Moon Landing 40th Anniversary thread

SinisterMinisterX

Illuminatus
Staff member
(I'm amazed no one else has started this yet!)

Today's the day. 40 years since Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. It's still unbelievable. An operation that massive, on tech equal to today's pocket calculators. Men riding on a giant explosion to another world and returning alive. It's always fascinated me - as a kid I was a geek about this. I can't count how many books I read about it. I'll have to check the TV schedule, I hope there's something cool about it playing tonight.
 
It was a monumental achievement, I'll give them that. Not the sort of thing I would choose to do - the risk of not getting back must have played heavy on their minds.

What also interests me is the conspiracy theorists that claim it never happened. I remember, several years ago, watching some guy trying to reason that it could not have happened for several reasons. It almost led you to think, well did they?

Then I watched someone else blowing massive holes in each and every reason.
 
Be prepared to see documentaries celebrating it on the Discovery, History, National Geographic and Science channels. And of course it wouldn't be the moon landing without your usual conspiracy nuts saying it was made in a hollywood studio...

Where's LC's "thesis" on the matter?
 
And now space flight is reduced to ensuring people on Fiji can watch the Superbowl...
 
Until then, allow me to rant a bit about this topic.

The moon landing should have been the greatest event in the history of mankind. It should have been the overture to the greatest adventure we had ever embarked on. And as we all know, that is what its contemporaries believed it would become. If you read comments from the late sixties and early seventies, you will see that the attitude was that basically, the history of mankind on earth had come to an end; it was now a mere matter of leaving the planet. Arthur C Clarke believed, and Stanley Kubrick visualised, that we would have a base on the moon by 2001, and that space flight would have become a steady institution.

A few years back, I was driving around Brandenburg with some people, and we decided to cross the Odra and visit Poland. We crossed the border, drove around a town for fifteen minutes and went back. There was no point in this action, and I didn't get anything from it other than being able to tell people that I've been to Poland once. It's the exact same feeling I have with the moon landing. As I said, manned space flight has become little more than being a tool to enable people on Fiji to watch the Superbowl. Technology has not significantly increased on this sector, so space flights are still astronomically expensive, naturally prompting people to doubt the point of it, and provoking cries to end the space program all together.

I believe space flight is the future of mankind, and I think it should finally be treated as such. Several billion dollars now will save us several billion dead in a few decades.
 
I agree.  I hate when people say "We've been to the moon.  There was nothing there.  Why go back?" Grrr.  My son's science teacher told him that space flight was a waste of resources.  I told him she was full of shit.  In history, the greatest advances have come at two times: During any war, or during space exploration.
 
The reason the Moon was abadoned so to speak is because it wasn't a primarily scientific venture, but rather a political one, to have bragging rights over the USSR. Once the race was won, what was the point to keep going? both powers stopped giving a shit by the mid 70's.
 
Onhell said:
The reason the Moon was abadoned so to speak is because it wasn't a primarily scientific venture, but rather a political one, to have bragging rights over the USSR. Once the race was won, what was the point to keep going? both powers stopped giving a shit by the mid 70's.
What he said.
I betcha if there was oil on the moon we'd have been back.
 
Welcome to July 20th, 2009. At 11:56 (local time) tonight, it will have been 40 years since man first walked on the moon, since astronaut Neil Armstrong put his boot in the dust coating the lunar surface. And how the world has changed since then - how the world has altered in the wake of that achievement. And how the world has simply passed it by.

Where are we, since that fateful late night, when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon? What have we changed? Sure, countries have fallen and evil empires collapsed; we've built a space station, we've cured disease and we've tried to make the world a better place. But this world of ours, this fragile little blue marble in the deep, vast void of space, was never better served than by the program that sent men to the Moon.

Consider the technology involved. Without Apollo, the microprocessor would not have been born when it was; it may never have been born at all. Without Apollo, we would not have fuel cells that promise endless, pollution-less power. Without Apollo, we wouldn't have valuable insights to the history of the planet Earth, and our solar system. But most important, without Apollo, we wouldn't have hope.

Dr. Stephen Hawking is a far smarter man than I, and pretty much all of us, and he has said that we need to colonize this universe, because we've put all our eggs in one basket for far too long. I humbly agree with him, and the Moon is our closest neighbour, our companion in space, and the first logical destination for colonization. The Moon can give us natural resources, it can give us a valuable base for learning to survive outside of our neat little 80/20 nitrogen and oxygen mix. It can give us a place to go if we manage to kill our world off. It's a foothold in space, a launching pad to Mars, and to the greater universe before.

Imagine the value of a lunar observatory, for instance! No atmosphere, but you could build a mirror a thousand times the size of Hubble. Everyone has seen what Hubble has done, but imagine a fully functional observatory. What secrets of the universe we could get there. Plants and bacteria may grow differently in 1/6th gravity - we could discover new methods of treating illnesses. The potential is endless. The Moon is there, and it is ours. We should use it, instead of looking at it and remarking that it is pretty.

But let us turn from the future, and look to the past.

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins set course for the moon because of the work of hundreds of thousands of people, and with the goodwill of the planet Earth on their side. They weren't the first pioneers.

Let us remember those who imagined this concept. Men like Robert Goddard, Herman Oberth, Sergei Koroylev, and Werhner von Braun. Men like John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Let us remember the very first who stepped foot into space. Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, Gherman Titov, Gus Grissom, John Glenn.

Let us remember the first who went to the moon. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders. Tom Stafford, John Young, and Eugene Cernan.

Let us remember those who went to the moon after Apollo 11: Conrad, Gordon, Bean, Lovell, Swigert, Haise, Shepard, Roosa, Mitchell, Scott, Worden, Irwin, Young, Mattingly, Duke, Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt.

Let us remember those who have died pursuing the destiny of our species: Bondarenko. Grissom, White, and Chaffee. Komarov. Dobrovolski, Patsayev, and Yolkov. Jarvis, McAuliffe, McNair, Onizuka, Resnik, Smith and Scobee. Husband, McCool, Anderson, Brown, Chawla, Clark, and Ramon.

Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin rode the Saturn V rocket into space, by far the most powerful rocket ever to carry humans. The first stage of the Saturn V rocket produced 7,648,000 million pounds of thrust (34,200,000 N), enough thrust to push forward around 225 Peterbilt 379 tractor-trailers. If the Saturn V blew, the lethal blast radius was three miles. Yet they rode this beautiful machine flawlessly from the earth to the moon...and brought their Apollo Command and Service Module (Columbia) back home. Safely.

The Apollo Command and Service Module was built by North American Aviation, and took about five years to take from concept to the actual manned craft. Unfortunately, poor wiring in one of the capsules claimed the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee in 1967. But the Command Module flew flawlessly after that. The Service Module's major malfunction was in April of 1970, when an oxygen tank exploded and put Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise in life-threatening danger. Regardless, the CSM was a gorgeous machine that took twenty-four men (three of them twice) from the Earth to the Moon. Fifteen CSMs flew in space; six had no name. Before the moon landing, those with names carried titles less dignified: Gumdrop and Charlie Brown. The seven Command Modules that bore astronauts destined for the moon were better named: Columbia, Yankee Clipper, Odyssey, Kitty Hawk, Endeavour, Casper, and America.

The Lunar Module, designed by Grumman in Long Island, was the only piece of hardware that never had a serious failure. It had some problems (famously the overload error during the Apollo 11 descent), but never truly failed. Indeed, one LM saved the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts when their CSM was stricken by an explosion. Like the CSM, the names for the first two LMs were almost comic: Spider and Snoopy. But the seven LMs destined for the moon had more appropriate nomenclature: Eagle, Intrepid, Aquarius, Antares, Falcon, Orion, and Challenger.

We can only imagine what appropriate names the next class of ships to take us beyond Earth's gravity will bear, and what men and women will be inside of them. But when we return to the Moon, whoever and whenever that might be, it shall be in peace, and with hope, for all human kind - and we shall be returning to a legacy greater than any of us and the equal of all.

And we should remember what JFK had to say:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too...Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there." Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
 
I think that the Americans have to collaborate more with other countries, more than ever. They won't be able to do it alone anymore. In these more difficult economic times they can't afford it to spend so much on it.

That's for me the biggest contrast with the heroic past, and those are my main thoughts on this day. Plus the end of the Space Shuttle program. And will we really return in peace? And who is we, China?
 
America doesn't have to collaborate.  They want to, but they sure don't have to...they could do it alone.  They did it alone before, didn't they?  Besides, the economic times aren't that difficult, not compared to the past.  Plus....the Apollo program employed 400,000 Americans.

The Space Shuttle program was a bad idea, and it should have ended 15 years ago, when it was supposed to end.  It is dangerous, complex, and expensive.

And China has the same rights to space as everyone else, Forostar.  Indeed, if the West and Russia goes to the moon, China should come with.
 
They did many things alone in the past but lately America has changed remember? Foreign policy has changed and will change.

I am less religious about this subject anyway. Loosey, your post sounded like a sermon! :)

And I rather look at other more urgent goals in this world, for instance the ecological.
Those problems need a lot of money.
 
LooseCannon said:
We can only imagine what appropriate names the next class of ships to take us beyond Earth's gravity will bear...

How about the, "That's What She Said!"?
 
LooseCannon said:
We can only imagine what appropriate names the next class of ships to take us beyond Earth's gravity will bear,

If it will go on the way it is going, the names will be Exodus, Messiah and Salvation.


Forostar said:
And I rather look at other more urgent goals in this world, for instance the ecological.
Those problems need a lot of money.

Sure, that's what everybody says, and that's why space flight is not an issue anymore. Nobody cares that even if we fix this planet (which we won't) and solve world hunger (which we won't either unless people realise the only way to do so is with genetically modified food), the world will be significantly overpopulated within a century, and the problems we are facing now will seem ridiculous to the people then. And they will wish we would have pushed space technology more.
 
You say we won't fix this planet? Already saving for a ticket to fly away from earth? ;)
What about the others who can't afford it to buy a ticket? Let them die because they are overpopulation?
Let's only save the rich?

OK, space travelling is still an issue, but I assume there will be more balance in (American) expenses to realize it. Living on earth should become more bearable. If that won't be, then we certainly can expect more problems.
Everyone for themselves? This will cause another world war.
 
Forostar said:
You say we won't fix this planet? Already saving for a ticket to fly away from earth? ;)
What about the others who can't afford it to buy a ticket? Let them die because they are overpopulation?
Let's only save the rich?

Huh? I never said that. In fact I said the exact opposite:

Technology has not significantly increased on this sector, so space flights are still astronomically expensive, naturally prompting people to doubt the point of it, and provoking cries to end the space program all together.

Improvement in technology would naturally lead to decrease in cost.
 
Foro, the last great advancement in human quality of life is a direct product of the space program.  This advancement is the internet, something only made possible because of the microprocessors invented for Apollo.

The next great advancement that will increase our survivability is the fuel cell, something which is already being cautiously deployed in cars.  My hope is that within 20 years, fuel cells will power most cars and trucks.  And more importantly: most ships.  The fuel cell is capable of infinite cruising aboard ship if the vessel has an onboard hydrogen extractor.  The only chemical output a fuel cell has is vaporized dihydrogen monoxide.  While admittedly dihydrogen monoxide is found in acid rain and cancer victims, it is far less vicious than what today's combustion engines put out.

A renewed drive to the moon may yield similar technologies and advancements.
 
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