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Walk on the Moon in IMAX 3D
HaveNoMouth writes "NASA, Lockheed Martin, and Tom Hanks are making an IMAX 3D movie about the Apollo moon landings to give viewers something like the actual experience of being on the moon. Complete with actors playing astronauts, mockups of the Lunar Excursion Module, and fake moon surface, this looks to be a real kick. The website for the movie itself is all shockwave, but it contains some nice behind-the-scenes photos of the production. Here's a QuickTime trailer. All you lunar hoax conspiracy theorists out there can just consider this the remake, with 2005-class special effects."
Of course the Soviets actually provide the most compelling evidence that we did go to the Moon - their utter and complete silence. It seems strange that at the height of the Cold War, the United States biggest enemy would be completely silent and not say a word. You would have thought that if it is so obvious from the photographic and video record that we didn't go to the Moon, that the evil commies would have been all over it. But there is nothing.
Our little girl Susan is a most admirable slut, and pleases us mightily - Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
You're a classic example of today's modern, plugged in, brilliant, and utterly uninspired people.
It's difficult to fathom the fact that a collection of atoms formed together to produce you in such a fashion that you can create such a statement. Life is utterly amazing in that regard. We're having an argument. THAT is awe-inspiring.
How can the idea of having overcome so many obstacles, arguably way before our time, traveled such a distance, and achieved such a feat. The idea that there's a massive rock orbiting our tiny little planet is crazy as it is but that we were able to get people there is insane.
Now I think that our progress in getting people more than 365 times as far (mars versus the moon) has been rather astounding. We managed, on only our second shot, to hit a target as small as mars (technically we 'hit' it twice) from literally ~50 million miles away. We have photographs taken from the surface of a completely different planet.
You're amazingly desensitized by tv, media, movies, music, videogames... i dunno what.
Landing on the moon was a crazy achievement.. In fact it was so crazy that there are people who, to this day, think we never made it. Making that voyage was like squeezing a baby until it makes it's first sounds. You wouldn't claim that it could talk. No where near. So now the kid knows it can make noises (not the best way to teach it) and it can spend the time learning new ones and fine-tuning the ones that it knows.
;)
Space travel is the same way. So we punched through the glass ceiling (so to speak) but we've been focusing our energy of late on sustaining life in a vastly different environment. The trip to the moon was roughly 3 days to, 3 days on, and 3 days to return home. The trip to mars is roughly a 6 year round trip? There are significant obstacles that have to be overcome before we can afford to send live humans out there. Not only that, but because of the length of each experimental trial, 40 years would only afford... 6? MAX (granted multiple trials can be undertaken simultaneously, shorter peices of the whole, etc, etc, but the point is made, and I can't picture anything less than full scale, full length simulations).
Food is an issue. Air is an issue. Water is an issue. Muscle atrophy is an issue. The list goes on. All of these things are being investigated at the ISS, and the MIR as well I presume.
In this day and age NASA can't afford to 'screw up' any more so I don't blame them for taking their good old time getting on track for mars. I say send lots of probes that can't die. If I were them I'd send a few monkeys with no families (you know, the hobo monkeys) up first as well.