A few nice prototype solutions pictures I identified:
Apollo 11 Prototype Flag
Image by jurvetson
As an Apollo artifact collector, I am so excited to have discovered the prototype build of the first flagpole assembly on the moon.
I brought it to Buzz Aldrin, and his eyes went wide. But from what I learned, there almost certainly is no Apollo 11 flag on the moon today. Hold that believed very first some background… =)
About three months just before Apollo 11, Robert Gilruth asked MSC’s Technical Services Division to design a flagpole that could assistance the U.S. flag in an environment with no atmosphere. It had to be lightweight, compact, and effortlessly assembled by astronauts wearing pressurized space suits. This construct, almost identical to the one placed on the moon by Buzz and Neil, comes from William R. Whipkey in the Technical Services Division of MSC.
The flag was such an afterthought, there was no place for it in the Lunar Module they had to strap it to the leg of the lander!
The final version had a beveled edge for lunar insertion, but as Buzz told me, they beveled it the incorrect way, on the interior, so the lunar regolith funneled into the central shaft, producing it difficult to insert.
Buzz recalls: "It took both of us to set it up and it was nearly a disaster…. As hard as we tried, the telescope wouldn’t completely extend. Hence the flag, which need to have been flat, had its own distinctive permanent wave. Then to our dismay the staff of the pole would not go far sufficient into the lunar surface to assistance itself in an upright position. Following significantly struggling we ultimately coaxed it to remain upright, but in a most precarious position. I dreaded the possibility of the American flag collapsing into the lunar dust in front of the tv camera" (Cortright, Apollo Expeditions to the Moon).
His issues had been not unfounded. Earlier this month, Buzz told me that Neil Armstrong clearly saw the flag blow more than on takeoff. He ends my video interview with:
“We can say with total certainty that of six flags on the moon, ours was the very best looking flag.
Till we lifted off, and it blew more than.
Neil saw it [fall down], and he shared it with me. And we decided it wasn’t required to inform the public immediately.”
So one may ask why the recent detailed LRO photos of the Apollo 11 landing website label specifics like a camera, but not the flag. A fellow space collector explained to me that as soon as laid flat on the moon, with no atmosphere to defend it for 40+ years of extreme UV exposure and 500° temperature swings, the fabric certainly disintegrated. But with no wind, one particular may possibly assume it would remain intact, undisturbed until this day… and clearly visible, when laid flat, by that LRO mission.
But here arises the peculiar properties of the lunar dust. A recent study by geologist Marek Zbik of Queensland University of Technologies finally explains the mysterious properties of the lunar dust from the nanoparticles within:
“That dust, the Apollo crewmen found when they went out to play in it, did some strange items: it rose above the surface when disturbed and hung there far longer than could be explained by the moon’s weak gravity it crept deep into the weave and cracks of virtually anything it touched and clung there as if adhesively attached.
Zbik created his discovery thanks to an instrument known as a synchrotron-based nano tomograph — a hunk of hardware that did not remotely exist when the Apollo crews splashed down… The infinitesimal glass bubbles scattered by means of the lunar material have been filled with a hugely porous network of alien-hunting glassy particles that span the bubbles’ interior.
and that would clarify a lot. Nano particles can turn out to be electro-statically charged, which would impart the very same home to the soil, perfectly accounting for its tendency to float. "
The lunar surface swirls in electrostatic eddies, rending the decomposed flag fabric to anything unrecognizable. I learned all this soon after acquiring the beta develop, and it tends to make it appear all the much more precious.
Prototype like crazy v.02
Image by juhansonin
1st reduce at ‘Prototype like crazy’ design axiom.
files.getdropbox.com/u/40223/prototype_like_crazy.pdf
Missing slides:
2x in hand meet pencil
2x about speedy prototyping and group gropes in Churn child churn
1x in critique section
….
The current Churn section is a whirlwind blast… three seconds per slide to illustrate alter more than time. Some of that design and style is… ahh.. eww.