Landing On The Moon

Moonfire The Epic Journey of Apollo 11 features hundreds of images from NASA vaults and magazine archives that document the successful moon landing including the above photograph of astronaut Edwin Buzz Aldrin setting up an experiment on the lunar surface

Today's selection -- from Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon by Catherine Thimmesh. With alarms sounding and fuel running out, Neil Armstrong came within seconds of crashing the Apollo 11 landing module:

"BAM! Suddenly, the master alarm in the lunar mod­ule rang out for attention with all the racket of a fire bell going off in a broom closet. 'Program alarm,' astronaut Neil Armstrong called out from the LM ('LEM') in a clipped but calm voice. 'It's a "twelve-oh-two."'

"'1202,' repeated astronaut Buzz Aldrin. They were 33,500 feet from the moon.

"Translation: We have a problem! What is it?

"Do we land? Do we abort? Are we in danger? Are we blowing up? Tell us what to do. Hurry!

"In Mission Control, the words TWELVE OH TWO tumbled out of the communications loop. The weight of the problem landed with a thud in the lap of twenty-six-year-old Steve Bales. Bales, call name GUIDO, was the mission con­troller for guidance and navigation.

"A moment earlier (after some worries with navigation problems), Bales had relaxed with a deep breath, thinking at last: We're going to make it. Now, wham! His mind, again sent rac­ing; his blood rushing; his heart fluttering; his breath -- still as stone. But he wasn't alone.

"A voice on another loop -- belonging to one of Bales's backroom support guys, twenty-four-year-old computer whiz kid Jack Garman -- burst in to make sure Bales was aware of the 1202. A quick glance at a master list told them a 1202 was executive overflow. Simply put, the computer had too much to do. But program alarms, as Garman knew firsthand, were built into the computer solely to test the software. By their very definition, they weren't alarms that should happen in flight. (During development, these alarms were testing computing cycles.)

"Yet there it was: 1202. An unreal reality. First, stunned inactivity at Steve Bales's console.

"Then, a bombardment of thoughts: What's the problem? Do they land? Do they abort? Are they in danger? Are they blowing up? Tell them what to do. Hurry!

"Bales scoured his guidance and navigation data. Searching. Sifting. Sorting.

"Flight Director Kranz plucked details from a flood of incoming information. 

"Juggling. Judging.

"Backroom guy Jack Garman (call name AGC) consulted his handwritten program alarm list, mandated by Gene Kranz (and neatly stashed beneath the Plexiglas on his console).

"CapCom Charlie Duke (or Capsule Communicator, the voice link between Mission Control and the spacecraft) mused aloud: 'It's the same one we had [in the simulator].'

"And indeed, in one of the very last simulations, or practice sessions, before liftoff of Apollo 11, mission controllers found themselves stumped when faced with a sim­ilar program alarm. While training with the backup crew, SimSup Jay Honeycutt (or Simulation Supervisor) had asked software expert Jack Garman to concoct some sort of computer glitch for the controllers to solve. So Garman remembered the hidden software testing alarms and threw out one of those. It wasn't a 1202, but a similar type -- one that supposedly should never happen in actual flight (because the situ­ations that would trigger those alarms had presumably already been removed from the software).

"During that simulation, that test, GUIDO Steve Bales had called for an abort -- an immediate end to the landing. They stopped the pretend -- land on the moon. But it was the wrong call. While the computer was definitely having difficulties, it would still have been safe to continue the landing because the LM's criti­cal functions were still working.

"'And so [Flight Director] Gene Kranz, who's the real hero of that situation, sat us all down and said, "You WILL document every single program alarm, every single possible one that can happen" and what we should do about it if it happens,' recalled AGC Jack Garman, explaining how they ended up with a written record of those 'nonexistent' program alarms.

"Sometimes, after the bugs have all been removed during development, programmers might go back in and remove all their testing alarms. But often, it's considerably more efficient (and cheaper) to just leave them buried unseen, deep down in the software.

"'So I remember,' continued Jack Garman, 'going back to my little corner with my friends -- my col­leagues -- and we wrote them all down. Wrote them on a sheet of paper (twenty or thirty of these alarms that were not supposed to happen), taped this list to a piece of cardboard, and stuck it under­neath the Plexiglas on the console.'

"As they would discover later, though it seemed an impossible situation, it wasn't a false alarm. Executive overflow meant the computer was too busy. And the computer was too busy (it turned out) because a switch had been mistakenly left on.

"'Give us a reading on the 1202 program alarm,' said Armstrong from the lunar module as it contin­ued its rapid -- and very real -- descent to the moon.

"'he astronauts had no idea what these alarms were,' explained Garman. 'Absolutely no idea. These alarms were software development alarms. They'd never seen them. Never studied them. Never had them. No one in Mission Control knew what they were, not Kranz or anybody.'

"GUIDO Steve Bales determined the computer had not lost track of the LM's altitude or speed -- critical for avoiding a lunar crash -- and still had its guidance control, also essential. Flight Director Gene Kranz determined, with input from his controllers, that all other systems were functioning within acceptable parameters. AGC Jack Garman concluded that as long as the alarm didn't recur, they were okay.

"Garman prompted GUIDO Steve Bales, who gave the 'Go' to Flight Director Kranz, who in turn gave the command to CapCom Charlie Duke. CapCom relayed the message to Armstrong and Aldrin. 'We are Go on that alarm,' he told Neil and Buzz and the hundreds of others listening in on the loops. Not more than twenty seconds had passed from the time the 1202 was first called out.

"'Program alarm!' Buzz responded from the LM. 'Same one.'

"Garman clarified to Bales that as long as the alarm was not ,constant -- not continuous -- they were okay. The rest of Bales's information looked good. He told the Flight Director, 'We’re Go.' Kranz 'went around the horn' -- polling his controllers for their status reports -- they were all 'Go.' Kranz told his voice link to the astronauts, 'CapCom, we are Go for landing.'

"Aldrin acknowledged the good-to-Go. They were 3,000 feet from the moon now. 'Program alarm!' Buzz called. '1201.'

"'When it occurred again a few minutes later,' Jack Garman recalled, 'a different alarm but it was the same type ... I remember distinctly yelling -- by this time yelling, you know, in the loop here -- 'SAME TYPE [in other words, Hang/ tight!] and he [GUIDO Steve Bales] yells 'SAME TYPE!’ I could hear my voice echoing. Then the CapCom says, 'SAME TYPE!' Boom, boom, boom, going up.'

"Their voices were rapid-fire. Crisp. Assured. There was no hesitation. But you could practically hear the adrenaline rushing in their vocal tones, practically hear the thumping of their hearts as the alarms continued to pop up.

"Then the Eagle was down to 2,000 feet. Another alarm! 1202. Mission Control snapped, Roger, no sweat. And again, 1202! Then the Eagle was down to 700 feet, then 500. Now, they were hovering -- helicopter-like -- presumably scouting a landing spot.

"In hundreds of practice simulations, they would have landed by now. But Mission Control couldn't see the perilous crater and boulder field confronting Neil and Buzz. Those things, coupled with the distraction of the alarms, had slowed them down.

"More than eleven minutes had passed since they started down to the moon. There was only twelve minutes' worth of fuel in the descent stage."

Team Moon How 400000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon
 
author: Catherine Thimmesh  
title: Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon  
publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children  
date: Copyright 2006 Catherine Thimmesh  
page(s): 18-24  

 






Coke, Sugar, And War


Today's selection -- from Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism by Bartow J. Elmore. Coca-Cola’s influence during World War II was such that it was designated a “wartime essential:”
 
"With the Office of Price Administration putting a cap on sugar prices, it appeared that the government would help Coke avoid costly losses in the face of uncertain international market conditions.

"The company's praise for the government's price control inter­ventions, however, was tempered with frustration about sugar-usage restrictions imposed by the Office of Production Management (OPM), the predecessor agency to the War Production Board (WPB). These restrictions went into effect on January 1, 1942, limiting sugar usage for Coca-Cola and other soft drink manufacturers to 70 percent of 1941 consumption. Coke executives were livid about the measure and believed that the government controls would severely impact domestic sales.

This refurbished Coca-Cola advertisement from 1943 is still displayed in Minden, Louisiana.

"Determined to get around the OPM restrictions, Benjamin Oehlert, a Coca-Cola executive and company lobbyist in DC, wrote to Robert Woodruff just weeks after the OPM restrictions went into effect suggesting the company look into 'the practicability of manu­facturing Coca-Cola syrup in Canada, Mexico, Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and any other place outside the territorial confines of the United States, for shipment to and use in the United States.' Ultimately, the Atlanta office tabled the proposal, recog­nizing that transportation and import fees would make the plan cost-prohibitive. Oehlert, unfazed, decided to approach the OPM to see if he could secure a better sugar deal for Coke.

"Ben Oehlert was well suited to act as Coke's liaison to the gov­ernment, having spun in the revolving door separating private and public worlds. Before joining Coke's legal team in 1938, he had served as an attorney for the Department of State since 1955. He was just the type of recruit Robert Woodruff was looking for in the 1930s, someone with the diplomatic acumen to help the company break into new markets. An Ivy League graduate, he was bright and confident, a man with a knack for brokering tough deals, a talent both busi­nessmen and public officials recognized (including President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who in 1967 snagged Oehlert from Coke, send­ing him to Pakistan to serve as US ambassador). Woodruff initially brought Oehlert in to handle issues related to foreign sales but soon recognized that his talents could be better used negotiating tough deals with Washington bureaucrats. Within a few years, he became one of the company's chief government liaisons.

"Oehlert, drawing on his State Department experience, knew that he had to prove to the government that increasing Coke's sugar quotas was a matter of national security. He recycled World War I propaganda that positioned Coke as a dedicated public cit­izen committed to the war effort, a product that brought much­ needed energy to a war-weary nation. Oehlert also sold thousands of pounds of Coke's inventoried sugar to the US military to improve the company's 'psychological and public relations position.' The ploy worked, with major newspapers, such as the Washington Post, praising Coke's government sales, citing the company's claim that it sold the sugar below market price. Citizen Coke was once again coming to the aid of its mother country. In the eyes of the American public, the Coca-Cola Company was sacrificing its bounty for the common good, aiding the federal government while asking nothing in return.

"Behind closed doors, however, Coke worked hard to capitalize on its 'charitable' donations, relying heavily on its inside man, Ed Forio, a Coke executive well versed in DC lobbying tactics. Again, the boundary between Coke and government was blurred. In addition to working for Coca-Cola, Forio was also a consultant for the Beverage and Tobacco Branch of the WPB. Working from within the government, Forio sought to raise Coke's status on WPB quota charts from a luxury item associated with candies to a wartime necessity. Explaining his chief objective, Forio told the Coca-Cola Bottler after the war that 'an untiring effort was made to point out the tremendous part that soft drinks play in the ordinary every day lives of average people to those highest in authority in government. This effort was crowned with the publication of the Civilian Require­ments Bedrock Report, which stated that a minimum of 65 per cent of the products of this industry was necessary to the maintenance of civilian morale.' The Bedrock Report also treated tobacco as a war­time essential, suggesting that the government take action to ensure civilian access to at least 71 percent of all tobacco products produced in 1941. Coke and cigarettes were apparently provisions essential to the good health and happiness of American citizens.

"In addition to its Washington lobbying efforts, Coca-Cola leaned on the talents of its advertising men to shape public policy in the company's favor. Coke's promotional team produced a series of publi­cations in 1942, such as 'Importance of the Rest-Pause in Maximum War Effort' and 'Soft Drinks in War,' that portrayed Coke as an essential foodstuff of the American worker. These propaganda pieces proclaimed that Coke was simply channeling energy, both chemi­cal and psychological, to the working men and women of America. To silence those individuals who questioned the company's scientific assertions about the benefits of soft drinks, Coke brought in a team of scientists to fight for its cause. One passionate appeal came from US Surgeon General Thomas Parran, who exclaimed, 'In this time of stress and strain, Americans turn to their sparkling beverage as the British of all classes turn to their cup of tea and the Brazilians to their coffee. From that moment of relaxation, they go back to their task cheered and strengthened, with no aftermath of gastric repen­tance. There is no undue strain upon the purse; no physiological pen­alty for indulgence.'

"Ultimately, the federal government bought Coke's pitch and increased the company's sugar quota to 80 percent of 1941 consumption. The OPA transferred the company from the Beverage and Tobacco Branch to the Food Section, a division overseeing produc­tion and consumption of basic agricultural necessities.

"But the government deal got even sweeter. The US Army per­suaded the OPA to offer sugar credits to Coke for all company shipments to military installations both at home and abroad, includ­ing post exchange stores at domestic army bases. Under the arrange­ment, Coke could sell virtually unlimited supplies of syrup to US soldiers without affecting its 80 percent cap on civilian sugar sales. This request for exemption came from the top: General Dwight D. Eisenhower issued an order on January 28, 1945, for equipment, bottles, and Coke syrup adequate to supply 6 million monthly serv­ings to the troops.

"Coke's military contracts allowed the company to make immense net profits, $25 million in 1944 alone, not only because it enjoyed exclusive access to army markets but also because it could purchase unlimited supplies of sugar at government-controlled prices -- ceiling prices that would have been far higher in a turbulent wartime eco­nomic climate had the OPA not intervened to regulate inflation. With government controls keeping the cost of sugar down and new mili­tary contracts being signed as the war progressed, Coke expanded its operations and increased its sugar consumption throughout the war, Coke's industry rival, Pepsi-Cola, was furious."

Citizen Coke The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism
 
author: Bartow J. Elmore  
title: Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism  

 

 


Gunfight Rules

Gunfight Rules

The best pistolero in Hawaii went to a gigantic law-enforement shooting contest in California...over 1200 participants. He came in second. I've seen his large trophy proudly displayed in his living room...it is in the shape of a tombstone.

 

"Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading."

 

In a gunfight, the most important rule is ... HAVE A GUN!

 

These are shooting tips from various Concealed Carry Instructors.  If you own a gun, you will appreciate these rules... If not, you should get one, learn how to use it and learn the rules.

 

RULES

 

A  Guns have only two enemies:  Rust and Politicians. Rust can be prevented, Politicians cannot.

 

B  It's always better to be judged by 12 than carried out by 6.

 

C  Cops carry guns to protect themselves, not you

 

D  Never let someone or something that threatens you get within 7 yards.

 

E  Never say "I've got a gun." If you need to use deadly force, the first sound they should hear is the safety clicking off, or the hammer cocking.

 

F  The average response time of a 911 call is 23 minutes when only seconds count; the response time of a .357 is 1,400 feet per second.

 

G  The most important rule in a gunfight is: Always Win - there is no such thing as a fair fight.  Always Win - cheat if necessary.  Always Win - 2nd place doesn't count.

 

H  Make your attacker advance through a wall of bullets ... you may get killed with your own gun, but they'll have to beat you to death with it because it will be empty.

 

I  If you're in a gun fight:

    (a)  If you're not shooting, you should be loading.

    (b)  If you're not loading, you should be moving.

    (c)  If you're not moving, you're dead.

 

J  In a life and death situation, do something ... it may be wrong, but do something!

 

K  If you carry a gun, people will call you paranoid.  Nonsense!  If you have a gun, what do you have to be paranoid about?


L    Never fire a warning shot, that is just one wasted bullet which could be needed within moments.

 

M  You can say "stop" or any other word, but a large bore muzzle pointed at someone's head is pretty much a universal language; and, you won't have to press 1 for Spanish/Mexican, or 2 for Chinese, or 3 for Arabic.

 

N  Never leave a wounded enemy behind.  If you have to shoot, shoot to kill.  In court, yours will be the only testimony.

 

O  You cannot save the planet, but you may be able to save yourself and your family.

 

If you believe in the 2nd Amendment, forward to others you know who also believe.