Did you know there were geotechnical engineers evaluating the bearing capacity and settlement potential of the lunar surface for the Apollo 11 mission? There were some prominent scientists in NASA at the time that thought […]
You might not think that geotechnical engineering would have anything to do with the Apollo 11 mission that put the first humans on the surface of the moon, but you would be wrong. The landing […]
I’ll be brief since I have already mentioned this in a previous post and in the July GeoPrac newsletter. But today was the 40th Anniversary of the first time humans set foot on the moon. […]
[Editor] For crying out loud. Two weeks later, and I finally notice the title of my post was 20 years off! Its the 40th anniversary, not the 20th. Sheesh! [/Editor] It’s hard to believe that such a tremendously historic scientific and cultural event is celebrating its 20th Anniversary this month! On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts “Buzz” Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first humans to set foot on the Moon. [Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin near a leg of the Lunar Module. (From enwiki), NASA Source]
One of the first featured articles I published on GeoPrac was a remarkable narrative by my NCS Consultants, LLC colleague, Dr. Ed Nowatzki, sharing his recollections of his work on the geotechnical (soils engineering)aspects of the design of the first lunar lander or LM. I was doubly reminded of his article recently, first because of the milestone anniversary, but also because a different spacecraft was having some soil-related trouble on the Planet Mars.
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