One Small Step For Man, One Giant Leap For Mankind", as said by Neil Armstrong 40 years ago today.
For those of us who were around, it is hard to believe that 40 years have passed since the first moon landing. Like Kennedy's Assassination, and 9/11, I can remember where I was at the time. It seems that exciting positive events of that kind do not happen too frequently.
It appears that America's manned space program is atrophying, if not dying at this time. The Space Shuttle has less then 10 more flights scheduled and then in mid-2010 will be taken out of service. A replacement American space vehicle may not be ready for at least 5 years at the best estimate and more likely 10 years if budget cuts or delays do not push it later. President Obama is not a big fan of NASA and may cut the agency back even further.
In the meantime, China is talking about a moon flight of its own, and Russia will have the only viable space travel vehicles after next year. Even India may be in Space before we return. Maybe the Russians actually have won the space race. They even will charge us to send astronauts to the Space Station. If so, it is very, very sad.
RAMI
P.S. I was in my livingroom, with my family watching our 20" black and white console T.V. It was thrilling to see.
Comments
I may be being cynical but...
Perhaps the way for Americans to get more money for the space program is to concentrate media attention on the Russia/China winning the race angle of the story.
Space Race
RAMI
Dear Dejah:
I do not think you are being cynical. It was called the "Space Race", because we were literally in a race to beat Russia to the Moon, and to surpass them in all types of technology.
That the Russian's put a satellite - Sputnik, up in space first, was a blow to American pride and moral. We were involved in the Cold War and small victories such as accomplishments in space, perhaps help keep it cold.
We have lost that drive to beat the Russians and to stay ahead. Many people do not feel that there is a compelling need to beat anyone in accomplishments in space. The only problem I see with your thoughts about media attention is that we (the United States) no longer fear the Russia Communist Menace and Mao's Chinese hordes are no longer perceived by many as an enemy.
Now if Osama bin Laden proposed and financed the Islamic conquest of space maybe we would have something to think about.
RAMI
RAMI
The Conspiracy Theories
There are some conspiracy theorists who say we never went to the moon at all. I personally think that it happened just the way history portrays it. There is a major problem with their theory in that some powerful telescopes have been able to see the flag that was planted into the lunar soil. Our country has always had people with the intelligence and ingenuity to come up with inventions that change something from a far fetched idea to a reality. The cellphone, personal computers and medical treatments and technologies have changed our world in extraordinary ways. President Kennedy had the vision and the determination to take us places we had not thought about before. The Russians might leap ahead in the next few years, but they can't deny that the U.S got to the moon and they never have to my knowledge. We had the right people in place to bring Apollo 13 back from the brink of disaster. That in itself shows just how freedom allows us to bring the best minds together to solve problems. Just think what this country would be like if the government had total control over everything? Thank goodness we are still able to think freely (For now at least). I pray that we never lose that. Our nation would suffer terribly.
I heard someone joke...
That it's hard enough keeping one American quiet let alone the thousands who would have to have been involved in faking the moon landings.
One point that is used to discredit video footage is that there is detail in shadow areas. People say that because there is no atmosphere these areas should be pitch black. They overlook the possibility of light being reflected into these areas.
The Sun Powers The Light Of The Moon
The moon absorbs light from the sun and reflects it back to Earth. That is why there was light on the surface in those videos. You are right about how difficult it would be to keep all those people quiet about the faked landings. It would be a fulltime job and would not be feasible. Sooner or later, someone would try to write a book about how it was done and I haven't seen anyone step forward and come up with a believable scenario.
Perverts! Remember I get half
A movie called Capricorn One?
"You're not crazy, I'm crazy. I'm crazy for listening and I'm crazy for saying what I'm about to say. I'll give you twenty four hours to come up with something. Not forty eight. I saw the movie too, it was twenty four."- Walter Loughlin(David Doyle) 'Capricorn One'
Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant
Space for future generations?
Disclaimer: I have no advanced science degrees, and this is my opinion.
I seem to have this ability to look at things about me, take historical events into consideration, and then come up with intuitive probabilites that for some reason have a way of working out a surprising amount of the time. The reason this happens is a complete mystery to me.
Applying my feminine pseudo logic to the problem of space travel, well right now we just can't do it in a meaningful way. We have to understand things much more clearly than we do now. We are in effect, much like the infant sitting on the beach on the US pacific coast who gets swept away by a wave. The Baby just is not going to be found in Tokyo bay alive.
We'll do the moon, and Mars and that will be it for a very long time. Using propulsive materials, it is just not posible to approach meaningful Galactic travel velocities. I think it is much more likely that we will figure out how to move from place to place without traveling in the conventional sense. It could be milenia before we even get out of our own galaxy. There are so many Galaxies out there that the number can not be written using laymans methods. Maybe we will discover ways to move our consciousness to far distant places, but our bodies will not follow for a long time.
Having gotten out of our play pen, there are hazards out there that we have not even contemplated. Solar Storms, Event Horizons, Dark Matter, X-rays and things that could eat us may abound and learning how to deal with all this will consume our time for
small steps
The galaxy? Jeez ..... There's plenty to explore right here in the solar system. If we can start doing that in my lifetime I'll be a happy armchair starfarer...
~~~hugs, and a toast of this TANG I'm drinking to Armstrong, Aldrin and What'shisname, LAIKA
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Collins
Mike Collins, the forgotten Apollo 11 astronaut. :-(
They know they can survive
The most likely scenario...
...is small groups of pioneers, letting natural population increase account for the numbers. With current and foreseeable technology, it's simply too expensive to send boatloads of people journeying to other planets, but entirely conceivable that we might develop technologies that would allow us to "seed" other star systems with Earth-like life, letting evolution to come up with something like us.
There are some, in fact, who theorise that this has already been done, and that we are the colony of some other solar system, incredibly distant in both space and time.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Scientology
Not that I take any of this too seriously, but Ron Hubbard's Science Fiction dealt with the premise that Earth was a prison planet for the local Galaxy. Ah, none of it can be proven by us, but it makes nice speculation. I have never heard an explanation that explains how two people created by God, could wind up being how many different races? How do we get the blackest of blacks, the whitest of whites, and Asian eyes all on one planet. I did recently hear that the Blonde Haired, Blue Eyed mutation was a relatively recent event, owing to what cause?
You can bet that none of the religions are going to try to explain all that reasonably. It would rob some of these carpet baggers of their income eh?
Khadija
I know where I was
I was in Japan getting reading to head back to Nam. The moon landing was awesome although I never saw it
I did get to meet Alan B. Shepherd (one of the original seven astronauts) while I served under a command he was the admiral in charge of.
Makes me wonder we can put a man on the moon (actually a few good men), but we cannot find a way to deter plane crashes.
Jill Micayla
May you have a wonderful today and a better tomorrow
Jill Micayla
Be kinder than necessary,Because everyone you meet
Is fighting some kind of battle.
Where was I?
Silently screaming for Armstrong to get down off that bloody ladder so I could go to bed and get some sleep before I had to get up to go to work. It's the only time we've had a TV in the house. We borrowed one from the family TV shop and installed it (illegally, because we never bought a licence) as I was determined to see mankind's first step onto the moon as near as possible in real time. IIRC it was at about 4 am BST.
It still surprises me that there are millions of adults who are too young to remember Apollo 11. Surely EVERYONE remember that momentous occasion!!! Then most lost interest until the drama of Apollo 13 showed just how dangerous the whole enterprise was. It was very, very lucky that more people didn't lose their lives in the space race. I wonder just how many bugs there were in the software just for starters.
Geoff
I wasn't born yet
However, the year I was born, my second cousin piloted The LEM for Apollo 14.
I feel as though I have a personal stake in space and space travel in part due to this connection. The first significant event in space travel that I will personally never forget was the Challenger disaster.
Personally, I don't hold out much hope for government funded space activity. I put my hope in private activity, people like Dick and Burt Rutan and the new kinds of spacecraft they are building. That and other private concerns like SpaceX are where the future in space lies.
I was awarded 2 medals for
I was awarded 2 medals for my part in the Apollo space flight missions for Apollo 8, and Apollo 11.
Both medals have portions of the space craft melted into them.
The Apollo 11 medal has bits from both the Eagle and Columbia in it!
I was attached to the American Projects Branch based in a secret location in Canberra Australia.
We controlled all the communications from all the tracking stations, Honey Suckle Creek, Tidbinbilla, Parkes, Carnarvon, Aural Valley, Pine gap, (including spy stations ) in Australia, Madagascar, and the airborne tracking systems.
Critical Life support data was transmitted via undersea cable direct to Goddard Space flight centre and all other data e.g. space craft control and tracking was computerised and transmitted by satellite to the USA.
The main reason that Australia was important to the Apollo Missions was they had the best direct view of the space craft in all the critical stages, eg. going into orbit around the moon, the landing and re docking etc.
The Australian Govt. controlled all communications in Australia at that time and completely controlled all NASA data, and by the way made a lot of dollars for the Australian Economy!
We met Spiro Agnew in parliament House (red carpet arrival), went to some great parties at the American Embassy.
During this time I was with the CMF (Army Reserve) attached to the Assault Pioneers and had been training for possibly deployment to Vietnam. Luckily the then prime Minister, Whitlam bought home the troops before we went! (about the best thing he ever did?)
LoL
Rita
Age is an issue of mind over matter.
If you don't mind, it doesn't matter!
(Mark Twain)
LoL
Rita
You Could Definitely Debunk Those Conspiracies
Thanks for your own firsthand accounts and your service for it. There are a bunch of conspiracy theorists who claim it never happened. I think their ideas are full of holes anyway. My uncle even jumped on their bandwagon. Your accounts could certainly make them look like the idiots they were.
Well!
We recorded similar data from about 1/2 doz tracking stations, I have Teletype messages from the space craft (On ASR33 printers which western union used for telegrams in the USA), I don't believe that the USA had the technology to do any sort of conspiracy, The astronauts virtually did nothing except the physical bits of walking on the moon,the rest of it was confirming the data uploads from earth.
All the space craft controls/manouvers were initiated from Goddard Space Flight Centre; the crew were basically monkeys and just made sure that the earth transmitted data was verified.
As I remember the only time the astronauts actually did something with manual control was with the reentry of Apollo 13 into the earths orbit?
The Parkes Tracking station was only PR and movies; they did no actual control data/biomedical transmissions that I know of, the movie 'the dish' was bullshit. The apollo project would have proceeded regardless of Parkes, however we would have had no Pics
Doesn't that make you think about what it was really about!!!!!!!!!!!
That's another story
loL
Rita
Age is an issue of mind over matter.
If you don't mind, it doesn't matter!
(Mark Twain)
LoL
Rita
Missing Recordings...
Too bad Nasa lost the "clear" recordings from y'all in the AU. Aparently the stuff broadcast here had a loss in clarity due to the sat transmission.
I watched a show that said the only recording of the AU transmission from AU is a recording a tech took of the monitor. :)
-HuGgLeS-
-P/KAF
Hi Piper!
Yes the USA was on the wrong side of the earth when the most important action was taking place.
We had the best view and most importantly the best reception for the critical phases of entry into the moons orbit etc.
LoL
Rita
Age is an issue of mind over matter.
If you don't mind, it doesn't matter!
(Mark Twain)
LoL
Rita