Apollo 11 Archives ~ From The Stratosphere

It’s 2019, Apollo 11’s 50th Anniversary

By hsrivney | January 27, 2019

Stop the world, I want to get off.

Earth from space — Northern hemisphere of Earth as seen from NASA’s deep space climate satellite

Well, just slow it down a little so I can take a breath!

So many things happening as 2019 starts. 2019 – does that slap you around a little? We were all supposed to be driving flying cars, instead of cars driving us. We do have quite a few technologies, and a few we never imagined before. It’s also the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic mission.

Remember just 10 years ago the smart phone came upon the scene – and nothing was ever the same in the industrialized world. I don’t think they’ve helped developing nations as much, but in my wildest imagination I never imagine that PHONEs would become portable computers. They can pinpoint your location on the planet as well as take excellent photos and videos, AND access the entire world’s information online. I mean, there’s an app for EVERYTHING.

Oddly, the one thing I wish a smart phone could do that it doesn’t is take your temperature. Why can’t we just stick it against our forehead and let it tell us if we have a fever worth going to the doctor or not?

the first iPhone from Apple — The first smart phone

If I’d had these technologies as a teen or young adult available! Broken down car – no worry, call someone from the side of the road. Call Lyft to come get you the next day. Look up the problem on the internet, buy the parts online, they’re delivered asap, take Lyft to work again, and the fix your beater over the weekend watching how-to YouTube video. And then there’s e-books.

Millennials, you grew up with this technology,

at least with cell phones, if not smart phones, and the internet. You take it for granted that everything will stream to you – music, food, friendship, entertainment, even money if you can build a web page with enough click bait on it. Work as you want – deliver for Amazon, GrubHub, FedEx, or become a Lyft or Uber driver, and all the work is just waiting for you to tap an icon, no set hours, no dry cleaning to deal with, and the money goes straight into a bank account – no standing in line at a bank from 10:00 to 3:00 to deposit a check and wait 3 days for it to clear before you get your money.

I’m fascinated.

Our most wonderful invention in 1980 was the ATM – money without the bank teller. Oh, yeah, and the video rental store, of course, in BETA, not VHS (what’s Beta you ask? Ask Siri). The hardest thing we had to deal with was programming the damn thing because in the 80s, television had you tuning in at their convenience, not the other way around. I like new technology, but I’m not the person who needs the newest of the new the moment it’s released – new phone, computer, television, stereo system, vacuum, car. Technology puttered for decades, even after the horseless carriage arrived. Things move so fast now writing science fiction is a challenge. I’m from the Boomer generation, and Gen Xers are between us and the Millennials.

I’m not certain, and no one else is either, when the cut off from one to the next is, but the Boomers ended in 1964, the year after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The world changed that day, not just America. No one saw themselves the same way anymore. The birth rate plummeted, and with good reason. The later half of the 60s was filled with Vietnam, riots, Nixon, more assassinations, and some of the most horrible fashions ever to walk a runway. At the same time, technology carried on, taking people to the MOON. This year marks the 50th anniversary of that giant leap.

Humanity has more heroes than Hitlers.

Give praise for the chutzpah of soldiers who stormed Normandy; of Martin Luther King, Jr., who inspired millions; of Truman, who bore the responsibility for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As we approach this milestone, remember their names.

They were the ambassadors of human technology, arguably the most courageous men of the 20th century. It takes a special kind of insanity to sit atop a Saturn V rocket, spend 3 days floating in a closet and using the strangest toilet ever invented. Then they must go into orbit, take a little module of a ship to this world, land, get out and take a walk, and get back in and hope the little module of a ship can get off the world, go back up and meet with the rocket engine orbiting the planet. And then COME BACK. Three more days in the closet, and this time they have to get back to Earth. This planet has an atmosphere (that could burn up the ship and passengers). They don’t land, but splash down using parachutes, and wait for the ship to come get you.

The boot print of a human left on the moon — Footprint from the Moon

Are you f*$#&* kidding me? The space program was the very definition of LUNACY. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins have every right to claim bravery above and beyond – why do we celebrate Columbus Day when we should celebrate Moon Day July 19th? It should be a worldwide holiday, like New Year’s Day; at the very least, an American holiday. Only a dozen humans have ever walked on our moon. That’s it. I lament that it may be another 50 years before humans can claim the honor of going to another world. Robots on both Mars and the Moon report that science and commerce could explode wide open, with new opportunities, to answer questions that have dogged humans from the beginning, and encourage the next 100 years of humans to grow beyond the narcissistic view that we are the apex of evolution.

But this is the year of Apollo 11’s anniversary, the 50 year milestone. Who knows what celebrations might spark the next step into the future.

After all, if we can go to the moon, we can do anything. I’m still waiting for that app that will take my temperature, though.

Apollo 11 Anniversary

By hsrivney | July 20, 2016

529 — I hope this isn’t a copyrighted photo. Human boot print on the Moon.

I would be guilty of a crime if I didn’t mark the anniversary, the 47th this year, of the Apollo landing on the moon today, the 20th of July. I am happy to say I remember watching a fuzzy television image in black and white and at the bottom some words, one of which was moon. I didn’t know the significance of this event in history for a couple more decades. I remember my kindergarten teacher discussing the summer spectacle but it didn’t stir my curiosity as much as watching water boil in a glass pot on a hot plate.

Humans have a hard time understanding big things. Not just large, like the galaxy, which is more than 100,000 light years across, or a googolplex of anything (1 plus 100 zeros), but even immediate large, like the length of time life has existed on Earth (about 3.5 billion years). Time and distance, as any algebra student will tell you, can be really hard to fathom.

Human achievement is an entirely different ‘big’ thing. And it is rarely, if ever, accomplished by one person in a single moment. Landing humans on the moon, and returning them to Earth, was a gargantuan feat that took thousands of humans centuries to accomplish (consider for arguments sake we start with DaVinci). It may have been the most comprehensive collection of effort to advance the human condition ever. Only war has ever used more people at one time for a single goal, and I’d like to think those events don’t serve to advance our civilizations but instead are more like plugging a hole in a dam to keep the worst from happening.

To don a protective garment, climb into a small metal cone and sit atop a rocket to escape gravity, to stay in a a few hundred cubic feet for days and land on another celestial body, get out, walk around, take pictures like a tourist, get back into the foil covered structure and then come back, having to splash down in the ocean without burning up like a meteor is extraordinary!

And a phrase was born: If we can go to the moon, we should be able to {fill in the blank}. No one says “if we can invent movable type, we should be able to {fill in the blank}”, or “If we can harness atomic power, we should be able to {fill in the blank}. There are thousands of milestones in human history, all of which advanced humanity in its own way (the wheel, the guillotine, penicillin) but still will support that as a species, nothing compares to what happened on July 20, 1969 AD, 19:56 Pacific Time, precisely because it didn’t happen on Earth.

And if we can go to the moon, only the limits of our imagination hold us back.

Tag: Apollo 11