Moon Landing Anniversary
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Moon Landing Anniversary
Here is the link of the Life Magazine photo of me at the Dunes baccarat pit watching the first moon landing. Today is the 42 anniversary of that space event.
http://images.google.com/images?q=dunes ... 80&bih=603
repectfully
http://images.google.com/images?q=dunes ... 80&bih=603
repectfully
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
At the baccarat pit? I thought we were the same age. I was in the Mekong Delta.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
I remember at the student flat I was living at that time we rent with a couple of guys a TV set. It was a memorable night!
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
I was 11 years old, at sleep-away camp in the Catskill Mountains. A kid named Michael Herman in the adjoining bunk had a father who worked for Panasonic, and he had this BIG radio. Were were supposed to be asleep, but we all snuck into that bunk and sat hunched over the radio and listened as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I'll never forget that.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
Geno Munari wrote:Here is the link of the Life Magazine photo of me at the Dunes baccarat pit watching the first moon landing. Today is the 42 anniversary of that space event.
Which means it was 42 years and 2 days ago that Ted Kennedy took Mary Jo Kopechne for a moonlight drive.
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He might have been president instead of Carter if not for that. Which means the elder Bush would probably not have been elected because Kennedy would have made it for two terms. Clinton would have done the next two terms, which means that the younger Bush wouldn't have been president, either.
Gotta watch out for those moonlight drives.
Gotta watch out for those moonlight drives.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
Geno;
Thanks for sharing. While you were watching TV in Vegas, I was in basic training at Ft. Lewis, WA trying to avoid 18 hour KP and low crawls (the PT I did not mind)! We could only hear about the events now and then on someone's "transistor radio". Those were NOT the days. Kent Gunn in another thread indicated that he was "enlisted scum". We were even lower - "drafted scum"!
Consequently, many of us in the Army missed the excitement of the moon landing. I'm glad you were able to see what you could on TV.
Jim
Thanks for sharing. While you were watching TV in Vegas, I was in basic training at Ft. Lewis, WA trying to avoid 18 hour KP and low crawls (the PT I did not mind)! We could only hear about the events now and then on someone's "transistor radio". Those were NOT the days. Kent Gunn in another thread indicated that he was "enlisted scum". We were even lower - "drafted scum"!
Consequently, many of us in the Army missed the excitement of the moon landing. I'm glad you were able to see what you could on TV.
Jim
Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
Richard Kaufman wrote:I was 11 years old, at sleep-away camp in the Catskill Mountains. A kid named Michael Herman in the adjoining bunk had a father who worked for Panasonic, and he had this BIG radio. Were were supposed to be asleep, but we all snuck into that bunk and sat hunched over the radio and listened as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I'll never forget that.
I was 2 years old. Sat in my grandfather's lap, and watched it on the television while wondering what the excitement was all about. It is my earliest memory.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
Entirely plausible. Ted K. only looked at years when he wouldn't have to give up his Senate seat -- '76 and '80; thereafter the dream in fact was dead; he didn't have!the option that, e.g., Lloyd Bentsten to hedge and run for both executive office and the Senate. So '72 was his sweet spot, and we know he had not aversion to running agqainst an incumbent, even a same-party incumbent. Despite the electoral and popular vote outcome in '72, Nixon presided over a crappy economy and increasingly bizarre, losing war. It was winnable for the sibling of an assassinated president and assasinaed almost-president, who surely would have closed the slim margin even Humphrey lost by. Almost anyone but a South Dakota one-note opponent would have had Nixon in '72 where Bush I in '92 was. The most interesting speculation of all, though: Could Ronald Reagan have arrived four years sooner, in '76, without the substantial symbolic impotence of the Iran "hostage crisis" to buttress the stagflation that was anything more vivid in '76 than '80? only obscured by Watergate, which in this scenario is at most a former president's minor scandal. Obviously House Minority Leader Gerald Ford wouldn't have beaten him for the nomination; and Nelson Rockefeller would never have beaten the better version of himself, incumbent President Ted Kennedy. 1980 was way, way too soon for Clinton. Mondale would have had no Vice Presidential cachet. Gary Hart? also too soon. even with a loss to Kennedy in 1976, Reagan comes out a plausible winner in 1980. Thereafter, therefore, even KENNEDY BEATS NIXON in 1972 plausibly yields roughlynthe same hand we've been dealt - maybe acceleratednif Kennedy doesn't lose in '76 for the same reason he beat Nixon in '72 in the hypothetical and Bush I lost in '92 in reality. Or maybe Reagan wins in '76 and is overwhelmed by the same 14% inflation/9% unemployment/Iran hostages as torpedoed Carter, with some middling Democrat claiming the landslide that in actual history was his. Or,alternatively, maybe former President Ted Kennedy runs again in 1980; has no difficultyngiving Roger Mudd a cogent response; gives the very same speech hem did atmthe 1980 Democratic convention; and reclaims the presidency with a thumping landslide over the unpopular incumbent Ronqld Reagan.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
Isn't it amazing how quickly a thread goes from a comment about the 42nd anniversary of the moon landing to the babble in the previous post?
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
timbrown wrote:Isn't it amazing how quickly a thread goes from a comment about the 42nd anniversary of the moon landing to the babble in the previous post?
Some folks are easier to misdirect than others.
And not even a mention of Transformers 3 so far either. There're two more movies on that theme due out in the near future. One is a comedy.
I was wondering then what we sought to accomplish there. And was not to surprised, though annoyed, when our space program essentially stopped with a tiny version of the space station just a few years after the moon program finished.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
I was 14 or 15. I watched the landing with my grandfather who was born only a few years after the Wright Brothers took off from Kitty Hawk. needless to say, he was amazed.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
i, too, hate it when someone interrupts the sanctimony of 42nd anniversary cliche swaps
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I like it, El Harvey. A good analysis.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
My father dragged the television into the backyard where I had set up my telescope so the neighbors could take a look at the moon. I doubt we will ever truly appreciate how amazing it is that those of us old enough to remember experienced one of the most significant events in human history. Ray Bradbury was booked on a talk show that night. Earlier guests had debated the effort in terms of cost and Bradbury became so flustered that he walked out before he was suppose to go on. In the hall of the studio he met a friend and told him about his frustration. The friend worked for another talk show and asked him if he wanted to join the discussion there, where apparently the achievement was met with absolute joy. Bradbury agreed walked into the studio, faced the camera and exclaimed that if you weren't watching the TV, "You missed it!"
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
My parents were stationed with the US embassy in Bogota, Colombia at the time. My dad woke us up (long past our bedtime) and we all went into the TV room where the Colombian national station had picked up the feed from the US. We sat there watching the grainy black and white picture from the moon which was rebroadcast over Colombia's just-as-grainy picture signal. It was an eerily breathtaking memory I'll never forget, since we knew if we could watch it, the whole world really was watching.
brian :o
brian :o
Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
Editorial Cartoon, the day after the landing, showing the moon in the sky with the poignant caption, "It will never look the same again."
This is a social not a political statement:
I remember the watching the TV with family and friends and some of the older folks observing it with incredulous wonder, saying, "This is amazing, I thought I was only going to see this when watching Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials, as a child, and now it's ACTUALLY happening!"
40+ years later, I heard different people who either voted for or against Obama,as he won both saying, "I never would have believed this would happen, this was only going happen in some , "What if?" movie/"Twilite Zone" espisode, and i't ACTUALLY happening!" "Who would have thought?!"
This is a social not a political statement:
I remember the watching the TV with family and friends and some of the older folks observing it with incredulous wonder, saying, "This is amazing, I thought I was only going to see this when watching Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials, as a child, and now it's ACTUALLY happening!"
40+ years later, I heard different people who either voted for or against Obama,as he won both saying, "I never would have believed this would happen, this was only going happen in some , "What if?" movie/"Twilite Zone" espisode, and i't ACTUALLY happening!" "Who would have thought?!"
Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
I was 6 years old and my mom & dad got us out of bed to watch it. Being half asleep, I didn't fully grasp the significance of what I was watching.
The space program came a long way from the moon to the shuttle missions.
The space program came a long way from the moon to the shuttle missions.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
I posted a quick thing on Facebook at exactly about the time 42 years earlier that I stepped out into my grandmas backyardabout a half hour into the EVAlooked up at the Moon and thought, My God: there are men up there. Ill never forget it. I was nine.
The space program has always been a big part of my life: my late father was very much a part of it. He worked on the Apollo program (Command Module) and designed the engine alignment system on the Space Shuttle (among other things). As a kid, I got to see every Command Module (post-flight) and attended the first roll out of the Shuttle (and subsequent ones). The biggest deal was attending a night launch with him, Mom, my wife, and kids about 20 years ago. That is a sight to see! I have a lot of Dads personal memorabilia here in my office: Awards from NASA, Rockwell (his employer), etc. My favorite is one of his retirement gifts: a large mounted photo of the Shuttle Discovery at blast off, with the matting (and the back) signed by his many colleagues and several astronauts.
Dustin
The space program has always been a big part of my life: my late father was very much a part of it. He worked on the Apollo program (Command Module) and designed the engine alignment system on the Space Shuttle (among other things). As a kid, I got to see every Command Module (post-flight) and attended the first roll out of the Shuttle (and subsequent ones). The biggest deal was attending a night launch with him, Mom, my wife, and kids about 20 years ago. That is a sight to see! I have a lot of Dads personal memorabilia here in my office: Awards from NASA, Rockwell (his employer), etc. My favorite is one of his retirement gifts: a large mounted photo of the Shuttle Discovery at blast off, with the matting (and the back) signed by his many colleagues and several astronauts.
Dustin
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
El Harvey Oswald wrote:i, too, hate it when someone interrupts the sanctimony of 42nd anniversary cliche swaps
That day, when the Eagle landed, many classes of engineering students were called in to be told that the space program was essentially over.
But at least we got a few impressive Life Magazine covers out of it.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
We got a lot more out of it than that. There are many technologies that came directly out of going to the Moon and lower Earth orbit (via the Space Shuttle) that are taken for granted today (and still create jobs, etc.). Its possibly the best money ever spent by our government when it comes to an actual ROI over time. NASA is not going away, its justlike everything elseadapting to the times. The human spirit of exploration and discovery will never go away.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
Dustin Stinett wrote:There are many technologies that came directly out of going to the Moon and lower Earth orbit (via the Space Shuttle) that are taken for granted today (and still create jobs, etc.).
NASA has been claiming this for years, and it usually doesn't hold up. Most of the "spin-offs" either have no real commercial value, or are of value only to NASA/space exploration; would have come along anyway as a result of routine progress, regardless of the fact that they were being used by the space program; or were in fact a result of Defense programs rather than space exploration.
For 35 years NASA has been the operator of Shuttles and a congessionally-funded jobs program, rather than the means by which people have explored space. When I was 7, I watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk around on a world a quarter of a million miles away. Since Apollo 17 in 1972, however, no American has been higher than 400 miles or so -- a distance I can drive in a day. This isn't exploration.
I say this reluctantly, as the husband of a NASA employee; as a resident of a NASA "company town" (Huntsville, AL, home of Marshall Space Flight Center); and as someone who has given up on his own childhood dream of easy access to space, but hopes my son will be able to go.
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Bill, you should know better then. Use any cordless tools lately? Smoke detectors are required in all new homes today: technology created specifically for space flight. I could go on, but you should know this stuff. They are not lies or exaggerations. Yes, most of the stuff has evolved to much better stuff today, but the initial work was done for (and funded by) the space program.
And the program also made other innovations better. Velcro was perfected during and for the program (I still have some of the original nylon-based material created for and used on the spacecraft). It wasn't as good until NASA pushed for the better material that lasted longer with repetitive use. And it wasn't until the space program that Velcro was even noticed for commercial use. Its popularity skyrocketed (no pun intended) as a result. It is taken purely for granted today and has put trillions into the world economy. Microwave ovens were enormous and completely impractical until NASA asked for smaller ones. And innovation continues today. The fact is that recent work has helped in the medical fields and countless other areas.
While I agree that we need to move past lower Earth orbit, we also needand this comes directly from the people that matter: the astronauts who put their lives on the lineto do it safer. That is part of the work going on up there. That is also why they no longer wanted the Shuttle. Theyve wanted a much safer splashdown recovery vehicle for a very long time (similar to Apollo).
Space travel will never be easy and will always be dangerous: it requires too much power to exit Earths gravity for it to be otherwise. And traveling in the vacuum of space is extraordinarily dangerous. And, of course, reentry is extremely hazardous. However, it can be made safer, but never easy. And it should never be considered routine. It has always been when complacency set in that accidents have happened: From Apollo One to Columbia. But why do I have to tell you this stuff? You should know it already.
And the program also made other innovations better. Velcro was perfected during and for the program (I still have some of the original nylon-based material created for and used on the spacecraft). It wasn't as good until NASA pushed for the better material that lasted longer with repetitive use. And it wasn't until the space program that Velcro was even noticed for commercial use. Its popularity skyrocketed (no pun intended) as a result. It is taken purely for granted today and has put trillions into the world economy. Microwave ovens were enormous and completely impractical until NASA asked for smaller ones. And innovation continues today. The fact is that recent work has helped in the medical fields and countless other areas.
While I agree that we need to move past lower Earth orbit, we also needand this comes directly from the people that matter: the astronauts who put their lives on the lineto do it safer. That is part of the work going on up there. That is also why they no longer wanted the Shuttle. Theyve wanted a much safer splashdown recovery vehicle for a very long time (similar to Apollo).
Space travel will never be easy and will always be dangerous: it requires too much power to exit Earths gravity for it to be otherwise. And traveling in the vacuum of space is extraordinarily dangerous. And, of course, reentry is extremely hazardous. However, it can be made safer, but never easy. And it should never be considered routine. It has always been when complacency set in that accidents have happened: From Apollo One to Columbia. But why do I have to tell you this stuff? You should know it already.
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
Oh, Bill. For what it's worth, of all the places my Dad had to travel to back in the day (Florida, Texas, etc.), Huntsville was his favorite. It was all about the food!
Dustin
Dustin
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Re: Moon Landing Anniversary
Dustin Stinett wrote:Oh, Bill. For what it's worth, of all the places my Dad had to travel to back in the day (Florida, Texas, etc.), Huntsville was his favorite. It was all about the food!
Dustin
No disagreement there. When Von Braun and his Germans came in 1950 - 1951, we got some really good German restaurants out of the deal (some of which are still around).