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Real Science

Remembering Apollo 11

Blain
Monday
10:35 am

nasasmallForty years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon while Michael Collins kept a close orbit. Today is a day celebrated by those of us that are still dreamers, thinkers, and doers and look beyond the reaches of our own planet for what else lies out there. Humankind was always meant to explore — it’s in our nature. We are meant to do great things and reach out to touch the untouchable. The space program has been stuck in a rut way too long. I hope that today will help inspire the next generation of dreamers, thinkers and doers. Space is still the final frontier.

Below are great high resolution photos from Apollo 11’s mission:

Below is the CBS broadcast in 8 parts featuring the late, great Walter Cronkite. A shorter, edited version will be broadcast tonight on the History channel several times throughout the evening and online. Check the website for times.


Reader Comments

Human beings were meant to explore. True. We are also designed to beat the crap out of each other, and to propagate with impunity. Hence, we’d better find a way off this planet, and soon. >;)

#1 
Written By Amber on July 20th, 2009 @ 12:25 pm

I just wish we could skip over this “40 years later, let’s try — TRY — for the moon again” crap. Let’s get our collective butts to Mars, pronto.

#2 
Written By Josh on July 20th, 2009 @ 2:05 pm

Sadly, we probably would have been further along if we hadn’t gone to the moon forty years ago. The expediency we felt due to the Cold War made us gamble and cut out a lot of steps that we normally would have taken–steps that would have enabled us to develop a much finer means of space travel, for example.

And, then, as I say, there is the expediency bit. We just don’t feel like we have to do it anymore, and human beings are nothing if not motivated by necessity. I think it’s necessary: 6.5-billion-people-on-one-rock says to me “necessary.” But most people just don’t see it. They don’t understand why we would want to leave the comforts of this planet, and they somehow believe that the planet will continue to support us–and that we will learn to support each other, despite what history teaches us about that aspect of our makeup–as we multiply.

#3 
Written By Amber on July 20th, 2009 @ 2:26 pm

37 years, technically, since they went there a few more times. I’m not in the least convinced that waiting would have led to finer means of space travel. We’re kind of limited by those pesky laws of physics. Why doesn’t someone get off his ass and invent inertial dampeners already?!

#4 
Written By Seth Armstrong on November 11th, 2009 @ 7:38 pm

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