How twisted is it that John F. Kennedy Sr. said we would be on the moon by the end of the decade and John F. Kennedy Jr. died 30 years TO THE DAY of when the first Apollo mission took off? There is a picture of John around 1972 playing with toy rockets and saying he had "my own little Cape Kennedy." John also died two days before the anniversary of his uncle Teddy's car accident, which occurred two days after the moon launch and two days before the first moon landing. Way cosmic!

Also that happened to be the day we moved so I have lots of memories of the moon landing buildup and other memories of the day and none of actually watching the first moon landing.

I was fifteen at the time, too young to drive. My parents drove a buddy and me to Zuma beach for the day, they were supposed to pick us up around 5:00 p.m. Now this was before cell phones/pagers etc. They were so glued to the TV that the forgot about us. We sat on the beach with a group of people and watched the landing on a 9" TV. Just before the one-giant-step the batteries went dead on the TV. I took the initiative to break into a lifeguard tower so we could plug in the TV and finish watching this historic event.

See, now THAT is worth remembering. We can't even be sure of dates. My dad always said we moved July 4, but he also always said we moved the day of the moon landing, which was of course July 20. My sisters and I remember seeing fireworks the evening of the day we moved, so are not sure whether it was July 4, or someone saved fireworks from then for the moon landing. The second moon landing, I DEFINITELY remember!

I was the same age as jkt (and, by a truly mind-blowing coincidence, I'm still the same age as he), and I listened to the whole thing on the radio.

It must seem unimaginable to the rest of you, but there WAS no TV service in my country until 1975. Not because we were too technologically backward, but because significant people in power were so politically backward that they saw TV as an evil, to be obstructed and delayed as long as possible.

However, I was a keen follower of Project Apollo all the same. I had at least two plastic models of the spacecraft, I kept scrapbooks, and I still have a sticker album with those cool mission patches. I can recite about half the crews by rote. Used to know 'em all, but time marches on ...

One of these days I'm going to have to post the video clip of Ray "driving" a Mars' rover remotely at JPL earlier this year. The man has never driven a car but has an official Mars' drivers license.

quote:

Originally posted by jkt:
The man has never driven a car but has an official Mars' drivers license.

I guess the DMV standards are lower on Mars.

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:

quote:

Originally posted by jkt:
The man has never driven a car but has an official Mars' drivers license.

I guess the DMV standards are lower on Mars.

Can you be a back-seat driver when there are 400 million KM between the steerng wheel and the vehicles wheels?

http://www.venturacountystar.c...0-years-later-where/

And

http://www.portaltotheuniverse...asts/eps/view/18969/

And while I'm at it:

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/07/

This message has been edited. Last edited by: philnic,

Phil: Mr. B sounds great (your above audio clip) and still firing on all cylinders of his magnificent imagination!

the moon race was an excellent and poignant example of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. i have sensed a mourning attitude in mr. bradbury's writings ever since the manned space program began to peter out in the early 80's.(no one in their right mind can say the sts program, designed as it was to be a technological cul-de-sac centering on the iss in non-perpetual low earth orbit, was intended as the next step in getting off this planet).

and do you want to depend on the likes of obama and pelosi to get us back to the moon?

mr. bradbury's sadness is evident in much of his poetry which, by and large, has been written since the bloom fell from the great saturn rockets.

at christmas time i make a habit of reading two pieces of mr. bradbury's work aloud to whomever will listen: "the gift" and "christus apollo" youngsters will tell me they are sad, but they dont know why...

I think you are absolutely right, aprwitch. Whatever the motives for the Apollo programme, it fulfilled the poetic ambitions of genre science fiction, and with enormous grace. Whoever it was in NASA who decided to take so many cameras to document the moon missions deserves a huge amount of credit.

There's an editorial in a recent issue of New Scientist magazine which says something to the effect that in the 60s the magazine was caught up in the "we can do anything" hype of the time, and was somewhat dismissive of Apollo. But now, with 40 years' hindsight, and no sign of a single technological achievement of the scale or beauty of Apollo, they can see what an amazing achievement it must have been for the time.

Bradbury also wrote at least one essay about visiting the Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida (where the Saturn V was put together). Like many who were privileged to enter the place, he was in awe of it.

Some interesting reflections on space, lots of Bradbury mentions:

http://www.thesmartset.com/art...article08180901.aspx

Time to bump all the anniversary threads!

It's that time again--47th anniversary.