America, and the world, is in your eternal debt.
My fond memories from this time would not be complete without the mention of another person.
Thanks Walter, to you too, wherever you are.
America, and the world, is in your eternal debt.
My fond memories from this time would not be complete without the mention of another person.
Thanks Walter, to you too, wherever you are.
AEGeneral — you are confused by the fact that there are two sorts of accountants.
The first sort is an enabler. No enterprise can succeed without knowing its inputs and outputs, any more than a car trip (or a space voyage) can succeed without fuel management. An accountant who is an enabler keeps track of the inputs and outputs, and finds ways to help the directors of the enterprise do what needs to be done given the current state of I/O. You would appear to at least consider yourself that sort.
The second sort of accountant is more properly termed “bean counter”. Such a one knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing, and leverages his (or her) position to force everyone to comply with routines and procedures and form-filling that have nothing to do with the goal of the enterprise. Given free rein, a bean counter can kill an enterprise as thoroughly as an Ebola epidemic among the participants — but can always blame somebody else for not keeping proper accounts.
When people rail against accountants, it is complaints about the second sort. For many, keeping the books is a tedious and odious task, but it has to be done for the enterprise to succeed, and we are fortunate that there are people who find it bearable or even interesting. It’s just that there are ‘way too many people who have been stifled by bean-counters for you to get the credit you deserve.
Regards,
Ric
RE: ralph ellis (07:15:17) :
The Medieval Era was a golden age.
===================================
Actually it was a golden age … compared with what we are now heading into, namely, The Second Age of Migrations, AKA Dark Age 2.0. (To be technically correct, it was even a golden age compared with Dark Age 1.0 … but that is a discussion for another day …).
I too have incredibly fond memories of the event. I watched it in COLOR on a Quasar TV. Bought with the LIMITED funds my Father (a janitor at a bank) and my Mother (a secretary) could afford. I’m stunned to read all the BRITS who only had B&W TV, but then the Brits tend to be socially and economically about 20 years behind the USA all the time. (SAD, It has to do with their approach to economics, enough said..)
I was 16 years old. That summer I soloed an aircraft, went to Sweden on an international air Cadet program, and came back determined to become – – –
an ENGINEER (not an astronaught, misspelling intentional..because of vision problems my chance would be NAUGHT!).
That I did become.
Haven’t worked for NASA, but have provided the electric power that runs their operations. It’s a TEAM effort man, whether one wants to admit it or not.) But on that line, just like the comment on Walter and TET, I still wonder WHY W.C. took such GLEE in “fearmongering” about Three Mile Island. I can only attribute a STRONG ANTI CORPORATE attitude (and thinking that power companies, although fundementally “Government regulated”, were private companies and therefore AUTOMATICALLY BAD..and some deep seated adversion to “things we don’t understand”, which made Walter such a KOOK on nuclear power!
Sad.
Right on one thing, DEAD wrong on many other things.
My vote: Don’t make Walter a HERO. Make the “Three” the Heros they are!
Mark H.
At the time they were calling this the television event of the century. But this was really the pinnacle of human achievement so far, putting humans on another world, and doing it repeatedly. Everything else really pales in comparison when you look at what was required to get it done.
I really feel fortunate, in that I was a thirty-something year old project engineer, working for a NASA contractor in Houston, involved in planning the Gemini and Apollo missions. Neil Armstrong lived a half block away. I remember Buz Aldrin from Gemini planning meetings, where I remember him being a specialist in orbital rendezvous, and a pipe smoker, a habit which I still have, but which he has probably given up. Funny, I can’t remember exactly where I watched the moon landing, but probably in my home. I know I wasn’t in Mission Control.
I also remember the fantastic splashdown parties that followed each successful mission, and they were all successful, even (and perhaps, especially) Apollo 13, where a fantastic team effort averted what could have been a disaster.
In the early sixties, I took part in NASA funded studies of prospective manned Mars missions, at the time optimistically projected to occur sometime in the 1980’s.
I experienced the gradual decline of interest in the space program after Apollo, and made a career shift into engineering/construction for the petro-chemical industry in 1974. I treasure my participation in the space program, but don’t regret the career shift, since I was able to gain a larger degree of personal responsibility and sense of accomplishment in a less beaurocratic environment.
It’s sad how NASA’s mission has evolved.
I was unfortunately about 8 months from being born at the time of the landing, but I look back at my father’s role in charge of training the astronauts in geology and am very proud of the contribution he made to the moment. The time and effort he and the others put into making the astronauts into good field geologists showed when one of Armstrong’s first actions after the “one small step” statement was to begin describing the properties of the dust he had stepped off into.
The NASA of the past no longer exists today. I was watching a program about all the mishaps which occurred during the flight to the moon. NASA had to improvise and take risks which would never happen today thanks to the precautionary principle.
OT:
Some scientists say human-caused heat, not carbon dioxide, main global warming problem
http://www.epmag.com/WebOnly2009/item42502.php
@ur momisugly Smokey (07:37:48) :
Gotta LOVE this stuff:
But many years later I read a quote by the NVA’s top general and strategist, General Vo Nguyen Giap:
”What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi.
Come on. Why don’t you read some history instead of just listening to conspiracy theories on the radio. This quote, if it is not completely fabricated, is certainly not a representation of Giap’s views. See:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_general_giap.htm
The moonshot, glorious adventure and technological achievement that it was, was done for ONE reason – To Beat the Russians! Okay, sports are fun and exciting, and we learned some stuff, but is that any way to run a country? If it’s science we’re interested in, and presumably,people who read this blog are, then a lot of robot probes would teach us much more.
Decadence of our culture indeed! What a lot of claptrap. As a left-liberal total sceptic on AGW, people like the commenters here leave me with a lot of explaining to do , as Ricky Ricard and a Senator Sessions would say.
When I was young I used to lie out on the grass, looking at the night stars, and wondering about going there. Daytimes I read Heinlein and Asimov and a host of other far-sighted authors, and I expected one day I’d be on a ship to Alpha Centauri.
In 1969 I listened to the Moon landing on a battery-powered short-wave radio in the hills of Nepal. The villagers could not understand the elation I felt.
I don’t think developing the capacity to live and work in low-Earth orbit is wasted effort, but we have to keep building on it. We have to go back to the Moon, and then to Mars and the Asteroid belt, and to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn—and to the stars as well!
As Robert Zubrin has written, the free American spirit depends on having a frontier, and the frontier is now in space. He recalls the 14th-century Ming emperor who sent a large fleet across the Indian Ocean, to Africa, only to have the fleet return and find China turning inward, leaving the Age of Exploration to the Europeans. It will be ironic indeed if the United States fails to return to deep space, and instead the Chinese explore the Solar System and beyond.
Even back in the heyday of the Apollo Program, there were the naysayers who wanted us to “Use the money here at home.” They do not understand the call of the frontier, and the need—and the benefits—of pushing past our boundaries and limitations. The frontier is the direction of progress, and progress benefits all humanity in ways we cannot yet imagine.
/Mr Lynn
Too bad the little short movie didn’t all come from the live CBS newscast; Armstrong’s one small step speech must have been lifted from the NASA source or somewhere else, because if you were watching that live on CBS, as I was, then Walter Cronkite was yakking about nothing much over the top of Armstron, so you missed what he said.
You can find the original CBS version in the Apollo 13 movie also.
Still a great event that most of the public still don’t comprehend.
Clarke, Heinlein, Asimov, van Vogt, Boucher, Del Rey, Wyndham, Bonestell, Sturgeon, Kuttner, Bradbury, Campbell, and others–those who gave me joy when I was young. The payoff seems microscopic: my tiny efforts on the S-IVB when I worked at Douglas Aircraft.
The books I loved are all gone, now, sold, given away, or turned to brittle, brown flakes with time. Asimov and the others have mostly passed away, but I was there! I was a part of their dream! Thank you, Richard, thank you, Arthur, thank you, Isaac… Thank you all.
Anytime we send mankind into space, it’s an act of bravery, no doubt. I was a young kid watching Walter Cronkite on our TV when Neil stepped on the moon, and I was just a few years older when Walter Cronkite announced NASA canceled the remaining Apollo missions.
I think that disappointment of the cancellation of the remaining three Apollo missions really changed my outlook on science. I later learned that _putting_ man in space and _getting_ him to the moon was the important part. Doing the actual on-the-ground science was the stuff that very few engineers wanted to continue doing.
One would think that the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, though flawed, were worth duplicating and tossing a few more of them in the direction of Mars. But the creation of the new rovers, however “shiny” and improved, has cost more than it should and most likely delayed the launch. Tell me, if we had ten more robots exactly like Spirit and Opportunity launched two years after the first two, would we be getting so much science back, the only reason to send mankind to Mars would be like the original Moon mission — a finish line, but not a destination.
I don’t want men and women to risk their lives for science that can be otherwise be acquired remotely.
Well Sandy, I certainly do see the flawed logic. The same arguments were made, successfully, against the Apollo program and subsequent manned deep space exploration. The technology and techniques to “cure malaria” and to “make sure every child on the planet has clean drinking water” already exists. Heck, the funding to do it already exists. What does not exist is the conditions to allow it to happen. The technology necessary to colonize Mars does not yet exist. But the developments (and political cooperation) necessary to put a permanent human presence on another planet would do much toward achieving those laudable goals, as well as many others. This is something the space program has proven. This spin-off technologies are too numerous to catalog.
Agreed Squidly. To paraphrase David Weber, the human being is by far the most capable self-programming remote.
” Steven Kopits (08:56:13) :
OT:
Some scientists say human-caused heat, not carbon dioxide, main global warming problem
http://www.epmag.com/WebOnly2009/item42502.php”
Details about this publication can be found on
http://www.ltu.se/forskning/1.16009?l=en&pureId=2090518&pureFamily=dk.atira.pure.families.publication.shared.model.Publication
and the actual peer reviewed document on
http://pure.ltu.se/ws/fbspretrieve/2090521
Maybe this article should be featured in one way or the other on WUWT for discussion and review. This is actually quite an interesting view to take and would in some way fit in with Dr Spencer’s view that around 20% of warming could be attributed to AGW CO2 emissions.
“”” Ron de Haan (06:26:35) :
The biggest and most remarkable and impressing event of the past century. “””
Well there was that little dust up called WW-II that I believe would upstage the moon landing.
That’s the problem; today we have the whole world being run by nonentities like Saul Alinski radical Obama; who have not a clue about what happened on this planet from 1939 to 1945.
Those people were the greatest generation; not the hippies of the 60s who ushered in the space age, and now propagandize the nation’s children.
I will say one thing for the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo program; it did give us an amazing array of technologies that we normally only develop in wars; and, it didn’t cost us a dime.
Armstrong beat Kennedy’s timetable to the moon by nearly two years, and the program came in under budget. In the following eight years after Apollo, the US economy saved more than the $38B that the program cost, just in reduced crop losses, in the South Eastern United States; that resulted from improved weather forecasting . That improvement of course was a result of the global weather and communication satellite network that was put up ONLY because we had a MANNED space rogram, and NASA wanted complete and continuous round the world weather and communication coverage.
With an unmanned robot program, which the “space” scientists wanted; there was no need for either the weather or communications satellites. The development of all of that technology ended up being a total freebie.
So just how much reward, are we going to reap from the machinations of today’s science and engineering community; my bet is it won’t hold a candle to Mercury/Gemini/Apollo.
George
Mark Hugoson;-)
I say steady on, colour tv’s were jolly expensive in those days & we only had one channel in colour, BBC2! Although I point out that it became one of the best colour systems in the world I believe better than NTSC at the time, which was nicknamed by technos over here as “Never Twice the Same Colour”! UK colour tv useage expanded through the early 70’s.
Yes indeed the Medeival Era was golden, especially in Europe, they had a lot of things back then that we don’t have today in the developed world, like rickets, cholera, malaria, plague, rampant infections & disease, a plethora of poxes of varying unpleasantness, almost continuous wars, brutal oppression, poor nutrition, bad teeth, bad breath, revolting sanitation & hygene, brutal healthcare, no safe transportation without some guy in green tights wanting to charge a Green tax on your dosh, & give it to the poor (allegedly), witchcraft, witch hunting (rugby & cricket handn’t been invented then), limited law & order, brutal legal systems with some interesting forms of punishments, bondage & serfdom, slavery, a flat Earth, & the Sun, stars & planets revolving around it, yes yes things were much better back..
AND if it wasn’t for the likes of real heros who gazed out of their caves into the distance & dreamed of what could be, we’d still be living in them, hell we’d not even have got down from the trees if Big Al was in charge. After all he & his ilk like to control people don’t they just so that he & they benefit from the suffering (taxing) of others? As I mentioned above, I would like to see that list of inventions that came about because of needs must in the Space Race, e.g. Papermate’s pumping ink pen? I bet I would find a fair few things that have enabled man to reach the depths of the oceans which otherwise may not ever have been possible. Most good or great inventions came about not because of a specific purpose, but as a by-product of other research & design! You’re at A & want to get to Z, you invent B to Y inclusive in the process. Safe clean drinking water for every child is certainly possible, & it is only political will power that prevents this happening – unfortunately until the world replaces some of the more objectionable criminal & brutally oppressive regimes, pocketting trillions in aid, around the world & replace them with open democratic government, to govern some of the countries/regions so afflicted, then this would have occurred yonks ago! This the UN seems rather less keen on achieving & I cannot think why! It rather reminds me of Band Aid in 1985. The rest of the world was angry & upset at this Biblical tragedy in Ethiopia, yet its marxist socialist regime was ordering lots of expensive goodies (including loads of pricey single malt whisky) in readiness to celebrate the governments anniversary! It cared not one jot for its people. 30 years on & nothing has changed except the Sudan has taken Ethiopia’s place, at least for the time being, & the UN did very little.
What came out of the 60s? How much of our current technology came from the 60s? (Aside, of course, from ME, created in the 60s)
Commercial airliners: 747, 737, 727, L1011, Concorde… Virtually ALL airframe and overall design for modern airliners was done in the late 50s and 60s. New planes are mostly just variations or refinements on the 60s designs.
Military aircraft: F14, F15, Harrier, (F16, F18 were 70s), C5A Galaxy, C141 Starlifter (B52 first flight was 1959… 50 years ago!!!! and they are still in use). The sum total of military jet design since the 60s has been evolutionary. Stealth technology? Still just tweakage of 50s and 60s designs (although, according to a show I just watched, the Nazis had a very stealthy flying wing in 1945).
Rocketry: we’re still using ICBMs as launch platforms for satellites, and the vast majority of engineering work was done in the mad rush to the Moon. Show me something new, I’ll be surprised, other than the obvious control electronics (ie. computers). Of course, most people here will be aware that computers were first actually USEFUL in calculating ballistics.
It is true: humanity has lost its spirit of adventure. Instead of people strapping themselves to giant bombs and riding them up to another sphere, we get excited when the 80th Shuttle flight elevators up to a couple of strapped together cans.
Robot exploration vs. human exploration is a passionate argument. We need both. For mundane cataloging of the local planets and satellites, sure, send a robot. But to explore, to actually understand and react to what is around, we need people… we need boots on the ground. We need to go to Mars, not just because a person can gather more data, but to spur the development of the technology and spirit required to get there.
It was a relief that the turbulent 1960s came to a close with something as inspiring and wonderful as the moon landing. A divided world was able to hold its collective breath in anxious anticipation for one brief moment.
The NASA of those days, I am sure, would have not dared to say that the sun does not heat the earth but instead you and me when exhaling or driving our cars!….what a peculiar generation we have in these “interesting times”…
I’ve recently been in email contact with Mark Albright of Washington University regarding a kerfuffle on snow pack.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/snowmen/
It’s a big enough issue that two state climatologists ended up loosing their jobs and Dr. Steig wrote an RC post on it. Now Mark Albright has submitted a paper for publication which shows that snow pack has actually grown in contradiction to the new state climatologists and the governor’s recent letter to washington in support of cap and trade. The paper is receiving some resistance from the reviewers in the Journal of Climatology.
It might be worth a WUWT repost.
I forgot to add that Walter Cronkite was a believer in global warming.
http://www.webcastr.com/videos/news/cronkite-chronicles-global-warming-webcastr.html
I remember being at the Newport Folk Festival, with the full moon shining large above the stage on a clear night, listening to Joni Mitchell, Arlo Guthrie, James Taylor and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
We hitch-hiked back to Boston and got a lift with a hippy who invited us into his pad to watch the landing. Those who saw the broadcast will remember the president being patched in to talk to America’s three heroes, and our new friend (who had by now consumed enough pot to be somewhat higher than the astronauts) decided to do likewise and spent the next half an hour trying to persuade the operator in Houston to allow him to talk to them too.
Unforgettable.