Why did some Apollo missions carry a grenade launcher?

(space.stackexchange.com)

33 points | by Skyfall106 2 hours ago ago

15 comments

  • franky47 18 minutes ago

        nasa employee: oh hey u guys are back early
        astronaut: moon's haunted
        nasa employee: what?
        astronaut: *loading a pistol and getting back on the rocket-ship* moon's haunted.
    
    https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/moons-haunted
  • wongarsu an hour ago

    Now I'm wondering how far a regular military grenade launcher could lauch grenades on the moon

    • moritonal an hour ago

      About six times further with zero drag. So 3.6Km, or from Buckingham Palace to St Paul's Cathedral.

      • johannes1234321 31 minutes ago

        Since there is no atmosphere even a bit further.

        • LoganDark 3 minutes ago

          Literally synonymous with zero drag

  • vconnor 24 minutes ago

    > They were part of an active seismic imaging experiment

    That is what we call plausible deniability.

    (Everyone complaining about this topic inviting jokes, and I’m the first to have posted one. Drama sells more than silly jokes these days.)

  • akmarinov an hour ago

    > Due to an influx of joke comments, all joke comments on this post will be deleted.

    And then they wonder why the whole group is dying

    • circularfoyers an hour ago

      The alternative to me seems to be becoming like a lot of subs on Reddit. It's part of why I like HN so much too, where the signal to noise is so much better.

      • tsunamifury 41 minutes ago

        It’s not you’re just fooled but garbage people with false bravado.

        • cbg0 38 minutes ago

          It actually is, on Reddit you need to collapse and scroll down a bit to get a real non-joke answer to something, over here low effort jokes tend to get pushed down.

          • jflessau 28 minutes ago

            Agree. I’m here because discussions are not padded left and right with memes and people trying to farm karma with humor tailored for maximum engagement.

    • dspillett an hour ago

      Nicely editorialised there, skipping the second half:

      > However, we would appreciate your sense of humor in chat if you want to drop by!However, we would appreciate your sense of humor in chat if you want to drop by!

      On HN many purely jokey comments are often discouraged, being down-voted and getting replies along the lines of "this isn't Reddit". Is HN dying, by the same measure?

    • abbadadda an hour ago

      I was going to say the same. They did follow up with “However, we would appreciate your sense of humor in chat if you want to drop by!” but the bolded comment above significantly outweighs this.

      At least this earlier comment was deemed relevant and not too jokey:

      > Even more fun, Apollo 14 didn't use their grenades, and they are still on the lunar surface.

      • realusername 38 minutes ago

        At least here it's jokes, sometimes they ask people to put valuable comments inside the chat, which is of course not publicly accessible so it's lost

    • wiseowise 28 minutes ago

      God forbid resource doesn’t turn into a group rewarding regurgitated jokes for internet points, it would insane. Every time I read some serious (ughhrr) book, I write trite irony on margins because I can’t process information like a normal human being anymore without turning everything into shit.