Why did some Apollo missions carry a grenade launcher? (2019)
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/37775Like this one, most of the questions are worded to enable an easy answer from a primary source.
In one instance the account answers its own question within the same minute: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/31279/how-was-the-...
In another instance, the account replies to a comment with "Nonetheless, this would be the question to document any examples."
People were amazed he would answer every C# and WPF questions minutes after they were posted.
I am convinced to this day he did the same thing.
Page 2-170 (179 of the PDF) of reference [1].
[0] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19710014816 [1] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19710014816/downloads/19...
Are these stations easier to maneuver than I imagine? Sounds like someone was imagining age of sail type of combat.
OTOH, if all piloting was manual back then, you'd have to have one guy aiming and another guy piloting to cancel out the angular momentum, so you might as well make the gun point away from the center of mass and let the pilot do the aiming.
"Kosmonaut survives space mission, gets mauled by bear protecting her cub" is not a great headline. Bringing gun was relatively cheap insurance
[1] https://meduza.io/en/feature/2026/09/11/russia-has-a-bear-pr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussuri_brown_bear#Interactions...
Wolf predation attacks on humans are rare, but far more common than brown bear attacks.
Being an astronaut means you are trusted with extreme responsibilities and it also means extreme oversight. That's part of why the selection process is so thorough and stress response is so well evaluated before NASA will put a person in space.
Reading the parent's comment pedantically is useless and against this site's guidelines. Reading it more charitably + less literally makes more sense.
So the pistol was presumably for the astronaut to use on himself?
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.
But I liked this comment be caused of its know your meme link. I learned something.
Well, I learned two things. One, I learned about the meme. Two, I learned not to trust Know Your Meme when it asks me to turn off my adblocker!
on Earth or on the Moon tho?
You'd have less grip under the soles of your shoes (less friction due to less normal force aka weight). You'd also probably have to fix your technique so you don't keep launching yourself 6 ft into the air on each stride.
Bloody difficult is probably an accurate description.
> Due to an influx of joke comments, all joke comments on this post will be deleted
I think this is pretty much the story of late Stack Exchange.
[1] https://forum.dvdtalk.com/movie-talk/257651-armageddon-gatli...
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.)
Never know when you need to seismically image some hostiles for scientific verification of threat elimination.
> Use precise geolocation data.
Why does this site need to share my precise geolocation with 263 partners? It's madness.
And then they wonder why the whole group is dying
> 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?
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.