The role of luck in the space race

The Economist correspondent vists Greenland Space Science Symposium;

"Breakfast teaches me that the Apollo missions were incredibly lucky. Almost every time an Apollo astronaut took a walk far away from the Earth he missed a dangerous spike in space weather by the skin of his well-maintained teeth. One of the attendees has kindly e-mailed his wife to send me a graph (see below). Imagine, he says, if some of the Apollo astronauts had been fried to a crisp by one of these spikes; surely the space race would have taken a different direction. NASA will have to improve its space weather predictions if it is going to avoid what the law of averages has in store.

Over lunch I learn about the compass. That instrument was supposedly introduced to Europe in the 15th century, explains my lunch-mate. His research suggests that this interpretation of history is wrong. Churches built in Denmark during the 12th century were oriented in an east-to-west direction, with the altar in the east. But they are all skewed 18 degrees away from a perfect alignment. This suggests their architects had compasses, because the Earth’s shifting magnetic north pole was exactly 18 degrees away from its geographical pole at that time.