50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

[omaghjoe]

The chap right at the front with the side burns  hogging the shit out of the box 

[macdanger2]

Where you around to see it on TV?

We didn't have a TV and I wasn't around for another decade or so

Are you mad interested in it or couldn’t give a shite?

Very interested. Some great programmes on Bbc4 on astronomy / science

Did they even go to the moon at all?

Definitely. Although I don't buy the argument that it's because thousands would have had to be in on it, they wouldn't as most people involved just worked on their little piece of the puzzle.

What’s your thoughts on it?

Unbelievable achievement but it was largely a propaganda-driven exercise. If we applied ourselves to in the same way to more "real" but less glamorous problems, the world would be a better place

[J70]

Very interested in this.

I am currently watching a three part documentary series on PBS which goes into the whole program in great detail, starting from Sputnik and the annexation of all those Nazi rocket scientists by the US and the Soviets, up through the Mercury and Gemini programmes which led into Apollo. For instance, I was not previous aware that Von Braun, the leader of the whole program in the US, was the same man who led the development of the V2 rocket for the Nazis. A lot of fascinating detail on the astronauts themselves, and stuff you would never think about like why is the NASA control centre in Houston (it was because the House committee chairman who controlled the purse strings insisted it be built in his district!). And interesting titbits like the fact that on Apollo 8, the first mission to actually go out to the moon and back (they didn't land), Frank Borman got sick and vomited and diarrhaead everywhere all over the interior of the astronaut module. They eventually got it cleaned up, but can you imagine travelling in those cramped conditions with that shit (literally!) floating around everywhere.

Chasing the Moon
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/chasing-moon/

Operation paperclip.

That’s it.

Where did they come up with the name?

[dec]

Very interested in this.

I am currently watching a three part documentary series on PBS which goes into the whole program in great detail, starting from Sputnik and the annexation of all those Nazi rocket scientists by the US and the Soviets, up through the Mercury and Gemini programmes which led into Apollo. For instance, I was not previous aware that Von Braun, the leader of the whole program in the US, was the same man who led the development of the V2 rocket for the Nazis. A lot of fascinating detail on the astronauts themselves, and stuff you would never think about like why is the NASA control centre in Houston (it was because the House committee chairman who controlled the purse strings insisted it be built in his district!). Footage of JFK talking about pulling the plug on the whole thing due to the cost and his personal lack of interest in the space programme. And interesting titbits like the fact that on Apollo 8, the first mission to actually go out to the moon and back (they didn't land), Frank Borman got sick and vomited and diarrhaead everywhere all over the interior of the astronaut module. They eventually got it cleaned up, but can you imagine travelling in those cramped conditions with that shit (literally!) floating around everywhere. They also show the intense public interest in the astronauts themselves and how NASA exploited that. On that same Apollo 8 mission, the news programmes were stationed in the homes of the wives, and had cameras stuck in their faces as they went through the agony of watching their husbands take off from Florida on the tip of basically giant ICBMs and later disappear behind the moon, something no one had ever done before.

Chasing the Moon
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/chasing-moon/

There are a few other shows on PBS as well for the 50th anniversary

https://www.pbs.org/summer-of-space/
Back to the Moon
8 Days: To the Moon and Back

I have recorded Chasing the Moon and am watching it with my son, we are about half way through, pretty good so far

[J70]

Very interested in this.

I am currently watching a three part documentary series on PBS which goes into the whole program in great detail, starting from Sputnik and the annexation of all those Nazi rocket scientists by the US and the Soviets, up through the Mercury and Gemini programmes which led into Apollo. For instance, I was not previous aware that Von Braun, the leader of the whole program in the US, was the same man who led the development of the V2 rocket for the Nazis. A lot of fascinating detail on the astronauts themselves, and stuff you would never think about like why is the NASA control centre in Houston (it was because the House committee chairman who controlled the purse strings insisted it be built in his district!). Footage of JFK talking about pulling the plug on the whole thing due to the cost and his personal lack of interest in the space programme. And interesting titbits like the fact that on Apollo 8, the first mission to actually go out to the moon and back (they didn't land), Frank Borman got sick and vomited and diarrhaead everywhere all over the interior of the astronaut module. They eventually got it cleaned up, but can you imagine travelling in those cramped conditions with that shit (literally!) floating around everywhere. They also show the intense public interest in the astronauts themselves and how NASA exploited that. On that same Apollo 8 mission, the news programmes were stationed in the homes of the wives, and had cameras stuck in their faces as they went through the agony of watching their husbands take off from Florida on the tip of basically giant ICBMs and later disappear behind the moon, something no one had ever done before.

Chasing the Moon
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/chasing-moon/

There are a few other shows on PBS as well for the 50th anniversary

https://www.pbs.org/summer-of-space/
Back to the Moon
8 Days: To the Moon and Back

I have recorded Chasing the Moon and am watching it with my son, we are about half way through, pretty good so far

Excellent. Thanks for the heads up. Although my wife won't be too pleased!

[Eamonnca1]

Were you around to see it on TV?
Was before my time.

Are you mad interested in it or couldn’t give a shite?
Hugely interested.

What’s your thoughts on it?
A remarkable achievement. It united all of humanity in awe at what human beings could achieve, and inspired a generation of people to become scientists and engineers. The number of technical spin-offs from space exploration is huge. It's a massive example of "blue sky" research where we try to solve complex scientific problems but aren't aware of how they're going to benefit society in the long run.

What grinds my gears is the "let's solve our problems on Earth first" crowd who seem to think that money spent on space exploration is wasteful. By solving problems "up there" we solve them "down here." They don't have cash registers on the ISS. There were no cash registers on the moon. Money spent on space is spent on Earth, not in orbit. If you're going to gripe about wasteful spending, NASA's pittance of a budget is the wrong place to look. Go to the Pentagon. Go to the defence contractor cranking out tanks that nobody wants and an F35 fighter jet that's the most expensive weapons system ever developed and has killed more of its own pilots than enemies.

Space exploration is the most noble endeavour ever and long may it continue.

[omaghjoe]

Were you around to see it on TV?
Was before my time.

Are you mad interested in it or couldn’t give a shite?
Hugely interested.

What’s your thoughts on it?
A remarkable achievement. It united all of humanity in awe at what human beings could achieve, and inspired a generation of people to become scientists and engineers. The number of technical spin-offs from space exploration is huge. It's a massive example of "blue sky" research where we try to solve complex scientific problems but aren't aware of how they're going to benefit society in the long run.

What grinds my gears is the "let's solve our problems on Earth first" crowd who seem to think that money spent on space exploration is wasteful. By solving problems "up there" we solve them "down here." They don't have cash registers on the ISS. There were no cash registers on the moon. Money spent on space is spent on Earth, not in orbit. If you're going to gripe about wasteful spending, NASA's pittance of a budget is the wrong place to look. Go to the Pentagon. Go to the defence contractor cranking out tanks that nobody wants and an F35 fighter jet that's the most expensive weapons system ever developed and has killed more of its own pilots than enemies.

Space exploration is the most noble endeavour ever and long may it continue.

Prehaps you missed the bit about what got these yokes outside of our atmosphere in the first place?

[Eamonnca1]

Quiet.

[armaghniac]

Where you around to see it on TV? -Watched it in Uncle's house

Are you mad interested in it or couldn’t give a shite? definite spacer.

Did they even go to the moon at all? Of course they did. Only loons think it was faked.

What’s your thoughts on it? Not surpassed until Armagh landed in 2002

[under the bar]

Given that the lunar landing was just over 60 years after the first ever manned flight by the Wright Bros and no astronaut/cosmonaut has journeyed much further in the intervening 50 years, despite huge advancement in technology, the achievement was utterly remarkable.

[J70]

Where you around to see it on TV? -Watched it in Uncle's house

Are you mad interested in it or couldn’t give a shite? definite spacer.

Did they even go to the moon at all? Of course they did. Only loons think it was faked.

What’s your thoughts on it? Not surpassed until Armagh landed in 2002

Excellent!

[Orior]

Interesting fact: While the two Americans were walking on the moon, the Russians crashed a rocket onto the surface.

[Fionntamhnach]

Where you around to see it on TV? Nope, was moee than a decade before I was born.

Are you mad interested in it or couldn’t give a shite? Was very interested in astronomy when I was young, not as much now but the engineering and technical advances to have made what was possible in the summer of '69 after JFKs announcement in 1961 was incredible even today.

Did they even go to the moon at all? 99.99999~% positive. Not one bit of even slightly credible evidence exists to show that any part of it was "faked". As Shamrock Shore & redhand88 have pointed out, if there was even the slightest hint that the astronauts didn't land & walk on the moon, the Soviets and their allies would have been over it like a rash. The fact was that in the media at least they gave a begrudging congratulations saying that the journey was dangerous & unnecessary i.e. THE SOVIETS SAID THAT THE' MURCIANS LANDED MEN ON THE MOON!! To deny that it occourced would involve claiming one of the biggest shared conspiracies known to mankind, dismissing details kept of the mission not just by the USA but by many countries and even amateurs monitoring radio signals, prior Apollo missions that builded up to the eventual moon landing that included human loss of life and also the near fatal mission that was Apollo 13.

Buzz Aldrin at least knows how to deal with such w**kers who get in his face.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UryIstlIGks

What’s your thoughts on it? It ranks to me as one of if not the biggest engineering feats, and to an extent a human feat, of the 20th century. Yes, the monetary cost was substantial. Yes, on a short term basis such expenditure could have been put to use instead on earth. And yes, it was the 'murcians desperate to dick wave to win the space race especially after being beaten to the punch by the Soviets whom got in first launching the first artifical satellite into orbit (Sputnik 1) and the first human into space & orbit Earth (Yuri Gagarin) during the middle of the Cold War, in a decade where there was a heightened level of tension that nuclear weapons could have been used that wasn't seen again until the early 80's. But considering the first trans-Atlantic satellite television broadcast was made only seven years prior (limited to 15 minutes, one way only) and the computer processing power of mainframes in those days being barely better than a school calculator today, it stands as nothing short of brilliant. And it's also forgotten that such engineering and technology advances made to achieve this helped benefit and advance other scenarios in many different fields. Many of the advancements in motor vehicles concerning fuel efficiency and safety have come off the back of experiments and testing in Formula 1 racing, for example. And whilst both resulted in massive human costs on their own, both World Wars (WWII in particular) led to major advancements and innovation in mechanical and electric & electronic engineering, developed by both the Allies and Axis belligerents.

[Fionntamhnach]

As a side note, several hundred millions of people across the world saw live pictures of Armstrong & Aldrin stepping foot and walking on the moon via television, including Ireland whom showed the live pictures in the wee hours of the morning (very rare at the time for programming to be transmitted when most people should be in bed). In many other countries footage was shown later on, like in some European countries when day broke. However there was one notable country at that time whose people couldn't watch it, namely South Africa.

That's because back in 1969 there was no TV service in South Africa. Back then the National Party government of the Apartheid state felt that the introduction of television would undermine the cultural and social fabric of the Afrikaaner Volk and its Dutch Calvinist outlook, with focus on the need to bringing in foreign English language programming being seen as the biggest threat, especially shows that saw people from different races living together without conflict. Funnily enough, except for the obvious racist overtones, similar concerns were expressed in Ireland (RoI) before Telefís Eireann launch on New Year's Eve 1961.

That's not to say that many South Africans weren't aware of the existence of television and some politicians were pushing for its introduction, especially as the then Southern Rhodeshia (now Zimbabwe) had a TV service running for several years and some other African countries, all of whom were more significantly impoverished than SA, had a regular TV service as well. What was the straw that broke the camels back for keeping TV out of South Africa was the moon landings. Not only could South African's not view it on TV because they couldn't, live or otherwise, there wasn't even any live or scheduled showings in public venues. It was seen as a national embarrassment and a more vocal group of people in public were calling for anything like this in the future to not happen again. Incidentally the government had made quick arrangements for short clips of the landings to be brought in and shown in cinemas, but only a few places showed them.

The Afrikaaner establishment didn't want to introduce a TV service that was extensively "liberal" and challenged the media & wider cultural controls in place, but a change in personell at government levels in the late 1960's meant a slightly more relaxed attitude to the establishment of a national TV service, plus another issue was that the potential progress of television being made available via satellite would allow viewers to watch programming from outside South Africa that overcame state censorship. This convinced the government that it was better they got a foot in first to ensure that the introduction of TV in the country was on "their" terms. Eventually the state radio broadcaster SABC/SAUK were given permission to start a TV service, but it still took a few years - test broadcasts only started in May 1975 and the full launch wasn't until January 1976.

[redcard]

Where you around to see it on TV?
YES There were two "western" movies on before the moon landing in the early hours which was unheard of at this time. First time I'd stayed up all night. Was totally wrecked then and throughout the day

Are you mad interested in it or couldn’t give a shite?
always remember it with fondness - which I cant say about the morning internment was introduced a couple of years later

Did they even go to the moon at all?
I always believed they did

What’s your thoughts on it?
a piece of history all right. Always remember that beeping noise from the broadcast