Extravehicular Activity or Lunar Excursion Module… These are extremely uncommon terms and any average person most likely never heard of them. Throughout the book there are many peculiar words and abbreviations that will blow your mind. In the novel Back to the Moon by Homer Hickam, were there any startling/unusual/effective words, phrases, expressions or images encountered while reading the novel? Lets see. Almost every other page of the novel has some odd terminology used by astronauts or in this case a man who stole the Columbia space shuttle. So to start off, one may have trouble reading this novel because there is not always an explanation for the acronyms/phrases which makes things quite inconvenient for the reader. Luckily the reader can just look up the words. A few good examples of these are CAPCOM, EMU suit and MECO. To start off, CAPCOM is simply an astronaut that sits in the Capsule …show more content…
If a person reads this novel without knowing just about every single one of these acronyms and terms then it will be near impossible to understand the literature. It exterminates any sort of immersion when the characters speak of DOT or Terminal Countdown Clock and the reader has no idea what it means yet the character does. Sometimes the author is nice and includes the meaning in the sentence directly after the first time the new term is introduced into the story. A good instance of this would be “Jack didn’t reply but opened a locker door marked SAREX - Space Amateur Radio Experiment. ‘While I set this up, how about stowing those seats?’” (Hickam 115). Roughly over half of the words include the meaning similar to how this one shown here depicted it. The same concept was applied to the first two words on this essay. EVA or Extravehicular Activity is when any action is performed outside the space shuttle by an
Barrett begins the novel with the crew loading the ship for the expedition, to search for the famous British explorer Sir John Franklin and his men, lost in the artic. It was said that any man to find him would have been assured of fame and glory. The expedition's youthful commander, Zachariah Voorhees also called Zeke, is determined to search for the men, lost now for nearly a decade. As being the captain of the merchant ship for years, he now is planning for a voyage through the Arctic and to discover places never seen before. The story is told from an omniscient point of view where different people's personal feelings and thoughts are revealed in many ways.
2) I think the author chose to utilize this term to give an example of a book where the narrator explained his life.
In 1961, the United States of America was embroiled in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. This confrontation was taking place not only on land, sea and air, but in space as well. On May 25th, 1961 recently elected US President John F. Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress, during which he outlined his now famous Man on the Moon challenge. It was through this ambitious dream that the creation of the National Aeronautical Space Administration (NASA) came about, which President Kennedy challenged to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Although he didn't live to see the achievement of his dreams, the United States successfully landed Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin on the moon on July 20, 1969 and brought them home safely1. It was President Kennedy's passionate beliefs that come through not only in his style of writing but in his delivery of the speech that drive home his point and get Congress, Industry and the American people to take up his call to arms.
Apollo 13 launched on April 11, 1970 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crewmembers aboard the ship were James A. Lovell Jr., John L. Swigert Jr., and Fred W. Haise, Jr. Before the launch, there had been a few problems. Thomas K. Mattingly was supposed to fly on the Apollo 13 but he was exposed to the measles. He didn’t have the antibodies to fight the disease, causing him to not be able to go into space. Swigert took his place. Right before the launch, one of the technicians saw that the helium tank had a higher pressure than expected. Nothing was done to fix this. During liftoff, the second-stage engine shut down, causing the other engines to run longer than planned. Apollo 13 was off to a rocky start.
1. The Hickam family can be described through several different concepts based on the family systems approach. The first is through boundaries. Boundaries are defined as open or closed a system is (lecture). These boundaries in the system can be within the family itself or can occur between various systems as well (textbook). Boundaries are unhealthy when the boundary is extremely closed or extremely open (lecture). Boundaries seen in the movie October Sky were the Hickam family as a family system, but within the family, boundaries were between the parents and the kids, Homer and his father and Homer’s mom with Homer’s dad. The Hickam family also had boundaries with Miss Riley, the coal mine, Coalwood, college, and rocket science.
After the accident, Gene Krantz relied on the skills and expertise of his people. A successful leader builds a strong team, but a leader must be able to separate himself/herself from the team to make the best decision. In Apollo 13, Gene empowered his team to come up with a solution for the air scrubbers. By addressing the most critical problem first, he afforded the team time to work on the other problems. The scrubbers were the most critical or they all would have suffocated. By encouraging the team to share expertise and professional opinion and separates himself by taking it all into consideration when making the decision.
... officer was a “white hat,” in the book they referred to them as newjack. Most of the guards were turnkey; they had little contact with inmates. Lastly, one guard told Ted Conover to live at work the problem at work and not bring it home with him. In class we talked about how officer go home with the problems of the job, which is not healthy for them and their family.
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th Ed. Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Fort Worth, 1993.
The book is about an officer named James Edward III (Jay) who meets a man in a black suit from an organization, the man name Kay. Jay meets Kay at a park after Jay gets into an incident with a disappearing man. Then Jay gets into the organization and is shown the headquarters.
In the early 1900’s Georges Melies introduced his film “A Trip To The Moon” to audiences in France. This film, when first seen by viewers at this time, was jawdropping. Melies who happened to be a magician, and illusionist before becoming a filmmaker, made one of the first-ever narratives in motion picture history. Similarily throughout “Trip To The Moon” and many of his later films, Melies, who also worked in theatre, took full advantage of what is known as Mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene is defined as: All the elements placed in front of the camera to be photographed: the settings and props, lighting, costumes and make-up, and figure behavior. In “Trip to the Moon” Melies created a world to which no one had ever seen on film, and utilized all the characteristics to which mise-en-scene is based upon.
Launius, Roger. “Interpreting the Moon Landings: Project Apollo and the Historians.” History and Technology 22.3 (2006): 225-255. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21 Jan. 2014. .
For centuries, mankind has wanted to explore outside the world we live in and into outer space. The idea of landing on the moon seemed impossible. Defeating all odds on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, 38 years of age, made what many thought impossible, possible. He landed a spacecraft named the Eagle on the moon, and explored its surface with Edwin Aldrin. This event captured attention throughout the world. Over 500,000,000 people gathered to watch this life changing moment. Only some people believed what they saw on television that day, while others did not. Many believed that some elements of the Apollo programs were hoaxes that were staged by NASA (Van Riper). In 1969, Neil Armstrong did not just land on the moon; he ended the Space Race, gave hope for future untold technological advancements, left a triumph for democracy over the Soviet totalitarian rule, and indeed made a giant leap for mankind.
The Readers Digest Encyclopedia Dictionary. Ed. Sidney L. Landau. Pleasantville: The Readers Digest Association, 1966. 652,1336.