Ronald F. Scott

A native of England, Scott, a civil engineering professor at Caltech, specialized in soils. Caltech runs NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which has primary responsibility for unmanned space probes. In the early 1960s, JPL was tasked to land several probes on the moon in preparation for the manned Apollo moon landings. One big question NASA had: would the lunar soil support the weight of a manned spacecraft, or would Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin sink to their deaths in loose dust? JPL launched several probes called Surveyor. Scott designed a system for Surveyor to scoop up and evaluate the surface conditions to ensure the astronauts would survive their trip. Based on experiments done by Surveyor 3 in 1967 and Surveyor 7 in 1968, Dr. Scott concluded the lunar soil would in fact hold up to the weight of the astronauts and their landing craft. Everyone remembers Armstrong's first words when he stepped out on the soil, but his second words were for Scott: "I sink in about an eighth of an inch. I've left a print on the surface." He also helped analyze soil samples brought back from the moon. Scott's main work was perhaps of even greater import: he studied what soils did during earthquakes, helping to improve the earthquake survivability of buildings and dams. He died at home August 16 from cancer. He was 76. From This is True for 21 August 2005 Suggestions for further reading: First On The Moon: A Voyage With Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins [And] Edwin ... by Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. Amazon Price: Customer Review: This book was published within months of the Apollo 11 flight. It tells its story as events are happening instead of as a history. That gives it a fresh view of events that is sometimes lacking in later Apollo books. First on the Moon stays safely...   One Giant Leap: Apollo 11 Remembered by Piers Bizony Amazon Price: $13.70 Customer Review: I worked on Gemini and Apollo at Kennedy, and I try to read every space history book I can get my hands on. From the title, I expected this book to be exclusively about the Apollo 11 mission. However, there is a lot of material included that, while...   Chariots for Apollo by Courtney Brooks, James Grimwood, Loyd swenson Amazon Price: Customer Review: Formatting is bad. No photos..., but they give you captions! Talk about salt in the wound! Save your money toward buying the REAL book in print.   Moon Landing: Apollo 11 40th Anniversary Pop-Up by Richard Platt Amazon Price: $12.00 Customer Review: My family and I recently visited the Houston Space Center and our 5-year-old daughter has expressed a keen interest in the subject of space exploration. I got this book as a means of making the complex concepts associated with space exploration a bit...   The Apollo 11 Moon Landing: 40th Anniversary Photograhic Retrospective by Dennis R. Jenkins, Jorge R. Frank Amazon Price: $14.49 Customer Review: This book is an interesting Photographic Retrospective. During Apollo none of us who worked on the project were allowed any pictures of any kind. This book is a delight to see. I would highly recommend it. You can learn things that we wh...   Newsfeed display by CaRP

About the HUs About This is True Subscribe Free to This is True Your E-mail: Prev: Typecast film maker David Loeb Weiss Next: Presidential doctor Daniel Ruge Complete Name List

Copyright 1998-2010 ThisisTrue.Inc, all rights reserved. May not be copied or archived without express, prior, written permission. "This is True" is a registered trademark of ThisisTrue.Inc, Ridgway Colorado. 9228