This - oh, utterly, thisI've had a little too much to drink, and I've found myself arguing with lunar conspiracy theorists elsewhere on the intertubes:
'382kg of moon rock (which conveniently matches up perfectly with the 0.32kg obtained robotically by the Soviets), giant boosters launching at regular intervals into the skies in a if-it's-not-launching-into-orbit-then-what-the-hell-are-they-doing kind of way, endless photography and film of both the fantastic and the banal, plasma-scarred re-entry modules scattered through museums across the world, retro-reflectors bouncing photons back to any inquisitive physicists caring to check, not one but six missions landing twelve astronauts on the moon in increasingly elaborate excursions, with moon-buggies and improved cameras and ever-advancing amounts of science and geology and so forth...
'Quite frankly, if someone wanted to fake such an achievement (and ongoing series of achievements), then it would have been fucking well easier to do the real thing. To fake one mission might have been vaguely imaginable, but why the hell would anyone think to fake Apollo 16's Shadow Rock, or remember that astronauts should see cosmic rays with their eyes closed, or pretend to pack duct tape in case an astronaut broke the dust-guard on the wheel of the Apollo 17 moon buggy, or figure out a detailed means for the astronauts to shit into plastic bags while in weightlessness, or joke around with 'heavenly bodies' taken from Playboy in the astronauts' checklists for Apollo 12...
'NASA did it. We did it. Humankind did it - this ridiculous, fantastic, quite frankly ludicrous enterprise which put human beings on our only natural satellite, to explore and poke around and do whatever it is we love to do - and we have to go back. We have to return before the rest of the remaining astronauts who were involved in this crazy venture are all dead - we need to connect with the past, to progress and see what implausible things we can do in the future.'
Neil Armstong isn't the first Apollo astronaut to die, but he was the first. Your post most definitely clicked.
(And apologies for length. Fnar.)
(,
Sun 26 Aug 2012, 10:54,
archived)
'382kg of moon rock (which conveniently matches up perfectly with the 0.32kg obtained robotically by the Soviets), giant boosters launching at regular intervals into the skies in a if-it's-not-launching-into-orbit-then-what-the-hell-are-they-doing kind of way, endless photography and film of both the fantastic and the banal, plasma-scarred re-entry modules scattered through museums across the world, retro-reflectors bouncing photons back to any inquisitive physicists caring to check, not one but six missions landing twelve astronauts on the moon in increasingly elaborate excursions, with moon-buggies and improved cameras and ever-advancing amounts of science and geology and so forth...
'Quite frankly, if someone wanted to fake such an achievement (and ongoing series of achievements), then it would have been fucking well easier to do the real thing. To fake one mission might have been vaguely imaginable, but why the hell would anyone think to fake Apollo 16's Shadow Rock, or remember that astronauts should see cosmic rays with their eyes closed, or pretend to pack duct tape in case an astronaut broke the dust-guard on the wheel of the Apollo 17 moon buggy, or figure out a detailed means for the astronauts to shit into plastic bags while in weightlessness, or joke around with 'heavenly bodies' taken from Playboy in the astronauts' checklists for Apollo 12...
'NASA did it. We did it. Humankind did it - this ridiculous, fantastic, quite frankly ludicrous enterprise which put human beings on our only natural satellite, to explore and poke around and do whatever it is we love to do - and we have to go back. We have to return before the rest of the remaining astronauts who were involved in this crazy venture are all dead - we need to connect with the past, to progress and see what implausible things we can do in the future.'
Neil Armstong isn't the first Apollo astronaut to die, but he was the first. Your post most definitely clicked.
(And apologies for length. Fnar.)
Nicely put.I agree entirely.
(
Black Moon Not cracked, I'm all up to be.,
Fri 31 Aug 2012, 3:10,
archived)