Dreams Of Chariots: 50 Years Ago Today, Apollo 11 Launched

[corbe]

Dreams Of Chariots: 50 Years Ago Today, Apollo 11 Launched
 
The fourth manned launch of the massive Saturn V rocket needed to bring a modular spacecraft to orbit and land on the moon demanded the culmination of many sundry technological achievements.

By G.W. Thielman   
July 16, 2019


 
Anyone who has read history intuitively realizes that humans can be (and have been) cruel and destructive. With great ingenuity, humans have also built monuments of grace and beauty, such as the Cheops pyramid at Giza (26th century BC), the Parthenon in Athens (fifth century BC), the Colosseum in Rome (first century), the Chartres cathedral (13th century), etc.

A touch of melancholy graces these achievements, for although not technical dead ends, these precursors didn’t usher in an ongoing legacy. Instead, they stand as mute testimony of our predecessors who possessed more apparent talent and devotion to build something magnificent than we can imagine ourselves doing today.

In the space arena, while Americans share the International Space Station in earth orbit with many other nations, we’ve been dependent on Russian spacecraft to ferry us there since the end of Space Shuttle operations nine years prior. Not so long ago, we seemed to be masters of our fate, conquering the cosmos with slide-rules and bent sheet metal, and now we gripe about those whose cast down eyes bore into cell-phones while ignoring friends and neighbors.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch. The fourth manned launch of the massive Saturn V rocket needed to bring a modular spacecraft to orbit and land on the moon demanded the culmination of many sundry technological achievements. That story could and has filled many volumes. This is a thumbnail sketch of those developments and the impetus that drove them.

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https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/16/dreams-chariots-50-years-ago-today-apollo-11-launched/

[dfwgator]

CBS Live Stream


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[Applewood]

I still have a local newspaper from the date of the moon landing on July 20, 1969.  It was an awesome time.

My maternal grandmother was living with us.  She was dying from cancer and in great pain.  Grandma had pain medication that made her sleep.  That night Grandma refused her pain meds so she could stay awake to watch the moon landing.  Though racked with pain Grandma saw man land on the moon.  It was enjoyable seeing this peasant from a small village in Italy marvel at this momentous occasion.  I still get teary eyed remembering Grandma's reactions to every moment.  Just beautiful. 

Grandma passed a few months later. 

[truth_seeker]

I can picture Pres. Trump starting up the dorment space program, to the opposition of

the "squad," who claim there are other nations' babies in cages, and drug addicts in the streets,  to care for before we go off to other worlds.

[Applewood]

@truth_seeker

I doubt Trump has any interest in restarting the space program anyway.  Obama killed it but the space program was dying for lack of interest even before he came along.  Politicians would rather spend the money on gimmedats  to buy votes.  Then the commie media lost interest in space.  And commie schools stopped teaching it. 

I can remember when the launches and splashdowns were televised and we schoolkids were herded into assembly to watch on tv.  After the first moon landing,  the schools and the media lost interest, except during disasters such as Apollo 13 or the space shuttle tragedies. Unless kids are in STEM schools, I doubt too many of them now even know we did land on the moon.  And they really don't care. 

Certainly, no politician will be interested in restoring NASA if people would rather have their free stuff instead of space exploration.

[thackney]

A real-time journey through the first landing on the Moon
This website consists entirely of original historical mission material
https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/

T-MINUS 1M
Join at 1 minute to launch

NOW
Join in-progress
Thu Jul 17 1969
Exactly 50 years ago

[Applewood]

Thanks @thackney

[kidd]

50 years later and still mankind's greatest achievement

[Bill Cipher]

50 years later and still mankind's greatest achievement

I understand the sentiment, but I beg to differ.  IMHO, mankind’s greatest achievement was developing representative democracy, free market capitalism, and rule of law (as opposed to rule by personality).  Those three little developments are directly responsible, IMHO, for lifting most of humanity out of grinding, bone-breaking, soul-squashing poverty and subsistence living. 

But the Moon landing was definitely mankind’s greatest technological achievement.

[Ghost Bear]

In the 50 years leading up to 1969 we went from plywood-and-cloth biplanes to landing on the Moon.

In the 50 years since 1969, we've gone... nowhere.

[Bill Cipher]

In the 50 years leading up to 1969 we went from plywood-and-cloth biplanes to landing on the Moon.

In the 50 years since 1969, we've gone... nowhere.

Maybe not bodily, but our craft have now reached interstellar space. 

[Ghost Bear]

Maybe not bodily, but our craft have now reached interstellar space.

Whoop-de-doo.

We should have had a permanently manned base on the Moon, successfully landed men on Mars, and sent human prospectors to the asteroid belt by now.

[Bill Cipher]

Whoop-de-doo.

We should have had a permanently manned base on the Moon, successfully landed men on Mars, and sent human prospectors to the asteroid belt by now.

Why?  If it’s not cost-effective, it shouldn’t be done.

[Ghost Bear]

Why?  If it’s not cost-effective, it shouldn’t be done.

Here's two reasons for you:

1. Man is not free, if he has nowhere to go.

2. One day, Earth will be uninhabitable. Humans should be able to go elsewhere before that happens.

[Bill Cipher]

Here's two reasons for you:

1. Man is not free, if he has nowhere to go.

2. One day, Earth will be uninhabitable. Humans should be able to go elsewhere before that happens.

And that all should have been done in the span of 50 years?  Really?  I don’t think so. 

[Ghost Bear]

And that all should have been done in the span of 50 years?  Really?  I don’t think so.

You and people like you are the reason we haven't.

[Bill Cipher]

You and people like you are the reason we haven't.

Uh, no. 

[mountaineer]

Moon landing: Buzz Aldrin took Holy Communion, read this Bible verse on lunar surface
Caleb Parke
By Caleb Parke | Fox News

Fifty years ago, when American astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, a devout Christian, made history landing on the moon, the first thing he did was give thanks to God.

Aldrin, seated next to Neil Armstrong, became the first person to celebrate a religious sacrament on a heavenly body outside Earth. The ordained Presbyterian elder wrote in a piece for Guideposts in 1970 he chose Holy Communion because his pastor at Webster Presbyterian, Dean Woodruff, often spoke about how God reveals Himself through the everyday elements.

"I wondered if it might be possible to take communion on the moon," Aldrin recalled a year after the mission, "symbolizing the thought that God was revealing Himself there, too, as man reached out into the universe. For there are many of us in the NASA program who do trust that what we are doing is part of God’s eternal plan for man."  ...

Full story at FOX News

[Applewood]

@mountaineer

Just wow!  Thanks.