RIP Neil Armstrong

The space race was a big enough endeavor for different groups of people to exploit it different ways, but the engineers and scientists and rocket builders and astronauts and flight crews and cafeteria workers and janitors and gift shop employees and everyone who wasn't an elected official or a conspiratorial douchehammer realized that the purest purpose of reaching another heavenly object, one that no human in the history of history had ever stepped foot on before, was the most amazing thing that had and likely will ever happen (until we find another form of life).

ffs, going to the moon isn't just like driving to a fucking rollercoaster park 300 miles away.

what was cankles banned for?

he made an offhand joke on the alex chilton rip thread. tbf chilton did make power pop.

Something hilariously surreal about this whole thing: Pres Nixon addresses the quarantined Apollo 11 astronauts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU0B-loHHTM&t=4m24s

That line where he tells them that he made a date with their wives; nice awkward moment there, Tricky

it's amazing that the man's natural modesty and understatement (his contention that going to the moon was just his job) is being used against him (that he was merely a "bureaucrat").

boy, america has changed a lot between 1969 and now.

Hmm that doesn't seem to want to play

Try again. Start it at around 5 min for the arrival of Nixon etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU0B-loHHTM

I've tried to convey to my students how much we were in awe of the space program when I was in grade school in the late '60s--how they were certified celebrities on the order of athletes or pop stars today. I was even in awe of three kids in my grade 4 class--Norm Allen, Bobby Selmar, and Rich Szczepaniak--who built a really large model of Apollo 11 and brought it into school one day.

i kinda just want to look at space tonight but its cloudy

ffs, going to the moon isn't just like driving to a fucking rollercoaster park 300 miles away.

― Johnny Fever, Saturday, 25 August 2012 23:56 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

c'mon man it's just going somewhere and coming back, like if you ran to the grand canyon & jumped over it & then back again, nbd

gbx otm itt

http://s12.postimage.org/op17yqhwt/neil_armstrong.jpg

i lol'd

as i said on the RIP thread, i've just finished reading moonshot, a fairly in-depth and moment-by-moment telling of the Apollo 11 mission. what armstrong achieved - along with his fellow astronauts, and the many hundreds of NASA scientists, technicians, test pilots and so on - was so very dangerous, so very difficult, can't help but inspire me. thinking about the risks involved, the incredibly high level of concentration and discipline the mission required, the almighty step into the dark unknown... i find it both really inspiring, and really humbling. it really is a massive achievement, and its no act of hagiography to respect that, to understand armstrong was just an ordinary man, but that the course of his life and the results of his actions and his efforts were entirely extraordinary.

like i say, i look at it all and i'm humbled, as i guess many are. maybe your reaction is to feel so belittled by comparison that you have to shit all over it and make some dumb joke about it, and that's fine. i don't guess it makes you feel any less pathetic, though.

and going by what you've posted in this thread, matt p, i'm guessing you're mostly ignorant of the mission, the circumstances, the results and the humans who were involved in making that all happen. it really is a story worth investigating.

I have been meaning to check out Moonshot, stevie, thanks for the reminder

and otfm to all that you said.

I was a youngster.

Post-Apollo NASA def a big letdown.

i spent much of my childhood wanting to be an astronaut. as an adult, i just think, oh my god, they all had/have balls of steel. i could never do anything like that.

Looks like there are two books called Moonshot, which one are you recommending, the one by Dan Perry?

the one that's not a history of anal porn

http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/294648_10151123689744481_442079392_n.jpg

First man on the moon.
Homemade pizza chef.

I would eat all these moonman pizzas.

66.6

Well, I see somebody just *had* to be the Momus of this thread.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/ap11-neilukulele-2.jpg

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/tt203/pplains/ripneil.jpg

whut

"Like emily said, damn right he deserves his own thread."

was ned actually saluting when he started this thread and wearing his old cub scout uniform? plus, i'm hearing charlton heston saying this.

oh but anyway i get scared when i think of people on the moon! i get vertigo thinking about it. i'm afraid they are going to fall off...many years ago. i like the earth pictures a lot. i understand the conspiracy people because its so beyond what anyone had ever done. this is true of the 9/11 people too probably. i ended up watching moon footage AND 9/11 footage on youtube tonight. because one leads you to the other on youtube. in case you didn't know that.

Landing on the moon is heroic, but flying the X-15 took a lot of straight-up guts: http://blogs.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/2009/05/neil-armstrongs-x-15-flight-over-pasadena/

was ned actually saluting when he started this thread and wearing his old cub scout uniform?

A vision but no.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnZakGY3RgQ

http://lazenby.tumblr.com/post/30206152130/well-right-naturally-you-should-hate

The astronaut quoted in that blog is about 50 times more eloquent than the blogger is.

I went to the junior-high version of Space Camp, called Space Academy, when I was 13. That year I attended 8th grade at Armstrong Middle School.

It was built in 71-72.

Guess whom it was named after.

It had conversation pits and "clusters" instead of classrooms because progressive education trends in the early 70s were fucking weird.

I later went on to get an Aerospace Engineering degree in Ann Arbor, soon realizing that everywhere that was doing manned American space flight was no where I would ever possibly want to live.

Also, I built this set in his honor:

http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/images/0928-1.jpg

which played a part in the whole "go to university to get an aero degree" thing

and I still want this tshirt:

http://image.spreadshirt.com/image-server/v1/products/19167921/views/1,width%3D378,height%3D378,appearanceId%3D17/LEGO-Space.png

That year I attended 8th grade at Armstrong Middle School... Guess whom it was named after.

Still kinda weird that the largest U.S. airport named after an Armstong is the one named for a jazz musician.

I haven't read any of the obits, but I remember he was from Wapakoneta OH

That Lego space shirt is one example of childhood nerdstalgia that I would actually wear.

RIP Mr. Armstrong and Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky!

like if we are the society of the spectacle, at least give 'em better stuff than IEDs and crowd shootings

― catbus otm (gbx), Saturday, August 25, 2012 10:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. How much better the world would be if ideological competition between nations was fought solely through space races and not wars.

and giant robot fights and boxing and hockey games

lol totally. Or some combo of all of the above!

How much better the world would be if ideological competition between nations was fought solely through space races and not wars.

for real. <3

It's cool that someone just went somewhere, picked up some souvenirs, freestyled some poetry, and came back. The whole event is like performance art. And the economic benefits were not too shabby either:

A November 1971 study of NASA released by the Midwest Research Institute of Kansas City, Missouri concluded that the $25 billion in 1958 dollars spent on civilian space R & D during the 1958-1969 period has returned $52 billion through 1971 -- and will continue to produce pay offs through 1987, at which time the total pay off will have been $181 billion. The discounted rate of return for this investment will have been 33 percent.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

That is over $300 billion in 2012 dollars, and that is without exploiting anything other than the spectacle.

And if you think it's fake, then you believe the U.S. government spent the modern equivalent of $1.7 billion dollars on an art film watched simultaneously by 500 million people.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/hold-state-funeral-neil-armstrong-symbol-american-dream-and-inspiration-generations/f2Nkgn6G

Creating an account requires less personal info than Facebook.

"signatures needed by September 24" - isn't a funeral usually a bit sooner?

many xposts, but yes, i meant the moonshot by dan parry.

Dutch Newspaper De Telegraaf broke the news on their site like this: ("first man on earth dead")

http://i49.tinypic.com/rm360i.jpg

matt p think you're still in need of a few more "truthful zings"