Six of them were selected amid great nerdy fanfare in 1965 but none had been assigned to a mission until Schmitt got a seat on the very last planned flight. The Lunar Module Pilot on that crew was Jack Schmitt, a Harvard-trained geologist who was a scientist-astronaut. Then by established NASA policy they rotated together to prime crew status on Apollo 17.īut then Congress canceled the funding for Apollo 18, which also had a crew that trained together for months. For Apollo 17 Cernan had chosen Joe Engle, a former X-15 pilot, and the two trained for months as the backups for Apollo 14. All had picked rookies, loyal sidekicks they felt comfortable with and confident in. On the five previous Apollo missions the commanders, all space veterans, were allowed to choose who would land with them on an alien world. All three have claimed that they took the famous Blue Marble Shot. The three men atop the rocket were Eugene Cernan, the Commander of Apollo 17 Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, the Lunar Module Pilot who would accompany Cernan down to the surface if all went well and Ron Evans, the Command Module Pilot who would remain in lunar orbit, keeping their return ship running while his crewmates did the glamorous exploring. Their trajectories were determined by the landing sites they were scouting or targeting, and those were mainly on the eastern face of the moon as seen from Earth. Most of the men who flew lunar missions saw neither a full Earth nor a full moon both heavenly bodies were partly in shadow - complementary shadows, like lovers walking past a streetlamp - the entire flight. In order to see our planet as a fully illuminated globe you need to pass through a point between it and the sun, which is a narrower window than you might think if you're traveling at 20,000 miles an hour. But only the last three saw a full Earth. They were the three-man crews of the nine Apollo missions that traveled to the moon between 19, six of which landed there successfully (three men went twice). You can't see the Earth as a globe unless you get at least twenty thousand miles away from it, and only 24 humans ever went that far into outer space. With the marble pattern it's only a subtle difference, but it blends so much better when the pattern texture has the same orientation.It was the first photograph taken of the whole round Earth and the only one ever snapped by a human being. This keeps the seam from widening over time and is easier to lay down, but comes with the risk of being more visible in pictures.Īnother trick is to run the contact paper the same direction rather than perpendicular. This is personal preference as well, because you can also overlap the paper a tiny bit. To lay the 2nd piece down, I butted up the paper edge to edge, rather than overlap them, as I didn't want a hump on my board. As you can see, I barely had to use any extra at all. While it is kind of obvious in these pictures, I make sure the seam isn't visible in my other pictures.Įasily enough, I laid down one strip of marble paper on the board and then cut out a second piece that would fit the smaller strip. However, on my giant board - even with using the larger sized contact paper (24"x78"), I still had to use two strips of marble paper. Since this board is fairly small (used more for travel purposes), my contact paper could cover the entire board, and I didn't need to seam two pieces of contact paper together.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |