My generation went to the moon.

[Cleita]

On May 25, 1961 John Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress about going to the moon.

http://history.nasa.gov/moondec.html

I had just turned twenty-one. I was not a baby boomer but the generation before like Bernie Sanders, who would have been nineteen. The Russians had beat us into space. In spite of the sci-fi nature of this aspiration, none of my peers considered it in the least bit crazy, foolish or unpragmatic. In my time we knew we could do it because we were Americans.

As Americans we knew we were the best and most advanced nation on the earth then and there was nothing we couldn't achieve when we put our minds, hearts and souls into something. In those days CAN'T wasn't in our vocabularies as a nation. Not only did we go to the moon, but we tried to pave the way to Civil Rights, Women's Rights and to end the Vietnam War. It never occurred to any of us that we couldn't do it.

When did we get reduced to thinking that things that are achievable cannot be done because they are too far out? Not pragmatic? Pie in the sky?

Sorry but free education works and single payer health care works quite well in other parts of the world as does child and elderly care for all. Most nations in the world are not at war, have minimal militaries and still get on just fine.

We, the people, need to remove the obstacles that prevent these things from happening to us before we turn into a third world nation like the ones our industrialists like to exploit. STOP VOTING FOR TRIANGULATING COMPROMISERS at every level of government so we can be proud to be Americans again, real Americans not the flag waving, gun toting goobers on the news these days, but real Americans like we had back in 1960, who were the 99% back then and still are today and who were able to do the impossible, put a man on the moon.

[NightWatcher]

1. Don't you mean a soundstage that looked like the Moon?

I Kid!











We need something that we as a country can get behind, a unifying goal....That's Not Another War.

Maybe as climate change gets worse, we'll get behind saving the planet with radical solutions that the entire globe will get behind. I do think/hope that we will rally around survival as a species.

[Cleita]

2. Well we have to get honest brokers in elected offices first, not

the revolving door of opportunists we have now, emptying our Treasury and destroying our country bit by bit.

[VulgarPoet]

29. Unforunately, that can of worms has already been opened

By the same kinds of monsters that salivated over Vietnam, over Iran, over Iraq, over Afghanistan. By the Bush dynasty and all their corruptocrat cronies; they've sharpened their people's teeth on the leathers of war for war's sake; war for profit's sake. Hostile takeovers of the most dangerous kind, where corporations buy land in literal blood and bullet casings. Fact of the matter is, I think to fix it, we need a lot of guillotines to make a lot of examples, because as long as long as they live, they won't willingly relinquish the gravy train.

[Cleita]

31. I agree that we need to bring them to justice.

Otherwise they will continue to do what they do with impunity. But we need legislators first who will be willing to do this.

[KamaAina]

34. Soundstage? Get serious.

Everyone knows it was shot in the Arizona desert.

[MuseRider]

3. I would recommend this

1000 times if I could.

This is great news! I remember those days although I was not even 10 yet. I remember how good it felt to know there were good, exciting and new things ahead. Striving for better things is never a bad thing. Being told that you can't have it is never a good thing.

Remember watching the launches? Man were those exciting national events.

Letting people strive as hard as they want to strive is a very good thing for all of us and knowing that if you just do the things you can to make a good life will not put you on the street is also a good thing.

Very good post, thank you.

[antigop]

4. Great post, Cleita! K&R nt

[FLPanhandle]

5. Has any country suffered because their citizens were too educated?

I think not.

[hifiguy]

6. Well, that was then, and now all we get told is

Unless it's War Forever and the inevitable Second Bank$ter Bailout. There will be PLENTY of money for those things.

[Octafish]

19. Attitude determines Altitude.

[valerief]

8. You're remembering wrong. The Russians didn't beat us into space. That was a myth.

They made it up.

You know, like those windmill people are making up climate change and those bestiality activists are making up evolution.

[ChiciB1]

23. Hee - Hee! Yeah, That's The Ticket!

It was all an illusion. Timothy Leary had us ALL SCREWED up! And now, even what HE was doing is BACK in the news. Rolling Stone has an article about many workers in the Tech Industry "micro-dosing" to EXPAND brain potential! And they're accepting this as JUST FINE. Just a little illegal right now. But, it's really getting big.

REVOLUTION BACK THEN, REVOLUTION NOW!

Where did Sputnik go?? I was quite young and in a classroom in TX when I heard! We almost ALL had to hide under our desks! LOL!

[ShrimpPoboy]

9. It's sad that doing here what most every other country is doing

can honestly be compared to the challenge of going to the moon.

[draa]

13. +1

[Octafish]

10. JFK knew that if we could do the 'impossible' like going to the moon...

...We the People could do anything on earth -- from defeating poverty by creating prosperity for all and ending war by creating peace on earth. He wanted to continue the New Deal with the New Frontier -- except instead of war for the limited resources on earth, we'd develop and harness new technologies to explore the planets. NASA, not the Pentagon, would lead the effort.

Of course, some people would be displaced by economic hardship converting the economy from one based on war to one based on peace, but we need to try now more than ever. They so hate the liberal, progressive vision of Democrats like JFK they have done all they can to diminish his memory and works. Nixon even went to far as to veto naming Apollo 11 after John F. Kennedy.

[hifiguy]

11. This.

[drm604]

12. We should return to the Moon and then go on to Mars.

We should also stop and then reverse global warming.

And we most definitely should institute single payer health care.

All of these thing are achievable and all would benefit the country as well as the rest of the world. All of them are investments, not expenses.

America is capable of "pie in sky". We've done it before and we can do it again if we have the political will.

[MisterP]

14. here's the nonsense this is all about

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511061225
long story short, the loss of 'Nam (and its bills coming due), the Long Hot Summers, OPEC, backlash politics, and just the plain fact that we WEREN'T invincible by means of growth and technology
but that just gave us the 70s--we recognized limits, we knew we had to clean house: but instead the neocons and neolibs hijacked stagflation, promising to get America "back on its feet" in ways that served only them (people got way poorer in the 80s than with the 70s)
Reagan promised an era without limits, with Riyadh tanking gasoline prices (heck, he even poured billions into space): but his boom had a bigger bust, and every time fewer and fewer were able to recover from it, fewer able to "invest" in the next upturn

the closest thing to a moonshot for this century would be HSR tied to an integrated local transit system--our main CO2 sources are commuting, the military, and plane trips


mining the solar system or fiddling with the atmosphere is just more of the same old hidebound thinking that got us into the mess we're in today, always looking for a quick fix instead of changing our (infra)structure

[Cleita]

15. Or this.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511064813

[emsimon33]

16. Excellent! nt

[Odin2005]

17. You said it, old timer!

[madokie]

18. I heard someone say not long ago

that we never did go to the moon that it was all made up. This was coming from a friend who I wouldn't have ever guessed that she held those beliefs.

[ChiciB1]

25. But Don't You Remember What Was On The

Dark Side Of The Moon?? THE BIG SURPRISE, the astronauts said nobody would ever believe that there was nothing. But, there's more to the whole story, have to google it and had lots of info.

I'm just having a little fun, because I was part of "My Generation!"

Also, I'm a WHITE woman and I must have had too many shrooms, cause I SUPPORT BERNIE and I'm told I'm in her voter pool! But, I know many more of us WHITE WOMEN who think like I do and WE support BERNIE!

[hfojvt]

20. when I was a kid in the 1970s

I used to hear "we can put a man on the moon, but we can't ...."

There seemed to be a whole bunch of things that we could not do.

These days we can't seem to get rid of our unpopular Congress. Right now I see a bunch of incumbents running unopposed, and I don't think that bodes well for November. Then again, I expect all those incumbents to win anyway, almost no matter who runs against them.

[Wounded Bear]

21. I was working that July day when the first landing happened...

I listened on the car radio of a guy that had pulled up for gas. Everything kind of stopped, he didn't yell at me to hurry up or anything. We just listened to history being made. I was 16, just finished my Junior year in high school.

Good days when, yes, we did the difficult immediately; the impossible took a little longer. (I stole that one . The point is people worked together and shit got done. New technologies were invented from whole cloth and developed. NASA set up one of, if not the, first global networks to maintain 24 hour connections to the spacecraft. (The Dish, about a monitoring station in Australia is a good watch if you haven't seen it.)

We need that attitude today. Desperately.

[ProfessorGAC]

30. Fortunately for Me

I was only 13, so i didn't have a summer job yet. So, i got to glue my eyeballs to the TV to watch the whole thing, not just listen.

I feel pretty lucky to have been able to see it actually happen. (Hear that hoaxers? It ACTUALLY happened.)

[Spitfire of ATJ]

22. Hillary asked for those things from the 1% and they said "No"....

Bernie isn't asking.

[zeemike]

24. I had just turned 19 when he gave that speech.

And I remember the great hopes this country had...and how they were shattered in Dallas and again in 1968 with the death of Martin and Bobbie in the same manner.
And by the time we did land on the moon we were a disillusioned nation embroiled in a unjust war...and it took the thrill out of that great accomplishment.

That was our great opportunity to make a great leap forward and it was stolen from us by the greed and hate of people who should not be in positions of power.

[New Orleans Strong]

26. That day was my tenth birthday -

The country that day is not what many have in mind when they want To Make America Great Again. Any one have memoories of that day? Mine are crystal clear. America was great that day. Under a D. Man on the moon...

[Victor_c3]

27. I wasn't born until 1980 so I wasn't alive then

But when I look at our history going to the moon is one of the achievements we have done that I'm most proud of. It did so much to tell the rest of the world that "we are capable of anything" and at the same time helped to give all people the gift of showing that anything is possible. Those are the sorts of achievements we need more of, not more military conquest. Thinking about that time just puts me in awe.

It's been nearly 50 years and still no other country has been able to top that achievement. What does that say about us? What, as a nation or a planet would we say when the first humans step foot on Mars or another planet? It'll be the same sort of proud achievement.

Something that really upsets me is that in the 1990s we were talking about building a $12 billion super-collider that would have been powerful enough to discover the Higgs Boson. Nope, we were told it was too expensive. Instead the government blew that money on stupid stealth bombers and aircraft carriers. That sort of thing infuriates me. We as Americans could have owned that discovery. Instead, we gave it away to someone else.

We should be placing our honor on people who explore and discover, not on some pointless military "achievement".

[Little_Wing]

28. Kick

the truth and nothing but the truth. wicked good, cleita.

[frizzled]

32. Going to the moon was FUCKING USELESS and a waste of money.

Absolute Waste. Of. Money.

It actually impeded science because human exploration of space is really, really stupid. The Russians did it the right way, with robots.

Imagine what could've been done with a focus on robots from the get go. We could've had probes swimming around Europa and so on.

Re-usable rockets like SpaceX could've been developed in the '70s or '80s. But no, we got stuck with the Shuttle because of military interference. So many missed opportunities and gigantic wastes of money and lives.

[Vinca]

33. Yuri Gagarin was a robot?

[Johonny]

45. He didn't go to the moon

The poster is correct. The Russians went to the moon with unmanned spacecraft. Just as we went to Mars and are on Mars with unmanned vehicles. Space and space science is generally been a race for better and better unmanned spacecraft. It isn't as sexy as sending people, but America has been to every planet now and reached the outer edge of our solar system this way. There is little doubt our machines which just get better and better will continue to do most of the science involved in space.

Was the Apollo missions a waste of money... GDP wise spending money large amounts of money (15% of our GDP during those missions) tends to have huge future rewards. So while its true the US could have done everything Apollo did science wise with unmanned vehicles, it is also possible to argue spending money on science is rarely a waste of money. Even Reagan's star wars program had far ranging science returns even if the project was stupid or impractical... it's a debate topic without an easy answer.

[FLPanhandle]

35. We are just now getting computing power to have reuseable rockets and robots.

Sorry but you are wrong. Computer technology has been heavily funded both by governments and private industry for decades. Are you seriously saying that NASA alone could have moved the needle by 30 years?

[frizzled]

37. Simply not true. Russia got robots to retrieve lunar samples in 1970.

Learn some history.

Nothing about re-usable rockets was impossible at least 20, 30 years ago either. It was just a lack of institutional willingness for cutting costs dramatically, and overcommitment to the flawed Shuttle model.

[FLPanhandle]

38. Oh I know my history.

One sample compares to what the US brought back? Since you are history "expert" Do you know who Harrison Schmitt is? Do you know what key samples he found and brought back? Do you know what we learned from it? Go read a few books on space history and engineering and robotics then come back.

Comparing the scoop that the Soviets brought back to what the US did?

[frizzled]

39. For the cost of the dead end US manned program vastly more could've been done by robots

Nothing was learned that couldn't have been gained from VASTLY cheaper targeted robotic missions. And they would have led to pathways for robot exploration of other worlds, instead of having to develop those technologies separately at vast cost.

The US spent a significant fraction of its entire GDP getting people to the moon.

Cost of Apollo program: $110 billion today.

Estimated cost of entire USSR Luna program: $4.5 billion today. That's 5% of the cost of Apollo. And that wasn't a dead end.

Fact is the USSR samples were much more important than the American ones. Because that's how we do space exploration today, and how we'll always do it in the future. Robots. The Russians came up with the model for the future. The Americans only beat them by gold-plating an obsolete mode of human exploration.

[FLPanhandle]

41. Again, read some engineering books

Robots and reusable rockets require communications, sensors, and most of all high speed data processing.

The USSR program cost 5% of Apollo and returned probably 0.0001% of the results that was a bad deal.

You need high speed computing power for truly exploring robots. We are just now getting there. The reason Viking lander and Soviet moon lander didn't really do anything is that they didn't have the computing power.

We are just now getting to a point where computers are powerful enough. That's why you are seeing the technology such as reusable rockets now.

NASA had to use men, they couldn't have done the mission without them.

Happy to discuss this with you via messaging as I'm bit of a space buff and know a number of the engineers that worked on Apollo.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

40. Your post was FUCKING USELESS and a waste of time. And...

...you don't know what you're talking about.

[frizzled]

42. Like it or not, Russia won. We're exploring other planets with robots not humans.

America's "victory" on the moon was hollow, since the idea of humans in deep space is simply not practicable.

The future in space belongs to the robots, and the real victor on the moon was the Soviet Luna program, even if they got samples back second. America threw money at obsolete human exploration, Russians did it the right way.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

44. Says only you, comrade. nt

[LanternWaste]

43. I'd stick to the allegation too, despite having no objective sources...

I'd stick to the allegation too, despite having no objective sources on which to predicate your unsupported conclusion.

Being contrary is fun and trendy, even though it often means being a giant, walking ball of inaccuracies, unsupported allegations, and pretense...

[dreamnightwind]

36. Great OP

I'm always amazed that we let this persist:

Sorry but free education works and single payer health care works quite well in other parts of the world as does child and elderly care for all. Most nations in the world are not at war, have minimal militaries and still get on just fine.

How did the U.S. get installed as the military of global capital? And why does this meet so little resistance from U.S. citizens? It's insane. Not only do they not respect our wishes re foreign policy, they use our sons and daughters to do it, and they get us all to pay for it!

Growing up, I was taught all sorts of myths about what a great force we are for peace in the world and for freedom and liberty. As I grew up I gradually figured out what a load that is, and that we are propagandized to believe it by the nexus of corporate and military interests. It was always that way to a certain extent, at east in modern times, I don't know our early history too well, but it's gotten much worse in my lifetime, both from our foreign and our domestic policies.

Our own party's centrists are fully onboard with having U.S. military bases in every corner of the earth, waging multiple and simultaneous wars or whatever euphemsm they are using for war that day. They position themselves slightly on the more doveish side than the kabuki opposition party, to make a slight distinction without changing the nature of power and global control. and our party's reps prefer smaller-scale "interventions" on the down low rather than massive ground wars, it's more civilized, or something.

Wake up people. It doesnt' have to be this way. It isn't generally this way for other countries. Because of our success in WWII, corporate forces have captured our government and are using the immense power of it to do their bidding in every corner of the planet. And they aren't even generous with sharing the proceeds, not that that would make it ok.

I want real substantive change, and I will support candidates who also want, and fight, consistently, for it. No more fake change candidates. You can tell the difference if you try, too many people just find it easier (and sometimes more profitable) to buy into the lies than to honestly look at the system they're supporting and work to regain control of it.

We can do this! We need all the help we can get to do it, but it can be done, and we shouldn't accept compromised phonies who do nothing but support business as usual.

I focused on war but could have done the same rant with a few tweaks to the other issues you listed. People need to wake up to the reality of it and lend a hand to become a country we can rightfully be proud of again.

Thanks for the OP.