An Extraordinary day in History . . . July 20th

[colt_saa]

Through pretty much all of history Mankind has been an Explorer. We have always wondered "What was over that hill?" or "Who are those strange people?"

We are on the Anniversary Eve on one of the greatest accomplishments of Exploration in Mankind's history. 45 years ago on July 20th, man landed on a Celestial body that was not our own.

At 9:56 PM Eastern time on that July 20th Evening, the late Neil Armstrong stepped off the last rung of the "Eagle's" ladder and changed everything. Those first 11 words spoken from the surface of another planet should ring in our ears for eternity......."That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

As natural Explorers. Mankind's desire to reach the heavens has probably been with us through all of history. It was not until December of 1903 when two brothers at Kitty Hawk flew for the first time. All of the sudden, the heavens were closer.

Gene Cernan, the last man to set foot on the moon, gives a great speech where he points out the truly remarkable achievement of getting from our first glider flight in Kitty Hawk to the surface of the moon and back in only 66 years. But what has happened in the 45 years since then?

Why has man gone no further? What happened to our desire to explore? Why have we not explored strange new worlds or gone to seek out new life and new civilizations? Where is Stanley Kubrick's space station and Moon base?

What is worse than not going anywhere and not doing anything, is that we have forgotten what we accomplished. Talk to any high-school aged person about landing on the moon and they know nothing of it.

This July 20th, talk to your kids, your friends, your neighbors or anyone that will listen to you and let us all remember together what those few brave men did when they ventured away from Earth. It is an accomplishment too exceptional to be forgotten.

While we are at it, let us figure out a way to rekindle that spark of Exploration that took Mankind from the Earth to the Moon




Images are provided courtesy of NASA, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren photographers

 

[islamoradamark]

our space exploration was very powerful in the day. i would really like to see America put more into our space exploration and put many more footprints on other planets

 

[smokindog]

It was truly an amazing day AND my mom's 50th birthday!

 

[Rangerpat]

What I remember most was that it rained (in the Northeast US) for the entire time the space mission took place. My mother said, "the rain was a message from God that we should NOT be up there!"

 

[bgrafsr]

I don't believe it for one minute. It was a stage, setup in the New Mexico desert to fool all of us.

The men & women who risked their lives to explore new frontiers in outer space have my full admiration. They are all heroes and should be looked up to for their accomplishments.

Unfortunately the younger generation, and some of the older generation too, would rather adulate sports people, singers, and other idiots who waste oxygen by breathing.

 

[-db-]

Mankind's greatest technical achievement, and it's a real shame it'll never be replicated or exceeded.

 

[Tom K]

....
Gene Cernan, the last man to set foot on the moon, gives a great speech where he points out the truly remarkable achievement of getting from our first glider flight in Kitty Hawk to the surface of the moon and back in only 66 years. But what has happened in the 45 years since then?

Why has man gone no further? What happened to our desire to explore? Why have we not explored strange new worlds or gone to seek out new life and new civilizations? Where is Stanley Kubrick's space station and Moon base?
....

In December 1911, Roald Amundsen and his party were the first to reach the South Pole. They did this via dogsled. (Robert Scott and his party also reached the South Pole shortly after Amundsen, but died on the return journey.) It was not until 31 October 1956 (45 years later) that humans once again set foot at the South Pole, when a party led by Admiral George J. Dufek of the US Navy landed there in an R4D-5L Skytrain (C-47) aircraft.

The Apollo astronauts went to the moon in a dogsled. The rockets that we use today are not significantly different from the ones used in the Apollo era. What we need to go back to the moon again is the technological equivalent of an airplane.

Chemical rockets are garbage. Congress needs to fund NASA for research into innovative launch systems whether it be nuclear propulsion, space elevators, electromagnetic rail launchers, or whatever. Until we can get off the Earth's surface efficiently, not much is going to change. I say this as an ardent supporter of manned space flight.



Just to emphasize what an achievement the Apollo program was (using dogsleds!), picture this: I have a globe of the Earth that is one foot in diameter. So one foot equals 8000 miles. At this scale the moon would be three inches in diameter, about the same as a tennis ball. If I hand you the tennis ball, how far away would you put it from the globe to be in scale? Got a distance in mind?

In fact, it would need to be about 28 feet away, nearly ten yards. That's a lot of empty space for the men of Apollo to traverse.

Now think about the International Space Station, orbiting the Earth - how far away would it be?

Most people think it would be a couple of feet away from the globe. In fact, it would only be about a quarter of an inch above the globe's surface. There is a vast difference between low-Earth orbit where the space station and all other manned missions have been (about 300 miles up), and traveling to the Moon. Even the highest non-Apollo mission, Gemini 11, only achieved an altitude of 739 miles, barely double what the Shuttle has done during the Hubble servicing missions.


Now consider this - for the six successful Moon landings, two astronauts landed on the moon while the third stayed in the Command Module in lunar orbit. When on the far side of the moon, since no radio signals from Mission Control or the landers could get through the moon that lone astronaut was completely cut off from humanity. No stranded sailor on a desert island has ever been so alone. 2000 miles from the nearest humans and 225,000 miles from Earth.

And I probably shouldn't do this, but the picture above - it's Buzz Aldrin facing the American flag. Or is it? If you find a higher resolution version of it and look closely, you can see that Buzz is actually looking out the side of his helmet at Neil Armstrong, who is taking the picture. Kinda puts a different feel to it, doesn't it?

 

[Texas Star]

Why does the flag seem to be blowing in a Lunar wind? Was there actually a breeze?!

 

[indie_rocker]

The flag was starched to look like it's waving and also had a support pole running along the top of the flag. Take a closer look at the pictures above.

 

[Mcwsky09]

Why does the flag seem to be blowing in a Lunar wind? Was there actually a breeze?!

Seriously?

I believe it was Buzz Adrin who was asked by some young "reporter" what he thought about the conspiracy theories that NASA faked the moon landings. His answer, "I don't know where they sent those other guys, but I walked on the moon."

Why is it so easy for so many to disbelieve the achievements of mankind? All the ancient aliens shows for example, how offended would you be if you took part in building the Brooklyn Bridge and 1000 years from now somebody claimed that it could't have been man made - just look at the placement of the stones, way to perfect for any technology we know about.
Especially in a post-apocolyptic world - I would love to see a movie or more likely a TV series which is set in a future well past some apocalyptic event where aside from ruins the only surviving documentation of the modern word is the Fiction section of a library or bookstore and maybe a SkyMall catalog or Brookstone. The TV series would explore what happened to the Vampires and Laser guns that are described in all the books. SciFi books would become highly debated topics between the true believers and the skeptics.
If you watch some of the documentaries made about the moon landings it is quite astonishing that they managed to pull it off at all and how close to the ragged edge of what was possible with the technology of the day they were on every mission. The computing power and even manufacturing techniques and materials available to us today are vastly superior then even 50 years ago. As noted in a previous post the challenge of cost effectiveness of achieving escape velocity remains unchanged. add to that the lack of profitable resources or at least exploitable resources and it is a huge challenge to make space travel worthwhile.
That said I do believe in manned space exploration and at some point in the distant future it may be the only path to the long term survival of the human race.
I do laugh at most stories about extra-terrestrials visiting Earth for whatever reasons, which is not to say I don't think there is life out there somewhere. I would think that any sufficiently advanced civilization which master interstellar space travel would not find anything here of greater value aside perhaps satisfying their curiosity (if they have even noticed us at all).
Hmm I should stop rambling now.

It is bitter sweet that the Apollo Program still stands as a pinnacle of achievement which I hope someday will be surpassed but I won't start holding my breath anytime soon.

 

[wbraswell]

I believe that we should spend our efforts more looking around rather than up. We should be exploring our seas, and the ocean floor. I think there is much to be learned and gained from our oceans. They are the key to our existence, for if we poison our oceans, our planet will die. We know very little about the ocean floor. I think we can make great strides in clean eternal energy from waves and tides. We need to study our effects on them and have international laws to control the plunder and pollution of them. To me, our oceans are the great unknown, and our next frontier.

 

[shouldazagged]

Unmanned exploration continues apace, and Hubble has shown us astounding things. I hope we'll see further manned exploring missions, but I know I won't live to see it. There will have to be huge advances in technology before we see humans set foot even on nearby Mars.

But who knows? Any smart phone has many, many times the computing power that the Apollo missions used to go to the moon. The average passenger car has more on board. A lot of the design work in the early days of the space program still employed slide rules.

I'm just fascinated that we've come so far in my lifetime. What a time to be alive!

 

[PA Reb]

I remember well as a kid watching the first moon walk on television in a Daytona Beach motel. A few days prior to that, we were standing about 3 miles from Apollo 11 as it was launched on its historic journey. I'll never forget that sight or the vibrations I felt even from that distance. Thanks for the memory of a lifetime dad!!

By the way, my dad had one of those old 8mm film recorders with him but he didn't use it as the Saturn V lifted off. He always told me he "wanted to see it with his owns eyes instead of through a view finder." I guess I can't hardly blame him for that!

 

[PA Reb]

Why does the flag seem to be blowing in a Lunar wind? Was there actually a breeze?!

Really? Here's Buzz Aldrin's reaction to a guy that harassed him time and time again > Buzz Aldrin punches Bart Sibrel after being harassed by him - YouTube .

 

[PA Reb]

I believe that we should spend our efforts more looking around rather than up. We should be exploring our seas, and the ocean floor. I think there is much to be learned and gained from our oceans. They are the key to our existence, for if we poison our oceans, our planet will die. We know very little about the ocean floor. I think we can make great strides in clean eternal energy from waves and tides. We need to study our effects on them and have international laws to control the plunder and pollution of them. To me, our oceans are the great unknown, and our next frontier.

I agree but like gun laws, there are already a great many "international laws" in place to protect the environment. Just like downing a passenger airliner full of innocent people is against international law as well as the laws of humanity, sadly, there's no way to enforce them. I see no reason why both frontiers can't be explored for the sake of the human race.

 

[BaldEagle1313]

There will be a couple of rebroadcasts of the event this evening for those who wish to re-live the event - or even those who weren't alive when it happened.

Moon Webcasts Celebrate Apollo 11 Lunar Landing: Watch Live Tonight

 

[sheepdawg]

Herr Hitler was nearly killed by a bomb at his bunker at Wolf's Lair on July 20, 1944. My mother would have been 96 today.

 

[nechaev]

It is sad that we have to rely on Russian launch vehicles to get our astronauts into space. Who would have thought it would ever come to this, considering all the progress we made in such a relatively short time in the twentieth century?

 

[smokindog]

Mine would be 95!

Herr Hitler was nearly killed by a bomb at his bunker at Wolf's Lair on July 20, 1944. My mother would have been 96 today.

 

[smokindog]

What bothers me is that the reasoning power on the other side of the glass seems to have decreased by similar multiples.

But who knows? Any smart phone has many, many times the computing power that the Apollo missions used to go to the moon.