxhist=0
Breakfast-drink, woohoo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Food_Sticks

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's the stuff. THE KIND THE REAL ASTRONAUTS EAT.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I was also fond of "Space Food Sticks," which are indescribable to anyone who never ate them, but will never be forgotten by anyone who did.

Those things were vile. Even back in the early 70's I thought that they were more likely fed to prisoners of war to obtain confessions than eaten by the astronauts.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Why do you think Gus Grissom risked his career to smuggle a corned beef sandwich onto one of his flights?

 

[MikeKardec]

I was also fond of "Space Food Sticks," which are indescribable to anyone who never ate them, but will never be forgotten by anyone who did.

Oh my God! Those nasty things started a whole revolution of plastic food. I thought they were cool as a kid ... for about a year. Then I suddenly recognized them as the horror they were. A newer version of Tang still seems to show up in MRE packs ... it's actually good compared to some of the crud sold as "orange juice from concentrate."

 

[Trenchfriend]

Is corned ceef still a celebratory-meal on St. Patrick's Day in New England?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep. Corned beef and cabbage is very much a thing in every pub you will walk into on March 17th. But if you know what's good for you, stay away from the green beer.

 

[Trenchfriend]

stay away from the green beer.

Equally, put it in my glass!

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=berliner+weisse+waldmeister&FORM=HDRSC2

 

[GHT]

Yep. Corned beef and cabbage is very much a thing in every pub you will walk into on March 17th. But if you know what's good for you, stay away from the green beer.

Green beer? Ugh! The only green beer that I've ever seen has been in the gutter, usually accompanied by cubed carrots and tomato skins.