We Came In Peace For All Mankind

[filkertom]

The answer to both the question of Life, The Universe, And Everything and the question, "How many years ago was the first lunar landing?" is... forty-two.

Therefore, please submit either your favorite memory of the space program, an excellent web site for space information (besides the obvious two), and/or a favorite quote from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.

Comments

[baka-kit.livejournal.com]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

[wcg.livejournal.com]

http://heritage.stsci.edu/

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

My Dad would wake up my sister and me at oh-dark-30 so we could watch together all the launchings of the space program on TV. I have wonderful memories of the three of us sitting on the sofa, dressed in jammies, holding our collective breath while we watched a shining metal cylinder blast off into the dark sky.

Yes, I am that old. *wince* But those are lovely memories. My Dad is gone now but he never lost his litle boy enthusiasm for the Space Program...and neither did I.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

hey, being that old beats the alternative. And why *should* one lose one's enthusiasm for something that has the potential to change the worlds. Plural.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

I completely agree.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Nothing can top the actual first step onto the Moon, in my memories. I'm willing and wanting new memories that try to compete. Langrange points, anyone? Permanent Lunar settlement? Manned mission to Mars? To infinity and beyond!

ETA: A site I'd forgotten until pointed at it by Bill Nye on FB: The Planetary Society

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[sdelmonte]

I go to Space.com often during the day. It's a bit commercial sometimes, like when it ran a feature about the aliens of Green Lantern - its owners also own the comic book new site Newsarama.com - but it has generally good coverage of the space program and astronomy news, and offers some debunking of bad science news.

"It must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

Favorite memory: that July 4 when the nascent Internet nearly crashed as the world rushed to view that first image from the Mars Pathfinder mission.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I was there for that internet near-crash; if you had a .edu address in Dixie your traffic probably came through a router that was two minutes' walk from my office. holy cats.

My first memory - ever - was of seeing Apollo 11 on the pad. But my favorite one was the first time somebody got to space without government funding: June 21, 2004, SpaceShipOne with Mike Melvill aboard.

"Something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."

Strangely, I don't *have* a favorite website. I suppose the one I most often go to is NASA TV, but after Thursday, meh? (I just want to make sure Atlantis gets home safe.) I'm *hoping* my favorite website will be Virgin Galactic, or something even cooler we haven't dreamed of yet.

*edited to get the icon right*

Project Gemini -Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 rendezvous

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

The first high quality color photographs of space ships in orbit. I first saw them in the April 1966 National Geographic.

Gemini 6, the second launch was shut down on the pad during its first launch attempt while I watched on black and white TV. It made it up for the rendezvous with Gemini 7 a few days later. They came within inches of each other while traveling 18,000 mph around the earth.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

Some years ago, my job at the time (tech writer at Hubble Space Telescope HQ) took me to the office of a senior NASA executive. On her wall was a poster blown up from a page of the July, 1979 issue of Analog. It showed a BW version of my icon underlying the text of this sonnet:


July 20, 1969

They made it -- we all made it, just a bit
Lke Vikings leaving runes and little more
Taking the lesser light where God had placed it
To show ourselves just what a heaven's for

They loped like diving-suited kangaroos
Over that sterile world of one night stands
Driving golf balls and moon buggies to amuse
The children, while the stars slipped through our hands

They're gone now to their shrinks and shrunken space
The praise is theirs; 'tis ours to wonder why
The world's still flat, and dreams are out of grace
So I, believing less each summer, pry open

That lost last year to see the bright
Earth-jewel, smooth and blue, in velvet night

W. W. Cooper


Edited for spacing.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

Another reason to love this day: it's stevemb's birthday! In his honor, I point out that when we finally reach another solar system, our Feline Overlords will be there already (http://icanhascheezburger.com/2011/07/19/funny-pictures-everythings-possible-with-catnip/).


Edited for HTML fail.

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

Astronaut Anders grabbing and using the color camera to take unscheduled photos of that first earthrise Apollo 8 witnessed, and later we witnessed.

-Tim (mostly harmless)

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I just typed a long comment and lost it. Perhaps the computer is trying to tell me something. Summary: I'm divided about 50/50 between the awe & reverence most of my SF friends seem to have, and the attitude in Harry Nilsson's song, "Spaceman."

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Goodbye, and thanks for the fish.

Also, I do remember the moon landing for an unusual reason: My grandmother was born 9/20/1886 (yes, in the 19th century) and the moon landing was the last great invention/event she saw. Her life was bracketed basically by the dedication of the Statue of Liberty (October 1886) and the moon landing; she died not quite a month later.

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

watching the moon landing and having Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon for the first time at 10:56:20 PM Eastern Time.

Several hours later, I was still watching. My parents yelled at me to go to bed. "But mom, dad, there's a man walking on the moon!"

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

There is a trick, or rather a knack, to flying. The knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

After my grandfather died and my mother, grandma and I were going through some things in the house, we found a box in the back of a closet that had some copies in it of his old work stuff. Including this (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/First_View_of_Earth_from_Moon.jpg). I knew the pictures were there somewhere (just low-res copies, but really all of them were low-res copies at the time) but hadn't ever seen them in person, and then, there it was.

[ebenbrooks.livejournal.com]

Arthur Dent's song "Take Me Apart" from Life, the Universe, and Everything, set to music by me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_IWosrJVMU

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

There was a cartoon in the Detroit News, I think after the splashdown, when the news was buzzing about the lunar samples brought back. It showed one guy running screaming with his hands still inside the torn-out Waldoes, and another guy holding something up with an annoyed expression, with the caption "Okay, who put the plastic creepy creatures in the rock samples?"

I was 13 at the time, and I remembered playing with Creepy Crawlers, and I found that absolutely hilarious. I think I still have the clipping around here somewhere, but it could be in any of several boxes.

[gorgeousgary]

Favorite memory: Seeing the launch of STS-51D in person.

Little-known fact: Most of the 3 years I spent as a word processing/desktop publishing temp after I lost my 1st engineering job was spent working for Goddard Space Flight Center contractors.

[unclekage.livejournal.com]

Not so much a favorite as a moment that's never going to leave me.

"Challenger, go at throttle-up."

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

My best memory: Man first lands on the moon. I wonder what the big deal is since we go to other planets all the time on TV (Star Trek, etc). What can I say, I was 4 years old at the time.

My worst memory: in the Navy, my ship was passing by Florida at the time of the Challenger disaster. My ship spent 3 days being involved with that search-and-rescue (given that we were an oiler, we spent more time refueling other ships than actually searching ourselves).

[ladycheron.livejournal.com]

I remember the moon landing -- and getting to stay up WAY past my 10-year-old bedtime to watch Neil set foot on the moon. I was reading Podkayne of Mars while we waited for the hatch to open.

I remember Gemini launches, every Apollo launch. I watched the last launch of Atlantis, and thought, "When did I become so blase that I missed most of the shuttle launches?"

I remember sitting on the edge of my seat, with my fingernails biting into my palms the first time a shuttle came in for a landing; cheering like a fool when they touched down safe.

I remember a cop tapping on my window, asking me if I was OK, as tears streamed down my face. I put the window down and told him, "We just lost another shuttle." I never did make it to that doctor's appointment, it was the better part of an hour before I could see clearly enough to drive.

And as I watch the US Manned Space program wrap up, I remember, "Don't Panic" and look to private enterprise to keep us going into space.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

My favorite memory of the space program is the program itself... Because all it will be, now... A memory.

[capt-video.livejournal.com]

I remember watching Enterprise, with her Boeing 747 "taxi", land at Lambert Airport. For the few days that she was there, I could look out my bedroom window at the future.

I remember a cheap transistor radio and an empty high school classroom, listening to Challenger die.

I remember my Mother's voice on the answering machine telling me we had lost another shuttle... I don't think my feet touched the floor as I ran for the TV... (Listening to the coverage of that event made me realize that I could not trust or believe media news coverage)

I remember holding my breath, waiting to be sure John Glenn's shuttle made it to space safely.

I remember cheering till I was hoarse when SpaceShipOne won the X Prize, because here was a new future...

[smparadox.livejournal.com]

Arthur Dent challenging Thor to a fight by asking him to step outside - of a flying party soaring through the stratosphere.