Apollo

Couldn’t have had a better present unless you resurrected ol’ Blue Eyes out of the grave to sing that in person. From what I’ve read or seen recently, one of the Apollo astronauts had that on his music tape that each was allowed to bring with him.

We were out vacationing on Hood Canal in July of 1969. We tried to watch the landing on a small black-and-white TV set. But we got almost no picture.

And I do remember my birthday as the day that the Apollo astronauts returned in triumph. As Michael Collins noted, when they went on their world tour, everywhere he went he met people who said “We did it.” There was a sense of universal triumph in this.

It’s so sad to think that we are poisoning generations of the young (and the old) with grievance, with a hatred for America. As my second favorite Jew, Dennis Prager, notes:



We suppose it’s a good idea for humans to migrate to the stars (or at least other planets) so that should anything happen to the earth (such as a big asteroid or comet), mankind would survive. But it's not boulders we need dodge. We’ve so poisoned ourselves on the rock of grievance, I can understand many Mayflowers may one day want to leave this earth. And not because of environmental damage but because we’ve become so corrupt.

After all, people really did leave Europe (and many other places) because they were harsh, sad, violent, and corrupt places where a common man couldn’t catch a break. We’re becoming that.

For a moment, Apollo gave us something more than grievance. And I appreciate that. Congratulations, Neil, wherever you are.

I don't know if this is real or not, but this Audio concept for a rover looks pretty cool:

Probably my favorite astronaut is Buzz Aldrin. I'm not sure why.

An interesting story about him is that it's likely much of his motivation was to please his father....who could never be pleased, even after he had walked on the moon. Buzz was extremely brave, competent, and (as far as I know) a pretty good guy, perhaps made more human and approachable because he wasn't quite as perfect as Neil (who was also a real good guy).

There can be little doubt that if you had to go into space on anything but a buss (that is, anything at all that required significant risk), you couldn't have likely picked two people in the whole of humanity since time began better than Aldrin and Armstrong.

I'm surprised this doesn't include "Fly Me to the Moon", which was a Sinatra standard by then, unless it's listed under a different title.  I wonder how many singers could have put together such an album of songs with "Moon" in the title -- especially if these were songs he had already performed.

I actually saw that show, at least occasionally.  Checking in IMDB, I even found an episode I recognized.

There was an article in Reader's Digest in the 1960s, which a science teacher of mine mentioned in class during the 1964-5 school year, that estimated (based on radio transmissions people heard) that 23 Soviet cosmonauts had died in space at that time. They admitted none. Of course, we have no way of knowing how many (if any) actually died, but this is sort of like Winston Smith putting down the first date in his diary and then mentally discussing whether or not this was accurate in any way.

Robert Heinlein came up with something similar. He and his wife, on different grounds, estimated that the population of Moscow (which they visited in 1960) was about 500,000. He later asked a top officer he knew, who came up with the same estimate for a third reason. Virginia Heinlein based it on births and deaths, something she would ask Russians they met. Robert based it on river traffic. The friend based it on transportation links into the city. I can see flaws in their reasoning; Virginia's estimate doesn't take in-migration into account, and could only be relative to the earlier population anyway. He and his officer friend probably used Western economic standards. But, at any rate, all 3 estimated the city as having a tenth as many people as reference works said.

I don't know the facts, but the problem is that this is inevitable in a system like the Soviet Union with its total Behemoth control of information. Winston Smith expresses similar concerns on many occasions in 1984, such as noting the vast quantities of shoes produced while a large part of the population went barefoot.

Boy, this sounds a lot like the JFK conspiracy theories, and for much the same reason:  the mysterious (well, JFK's wasn't that mysterious; we know he was shot) death of a popular hero.  Distrust of government also helps explain it; the JFK conspiracy fans have generally been radical leftists, and it's easy to imagine why there was a lot of distrust of Brezhnev the re-Stalinizer -- though Soviet slaves would have had to be very careful about expressing doubts.