Slashdot Mirror
47 Years Ago Today, Apollo 11 Landed On the Moon (foxnews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: At this point 47 years ago we had begun our orbit around the Moon," writes Buzz Aldrin in a tweet. Today, Wednesday, July 20th, 2016, marks the 47th anniversary of when NASA astronauts landed on the moon for the very first time. Fox News reports: "Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins blasted off from Earth on a massive Saturn V rocket on July 16, 1969. Four days later, the Eagle module landed on the surface with Aldrin and Armstrong inside; Collins stayed behind in the orbiting Columbia craft. Millions of people back on Earth watched, captivated, as Armstrong was the first down the ladder, then uttered his now-famous line: 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' The astronauts eventually returned to Earth, splashing down four days later in the Pacific. On the moon, an American flag and a plaque that read, in part, 'We came in peace for all mankind,' remained." To this day, only 12 people have ever walked on the moon. Hopefully, that number will increase within the next decade. NASA is also celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Viking 1 lander's arrival on Mars. Viking 1 was the first American craft to land on the red planet on July 20, 1976.
https://xkcd.com/893/
You have to do the moon shot AND stage the landing. Because the rocket has to exist and it has to go somewhere. And that somewhere better be the moon, because the Russians will listen for anything that could remotely be considered fake. And they will waste not a nanosecond to expose it, you really think they would not have jumped onto the possibility to pull your pants down?
So that rocket has to go to the moon and telemetry has to be in sync with what's to be expected. Because even if you want to spin the conspiracy further and say the Russians are in on it (yeah. Sure. Right. The reason this was done in the first place, the one who had to lose the most by being "one-upped" after their firsts, they play along with you), there were literally thousands of amateurs listening in. All over the world. You could never have squelched that if something went wrong.
The risk alone is impossible to assess. You have thousands of people working on it, thousands you have to silence. Or you have to give them the absolutely credible impression that they are currently running a moon mission. Which means that you have to run a moon mission, essentially. AND then pay for the staged landing.
Yes, that would have been more expensive.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Erh... well, the whole moonshot thing was a political thing if there ever was one. Kennedy wanted to do this to "one-up" the Russians. They were the first in orbit, so the US had to be the first on the moon. There wasn't really any other "real" reason to do this.
Of course, in the end it gave the US an incredible boost in many economic fields, purely out of necessity. This was the beginning of modern process management, and various fields in technology made groundbreaking leaps ahead, materials research alone was enriched with a wealth of new materials that came into existence out of pure necessity, plastics and composites, ceramics and metal alloys that are heat resistant and cold resistant, efficient heat and electronics conductors or insulators, a LOT of materials that can withstand extreme conditions from vacuum to the stress of reentry.
And of course the already mentioned "WE did it" spirit that filled the country. This is important, it gave people something to believe in, not something intangible like some religion or a promise for much later, something that people of all trades had a part in that they could be proud of, from the astronaut who put his foot on the moon to the assembly line worker who could imagine that the screws he sorts are used to hold two parts of the Apollo space ship together.
And something like this is sorely missing today. Yes, of course you can send a probe to Mars instead of men. But, again, the value of the moon shot was not in the rocks they brought back. The value is the research necessary to get them there and back. The technological advantage the US got out of this carried them well into the 90s, at the beginning of the 1970s the US was more than a decade ahead of the rest of the world in technology and management. And that reflected on their industry. "Made in the USA" was highly prized, and I mean globally, because it was the synonym of "made by someone who knows what he's doing".
This was taxpayer money funneled into various corporations, much like it is today. But back then it was done way more sensibly. Not only did that taxpayer money indeed trickle down to the working people (because something as secret and high-tech as bleeding edge space technology isn't something you outsource easily, you have to employ US workers), it also was an investment into US technology and research, which led to the aforementioned edge in international trade and a competitive advantage over foreign products which were invariably inferior due to inferior technology, worse materials and production processes.
Today, taxpayer money poured into corporations is siphoned away to pad C-Level salaries. That's not going to give the economy a boost. That's money wasted on parasites.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...was the direct result of the unique experiences of WW2.
First, the US - despite the existential military challenge from the Soviet Union, which was only possible due to the disproportionately cheap annihilatory threat of nukes - was basically unchallenged as Earth's superpower economically, culturally, and militarily.
The rest of the world was still recovering from the aftereffects of WW2, from which the US had emerged largely unscathed but with a newfound taste/appreciation for the power of its science & industry marshaled by a central government (again, born of WW2).
At that same time, you had an entire generation of men that came back from war with a "we can accomplish anything" confidence (which in some cases tragically proved to be a dangerously entitled arrogance) AND an understanding that some things in the span of human events were WORTH the sacrifice of life and treasure. They accepted that.
I doubt we'll ever see such a time again.
We live in what remains the wealthiest, most comfortable society ever in human history, yet we still can't afford everything we buy.
47 years ago, we celebrated the triumph of landing people on the moon. In a short time, it became so pedestrian that it wasn't even front-page news anymore.
Today's triumphant news is about a new Tinder app that lets you 'hook up' with multiple people.
I know it's very "get off my lawn" but where we had an outward-looking, achievement-oriented society 50 years ago, today I see nothing but an enervated country suffused with ennui and a narcissistic obsession with carnality that leaves us paralyzed like a heroin addict on a buzz.
-Styopa