WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Something Wonderful: A Blast from the Past
byVanderleunonApril 27, 2022
Saturn V rocket launch with enhanced and remastered footage.
“Commander Alan Shepard, Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa, and Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell launched on their nine-day mission on Sunday, January 31, 1971, at 4:03:02 p.m. EST. En route to the lunar landing, the crew overcame malfunctions that might have resulted in a second consecutive aborted mission, and possibly, the premature end of the Apollo program.”
“Shepard and Mitchell made their lunar landing on February 5 in the Fra Mauro formation – originally the target of Apollo 13. During the two walks on the surface, they collected 94.35 pounds (42.80 kg) of Moon rocks and deployed several scientific experiments. To the dismay of some geologists, Shepard and Mitchell did not reach the rim of Cone crater as had been planned, though they came close. In Apollo 14’s most famous incident, Shepard hit two golf balls he had brought with him with a makeshift club.”
I was 3 months shy of turning 11 years old, when I watched that on teevee. The remastered/enhanced video elicits the same awe I had when I was a boy. Cool!
ghostsniperApril 27, 2022, 11:07 AM
On 31 Jan 1971, a Sunday, my 16th birthday party had ended and my mother went into the living room and turned on the 19″ TV and said, “The moon launch is coming on soon!” and we all went in there to watch. My dad had given me my first car and after the launch he and I went out driving around. As the launch was happening we went out in the front yard, in Fort Myers, FL, and stared northeast and there it was, bigger’n Stuttgart, 150 miles away. The sun was at the right angle and reflected off of it just right. We watched til it was out of sight. It was moments like that that inspired me to be an engineer someday, though not in that field. What a wonderful time to be alive.
My question is very simple. If this happened 50 years ago with a space program that was second to none, then why do we not have colonies on the moon now? The more I read about about our moon shots, the more I doubt they ever happened. Encapsulate what I just wrote in the context of, “When has the government ever told us, the American people, the truth?”. AND-“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” – William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)
Fletcher ChristianApril 27, 2022, 8:57 AM
Quite simple. The Apollo moon shots, and indeed most of what led up to them from Gemini onwards, were pointless from any point of view except what they were; Cold War propaganda boondoggles. To get even Project Mercury started, all work on several other projects was stopped – including DynaSoar, which was a natural step up from high-altitude aircraft.
Before the famous speech, everyone was assuming that space travel would proceed as a logical sequence, including the building of an orbital base from which a Moon mission would eventually be launched.
What America got, instead, was a series of disintegrating totem poles.
A Moonbase never succeeded Apollo for two reasons; one that it was unaffordable with the available technology and secondly, that Apollo had proven the point it was supposed to.
Incidentally, one of the casualties of the damn-the-cost race to the Moon was a technology that would have had Americans on Saturn’s moons by maybe the late 70s; Project Orion.
Gordon ScottApril 27, 2022, 11:26 AM
The rot engendered by the 1960s affects us still today. Vietnam left us emotionally exhausted, and budgets were cut to pay for the excesses of the 1960s. The space shuttle went from a highly capable Cadillac to a Chevy that never met its promise. And politicians demanded money be spent here, not on the moon.
I disagree with Fletcher. Project Gemini did what it was supposed to do: prove that we could work in space, including meeting up with another spacecraft. That’s no easy thing. And since we used a proven booster, the Titan, it was relatively inexpensive, and we turned those missions around quickly (the way Musk does).
The Apollo flight profile (lunar orbit rendezvous) was the result of engineers working out how to get a mass of X onto the moon, and then get it back again. It’s an interesting story in itself. We could have simultaneously worked on Orion and all the other projects, but instead we built 10,000 Huey helicopters to fly around half a world away.
The techniques and technology are proven. We needed to get NASA out of the way. That’s happening now. NASA’s launch program is obsolete before its first flight.
D S CraftApril 27, 2022, 9:53 PM
The answer is pretty simple, too. The whole point of going to the moon was to get there before the Soviets did. Kennedy threw down the gauntlet when he was still alive to get there by the end of decade and prove that America’s capitalist system was superior to the USSR’s communism. In the 1960’s that was a real big deal and we threw a ton of money at it to make it happen. Once we got there it was mission accomplished. Reagan repeated the tactic in the 1980’s with the ABM system we started working on to much fanfare knowing the Soviets would try to keep up. Once again we pitted our economic system against theirs and won. Things on the ABM front got real quiet once the USSR folded. But we most definitely made it to the moon, in spite of what some moonbats say.
Many think these moon shots were Hollywood back lot productions.
My father in law says nope. He was chief engineer on many of these rocket shots. Ended his career as one of the chief engineers on the MX Missile program, “Aerojet”, out of Folsom Ca. He’s 93 now, sharp as a tack!
The 1st Saturn V launch, unmanned, was on May 25, 1966. About 10 minutes before the launch, B. Frank Brown, the principal of Melbourn High School 30 miles south of the Cape, had the entire school go outside to watch. It was a proud day for us all I believe. Some years before that I had a paper route and delivered to rocket scientist types and others that worked at the Cape. Heady days growing up around all of that.
Truly, “there were giants in the earth in those days.” The Americans were the greatest people in History. But senescence and lassitude have overtaken what was once grandly claimed as “the American century”. In times past when one civilization faded another arose to take its place. But nowadays there is nothing worth mentioning on the horizon. Almost every nation has been subsumed into a dreary existence of gadgetry and wokeness under the banner of sexual perversion. If there are historians of the future what would they call the age in which we now live? “The Dark Ages” is already taken. I suggest therefore “The Twilight of the Gods”. Catchy, yes? Better than “Götterdämmerung” I think.
ghostsniperApril 27, 2022, 11:18 AM
Dam your ass Mike, make run for the dictionary again. Maybe I’ll be a better person some day for it.
I concur with what you wrote. In 1971 I KNEW someday I would drive my very own AeroCar, like was shown in Popular Mechanics magazine. But by the time I got out of the army at age 23 in 1978 the signs were already there but nobody paid attention. The downhill slide continued slowly to where we are today. Adult size children squabbling over who gets the last cookie crumbs from the bottom of the tainted jar. Except for what I have done solely, the rest of my life has been a waste. “Too many people, and not enough eyes to see.”
Also good. A pity we cannot know how some future historian will think of us. He might just possibly laugh out loud at the first—and last—people in all of History not to know the differences between men and women.
One can also go backwards. What would the Vikings have thought of us? What would the legions of Scipio have thought of us? But then comes this: What would Jesus think of us? What does Jesus think of us?
Another term: “The Time of Darkening”. Wake me when it’s over.
Fletcher ChristianApril 28, 2022, 2:54 PM
Indeed. I often wonder what Jesus would make of the Vatican, or of any of those megachurches owned and run by televangelists – complete with the rows of Rolls-Royces outside.
KCKApril 27, 2022, 1:56 PM
I like that. It has it’s own meaning separate from the Dark Ages, and sounds man-driven. As great as the Enlightenment was, so dismal will the Endarkenment be.
I want to be an Irish monk, inscribing the Testaments and better, yet, artworks, while the world devolves for awhile.
Lindisfarne was fine until the arrival of the Northmen (793).
KCKApril 27, 2022, 8:09 PM
You jumped from Ireland to the other side of Britain. But, it’s all good. It seems that the Irish – kings, queens, monks, and people, preserved the scriptures at the outermost edge and past the Roman Empire. While the Dark Ages saw what deterioration it did see, the Irish “saved” civilization, according to the story.
Beautiful music, thanks.
I try to part time backwards and see more in the Medieval for my art than I see in the Renaissance. God filled the air, and space was stacked vertically. The most energy developed was when Cimabue began to resolve Christ’s visible form with his crucified body and with time itself. God managed Cimabue’s outcomes.
ThisIsNotNutellaApril 27, 2022, 7:29 PM
We Wuz Kangz.
Fletcher ChristianApril 28, 2022, 3:57 AM
Almost, but not quite. There are exceptions. Led, IMHO, by one man, whom the apparatus of government (FAA, various tax issues…) is being warmed up to stop.
His name? Elon Musk.
Blackwing1April 28, 2022, 8:11 AM
I think that Heinlein’s “The Crazy Years” will be applied.
FreddoApril 27, 2022, 9:21 AM
Humbling. And now SpaceX is doing it in reverse on a routine basis. Standing on the shoulders of giants…
Fletcher ChristianApril 27, 2022, 11:16 AM
To be fair, the main reasons why SpaceX can do so well now is the immensely better computing technology – allowing for such things as CAD design and 3D printed rocket nozzles. Still requires vision, though.
Many years ago, I was a key note speaker at a Juvenile Justice Conference, in Washington DC. I was asked to go, politely said No Thank You. Then I got Ordered to go. Yes Sir.
Anyway I went to the Smithsonian while there that week. Sputnik was next to our Apollo. The contrast between both was amazing. Apollo was crude but the workman ship outstanding. Sputnik, my god it’s hard to believe that even a monkey or two flew in that hunk a shit.
That’s the exterior. Amazing to be able touch such an important part of our history, to reflect on. All the engineers, the trial and error, yet we prevailed. Those are truly proud moments.
Sputnik literally looked like a bunch of vodka drunk Russians put it together. Crude poorly constructed. Amazing really.
I spent a complete day in the aviation wing.
ghostsniperApril 27, 2022, 3:06 PM
Are you talking about this Sputnik?
How does it look crude?
I don’t think critters occupied it.
It’s important to smoke just enough Copeium to get through any given day and not more.
Soviet military and aerospace engineering was rough and ready… Generally it got the job done well enough.
Some of the apparent crudeness was due to Muh Communism, some due to not needing to gold plate shit in multiple Sentators’ states in order to get the contracts, and some due to the aforementioned form follows function and blinged out fit and finish often being superfluity. And some of the apparent American Shininess was even due to to being the best they could be and Giants in the Land. It’s not like a whole lot of Operation Paperclip Germans didn’t teach them a thing or two about how to get Alles in Ordnung 😛
Ten years after the Collapse, let’s see how many AKs are still functioning ‘well enough’ cf. ARs.
I’m two decades younger than the average Boomer here.. Old enough to have spent the early part of my life hating and fearing the Soviets. I’ve moved on. Took me longer than it should have, too.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
![Christmas UnShopping List of Known Corporate C*********s for BLM'S Thugs, Grifters, and Gangsters [Pssst... Pass It On]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/c6147320164035a2acead2ebe59c11aa21618415-1024x682.jpg "Christmas UnShopping List of Known Corporate C*********s for BLM'S Thugs, Grifters, and Gangsters [Pssst... Pass It On]")
Gerard Van der Leun
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Awesome!
I was 3 months shy of turning 11 years old, when I watched that on teevee. The remastered/enhanced video elicits the same awe I had when I was a boy. Cool!
On 31 Jan 1971, a Sunday, my 16th birthday party had ended and my mother went into the living room and turned on the 19″ TV and said, “The moon launch is coming on soon!” and we all went in there to watch. My dad had given me my first car and after the launch he and I went out driving around. As the launch was happening we went out in the front yard, in Fort Myers, FL, and stared northeast and there it was, bigger’n Stuttgart, 150 miles away. The sun was at the right angle and reflected off of it just right. We watched til it was out of sight. It was moments like that that inspired me to be an engineer someday, though not in that field. What a wonderful time to be alive.
My question is very simple. If this happened 50 years ago with a space program that was second to none, then why do we not have colonies on the moon now? The more I read about about our moon shots, the more I doubt they ever happened. Encapsulate what I just wrote in the context of, “When has the government ever told us, the American people, the truth?”. AND-“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” – William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)
Quite simple. The Apollo moon shots, and indeed most of what led up to them from Gemini onwards, were pointless from any point of view except what they were; Cold War propaganda boondoggles. To get even Project Mercury started, all work on several other projects was stopped – including DynaSoar, which was a natural step up from high-altitude aircraft.
Before the famous speech, everyone was assuming that space travel would proceed as a logical sequence, including the building of an orbital base from which a Moon mission would eventually be launched.
What America got, instead, was a series of disintegrating totem poles.
A Moonbase never succeeded Apollo for two reasons; one that it was unaffordable with the available technology and secondly, that Apollo had proven the point it was supposed to.
Incidentally, one of the casualties of the damn-the-cost race to the Moon was a technology that would have had Americans on Saturn’s moons by maybe the late 70s; Project Orion.
The rot engendered by the 1960s affects us still today. Vietnam left us emotionally exhausted, and budgets were cut to pay for the excesses of the 1960s. The space shuttle went from a highly capable Cadillac to a Chevy that never met its promise. And politicians demanded money be spent here, not on the moon.
I disagree with Fletcher. Project Gemini did what it was supposed to do: prove that we could work in space, including meeting up with another spacecraft. That’s no easy thing. And since we used a proven booster, the Titan, it was relatively inexpensive, and we turned those missions around quickly (the way Musk does).
The Apollo flight profile (lunar orbit rendezvous) was the result of engineers working out how to get a mass of X onto the moon, and then get it back again. It’s an interesting story in itself. We could have simultaneously worked on Orion and all the other projects, but instead we built 10,000 Huey helicopters to fly around half a world away.
The techniques and technology are proven. We needed to get NASA out of the way. That’s happening now. NASA’s launch program is obsolete before its first flight.
The answer is pretty simple, too. The whole point of going to the moon was to get there before the Soviets did. Kennedy threw down the gauntlet when he was still alive to get there by the end of decade and prove that America’s capitalist system was superior to the USSR’s communism. In the 1960’s that was a real big deal and we threw a ton of money at it to make it happen. Once we got there it was mission accomplished. Reagan repeated the tactic in the 1980’s with the ABM system we started working on to much fanfare knowing the Soviets would try to keep up. Once again we pitted our economic system against theirs and won. Things on the ABM front got real quiet once the USSR folded. But we most definitely made it to the moon, in spite of what some moonbats say.
Many think these moon shots were Hollywood back lot productions.
My father in law says nope. He was chief engineer on many of these rocket shots. Ended his career as one of the chief engineers on the MX Missile program, “Aerojet”, out of Folsom Ca. He’s 93 now, sharp as a tack!
The 1st Saturn V launch, unmanned, was on May 25, 1966. About 10 minutes before the launch, B. Frank Brown, the principal of Melbourn High School 30 miles south of the Cape, had the entire school go outside to watch. It was a proud day for us all I believe. Some years before that I had a paper route and delivered to rocket scientist types and others that worked at the Cape. Heady days growing up around all of that.
Truly, “there were giants in the earth in those days.” The Americans were the greatest people in History. But senescence and lassitude have overtaken what was once grandly claimed as “the American century”. In times past when one civilization faded another arose to take its place. But nowadays there is nothing worth mentioning on the horizon. Almost every nation has been subsumed into a dreary existence of gadgetry and wokeness under the banner of sexual perversion. If there are historians of the future what would they call the age in which we now live? “The Dark Ages” is already taken. I suggest therefore “The Twilight of the Gods”. Catchy, yes? Better than “Götterdämmerung” I think.
Dam your ass Mike, make run for the dictionary again. Maybe I’ll be a better person some day for it.
I concur with what you wrote. In 1971 I KNEW someday I would drive my very own AeroCar, like was shown in Popular Mechanics magazine. But by the time I got out of the army at age 23 in 1978 the signs were already there but nobody paid attention. The downhill slide continued slowly to where we are today. Adult size children squabbling over who gets the last cookie crumbs from the bottom of the tainted jar. Except for what I have done solely, the rest of my life has been a waste. “Too many people, and not enough eyes to see.”
Mike, this is the age of “The Endarkenment.” I first learned the term from Billy Beck, but I do not know if he coined it.
Also good. A pity we cannot know how some future historian will think of us. He might just possibly laugh out loud at the first—and last—people in all of History not to know the differences between men and women.
One can also go backwards. What would the Vikings have thought of us? What would the legions of Scipio have thought of us? But then comes this: What would Jesus think of us? What does Jesus think of us?
Another term: “The Time of Darkening”. Wake me when it’s over.
Indeed. I often wonder what Jesus would make of the Vatican, or of any of those megachurches owned and run by televangelists – complete with the rows of Rolls-Royces outside.
I like that. It has it’s own meaning separate from the Dark Ages, and sounds man-driven. As great as the Enlightenment was, so dismal will the Endarkenment be.
I want to be an Irish monk, inscribing the Testaments and better, yet, artworks, while the world devolves for awhile.
An Irish monk? Then watch out for these fine fellows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab1WyWzTLq0
Lindisfarne was fine until the arrival of the Northmen (793).
You jumped from Ireland to the other side of Britain. But, it’s all good. It seems that the Irish – kings, queens, monks, and people, preserved the scriptures at the outermost edge and past the Roman Empire. While the Dark Ages saw what deterioration it did see, the Irish “saved” civilization, according to the story.
Beautiful music, thanks.
I try to part time backwards and see more in the Medieval for my art than I see in the Renaissance. God filled the air, and space was stacked vertically. The most energy developed was when Cimabue began to resolve Christ’s visible form with his crucified body and with time itself. God managed Cimabue’s outcomes.
We Wuz Kangz.
Almost, but not quite. There are exceptions. Led, IMHO, by one man, whom the apparatus of government (FAA, various tax issues…) is being warmed up to stop.
His name? Elon Musk.
I think that Heinlein’s “The Crazy Years” will be applied.
Humbling. And now SpaceX is doing it in reverse on a routine basis. Standing on the shoulders of giants…
To be fair, the main reasons why SpaceX can do so well now is the immensely better computing technology – allowing for such things as CAD design and 3D printed rocket nozzles. Still requires vision, though.
Many years ago, I was a key note speaker at a Juvenile Justice Conference, in Washington DC. I was asked to go, politely said No Thank You. Then I got Ordered to go. Yes Sir.
Anyway I went to the Smithsonian while there that week. Sputnik was next to our Apollo. The contrast between both was amazing. Apollo was crude but the workman ship outstanding. Sputnik, my god it’s hard to believe that even a monkey or two flew in that hunk a shit.
That’s the exterior. Amazing to be able touch such an important part of our history, to reflect on. All the engineers, the trial and error, yet we prevailed. Those are truly proud moments.
Sputnik literally looked like a bunch of vodka drunk Russians put it together. Crude poorly constructed. Amazing really.
I spent a complete day in the aviation wing.
Are you talking about this Sputnik?
How does it look crude?
I don’t think critters occupied it.
https://i.natgeofe.com/n/a67a5bcb-d814-410a-aa70-3dc9b44641d1/sputnik_nationalgeographic_1090108.jpg
HAMSTERS. Two. In rut.
Gerbils… If you can keep them.
It’s important to smoke just enough Copeium to get through any given day and not more.
Soviet military and aerospace engineering was rough and ready… Generally it got the job done well enough.
Some of the apparent crudeness was due to Muh Communism, some due to not needing to gold plate shit in multiple Sentators’ states in order to get the contracts, and some due to the aforementioned form follows function and blinged out fit and finish often being superfluity. And some of the apparent American Shininess was even due to to being the best they could be and Giants in the Land. It’s not like a whole lot of Operation Paperclip Germans didn’t teach them a thing or two about how to get Alles in Ordnung 😛
Ten years after the Collapse, let’s see how many AKs are still functioning ‘well enough’ cf. ARs.
I’m two decades younger than the average Boomer here.. Old enough to have spent the early part of my life hating and fearing the Soviets. I’ve moved on. Took me longer than it should have, too.
*the Smithsonian*
-now woke.