Poster of the Apollo 11 radio transcript.

The red line you see in the middle there?...

Found over here at Baekdal.com.  He's gone through the whole thing and pulled out some interesting tidbits.

I haven't been following the Lunar X-Prize much except as part of the remarkable private space program genesis we are seeing right now.  But it appears from this discussion that the X-Prize Foundation (XPF) is doing a poor job in managing the contest.

But I hadn't counted on the X Prize Foundation, which has done an extremely effective job of administering the contest to make it harder and harder to win.

The XPF has apparently driven out one of the most innovative teams.  And one that had a good chance of winning.  Team Cringely is so confident of its mission plan and technology design that it is continuing full-speed ahead without the carrot of a $20MM prize for winning.

Bureaucracy is as bureaucracy does.  pity.

And then, why then my dear travelers through this universe of ours, we will have the mind blowing space traveling abilities of the far future.  I speak of the awe inspiring year of 2001.

At least that's how science fiction predicted it.  Funny we're still driving combustion engine cars and the grand total of people who have been in space is still less than 1 thousand.  (I guess that is a lot more than 1, but it is still less than a billion).

Self-sufficient space habitat designed

Now we hear about a "new" set of technologies being refined down under in Oz. [linky]

Devised by an international team of 30 space scientists, Luna Gaia would be a 'closed-loop' environment, meaning that almost all material within the system is recycled with very little need for input from outside sources. The current design caters for a team of 12 astronauts under isolation for up to three years.

This doesn't sound Earth shattering except it is a skill set that we do need to have fully understood before we can successfully deploy a space colony. Shipping up a couple of cases of macaroni and cheese gets a bit prohibitive at thousands of dollars per pound of payload.

A lunar base is unlikely to ever be 100 per cent self-sufficient, said Chartres, because no atmosphere is completely safe from leaks and it could not provide humans with all the nutrients that they need to survive.

Luna Gaia...ugh.  Why not call it Lunar Colony Test Facility? 

So this comes up in sci fi a lot, beginning with "2001: a space Odyssey". In that movie Dave has to jump from the pod to the emergency airlock without a helmet.

He does it and it takes some seconds, approximately 10 or so..

It happens in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy wherein Arthur and Ford are thrown off the Vogon Constructor Fleet ship and are rescue 29 seconds later by Zaphod in the Heart of Gold.

Total Recall had it where Quaid and Melina were exposed to the partial atmoshpere of Mars for awhile until the atmosphere kicked in.

It's in the new movie Sunshine too.

So how long can a human actually survive in the vacuum of space?

Turns out we actually have an incident, where the astronaut survived.

At NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (now renamed Johnson Space Center) we had a test subject accidentally exposed to a near vacuum (less than 1 psi) in an incident involving a leaking space suit in a vacuum chamber back in '65. He remained conscious for about 14 seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2 deprived blood to go from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not reach a hard vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds. The subject regained consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent altitude. The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil.

[linky]

Bottom line: you have about 15 seconds until you pass out...and that will result in you...um...dying.

It's a nasty ride, you're blood boils, your skin blisters, you lungs might explode if you try to hold your breath...icky, icky.

So I've read this great book just lately called: A Man On The Moon. It's really cool.  The author, Andrew Chaikin, does a great job. He interviewed a lot of the astronauts and gives a great telling of the adventure.

I highly recommend it.

I got to thinking and I wondered; what sort of videos of the moonlandings might be available out on the web.  I grabbed a few and I encourage you to go look up some more.

And then if you want to explore some more go over here: Nasa - Apollo

An amazing period in the history of the United States and Mankind.  Unbelievable what they achieved.  The longer it's been since the landings the more amazing it becomes.

Apollo 11 liftoff:

Niel on the surface:

Apollo 17 on the surface:

Golf on the moon:

Feather and Hammer