How do you feel about the 40th anniversary of moon landings?

I myself do not fell excited in any way. That may be connected with the fact that I could not have vitnised it live because I am to young.
If the moon landing is fake or not? Though there were/still are a lot of conspirecy teorys, I do belive that the moon landing has happened. In my oppinion a great acheavment nad proof that science is developing and we are moving on with various new discoveries. So then again, mabye I do not feel any excitement, but for cirten I can say, I am proud.

After all these years, I still think it was an outstanding technological and scientific achievement to put men on the moon in 1969. I also believe that it was a significant step or advancement in the field of space exploration for that time period.

I’ve seen the controversial documentary “Something Happened On The Way To The Moon” about the whole thing being faked along with video and photographic evidence that is supposed to prove that the moon landings never happened. Sorry, I’m not buying it. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted an American flag in genuine moon dust 238,857 miles from earth on July 20, 1969.

Why has it taken soo long to put man/woman back to the moon ?
Is it true if you look at the moon via telescope you can see the flag and lander remains ?

I think they don’t consider a returning to moon because it doesn’t exist any reason to do that.About the telescope I don’t know

But there was reasoning for trying to put all those people to the moon , and land 6 times on its surface i think 6 times was once not enough for them ? could have gathered all the information they needed with the one landing .

@sandystrachan
that was political posturing. it was during the cold war, remember?

There is not much to prove after you do it once tho , the game is up no1 can take the claim from you .

maybe it wasn’t political,maybe they landed 6 times on the moon because they didn’t want to risk astronauts’ life by gathering all the information at once(in 1969 the risks were not very understood)

Upset that we haven’t made any major advancements. We were once so full of hope, what the fuck happened? Landing on Mars was just a step away back in ‘69, now it seems lightyears away.

Hey, at least we have a President that believes in science. Let’s see if that trend continues.

The other reason for the 6 landings was that each was accomplishing something different. The first was just to get there.

The second was: First precise manned landing on the Moon. Recovered part of Surveyor 3 probe. (They wanted to study the effects of the extended duration on the probe)

The third was a geological survey to the Fra Mauro formation.

The fourth was “the first of what were termed “J missions”, long duration stays on the Moon with a greater focus on science than had been possible on previous missions” and the first with a lunar rover.

The fifth was another “J” mission, with an exploration of the Descartes Highlands, and a subsatellite used for magnetic readings

And the final landing brought an actual scientist along, and did a whole lot of geological surveys. The geologist was also a bit of a goofball, if you watch the videos =)

Each landing learned something new, and the moon isn’t homogenous, you couldn’t just take what they learned in the Sea of Tranquility and apply it to the highlands (which they thought, originally, were volcanic in origin, turn out to be impact origin)

From Wikipedia although I don’t know how accurate this information may really be: The U.S. has committed to return to the moon by 2018.

I thought it was 2020 when they plan to return , wasn;t isn’t most of the people ( scientists) from England / Wales that help(ed) make the rockets and other things then U.S.A took everything and classed it there own , same with the Atomic bomb.

It’s all bollocks and never happened…too many questions unanswered and things which don’t add up IMO

walshy

I think going again is an incredible waste of taxpayer money. Our economy is in dire straits and we are spending billions of dollars on sending people to the moon or mars? I agree with the satelite stations, and believe they are necessary, but I don’t see a purpose in sending space ships to other planets.

Well NASA is celebrating:

from the AP
The astronauts aboard the shuttle-station complex will celebrate the 40th anniversary of man’s first moon landing with their own spacewalk.

Late Monday morning, David Wolf and Thomas Marshburn will venture out to hook spare parts to the international space station. It will be the second spacewalk in three days, and take place 40 years to the day that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.

The space station crew, meanwhile, will spend Monday working on a broken toilet. One of the station’s two commodes malfunctioned Sunday

For the time being, the 13 astronauts are lining up at the two good toilets, one on the station and one on Endeavour. NASA says it hasn’t yet become a serious problem.

Watch the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon and then try and tell me those men are lying and it was a hoax. Bet you can’t, cause it wasn’t.

I see a purpose in continuing space travel. I’ve said this before in another question: Think of the day that man landed on the moon – the whole world stopped and looked, and congratulated each other. I think it’s a way for nations to create healthy rivalry that therefore produces more research and knowledge, or for them to work together and compile their research and knowledge. Instead of having an American NASA, we should create an international administration. That way, the costs would be shared and the countries could use the other money for other things.

Hw do I feel? OLD. I was five when that happened and it’s one of the first things I remember seeing on television.

I was 15 years old when man first landed on the moon and it was an awesome event. Over the years I was fortunate enough to know several of NASA’s top scientists, engineers and program managers and not only am I certain that the landings were real, but were it not for budget restrictions we would be venturing well beyond where we are today. There are no limits to the ideas from brilliant minds…only monetary limits to fully exercising those ideas to fruition. See ya….wtf (my initials)

I believe it completely.

I find it very exciting because it shows what can be done when things go right and are left alone to do so.

I also think it was one hell of an achievement given the technology of the day.

The whole hoax thing is so stupid.

I think those guys were remarkably brave. Have you seen the lander on display? It looks like it was made with duct tape and tin foil.

I asked my Mom and Dad about the landing just this weekend. They both clearly remember staying up until 2am to watch – it had an enormous impact on them both.

It simply reminds me of billions of dollars of wasted money. I wonder what the world would be like if we had spent all that money on dealing with the problems on the planet we actually live on.

Elated. Because I know we can do it again. And go beyond.

i can’t cite examples (other than Tang), but the space program led to many innovations that led to practical uses on Earth. I made a weak effort to find numbers online and while they aren’t readily accessible further effort would no doubt lead to them. for now, keep in mind that much of scientific effort takes place purely for the knowledge gained from such activities, not economic gain.

and someone above asked if the US space program was enabled by Brit’s, including possibly a Welsh person or two. this is basic stuff, but the US benefited greatly by the efforts of peoples from around the world (including quite possibly a Welsh person or two), but the efforts of German engineers “purloined” in the immediate aftermath of WW II were of particular benefit. I will beg the question about if that means the US doesn’t deserve credir for its space efforts.

p.s. we also didn’t invent rock n roll…geez…

Amazed and proud. I remember it when it happened. We were at my farher’s company picnic at Elk Grove park. We brought along our little black and white portable television and everyone gathered around it to watch Neil Armstrong take his first and subsequent steps on the lunar surface. Most of you on this site are too young to have been around on 20 July 1969. Believe me when I tell you that it was an awesome (and I mean that word in the traditional sense) event. A dream of many centuries was finally fulfilled.

I just posted this alt explanation on an older thread. Pretty fascinating.

@syz, I’m not really interested in getting into a prolonged debate, but I can’t help but comment on how hoax=stupid and a duct-tape-and-tin-foil-lunar-module=Buck Rogers heroism. Not to mention plausibilty.

@Astro, that’s a great story, and I don’t mean to diminish that experience (or similar ones posted) by any means.

P.S. We accidentally used the original tapes to record “All in the Family.” Sorry.- NASA

Of course it was real.

It was amazing and thrilling, a high point of my youth to see it live on TV.

We haven’t been back because our national (budget) priorities changed. But this event was the culmination of a long, slow buildup commencing after Sputnik launched in 1957. Even in those times of tumultuous change, this event was a standout.

I remember exactly where I was at the time. It sure made me proud.

Even the Russians with all the ill will and cold war propaganda didn’t say anything negative. Of course not, they watched and monitored the craft the whole time.

The NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been sending pictures of the different sites as it passes overhead and maps the moon. Go to the NASA site to see. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/main/index.html It shows the shadow of the flag.

@sandystrachan Amateur astronomers can regularly see 1 km resolution on the moon through the earth’s atmosphere. The flag and lander are too small – so far. The big telescopes might be able to do it.
I know they regularly bounce laser signals off the mirrors placed on the moon for distance measurements. Any Grad student with access to a high power laser and detector can do it. Look up EME. That is for radio waves.

Anyways, i get some feeling of pride, because i know that the US would not have made it before the Russians without German engineering excellence.

FYI: http://lifehacker.com/5318624/google-earth-adds-the-moon-to-celebrate-the-lunar-landing

@ragingloli the russians purloined their own german engineering excellence. why do you think it wasn’t the case that germany beat everyone? what i mean is it takes a village, you know?

i failed to add that ordinarily many of the purloined germans should have been tried as war criminals. cold war concerns overrode concerns for justice in their cases.

@ avalmez
Russia only used the German engineers to develop the V rockets a bit further. Everything after that was the work of their own engineers, most notably Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.
The US at first tried to develop the rockets themselves, however their attempts failed utterly. That was when they got von Braun to take over.

@kevbo – I was just complaining that they didn’t alter their logo for this. Thanks for the link!

@kevbo Jay Weidner’s explanations (and particularly complaints about depth of field) fall apart when you start looking at the high-res scans of the photos taken on the moon. =)

Everything looks like it’s in focus at 300px wide

I watched a tv show the other day which claims we never really landed on the moon at all. The show claims the moon landings are a hoax.

That’s just dumb.

What will you say when someone claims there was never a Barack Obama and the election of our 44th president was a hoax?

@tinyfaery

“I wonder what the world would be like if we had spent all that money on dealing with the problems on the planet we actually live on.”

It would be a much, much, much, much less technologically developed world in which far, far, far, far more people suffer and live horrible lives. And it would continue to be such a world so long as the populous continually failed to understand the undeniable importance of scientific exploration.

@mattbrowne lurve, brother. i love the “we” in your answer as well!

For anyone else who might say that space exploration is a waste of money, you might want to check out this and this.

@Ivan There is no way you could know that.

@tinyfaery

What is the point of science?

This has no bearing on how different the world would be, either technologically or sociologically. Landing (or pretending to land) on the moon has not advanced humankind very far. However, it is nice to pretend it has done so.

It would be shameful to abandon the space program.
We don’t spend enough on space exploration as it is and it’s ignorant to say it has no value.

People said similar things about the development of air travel.

It makes feel old! I watched it on TV as it was happening! Yi!!!

It happened a good 10 years before my birth. I’ve never lived in a world in which man hasn’t landed on the moon. Therefore, I’m sorry to say, it doesn’t feel “special” to me. It just feels normal. I almost envy the folks old enough to watch it as it happened the first time.

@tinyfaery, nor is there any way you could know that the world would be a better place without space travel. Why worry about it? It’s happened, and most of the things you use in your every day life is thanks to NASA and technological advancements from investments into space travel, right down to the bandaids you use on your cut fingers.

I just wish I could have seen the landing. It would have been the best day of my life.

@avalmez
Yes they should, but neither side really cared about war crimes and justice. The Soviets certainly didn’t and the US didn’t either. The people who ordered to drop nukes on civilians should have been tried as war criminals as well, instead they are celebrated as heroes.

There have been many conspiracy theories, and yes they might be fake, but personally I’m more willing to accept they were real. It’s probably easier to do the real thing than to fake it. But there have been some questions raised, some valid.

As for the morality behind it, I’m actually all for space exploration. I think that as a species we need to eventually move in that direction, and even though the driving force was Cold War politics in our case, I think that overall the result was positive for Mankind (I actually think that Cold War was overall good for Mankind, but that’s a different story). And yes, I know you can feed a thousand African kids with the price of a rocket. You can also feed a thousand African kids with the price of 10 soap operas, or one hollywood movie, or 32 sex transplant operations. But we set our priorities on a personal and global basis, and globally speaking I think space exploration is a long-term priority. For me, so is art, but everyone is allowed to disagree. People have every right to feel stronger about the environment, or their new mobile phone, or pensions, or better roads, or criminality, or better education. What a boring world it would be if we all agreed.

@ragingloli nukes…another example where german excellence contributed generously. here’s where we should all agree, however, that the world benefited greatly by our having developed nukes first, ahead of germany. and, yes, it was terrible that the bomb was ever used, but not necessarily the wrong thing to do, however easy it may be to make that claim. finally, where war is concerned, it’s the victors who get to decide who the criminals are and generally it’s the other guys, the bad guys, that are the criminals. now, peace and lurve else we could go on endlessly to no good end.

@Zendo in the process of trying to do so however, plenty of very valuable advances have been made, that’s what you’re not getting. while the few days Buzz and Co. were actually in space and on the moon didn’t really have any major effects, the technology that was required to do so forced mankind to push the limits of what they were capable of, landing on the moon accomplished A LOT.

I feel unmanned space exploration is something we should keep doing. Manned exploration needs to be taken with baby steps.
The cost of manned space travel is enormous, just keeping them alive and the redundancy needed to back things up in case something breaks. 8 back up computers in the space Shuttle for starters. It took 10% of our gross national budget to get a man on the moon.
The international space station is a waste of money. We have not learned much about human survival in space since they walked on the moon. Would rather have seen the ISS sitting on the surface of the moon.

Sending a man to mars would be suicide. My money is on, they will not come back alive.
Going to the Moon again is good in that if we can live on the moon and manufacturing on the moon to get to other places. It will become much cheaper. And, hopefully in time we will figure out how to live longer in space to go to places like Mars and beyond. Also any problems that might happen. A three day ride back to earth is much more survivable then a 6 month trip.

I do know that wether or not NASA exists, we would have still had band-aids. We might also have no poverty or global warming. I’m willing to give up the band aids.

“We might also have no poverty or global warming”
We would have both whether or not nasa existed, as it is next to impossible that the money not spent on space exploration would have been spent on combating either porverty or global warming.
Besides, global warming is a global phenomenon, the entire planet has played its part in its creation, so the US spending a bit more money on combating it, even if they used the save money to that purpose, would not have prevented its existence.
And poverty is a natural result of capitalism, so the non existence of NASA would not have alleviated that problem. On the contrary, the technologies resulting from the space program have created a lot of business opportunites.

You all act like you definitively know what would have happened. I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure the human mind would have gotten around to technological advances soon enough. And I am no believer of progress for progress sake.

the lack of appreciation for our space program is somewhat startling on her I must admit…

@tinyfaery

You don’t seem to understand how technological advancement works. That’s why I asked you what the point of science is (you have yet to answer).

Let’s say that I payed you a billion dollars in 1930 to develop a really efficient oven. You could spend your entire life improving upon convection, electrical coils, etc, but you would never come up with the microwave oven. For that, we needed to spend tons of money researching microwave radiation.

You see, you can’t just say that someone eventually would have come up with the microwave even if we wouldn’t have spent so much money researching other bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. We spend lots of money on scientific research, not because there are consequences of research that we foresee. We spend lots of money on scientific research for the consequences that we don’t yet see.

We didn’t go to the moon just to show off, hit a golf ball, and drive a rover around for a few hours. We went to the moon to progress the boundaries of human exploration and knowledge. We went to the moon to inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers. We went to the moon to develop new and unforeseen technologies which now dominate your life without you even noticing it.

The space race was the single most important scientific endeavor that this nation, and perhaps this entire species, has ever accomplished. I’m sorry, but for you claim that it was worthless is magnificently ignorant.

And why was it necessary to invent a microwave? Or the internet, or computers, or cars, or anything? None of these things have advanced humanity. We are still egotistical, self-centered, destroyers of nature and those unlike us, we pillage and accuse and think that we are the only important thing in existence. Can NASA help us with that?

@tinyfaery
when they discover the first extraterrestrial civilisation.

@tinyfaery

I’m assuming you’d rather us be egotistical, self-centered, destroyers-of-nature-and-those-unlike-us, pillagers who live in poverty until we die at age 40.

I don’t know about you, but allowing people to live longer, healthier, more comfortable lives is a good thing in my opinion.

@tinyfaery
oh and for the record, the internet has advanced humanity. Easy access to information made us more knowledgeable. having access to countless different opinions and sharing one’s own opinion made us more tolerant towards other mindsets. Forming social networks on the net strengthens societal cohesion.

You can’t stop technology. Why shouldn’t humanity try to advance itself?

I answered. Don’t push your opinions down my throat. Like I said, egotism. Y’all must be right.~

I feel very good, knowing that science has came a long way

400,000 people worked on that project, and every dollar spent was spent here on Earth.

For something that got thrown into space.

I am watching “From the Earth to the Moon” very interesting.

Only a few thousand pounds of stuff got thrown into space. The rest of it was spent here on earth for research, education and inspiring guys like me to go into Engineering. They showed that scientists and engineers can be heroes too.

worriedguy – I totally get what you are saying. I dig the space program, growing up in the 60’s and 70’s.
Always wanted to be an astronaut. Lot’s of smart people go into and come out of the program.
But, I would rather, at this point in history, leave space exploration to the un manned type.
Putting more of that time and energy into what we need to survive here on earth. OK cool, we climbed the mountain because it was there. Now it’s time to come home and cut the lawn.
Looking back at 1969. If today we injected 10% of our gross national budget into solar power and environmental cleanup. We would all have affordable and clean energy. Freeing up our money to do other things.
My mom always said, “clean your room before you go out and play.”

@ChazMaz

“Putting more of that time and energy into what we need to survive here on earth.”

Space exploration is putting time and energy into what we need to survive on Earth. See my above comments.

“We didn’t go to the moon just to show off, hit a golf ball, and drive a rover around for a few hours.”
Actually that is just what we did. It came down to a cold war thing. If it was not for the Russians pushing the issue we probably would not have gone to the moon.
Or should I say not as quickly.
“We went to the moon to progress the boundaries of human exploration and knowledge.”
That was part of the process of getting there and an after thought.

I am not taking away the accomplishments of what we discovered in the process.
But space exploration, especially from what we now have learned. Can directly be applied to living here on earth without a 3 trillion dollar ride to mars.
As I said, un manned space exploration is a good thing.

@ChazMaz I agree with you. Manned missions are very expensive for the payback. Back in 1969 we did not have the computing power to autonomously handle issues that might come up. Now we have all kinds of capability.
By the way, this is not to debate the Iraq, Afghan, expenditure of $1.2 trillion to date. But, for that kind of money we could have financed a couple of moon missions or had a nationwide wide high speed rail system or even a health care system. On the other hand, military expenditures advance science too.

“Now we have all kinds of capability.”

Yes, we do, because of manned space flight.

Actually, if we had gotten a man into space and orbited the earth first we never would have raced the way we did to get there.

@Ivan Absolutely!

One of the major contributions of the space program to society at large is miniaturization. There were three computers on board a typical Apollo lunar mission, each with 2 kilowords (approx 8 Kilobytes) of RAM and 36 kilowords (144 Kilobytes) of ROM. The Apollo missions were also the first in which NASA used integrated circuits in the computers.

Compare those memories (measured in Kilobytes (Kilo=1000) to the PC, Mac or even phone you’re reading this on. It is not unusual for a handheld device to run memory in the Gigabyte (1,000,0000,000 or one billion) or Terabyte range (1,000,000,000,000, one trillion).