04.27.1979 – 00:01
Most of the stuff I’d be interested in blogging about predates the internet, and me. Also I’d like to keep the current posts more about things that I’m doing, not just thinking.
So this is my retroblog. A retroblog is whatever I say it is, or was whatever I said it was.
And this is it.
07.21.1969 – 02:56
“That’s one small step for a man… one giant leap for mankind.”
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about putting my boots down in that dust. I could do without the immortality of historical recognition. Like Alan Bean, I be just as happy to be the 4th or the 104th. I just want to look out from another world. More than that, I want to believe that people like me might look out from a thousand different worlds.
I’m a pretty imaginative guy and I think that’s pretty far-fetched. 24 men, of the billion or trillions or quadrillions of people that have lived and died on earth – 24 have seen the universe from another world.
Many have ruled Rome, many have won superbowls, many have climbed mount Everest. Few went to the moon.
We’ll never really love this Earth until we know what it’s like to miss it. Carl Sagan tried to tell us.
I pray we survive long enough to have that experience, then we survive the experience. Then maybe we’ll be something…
Also – conspiracy theorists- Bring it. We did it and it was the best thing we ever did. Deal with it.
We went to the moon. We landed. We got out and walked around. We even brought a crazy dune-buggy and took it for a spin. Ask the engineers who designed it, ask the machinists and mechanics who built it, ask the crews who fueled, inspected, tracked, and recovered it, ask the astronauts who flew it.
Better yet- build a spaceship, take it to the moon, and see for yourself. We did it. We did it with technology that didn’t exist when we declared we would do it. We did it in the middle of a war. We did it with less computing power than most people carry around in their pocket.
We could do it again. Now. It took 10 years last time. I say we could bring it back online in 3. If we had any balls.
07.20.1969 – 20:17
“Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.”
“Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”
God how I wish I’d been alive for that moment. Even more though, I wish that I didn’t care so much about that moment because I believed it was only the first of many feats of engineering, science, manufacturing, administration, and political will. Instead I am possessed by the fear that is may be the last and greatest of such feats.
Not to say there have been no great feats, only that there have been none so ambitious.
I shouldn’t be naive though. I realize the motivations for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs were based in fear of being dominated. And I realize that even at the time the interest for manned space exploration fell off sharply after the historic achievement of Apollo 11. The will to finance war and destruction outpaced the will to finance human advancement even at the peak of that advancement.
Apollo provided the incentive to develop and hone many of the technologies we depend on today, even many military technologies. But somehow we cannot justify the expense of such ambitious programs.
So the Eagle landed, the entire human race looked up and saw human beings had lifted themselves into the sky, survived the vast and deadly void, and occupied and claimed a hostile world with apparent ease.
Were we challenging God? No more than an ant on a tabletop challenges mankind. We reached out to show our gratitude and new humility at the eternal greatness of creation. For a moment we offered our greatest minds, our bravest spirits and most able bodies in thanks to creation. So that we might better know the will of God. God means many things to many people, but to know and serve the will of God is the basis for all who believe. Whatever you believe, the universe is there, it is, it was, and it will be, and however it got there, we have been blessed with the gifts honor creation in a way unlike any other creature we know. We reach.
Whether by creator or by chance, we were placed in a universe that only respects survival. If we are to show gratitude for our creation, we must take every action to preserve and extend the survival of the compassion, intelligence, and greatness of the human spirit.
So let’s crank up the funding for new propulsion, life support, and in situ resource utilization, warm up the Saturn V’s while we’re waiting, and get sapient.
Also let’s just take 2/3 of the military budget and funnel that straight into education. I promise, Mexico and Canada aren’t going to attack and the Atlantic and Pacific make great neighbors.
As for terrorists- it’s not easy but I have a plan.
1) stop killing people. the less people you kill the fewer want to kill you for killing their family and friends.
2) apologize for the people you did kill, and make sure the countries you killed people in have shit load of jobs and educational resources available to keep people from thinking about all that killing you did.
3) if you absolutely cannot stop yourself from killing people, go to North Korea, or Wall Street. be selective though.
—
“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. 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.”
01.27.1967 – 06:31:04
“If we die we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. Our god-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because in the final analysis, only man can fully evaluate the moon in terms understandable to other men.”
-Virgil Ivan Grissom “Gus”
Build spaceships or die.
Cedar.
“Dear friends, both known and unknown to me, fellow Russians, and people of all countries and continents, in a few minutes a mighty spaceship will carry me into the far-away expanses of space. What can I say to you in these last minutes before the start? At this instant, the whole of my life seems to be condensed into one wonderful moment. Everything I have experienced and done till now has been in preparation for this moment. You must realize that it is hard to express my feeling now that the test for which we have been training long and passionately is at hand. I don’t have to tell you what I felt when it was suggested that I should make this flight, the first in history. Was it joy? No, it was something more than that. Pride? No, it was not just pride. I felt great happiness. To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage single handed in an unprecedented duel with nature – could anyone dream of anything greater than that? But immediately after that I thought of the tremendous responsibility I bore: to be the first to do what generations of people had dreamed of; to be the first to pave the way into space for mankind. This responsibility is not toward one person, not toward a few dozen, not toward a group. It is a responsibility toward all mankind – toward its present and its future. Am I happy as I set off on this space flight? Of course I’m happy. After all, in all times and epochs the greatest happiness for man has been to take part in new discoveries. It is a matter of minutes now before the start. I say to you, ‘Until we meet again,’ dear friends, just as people say to each other when setting out on a long journey. I would like very much to embrace you all, people known and unknown to me, close friends and strangers alike. See you soon”