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.
“Alan the Brit (01:52:18) :
Patrick Davis:-)
No one disputes that many did not die, nor that only one region of the country was so severely affected, nor that the media love a good story & the camera always shows what the media want the public to see, (polar bears etc)in this case, the BBC actually did something rather wonderful to touch the hearts & souls of millions of better off people. They just forgot to tell the story, the whole story, & nothing but the whole story! We in the UK know the “donations” got through to those who needed it as we are regularly reminded by Comic Relief every couple of years or so. Personally, I never had the time to take out or finances to visit such places, something the youth of the last 20-25 years seems to have found in abundance, thanks to science, technology, free-enterprise, low-cost flights, & modern relaxed attitudes to life, & I would have probably been thrown into clink (or worse) the minute I opened my mouth to object to the way whatever “State” behaved towards its peoples!”
I was there with you in the UK too, seeing what you were seeing, the BBC actually did real work then, I don’t see that now. You should see the art from that era in Ethiopia, set along side *Lucy”, also, still the millions of bags/tins of rice, from where who knows, but they all arrived with “USA” printed on them, and many people still have them. Rice? What would Ethiopians do with rice? LOL Teff is the staple grain there…
Anyway, if you get a chance, go there, have some kitfo, doro wot and tej (A hony based wine).
Wish you well.
CodeTech (09:56:32) :
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.
Right Code Tech,
The current Gaia Green Movement promotes a type of human that is less ambitious, that is happy with the basic essentials of life and not to demanding.
They even have developed a universal religion that bridges the (at least that is the idea) the gap between the Christian and the Islamic World.
Our current Governments are pumping out rules that kill any private initiative.
It’s time for a reset and clean up.
Which sane individual or entrepreneur wants to be confronted with rules that dictate to growers how their cucumbers have to look like?
It’s all going to far and many of us have the feeling we can’t breathe any more.
Today, the USA is still the land of opportunity.
The wave of private initiative of kit plane building introduced by Bert Rutan brought us the Voyager flying non stop around the world, the Rocket Racers and now, with the help of “Big Money”, the first private Space Base in New Mexico offering Space Flights for “little money”.
The world today is confronted with institutionalized mega companies tightly cooperating with Government.
They watched how the Chinese system (still communists) became the world’s biggest factory in the shortest period.
They saw how the modern democratic societies today needed 20 years of legal procedures before they were aloud to construct 5 miles of rail track.
Today we are witnessing a “revolution” on an epic scale and this revolution will not serve the people.
It will serve an unprecedented growth in Governmental power and takes away all restrictions for big capital to do their business.
As a consequence, we will be reduced to assets, losing our freedom.
The new “World Order” will be “totalitarian” in concept.
In the past, the biggest conflicts in the world emerged because ideologies collided.
Some powerful entities (a.o, the UN) have decided that the winning ideology has become a threat for the future of the planet.
They believe that the planet does not have the resources to bring prosperity all corners of the world.
We all know that modern technology and the current climate conditions have served an increasing number of people.
To stop this process is wrong.
It is as wrong as the UN’s climate assessments and the doctrine of Climate Change and Global Warming.
If we love our freedom and trust, really trust our capability to overcome major set backs by our wit, skills, creativity and technology, we have to fight.
This will be the hardest and most difficult fight we have ever fought.
The reason for this is the fact that the “enemy” is not confined to a territory.
You can not recognize him by a uniform.
This enemy has infiltrated our societies and taken over all strategic positions.
Resisting this enemy is resisting Government and the law.
People are losing their jobs and have become subject to false intimidation.
If there ever has been a war that was defined by “right against wrong”,
Evil against the Good, Capitalism against Communism, the Allies against the NAZI’s,
this war will be it.
This war is about the truth and corruption.
The big, big mistake the initiators of the so called “World Revolution” have made
is that they started out on the wrong basis.
Corrupt as they are, they introduced the AGW doctrine based on falsified and manipulated science.
The corruption will be beaten by the truth, the law and the same spirit that brought a man on the moon.
The major battle field will be (already is) the internet and one of the most powerful weapons are the blogs.
We will regain the great spirit which marked the sixties. We will fight for our freedom and independence and we will liberate those who still live under communist or totalitarian rule.
The AGW Climate Change doctrine is cracking up and it will crash short term.
It will provide a major blow to the establishment.
A new front has been opened up carrying the tag “Major Corruption”.
The people pushing for Cap & Trade are behind this and we are finally arriving at the point where there is a chance they will brought to justice.
see http://www.seablogger.com/?p=15992
The next US election will provide new opportunities too, as long as people get informed about the real intentions of the politicians they trust their vote to.
A lot of effort has to be invested in “information and education”.
This blog does a hell of a job.
It promotes common sense, objectivity, honesty, free speech and good spirit.
@ur momisugly paullm (18:20:30) :
You wrote: “You can’t just claim that the military was stabbed in the back by weak-minded, craven reporters who didn’t understand we were close to victory.”
Try the facts:
1)after the press was given unprecedented access to the war effort the military was stabbed in the back by the press;
So, I claim you can’t prove something, and your proof is to asset the same thing over again and claim it as a fact.
As I have said, this sort of discourse is too typical of the entire discussion of AGW. Unfortunately, it is common even among scientists. As Freeman Dyson remarked on an exchange between Lindzen and Rahmstorf, they seem to speak past one another. (Although, Freeman seemed to favor Lindzen’s point of view!)
Here is the spirit, still alive!
http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/about-the-prize
Tom B (07:29:53) :
SteveSadlov (11:55:44) :
…. It’s intuitively obvious.
I don’t like the “intuitively obvious” argument. “Look at the receding glaciers, the climbing global temperatures, the increase in CO2. Man-kinds CO2 emissions are the cause of global warming. It’s intuitively obvious.” Sound familiar?
Tom B,
Glaciers are advancing (world wide observations) again. That is not intuitively obvious, it’s a fact.
evanmjones
Re: (21:02:09):
Nice.
That night the world held its collective breath and marvelled at the sheer accomplishment of it. “Going to the moon” used to be an expression of the most impossible thing one could imagine. With this achievement, mankind was forced to recalibrate its scale of what was possible.
I remain an optimist. I don’t see the decades-long stall in further space exploration as a loss of curiosity, will or fascination with the unknown. The technology that took us to the moon evolved from Nazi V-2 technology. Herculean efforts of countless engineers and scientists fashioned the most amazing, complex machine(s) ever made. But it was all done with the goal of simply “sending a man to the moon and returning him, safely, to the earth”. We called it “the space program”, but it was never that. The reason we got bored with going to the moon was because the whole trick was to do it once, and first. Once that was accomplished, there was really nothing left to see.
I think JFK wanted to show America, and humanity in a larger sense, that after WWII, there were great things to be done. Heck, we can go to the moon if we want to! As a boy watching it all happen, I recall the only real justification for a “space program” was to get us on our way to a new planetary home because we were killing our earth with pollution and overpopulation. Those reasons don’t ring true to me now. But JFK’s reasoning begins to make sense to me.
Curing disease and lifting populations out of poverty and providing clean water and medicine to everyone are huge challenges. But JFK showed us that the impossible was possible. It still is.
And as we praise Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, let us never forget the names of White, Chaffee and Grissom, who lost their lives in Apollo 1.
Ron de Haan (15:12:44) :
Sorry Ron. I think, perhaps, you’ve missed my point. I know that many glaciers are, in fact advancing. I know that global temperatures are decreasing as CO2 concentrations continue to increase. I know that Arctic ice is recovering. I know that Antarctic ice coverage is increasing. I know that the tropospheric “hot spot” all climate models predict has never been observed. I’m aware of these and many other facts. I, in fact, agree with SteveSadlov that industrial heat build up may be a major contributing factor to any observed global temperature rise. I also agree with Steve that this could well be considered “intuitively obvious”.
I’m just cautioning against using the “intuitively obvious” argument since this fallacious debating technique is so widely used by AGW proponents.
I want to extend my great thanks to Robert (00:41:10) : for that Orbiter link. That site contains a link to the JPL “Basics of Space Flight” tutorial. I’ve been plowing through that for the last few days as time permits. What a fantastic introduction to the staggering number of variables and disciplines astrogation requires. I’m also quite pleased by how much my life-long absorption of Sci-Fi means I already knew a surprising amount of it! My admiration for the people that plan and conduct deep space exploration knows no bounds. My heartfelt thanks to the folks at JPL for putting up that site.
A sobering excerpt on the future of space exploration from a former law professor of mine, Professor Joerg Knipprath:
“The [Chinese], especially, are working overtime to get a capacity to fly to the moon and beyond. As an aside, despite all the protestations, space will be militarized beyond being the home of satellites as soon as someone has the capacity to do that. The way the U.S. is going, it won’t be us.
Leaving aside the military angle, it is for science, technology, and, as John F. Kennedy (to whom our current President likes to compare himself) put it, the challenge of it that space exploration proceeds. It is the sign of a self-confident and risk-taking society to undertake such tasks. The moribund state of our space program is a symbol of our societal drift. We, of course, are more engaged in fits of millenialist paranoia such as global warming to take note of the future. We unilaterally want to hunker down, even de-develop as Obama’s “science czar” once recommended. We see progress (except “green” technology, real or fraudulent) as a curse. At least as reflected in our national administration, we look with suspicion on risk-takers, preferring instead the all-suffocating cradle-to-grave “government safety net” that sucks incentive and the inclination to meet challenges out of the body politic. “
Full article is at:
http://www.tokenconservative.com/if-anyone-boldly-goes-where-no-man-has-gone-before-it-probably-wont-be-an-american/
The people that think Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia was the first to transmit the Moon landing have it a bit wrong. It was Honeysuckle Creek, just outside where I live.
Unfortunately “The Dish” helps to perpetuate this myth.
I should mention that I recently went to a talk by one of the people that worked at Honeysuckle Creek ( part of the 40th celebrations) and he showed a video that compared the TV image from both Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek. The one from HS was *much* better. Apparently what happened was that the TV images showing Armstrong on the ladder were from Goldstone, but when NASA saw the image from HS they switched over and the historic moment was from HS. Parkes switched in after about 9 minutes and continued to show the rest.
The dish from Honeysuckle Creek was eventually moved to Tidbinbilla where it is still in use.
“Roger Sowell (19:31:14) :
A sobering excerpt on the future of space exploration from a former law professor of mine, Professor Joerg Knipprath:
“The [Chinese], especially, are working overtime to get a capacity to fly to the moon and beyond. As an aside, despite all the protestations, space will be militarized beyond being the home of satellites as soon as someone has the capacity to do that. The way the U.S. is going, it won’t be us.
Leaving aside the military angle, it is for science, technology, and, as John F. Kennedy (to whom our current President likes to compare himself) put it, the challenge of it that space exploration proceeds. It is the sign of a self-confident and risk-taking society to undertake such tasks. The moribund state of our space program is a symbol of our societal drift. We, of course, are more engaged in fits of millenialist paranoia such as global warming to take note of the future. We unilaterally want to hunker down, even de-develop as Obama’s “science czar” once recommended. We see progress (except “green” technology, real or fraudulent) as a curse. At least as reflected in our national administration, we look with suspicion on risk-takers, preferring instead the all-suffocating cradle-to-grave “government safety net” that sucks incentive and the inclination to meet challenges out of the body politic. “
Full article is at:
http://www.tokenconservative.com/if-anyone-boldly-goes-where-no-man-has-gone-before-it-probably-wont-be-an-american/”
And the Chinese will get there, with not only th emoney they get from trade, but money they will get from “emissions trading”. Game, set and match! Cha-ching (Cash register).