Neil Armstrong, 1930-2012

[bakubo]

A cool collection of photos. There is sort of a surprising one in there too, #36: "Neil Armstrong, an Eagle Scout himself, makes an appearance at a Boy Scout Jamboree in Japan, on July 5, 1974."

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012 ... 12/100359/

Last week Neil Armstrong died. Unlike Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith, et al I really care and am very sad about Neil Armstrong's death. Of course, the others get the non-stop breathless media coverage and he just gets a short mention, but he was one of my biggest heroes. He never used what he did to make a fortune, become a ubiquitous pundit, and become a celebrity always trying to be in the spotlight. He just did one of the most amazing things in world history and then lived a quiet life.

I was 12 years old and stayed up late to watch his first steps on the moon on TV. Earlier that evening with my 2 best buddies, Ricky and Randy, we were lying on the grass in the dark in front of Randy's house in South Austin looking up at the moon and quietly talking about and contemplating that at that very moment Armstrong and Aldrin were in the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) sitting on the moon! We were in such awe of this and glad to be alive at a time when this could happen.

[Dr. Harout]

That makes two of us.

[bfitzgerald]

I'd agree it's nice to see modesty rather than the usual scandal induced other celebs we hear about who passed away. I found the photos very interesting and liked them a lot. I admire Armstrong and yes he has a place in history no question.
Not to wander much but I have to raise one point (not to blame Armstrong) but whilst I don't question the technical achievement in landing on the moon, I do question if the money could have been better spent down here. That's my only point really..in the long run what does it mean landing on a dead moon with dust on it? For most people not very much.

[Birma]

Like the pictures Henry - thanks for posting. He was, and remains, an inspiration to us all.

[Dr. Harout]

I'd agree it's nice to see modesty rather than the usual scandal induced other celebs we hear about who passed away. I found the photos very interesting and liked them a lot. I admire Armstrong and yes he has a place in history no question.
Not to wander much but I have to raise one point (not to blame Armstrong) but whilst I don't question the technical achievement in landing on the moon, I do question if the money could have been better spent down here. That's my only point really..in the long run what does it mean landing on a dead moon with dust on it? For most people not very much.

Barry, are you sure it's only dust?
Landing on the moon means also (apart from the other thousands of meanings) accepting a theory/postulate that the possibility of alien visits is possible. Don't take this as a joke. Our planet is quite young compared to other planets in other solar systems. So just supposing that there might be an intelligent form of life in a similar planet far away, which being older than us, then their scientific and technical evolution should be quite ahead, so if we can travel from a planet to another, why can't they.
I know, this opens a door for a lot of debates.
However, think about domination too.

[Greg Beetham]

Yeah me too Henry, I do remember going outside and looking up at the moon at the time and wondering if the life support system aboard the LEM and command module were all working properly as they were a long way from home should something go wrong.
I watched it all happen (when I was a bit younger), man leaving the Earth and going out into space to another (smaller) world. It’s all very well going into orbit (orbit around the Earth involves moving sideways fast enough so that as you fall back you keep missing, basically you have too go sideways very fast) you are still bound too the Earth’s gravity and will at some point fall back to Earth (but not in the original condition you left with).
Leaving the Earth’s gravitational field and sailing off into space in the general direction of some other body is something else altogether and not for the faint hearted, there is no guarantee of being able to get back…ever, should the direction be slightly wrong, or the speed wrong, or the rocket engine not fire to slow them down for Moon orbital insertion, then it’s goodbye, the World would have had to watch helplessly as they drifted off into space eventually running out of oxygen and perishing, luckily that never happened but was a possibility with every mission just the same. People and systems aren’t infallible, I remember a much later robotic Mars mission which crashed and burnt, it was primarily caused by someone calculating in the wrong measurement system Km’s not Miles (or vice versa) so the entry profile was all wrong, a fatal error can be as simple as that.
I think its full marks to all of them that went on such a perilous mission exposed too micrometeorites, solar radiation, equipment failure with the vacuum of space waiting just outside to kill you in moments, and finally the hazardous return trip with its fiery re-entry through the atmosphere.
You could say that the money might be better spent briefly lifting the welfare level of the poor, or on research that might find a cure for cancer or a number of other worthwhile causes, famine relief or a slush fund for natural disaster aid etc. but the world could do all of those things at the same time if everyone stopped building and designing better ICBM’s, bombers, NUKES, Aircraft Carriers, Attack Submarines, Tanks, Artillery etc. But mankind has not shown any inclination to do that.
Greg

Ps It’s not as far fetched as anyone might think Doc take the synchrotonic beam from a quasar for example (some of which just happen to be aimed at Earth and thus discoverable) that has photons with energy in the order of 15TeV+ that come clear across the universe. The question is, how did they get here? Even if you allow 1 atom per cubic kilometre in space (space has a lot more than that), it’s an obstacle that adds up over a distance of billions of light years to an impenetrable wall for something carrying that amount of energy (trillions of electron volts), it means instant annihilation for any atom that such a photon collides with and no beam from a quasar would ever arrive. The only way that such energetic particles could get here from there is by taking a short cut, in effect the energy they began with was so great they formed their own black hole and disappeared from our universe, travelled for x amount of time loosing a little energy on the way and re-emerged not only some ‘where’ else (near us by accident), but also some ‘when’ else as well… I don’t know based on what I’ve read what other explanation one could offer, maybe it’s an unknown unknown, it might not even be a known unknown but whatever the case there are mysteries out there and there are probably mysteries that are still not even known about yet.
The problem for interstellar space travellers, those that have discovered some kind of hyper drive is that they are forever lost, they can never return to the place and time whence they came, unless they have also mastered time travel as well.
I have never seen a UFO myself; one that I could say without question ‘yup that was a UFO’ but I do know ‘something’ so far unexplained is going on. I know someone who I have known for many years ‘who doesn’t imagine things’ who did see one reasonably close one afternoon right here in Townsville, I could tell he was knocked off balance by the experience as he described it too me (most unlike him) and I have no doubt at all that he saw something far removed from anything possessed by we humans (he also drew me a rough diagram of the fast silent delta shaped object with lighted windows across the front), he was struggling too come to grips with the whole thing…and so was I. (I think he was hoping I knew how to explain what it might have been…and that was a negatory)