I guess 49th anniversary are pretty much be definition going be ignored.
But is worth remembering that 49 years ago mankind took its first step to become an inter-planetary species.
It is amazing to me that we first stepped foot on the moon in 1969, checked out the neighborhood a few times and then never went back.
What if Columbus had done that?
Hundreds of thousands of happy Native Americans?
But there would be no baseball, and we would all play soccer probably. Ugh.
This still seems to me the high water mark of human achievement. This, or maybe the Goldberg Variations.
This is why I would just get depressed watching this.
I was 7 when I watched this live at midnight. During my whole childhood the space program was the USA’s future. I collected everything, wrote NASA every few months and received boxes of NASA stuff, covered my wall with (real) spacecraft and astronaut posters. It’s when I first started paying attention to science and engineering.
It took a while for it to sink in that this was going to be it in my lifetime, and probably for my kids’ lifetimes. Frankly, probably forever. The shuttle program starting in the early 80’s was just a glorified airplane…hell, that wasn’t even space, it was just “really high”. Same with the ISS.
Now we have bumpkuss. Hitching rides with the Russians on their 70’s era roman candles. And nothing at all that will really happen.
Maybe Elon or Jeff will actually pull something off.
I was 10. Me and my brother lying on the carpet watching the B/W Zenith TV. Even at that age I knew it was A Very Big Deal.
Ditto, my experience was the same as yours. I dare say based on the number of real-life internet conversation, that a lot, likely a majority of scientist and engineers in their mid 50s to mid 60s were heavily influenced in our careers by the space program.
No matter what Elon, and Jeff to a lesser extent, do I’ll always be thankful for their role in revivifying my childhood dreams, and inspiring a future generation. I don’t often wish that I was much younger or could do things a lot differently, but every time I see those SpaceX employees cheering over a new launch, I find myself really jealous, that I missed that chance.
They already have? The private rocket industry is a real thing now.
I realize it’s no moon landing but if you take the long term view it represents something just as important -
I mean holy shit, I still get goosebumps everytime I watch a rocket landing. Two rockets landing? <headexploding.gif>
Yeah. EE Doc Smith, Heinlein kinda stuff.
Oh yeah, that blew me away. I’m with Strollen in that it revives a dream.
But as you say, it’s only a start. I’m talking bases on Mars, mining asteriods, etc… Imagine where we could be now if we’ve kept the momentum of 1970. But maybe the advance of tech in the last 50 years will make the next major jump that much quicker.
Yep, Delos Harriman.
Oh man! Blast from the past. I have that Tintin book in hardcover. I’d read it over and over as a kid. I loved the artwork. The colors when the Thompsons take the drug that makes their hair grow. Amazing stuff.
Small, 12" B&W TV in my father’s office in Heidelberg, at Campbell Barracks. It was the Army counter-intelligence office, of all places. Still remember watching it though, even if I was all of 7.5.
If we were a base-7 society, it would probably be a really big deal though.
God-damned national treasure.
Lol. 64, 5, 66, 100! Awesome, it’s the 100th anniversary :).
Not in any way to refute that, because it is true. But it is quite likely that Linn Leblanc wrote both of those tweets.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/linn-leblanc-4a746054
Chief Operating Officer at Buzz Aldrin Ventures
Current
Buzz Aldrin Ventures LLC, Paradise Boating Adventures
Previous
Buzz Aldrin’s ShareSpace Foundation, WU Group, Astronaut Scholarship Foundation
It looks like Lin replaced his previous assistant Christina as part of the ugly family lawsuit.