Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Buzz Aldrin AMA

Buzz Aldren did an AMA on reddit yesterday that's a lot of fun. I am Buzz Aldrin, engineer, American astronaut, and the second person to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 moon landing. AMA!.

Q: What's the most frightening moment that you have ever experienced in space?

A: I believe it was after leaving the surface of the moon and completing a successful rendezvous with Mike Collins in the command module, as we approached connecting / docking, the procedures in the checklist said one thing, and I thought maybe doing it a slightly different way, rolling and pitching instead of something else, and I thought that was better on the spur of the moment! It turns out that it was not a good thing to do, because it caused the platform to become locked, and we were not able to use the primary thrusters, the primary guidance, to control the spacecraft, to its final few feet to dock and join the other spacecraft. That was my mistake. I suggested to my commander that we do it differently, and it was his mistake to assume that i knew what I was talking about. So we both made mistakes - brought about by me! We recovered successfully on the "abort guidance" system.

Here's a cleaned up version.

Meanwhile, we have more evidence that Voyager 1 has left the solar system. Sun Sends More 'Tsunami Waves' to Voyager 1

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