Here men from the planet Earth....

[lastlib]

"We Came In Peace For All Mankind." (obviously not composed by Dick Cheney)

Forty-five years ago.....








An unforgettable moment in human history! So proud that it happened in my lifetime!

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, lastlib.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. I love this picture...

Taken after the first moon walk, it represents how everyone felt: Holy cow, we did it!

[yurbud]

8. I wonder if we will ever have any moments like that again after seeing shuttle fly over

on its retirement tour.

It was like watching my childhood vision of America being led to the glue factory.

Instead of taking on epic challenges like that, our government is wasting money on weapons and wars against imaginary enemies, slowly strangling the middle class, all to enrich the already wealthy.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

20. Actually, we're wasting time listening to Republicans claiming, "We're broke."

[yurbud]

21. that too. When they say "we're broke" they mean "we want middle and working class Americans to be

broke."

You can't put up a political struggle if you're just struggling to survive.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

25. They want America to look like Detroit and then blame the black guy....

Trust me.

If Romney had won they would be borrowing like mad to make America look like it had just won the lottery.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

18. They used to call that the Snoopy cap.

[Helen Borg]

3. Imagine if...

Back in '69 we had found that there were some lunar natives. My bet is that we would have colonized the moon and by now we would have moon bases. What think?

[PowerToThePeople]

4. We would have genocided them for their natural resources.

Or at least created a civil war via CIA interaction, called them terrorists, bombed them into submission, and taken their natural resources.

[Helen Borg]

5. Probably...

But even more than that, the very same fact that somebody was already there would have compelled us to take over the place. F**ed up!

[unionthug777]

11. imminent domain

on the moon.

[yurbud]

22. you beat me to it.

[heaven05]

16. the "lunar natives"

would be on reservations if they weren't technologically advanced.

[TygrBright]

6. We could see it, then. Just over the horizon.

A world where technology changed us for the better. Where the ideals of science and progress walked hand in hand. Where the big problems were solvable. Where the WILL to solve them existed, and the belief that they COULD be solved motivated us.

Sure, there were clouds on that horizon, too. One particularly ugly one-- We didn't see it for what it was.

We thought it was just a war. A stupid, unnecessary war based on the old fears of old men. We'd fix that. We didn't have those fears.

We didn't realize it had very little to do with those old fears.

We didn't realize it was business as usual for Our Beloved Oligarchs, who were quietly, insistently fighting us teeth and toenails, inserting a poison pill into every concession we gained, building the hidden machine, subverting the technology not to build a better world for all, but to control the tide, make the hidden machine bigger, grab the gains for themselves.

All that beautiful hope was a chimera.

Or was it?

ambivalently,
Bright

[NBachers]

7. I remember a headline: "Apollo 11 Streaks Toward Moon as Earth Watches!"

[mbperrin]

9. It takes a lot to kill a great dream.

But the PTB put in the time, money, and effort, and they got it done.

Indescribably sad.

[littlemissmartypants]

10. Kicking. Thank you. nt

[rickyhall]

12. Should've had JFKs name on the plaque on it, not Nixon's

Had Nixon won in 1960 it never would've happened.

[lastlib]

13. I agree! Nixon's signature is kind of like a stain on it.

Last edited Sun Jul 20, 2014, 03:33 PM - Edit history (1)

Like having Judas Iscariot's name on a memorial to Jesus.

[Iggo]

15. Hey, take it easy on Judas.

He was just following orders.

[rickyhall]

26. Exactly

[MisterP]

14. Nixon was't the one saying "I'm not that interested in space" and meaning it nt

[H2O Man]

17. oh

[MisterP]

19. it's really Charles Stark Draper's baby

this is dry but a good read on Apollo and its mythology:
http://www.academia.edu/179045/_Public_Opinion_Polls_and_Perceptions_of_US_Human_Spaceflight_

thing is, I'm no space naysayer, getting yelled at for crawling on Mt Palomar's unsecured catwalks and going to JPL and the Air and Space Museum: I'm for even a crewed Mars shot (international, so it's easier to scrape up the ¥€$ over a decade, and once we sent some doughty probes down those weird caves)--but I'm for it more on geological or interdisciplinary grounds: I'm not a big believer in feeding sparrows by means of horses, nor a slave to Tsiolkovsky's batshit fantasies about greening the galaxy and resurrecting everyone who ever died

[freshwest]

23. Thank you! What a year that was!

[freshwest]

24. A live concert in tribute to the space program years later:

Cross posted your thread to this thread celebrating the Moon landing and other space programs:

When Democrats are in office, great things happen:

I attended this concert. It was an awesome event, bringing back the days of the Moon landing, in a city and state run by Democrats:



Rendez-vous Houston: A City in Concert was a live performance by musician Jean Michel Jarre amidst the skyscrapers of downtown Houston on the evening of April 5, 1986, coinciding with the release of the Rendez-Vous album. For a period of time, it held a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest outdoor "rock concert" in history, with figures varying from 1 to 1.5 million in attendance.

Rendez-vous Houston is remembered for being the concert which celebrated the astronauts of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which had happened only two and a half months beforehand. One of Jarre's friends, astronaut Ron McNair, had been killed in the disaster. He was supposed to play the saxophone from space during the track "Last Rendez-Vous"; his substitute for the concert was Houston native Kirk Whalum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendez-vous_Houston

In in April of 1986, Democrat Mark White was still governor, but he lost to Bill Clement in November. Texas was hard hit by Reagan. Despite the loss later that year by White, all down ticket Democrats won and Kathy Whitmire was the mayor of Houston.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_gubernatorial_election,_1986

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Whitmire

The very beginning with President Kennedy speaking, still brings tears to my eyes. Hear the cheers of the crowd for the image of him projected on a skyscraper and his words.

What a beautiful vision our fellow Democrats have for America and the world. It has been a great time to be alive.