Have you ever experienced being an astronaut? It is hard to describe or even to imagine it precisely, but nothing better to get into the skin of an astronaut. I recommend you to :
- watch "Apollo XIII", a Hollywood movie about the failed mission to the moon. I know that is not a movie for the general public( a bit tedious if you do not understand the technical words) but if you have a mininum of interest about the details of a real mission to the moon, this is movie is really realistic! Due to the special effects is easy to believe that we are in there... flying by the moon. And also describes really well the engineering job in the Ground station. When there is a certain problem and there is also limited time and limited resources... lets solve it anyhow, men!!
-reading "2001, A Space Oddysey". I can not still believe that this book was written on 1969. The author, Arthur C Clark, predicts many kinds of artifacts not yet implemented at that time (as internet ) and also describes really precisesly the following topics:
- watch "Apollo XIII", a Hollywood movie about the failed mission to the moon. I know that is not a movie for the general public( a bit tedious if you do not understand the technical words) but if you have a mininum of interest about the details of a real mission to the moon, this is movie is really realistic! Due to the special effects is easy to believe that we are in there... flying by the moon. And also describes really well the engineering job in the Ground station. When there is a certain problem and there is also limited time and limited resources... lets solve it anyhow, men!!
-reading "2001, A Space Oddysey". I can not still believe that this book was written on 1969. The author, Arthur C Clark, predicts many kinds of artifacts not yet implemented at that time (as internet ) and also describes really precisesly the following topics:
- problems of the space travels ( excesive time duration, cryogene, lonelyness, communication delays with earth...)
- possible contacts with other kinds of life and possible forms of them.
- technical maneouvers like shifting the orbit or landing in a remote planet.
- long etc.
Now I am studying in my masters about the space missions and the orbits calculations, and I can definitively say that Arthur knows really well about the space technology. In the book it is described a mission to Saturn and one of its moons, Japeto. Really, the mission is almost exactly as the Cassini-Huygens, launched in 1997. The difference is that the last one in not manned, and that the Huygens probe was launched to Titan, and not to Jupiter, as decribed in the book.
If you want to motivate about the space exploration, I sincerely recommend you "2001", the book. I have not watched the film already. When I have done that, I will comment the differences.
PD. Too much workload in my studies already. That is why I have not written here for almost one month. Meanwhile I have gathered some information for future posts!
