Happy Fourth

byCameron816

91 followers

5 years ago

Well, I know this is going to be off topic, however, I would like to remind everyone that this month is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. For those of you who can remember (albeit vaguely) the excitement of the words, "Tranquility base, the Eagle has landed". It was a milestone, and without those astronauts risking it all, and some didn't make it, to go and do what was widely believed at the time to be impossible. If we had never had a president, that dared us to send a man to the moon, and return him safely to earth, "We do these things and more, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"

Imagine if we had followed the leadership of the republican party of the day, that believed that going to the moon in a decade, was not only impossible, but too costly. The US would have never been a leader in space travel, this country developed from scratch every process used to fly Apollo missions, and return to earth. It was a technological marvel, and as a very young boy, watching that Apollo rocket take off, (my parents were buying furniture at the time, T.V.s of the day were made like a piece of furniture) so the furniture stores, sold T.V.s, so there were what looked like hundreds of people in the store, gathered around a black and white 25 inch T.V., but as a young boy, I was mesmerized, even though the historical significance was lost on me because of my youth. The store had put three T.V.s in their windows as did many other stores.

That said, NASA, refurbished that control room, for those that have never been to tour the facility, you should it's pretty amazing when you think of all the engineering that went into building something for an environment that they had never been too, in fact NASA and the Doctors at NASA thought that the heart would be able to pump blood in zero gravity, using the "vomit comet" which is a commercial jet that they fly like they were going up and down hills in the sky, you hit negative Gs at the top of the hill, people and things float in the aircraft, for a whopping 30 seconds or so. NASA, had no idea what would happen when an astronaut left the capsule.

And for those conspiracy theorists that think that the moon landing was faked, because you can't see the flag, or you can't see stars behind the astronaught that was planted or, the part of the L.E. M that was left behind. Since those artifacts would be less than the size of a pixel, you would need huge optics to be able to zoom into something that is 240,000 miles away for one, and two it would take less than a pixel. Well, NASA decided to turn a satellite that is used for spying, and they turned it to the moon, punched in the coordinates and viola, you can see the L.E. M, and the flag.....

Anyway, I just wanted to point out what this country can do when we work towards a common goal, that benefits mankind, and for me, every dime we spend on NASA and space travel, is money well spent.... I hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th of July. Wouldn't it be nice to hear, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" again.