Astronaut Rusty Schweickart Looks Back on Apollo 9, and to the Next Asteroid Impact

Astronaut Rusty Schweickart Looks Back on Apollo 9, and to the Next Asteroid Impact https://www.eresviral.com

Astronaut Rusty Schweickart Looks Back on Apollo 9, and to the Next Asteroid Impact





Astronaut Rusty Schweickart Looks Back on Apollo 9, and to the Next Asteroid Impact


The defining moment of the career of NASA astronaut Russell Schweickart arrived thanks to a problem with the camera.



	

	During a spacewalk in the Mission of Apollo 9, the camera of the film of his colleague got stuck, and Schweickart received an order to remain seated during 5 minutes while the equipment solved it. They let him look at the vastness of space and the Earth within him. When he returned home, he began to try to inspire others with that experience.

		He even joined the then Soviet cosmonauts to do it. "We are the only people who have seen the Earth with our own eyes as a unique place in all of life," Schweickart told Space.com about space travelers. "Indeed, I found that my fellow cosmonauts felt the same."

The[[Apollo 9 in photos: NASA tests the lunar module of Spidery]





						


NASA astronaut Russell L. Schweickart during a spacewalk in March 1969, seen from inside the lunar module.

            						    Credit: NASA 


		Much of Schweickart's energy has been directed towards the planetary defense of asteroid impacts through the non-profit organization he founded, called the B612 Foundation. This interview has been edited for its length and clarity.



	Space.com: What do you think is missing in the current conversations about space and space exploration?



	Russell Schweickart: While the pragmatic elements of space exploration, or the use of space in reality, are spoken more frequently, the implications of humanity moving from the planet to me are the most important things in the long term. But they become a bit of a fairy, so people usually do not talk about that kind of thing. It's not religious but it's philosophical, and those [implications] They are less pragmatic, less immediate, they are not as fun for most people as competition or technology itself. But for me there are the long-term implications of humanity moving out of the planet, looking back, realizing how precious the Earth is as the home of life, caring for the planet as it moves. It is not the cowboy mentality of 'we have destroyed this place, let's move on to the other'. Being born of your mother is when you start to love your mother, not when you finish loving your mother. [even if] You may have partially destroyed it in the process of being born. ... The development of the space uses a large amount of resources (water, fuel, energy, etc., etc.) and the pace of space development will depend on the long-term economic Sciences to develop consumables in space and not continue to excavate the Earth. ... There are resources in abundance in space, for example, in the asteroids, and people have talked about asteroid mining, but the economics of that have not been well studied.



	Space.com: It's interesting that I mentioned the asteroids as a potential resource, but that I also participated in talking about the asteroids as threats with the B612 Foundation.



	Schweickart: Asteroids They are multidimensional. ... To protect the Earth, you must know where the asteroids are and where they are going, and some time ago, we realized that when we really think about it in the broader context, we have to develop. A dynamic map of the inner solar system. ... But as soon as you think about it, that map is necessary for all other aspects, either exploring the asteroids for science or as exploration sites or targets for human exploration, or for the exploitation, ultimately, of resources spatial The idea of ​​creating a dynamic map is an essential first step for all the different dimensions with which asteroids are involved. ... We can learn from asteroids about how life came to be in the solar system. There is a lot of information there that is waiting to be harvested in terms of the nature of the life of the asteroids. Scientifically, they are as interesting as protecting Earth from the occasional impact. ... I would say that, probably, apart from increasingly intelligent telescopes, actually visiting asteroids is probably the way we will learn more about that big question: was life before the solar system or invented here? ?

The[[Apollo Building: Pictures of Moonshot History]



	Space.com: What have you learned from your experience working with the government?



	Schweickart: The international geopolitical environment is frankly more important than any of the technological challenges of protecting Earth from asteroid impacts. The whole subject of finding asteroids out there, incorporating them into a database, knowing their orbits, being able to predict an impact years before, being able to have the technology ready to divert an asteroid, all those things frankly pale in comparison, ironically, with the geopolitical decision to act. ... You will have to make the decision to act to protect Earth decades before the impact occurs. Half of your population that elected you to be the head of their nation does not believe there is such a thing as an asteroid, much less one that hits and eliminates them. And you're going to re-election in five years and you have to be a part of spending $ 500 million or $ 1 billion. ... We will probably be hit a couple of times unnecessarily before we finally get to the point of using technology to protect Earth from the next impact. Geopolitics, whether nationally or internationally, is ultimately linked very, very directly with the ultimate survival of life on Earth. The technology in general will arrive and it is simple in comparison: it is more fun to design it. Designing geopolitical systems is a pain in the ass and is a disaster. ... Antarctica is, in my opinion, the best model we have up to now for responsible governance in a non-sovereign territory. The space is a non-sovereign territory and it must remain non-sovereign, and I think we should look seriously at how that governance should occur.





						


Official portrait of astronaut Russell L. Schweickart.

            						    Credit: NASA 




	Space.com: That's an interesting contrast; Geopolitics is really what led us to Apollo and here we are seeing an incarnation very different from geopolitics. 



	Schweickart: When we were in the middle of Apollo, on the one hand we were in this race to the death, almost, with the Soviet Union to be the first to reach the moon and regain our self-confidence or our self-esteem. At the same time, when the Soviets did something, we would all be happy because we knew that this would encourage politicians to make quicker decisions and we could accelerate the program. It was a frantic situation.



	Space.com: USA is building new manned spacecraft    For the first time since the shuttle: what is it like to try a new vehicle like you did with the lunar module?



	Schweickart: Being part of the development of a vehicle and flying is quite different from learning to fly a vehicle that flies 50 times. ... It's a different experience and I think you have a different opportunity. It forces you to, as a design person, as an engineer, think about how something is built to be even more useful to you, who is going to fly it. That not only affects the actual design of physical things, but also the nature of software coding and things of that type, especially today much more than in our days. The software in Apollo was a really pioneering work, but nowadays software does all kinds of things.

The[[Images of the moon and snapshots of the Apollo project]



	Space.com: We are approaching the 50th anniversary of Apollo 9. What is it that makes you stand out from that experience when looking back?



	Schweickart: We were the first ones who had the opportunity to fly and test the lunar module, which gave all my friends the opportunity to run around the moon then. Unfortunately I could not do that. But being able to be the first to test that vehicle and make it such a pleasant experience, and, of course, personally, the failure of that camera that Dave [TK] I was using and I was outside and having five minutes to be a human being was really an important moment in the mission for me. It made it a much more personal experience than if that camera had not failed. There would be some more pictures of me outside, but you know it's a different problem. ... I am very happy, in a way, that this accident happened.



	Space.com: Have your feelings and emotions around the mission changed over the decades of looking back on that experience?



	Schweickart: The reality is that it is increasingly difficult to return to that experience. I never know when I'm talking at a level of detail if what I'm doing is remembering something I said 20 years ago, as opposed to what happened 50 years ago. The memory fades. If you ask me a technical question about the lunar module or what was a caliber reading, I have no idea. Probably 50 percent of the people who attend

The[[The Economist Space Summit]Know more about my flight than I remember. But I had the experience and what I remember is the profound impact that experience has had on my life. In many ways, it has given me the opportunity to start things, either forming the Association of Space Explorers or starting the B612 Foundation, protecting the Earth. I have been able to do many things because I flew in a space that has implications for the future that were not part of Apollo 9 per se. This makes my wife go crazy, but in many ways I am more proud of what I have been able to do since my flight than of having flown in Apollo 9. I am not the kind of person who revives something. I did it 50 years ago.



	Email Meghan Bartels in mbartels@space.com or follow it @meghanbartels. Follow us @Spacedotcom Y Facebook. Original article about Space.com.

http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)

  {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?

  n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};

  if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';

  n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;

  t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];

  s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',

  'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');

  fbq('init', '369524843414444');

  fbq('track', 'PageView');



        document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",function(){if(document.getElementById("comments")){var listener=function(){var rect=document.getElementById("comments").getBoundingClientRect();if(rect.top<window.innerHeight){loadAPI();window.removeEventListener("scroll",listener)}};window.addEventListener("scroll",listener)}});function loadAPI(){var js=document.createElement("script");js.src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&appId=131734303545872&version=v2.4";document.body.appendChild(js)}

var Purch=Purch||{};Purch.queue=Purch.queue||[];Purch.queue.push([["jquery","Purch/UI/Poll"],function($,Poll){$("[data-poll]").each(function(){var e=this;var oconf=$(this).data("poll")?$(this).data("poll"):{};oconf["element"]=e;var poll=new Poll(oconf)})}]);

        .


SOURCE LINK ERESVIRAL.COM 
https://www.beviral.online