Happy July 20th!

...or July 21st, depending on your timezone.

49 years ago the first manned Moon landing was accomplished. It is one of my favorite moments in history (To learn about my favorite you may have to wait for December the 9th), and to celebrate I've re-edited Hoofprints to be a little less... ah, draft-y.

I hope you'll join me in raising a toast to these gentlemen.

Cheers!

Comments

[zimmerwald1915]

Magnificent desolation.

[MrNumbers]

I don't really see the big deal. They just got really high, then came crashing back down. Just like everyone else in the late 60's.

[Oliver]

You just had to mention that when I’m all out of alcohol…

[horizon]

I was born on the eighth anniversary of their achievement. I've always had a great fondness for it, on multiple levels.

[GhostOfHeraclitus]

4904449
See, if you went to Galacon I'd totally _bring_ you booze. Fine, aged booze, no less.

4904478
Oh! Happy Birthday, horizon! As if the day needed any more reasons to be awesome...
:)

4904444
:P

Also I don't think they like 'crashed.' Bad connotations. I believe they prefer "Descended Onto Holy Terra On WINGS OF FIRE!" or words to that effect.

4904437
They should have sent a poe---oh. I see they did. Very good. Carry on.

(Seriously, though, 'magnificent desolation' is a very poetic turn of phrase.)

[Lurks-no-More]

All hail, and cheers!

[Manga Shoggoth]

One of my earliest memories: I was five at the time, and my parents woke me up specially to see the landing. if course, at that age I didn't really understand exactly what was going on, but I remember watching on the old black and white TV set.

I think I'll read Hoofprints again in celebration...

[MrNumbers]

4904495

A common misconception to the common person stands:
That friction caused the fireball when Apollo came to land
His chariot a second sun that streaked across the sky
A pity then the common man knows not the reason why

We launched a metal rock-nest thing so very hard and fast
That quantum relativity means we sent it to the past
It's not friction from re-entry when combustion transpires
but air cannot move fast enough; compression caused the fire!

When you make the molecules all bunch up too too quick
They tend to get a fever like you've made them very sick
They stress out under pressure, and NASA's very bad at waiting
If one must be so impatient, try ceramic ablative plating!

EDIT:
According to someone else's maths, they were moving so fast that they probably became 2.5e-5 seconds behind Earth. Neat!

[Luna Aeterna Solutae]

Merry Moonmas!

[Georg]

Little known fact: Every astronaut on the Apollo roster was a member of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Turtles, the most famous/infamous of which was Wally Schirra, who received the quiz while on the Mercury-Atlas 8 mission.

[TheJediMasterEd]

All in the sea of sky, my love
The moon-ships sail and fly, my love
And many are their kind, my love
Though all need but one wind
To make their starry ways
To make their starry ways

pre00.deviantart.net/bddc/th/pre/f/2012/198/7/a/the_mare_nubium_sets_sail_by_harwicks_art-d57iaof.jpg
--Harwicks-Art

Adventure strange! No such in Story we
New or old, true or feigned, see...
He would not use nor trust Icarian wings
Lest they should prove deceitful things,
For had he fallen, it had been wondrous high-
Not from, but from above the sky...
...Yet doth he briskly run
And bold the danger overcome;
Who, as he leapt, with joy related soon
How happy he o'er-leapt the Moon!

--Thomas Traherne

And now the matchless deed's achieved,
DETERMINED, DARED and DONE.
--Christopher "Kit" Smart

[nemryn]

[Dan]

Check out the series From Earth to the Moon hosted by Tom Hanks. Last I checked it was totally on dailymotion.

[Dan]

derpicdn.net/img/2014/5/28/639043/large.jpeg

[Misplaced Mage]

4904525
This is going to date me as well, I know, but…

One of my earliest and favorite childhood memories is of a cottage lacking in air conditioning on a warm night in late July. My parents woke up my younger brother and I and brought us out to the main room of the cottage. There, in the darkness, my parents sat on a love seat and my brother and I tried to find a comfortable way to sit, lie, or kneel on the rattan mat that covered the floor. There, we watched a 12” portable black and white television tuned to the local CBS affiliate. The reception wasn’t great and the image was washed-out, but the broadcast had travelled an extraordinarily long distance and had overcome more than a few issues to reach us.

And that was how I, too, first saw Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon—live.

[Southpaw]

Dating myself, yay! I was five years old at the time. My parents said they'd put me to bed before-hand, which I count as a personal tragedy. << cue drama <<

Still, I can imagine the emotions that everyone felt when Neil stepped onto the surface of the moon. The act of it still amazes me.

[Emptybee]

4904737 I second this. From the Earth to the Moon is simply magnificent, HBO at it's finest.

[Nambuk]

Heh, those early astronauts were so incredibly ballsy.
Dedicating and trusting their lives to a pursuit so...rushed, and inherantly deadly.
But the dream, and what that must have felt like - to have such a profoundly different perspective of the world than everyone else, because of that accomplishment and the view.

[Dan]

4904813

Did they ever figure out what went wrong with the Gemini 8 maneuvering thrusters?

[Emptybee]

4905572
Not definitively from what I've read. Best guess seems to be an electrical short caused by static electricity.