Apollo 11 Moon Landing Turns 45 211
An anonymous reader writes On July 20, 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. Neil Armstrong would say later he thought the crew had a 90% chance of getting home from the moon, and only a 50% chance of landing safely. The scope of NASA's Apollo program seems staggering today. President Kennedy announced his moon goal just four years into the Space Age, but the United States had not even launched a human into orbit yet. Amazingly, just eight years later, Armstrong and Aldrin were walking on the moon.
I was six years old watching that (Score:2, Interesting)
Like a lot of geeky little kids, I saw the grainy black&white television with my family, and was *amazed*. The National Gegraphic that came out with the wonderful moon maps and photos was a treasure of my childhood. So were the years of National Geographic and Analog on the family bookshelves. It was only 30 years later that I realized just how *deeply* Dad delved into the leading technologies of his time. I didn't get to see him much, because he was supporting almost a dozen immigrants. But all the boys, and some of the girls, learned machine shop basics in the basic with him.
That moon landing has inspired generations of Americans to reach out and do *amazing* things. And in the midst of the Cold War, to make it one "giant step for mankind" instead of a claim for our own nation. Combined with the 'Outer Space Treaty' to prevent militarization of outer space, it makes me proud as hell that we've visited there.
And we are going *back*, dammit. SpaceX, *go, Go, GO*!!!!!!
Re:And today (Score:5, Interesting)
nonsense, the US has many manned space programs in development and some of them are private. Exciting times are coming
Generations before us (Score:4, Interesting)
US, the moon. China, mars. (Score:3, Interesting)
China is the new United States. It has a "future belongs to us" mindset that the US had in the 1960's. It values science and math, and it's willing to invest in its own future. It has many problems it has to solve, social and economic, even bigger ones than the US has, but it will solve them because it has the will to do so.
The US has fewer problems than China, but lacks national will and foresight. It gets tied up petty bickering and political infighting. It no longer values science or understands how much of what it takes for granted has come from basic research in science and technology. Entire fields it once dominated, in everything from medicine to technology, are moving step by step to countries like China. It's little by little strangling its former best-in-the-world national labs, NASA, and other national assets. It's shipping its technology over to China wholesale as industrial theft and voluntary outsourcing of production transfers the know-how elsewhere.
The US is Rome in the last of its days, trying to hang onto its position in the world, but watching the future slip through its fingers.
Re:And today (Score:3, Interesting)
explain to me what reaching out to muslims have to do with space travel????
there is alot of blame to go around, but a lot of it belongs on obama
Re:And less than four years later... (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't be long before the 12 human beings to walk on the moon are dead. Already we are down 8. Soon there will be no living person who has walked on another world.
I wonder if time will show this period to be the high water mark of the human race. With all the existential threats facing us it could work out this way.
Re:Not going to happen again any time soon (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect it has more to do with it sounding Islamic / non-American.
Re:US, the moon. China, mars. (Score:4, Interesting)
US may be more like Byzantium, a slow centuries-long decline. Reliving its past glories "safe" behind its invulnerable walls.
Civilizations rise and fall. Its not clear who's next. China is making rapid progress, but it isn't clear if they will regain their millennia long place as world leaders, or crash and burn on the next economic downturn. I hope they make it though - I'd rather it were us, but I want someone in space.
Re:It's a fake! (Score:4, Interesting)
Sort of.
Go there. See for yourself.
It won't necessarily prove exactly when it happened, if you're going to be really skeptical about it, but it should prove that it happened... at least to the extent that you can trust what your own senses tell you, and what you will find there will be completely consistent with what should be there. At an absolute worst case, it would prove that somebody spent a whole lot of money to fabricate a replica set of the"fake moon landing" on the real moon just to convince future people who land there that it actually happened... of course,even that still means that somebody has already been on the moon.
Oh, and of course, any stories you might tell upon your return would be categorized by skeptics as either you being paid off to say what you saw. And the really die hard skeptics who go up themselves would probably just believe that they were being brainwashed if they saw it for themselves.
There is a difference, you see, between proving that something happened and having somebody believe that it happened.