Happy Moon Landing Day!

48 years, and look at all we've accomplished!

A hearty thanks to those men who went Boldly: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins.


I remember being a 9 year old Trekkie watching in awe with the rest of the world. We humans need
more unifying things like this these days.
(And thank the Doctor for breaking the Silence! )

Who else remembers watching?

 

Unfortuantly in terms of manned travel we seemed to have stalled and the one girant leap. But at the time of posting it'll be around 15mins till the exact time the moon landing occured.

As for the moon walk we'll have to wait until tomorrow for that (UTC)

 

"It's a sultry night in July. You've fallen asleep in the armchair. Abruptly, you startled awake, disoriented. The television set is on, but not the sound. You strain to understand what you're seeing. Two ghostly white figures in coveralls and helmets are dancing. They make strange little skipping motions which propel them upward amid barely perceptible clouds of dust. But something's wrong -- they take too long to come down. Encumbered as they are, they seem to be flying -- a little. You rub your eyes, but the dream-like tableau persists."

"Apollo conveyed a confidence, energy, and breadth of vision that did capture the imagination of the world. It inspired an optimism about technology, an enthusiasm for the future. If we could fly to the moon, as so many have asked, what else were we capable of?"

 

Happy Moon Landing Day!

It was the greatest accomplishment of the Human Race. Unfortunately, like so many such milestones of the time, it has not yet led to greater accomplishments.

I not only remember watching, but I got to take a Polaroid of the action:

 

4:58 (&t=298)

 

Someday, in a few decades, everyone who saw it happen will be dead and we still won't have gone back and the people who doubt it really happened will have grown in number and the people who don't care will be most of [future] us.

 

Sounds like the chilling parent-teacher conference in Interstellar where the Moon-landings being a hoax has become national educational policy:

 

Now to return
https://www.space.com/37549-elon-musk-moon-base-mars.html
https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.0749

 

Essentially, in the long run, Heinlein was right.

 

I'm less pessimistic. I prefer to see the 'silent' 50 years since then as a time of solidifying and making all kinds of advances in 'background' sciences such as material sciences, engine design, etc. The moon landings were a heroic, but also monstrously expensive endeavour. Now, we're nearly at the point that privately owned companies (admittedly specialised ones) can launch (near-)spacecraft, which 50 years ago only the 2 most powerful states on the entire planet could do. Which I read as that access to space has become a lot 'cheaper'- though it still is obviously very expensive.

And when it becomes cheaper still, to the point it becomes profitable to extract resources from somewhere else than earth, we will get back into space - provided no major crisis occurs of course. I'm just not certain I will live long enough to witness that era.

 

Imagine what we could do if the various space agencies pooled their money, instead of competitng.

 

Apollo 11 still inspires and they're already talking about Space Tourism visiting the Moon in the years to come, which will visit this and other landing sites, there. Let's just hope that these Historic areas are respected ...