July 16, 1969 was the culmination of a decade of work that would result in America's finest hour four days later. The 1960's, and 1969, and Apollo was a time when petty people didn't cancel government programs because some other president started the process. Kennedy started the quest for the moon, Johnson continued it, and Nixon made sure NASA had the funds to carry the ball over the goal line.
It was a time when science mattered and was respected. When the laws of physics governed whether a rocket carrying Americans could get into space, leave earth orbit, transit space, enter lunar orbit, land on the moon, and then do it all in reverse and return safely. Prayer didn't get Aldrin and Armstrong to the Moon, science and hard work did, along with tens of thousands of government workers who did not have to fear being fired for doing their jobs.
The moon landing is the ultimate intersection of government support and capitalism. Only the United States of America had the entrepreneurial spirit to produce men and women who could design a plan to land two people on the moon and return them safely. Fifty-six years later, we are still the only nation on earth to do so. It was a time when competence, science, and intelligence mattered. How times have changed. Sadly.
But enjoy the liftoff. And you can best expect our nerdy 1202 Alarm post on July 20.
My iPhone has more power by several factors than all of their computers. They had no computer network to speak of. No wifi. No bluetooth. Most engineering problems were solved with math by pencil on paper and a slide rule. They built the most complex machine ever made with over a million moving parts. They made it to earth orbit. Then left and successfully travelled in space to enter lunar orbit precisely correct. You can’t just look at the moon and fly to it. You have to fly to a point in space where the moon will be when you get there. They had to design engines and valves that HAD to work. No repairs or replacements were possible. And they did it all. We did it. When we have leadership that celebrates Americans and doesn’t terrify them we can do amazing things. Someday we will have this spirit again. Hopefully soon before measles or another pandemic rips into us and when we go to have experts help we learn they were all fired or threatened so they retired and we gave pseudoscience practitioners telling us prayer and codfish oil will do the job.
ReplyDeleteWhat’s a slide ruler? Fake news. They had WiFi duh. How can you live without WiFi much less send some rocket thingy to mars or wherever ? Stop romanticizing the 60s boomer. It sucked. Very few Starbucks. IG had like a few users. It was dark times.
ReplyDeleteThe Trump administration deported five migrants from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam and Yemen to the tiny African nation of Eswatini on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced.
ReplyDeleteDamn. I’m going to Eswatini in two weeks. They have a great spa experience and a museum with four rocks and three pencils from the 1950s. Their downtown tour bus completes the loop in six minutes flat. Let’s see one of those buses in London do that. And there’s one restaurant with ac and I managed to score a table. The special is mashed potatoes. Yum.
ReplyDeleteBuzz Aldrin had a doctorate in Orbital Mechanics from MIT. Gee we had universities that had exceptional professors and programs that thrived with government grants to allow them to create new areas of study to promote growth and meet the new challenges of the time. What an unusual idea.
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