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"First Man" ...revisited: YouSuck-MZ



 
 
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  #1  
Old September 20th 18, 07:18 AM posted to sci.space.history
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Default "First Man" ...revisited: YouSuck-MZ

Huge week this week with Elon Musk's announcement that Yusaku 'YouSuck/MZ' Maezawa is slated to be SpaceX's first paying customer on the BFR to fly to the Moon.

Here is a question that I am intrigued by, yet no one asks...

Who was the first person on the Moon who didn't kill anyone?

Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first person to step on the Moon.. And he did this, famously, as a civilian. And of the 12, the very last one to step onto the Moon, Jack Schmitt, was the only person to walk on the Moon to have never spent a day as a military person.

24 people flew out to the Moon, and Schmitt was the only one of them who had never been in the military. Yet Schmitt did receive military training. About a years worth.

With Monday's announcement, we are now in anticipation of having the first human beings with absolutely no military training to fly out to the Moon. And one of the most amazing things about Yusaku's announcement was that he wants to go with a bunch of artists. He sees this to be a mission that can inspire World Peace. And he is so committed to this vision that he has made the astoundingly generous offer to pay for the seats of the artists who will join him.

Of course, art is something that is available to any and all human beings. Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean was a Navy fighter pilot turned professional artist. And Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden was an Air Force fighter pilot who published a poetry book on his experiences. As that generation completely dies off, it is possible that we will learn of even more artistic endeavors by those who have been to the Moon.

In other current Space Policy news, there is the push by Donald Trump to create a separate US Space Force. And this has received backing by prominent people like Neil deGrasse Tyson.

It is ironic that NdT shares the same first name as the first person to step on the Moon. Neil Armstrong is one who is remembered for promoting world peace with the iconic words he chose to speak with his first step. He recognized it as being far more than an accomplishment of one single person, or even one single nation. He told the world that his first step was a singular accomplishment for all of mankind.

'-kind' is right there in the word he used. It harkens to the concept of kindness, and treating each other with mutual respect. It harkens to the concept of how all human beings are of a kindred spirit.

Yet there was a mixed message. Neil & Buzz planted the American flag. And that act served as a reminder of how the Space Race as a whole was a contest for the very survival of polarized nations. Nations with thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other, ready to vaporize millions of fellow human beings at a moment's notice.

Neil & Buzz themselves had military backgrounds where they lived as warriors flying missions with the goal of killing human beings of the Korean variety. Buzz got his first taste of fame by appearing in Life Magazine a full decade before he got selected as a NASA astronaut. It showed his gun camera footage of him destroying a Korean fighter pilot's jet aircraft. One of the famous Korean War stories about Neil Armstrong is how during one bombing mission he got shot at and he ended up flying into anti-aircraft wires which sliced off a section of his jet's wingtip. His aircraft was too badly damaged to land, so he had to eject.

It is told as a survival story of Neil. But no one talks about all the people he killed by dropping his bombs on them that day. And no one talks about the people Neil & Buzz killed on their many other combat missions.

Astronauts are upheld as some of the greatest heroes in our society. And the astronauts who went to the Moon, and walked on it, are upheld as the greatest of astronauts. Yet the simple fact that moonwalkers killed other human beings on their career path toward getting to the Moon is not something that is talked about.

Next month we will get the broad release of the movie First Man. Will it depict Neil Armstrong killing other people? It's easy to guess that yes, it will. Will it show the suffering that was inflicted by the bombs he dropped? Here it is easy to guess that no, it will not. Will it have any scene where Neil takes a moment of introspection to examine his emotions about having killed other human beings? It's obvious to guess that he killed soldiers with wives and children. But it is also quite likely that his bombs killed women and children themselves. Surely one of the heartwrenching scenes will be when Neil & Jan's two year old daughter Karen died while Neil was a test pilot at Edwards, in the same year he was selected by NASA to the Apollo Program. Will the grief of that toddler dying because of a medical condition be contrasted with the grief that a Korean family felt after having one of their beloved members killed by one of Neil's bombs? It's hard to imagine that any Hollywood director would choose to delve into that angle..

Is this an aspect to the psyche of the moonwalkers, amongst those who experienced combat, that anyone is interested in looking into? Did anyone ever ask that of Neil Armstrong, in the thousands of interviews that he has had? Surely this is a relevant topic given the words of peace he promoted during his most famous mission.

"We came in peace for all mankind."

It is easy to guess who the first person was to step foot on the Moon without having killed anyone beforehand. You simply look at whether or not they were involved in combat, and then if so, you look at the chances that the stretch of their combat experience did not include taking anyone's life. And if the astronaut did not have combat experience, you look at other ways they might have been involved in causing the death of another human being (akin to the simple analysis that Laura Bush killed more people than Charles Manson - accurate history often goes against the tide of conventional wisdom).

It seems clear that Jack Schmitt, as the only one of the 24 who flew to the Moon without having been a member of the military, is one who did not kill anyone. And it also seems clear that there is more than one in this subgroup of the 24, or the 12.

But it is also clear that the entire Apollo Program was driven by the base instinct within human beings to kill, and threaten to kill, when we feel that our own life has been threatened. As the United States felt threatened after Sputnik. This homicide-justified-for-the-sake-of-self-preservation meme is an intensely powerful one, and Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C Clarke dramatically illustrated how far back this goes, all the way back to that first ape-like human who had learned to use tools as weapons to kill their fellow ape-like humans.

Monday was a breath of fresh air.

We were treated with Yusaku Maezawa's vision that we, as a species, can rise above this legacy. It may be our history. But it does not need to be our future.

For those today who believe that a military Space Force is needed, we have been given a resounding reply:

YouSuck.

He told us that his nickname is 'MZ'. That is like taking the Korean DMZ that was the legacy of Neil & Buzz and others, and whittle away at that barrier in order to make it more permeable. In order that we can relate to our fellow human beings that were once seen to be enemies, but with one less letter in that barrier. DMZ becomes just MZ. And MZ's motivation for his flight is to help whittle away at that barrier even more. Perhaps after his trip around the Moon, humanity will be left with just 'Z'. Helping us toward a Singularity like the Omega Point of the Alpha-Omega, and we will all be able to more clearly see each other, not as enemies, but as kindred spirits, all striving toward similar goals in each of our lives.

We will see that actions we take every day have the potential to raise the standard of kindness that we treat each other with. Even through each thought we choose to entertain, we can further emphasize the '-kind' in mankind..

This has the potential to be a radical shift. To paraphrase Neil,

"That's one small step for a human being, one giant leap for manKind."

~ CT
  #4  
Old September 22nd 18, 06:05 AM posted to sci.space.history
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Default "First Man" ...revisited: YouSuck-MZ

I see this to be a very important topic. Ways that we as human beings can figure out how to get along without killing each other. And, for that matter, without attempting to murder each other with our words.

The response here in this forum to my post would be very easy to predict. Hardly surprising. Yet one can still remain hopeful for reasonable, respectful interaction.

This topic about the homicidal history of those who walked on the Moon is something I see to be so important that I took a guess that there are others who are interested in this topic as well.

So I turned to Google...

And I was very glad to see that the very first search attempt gave a top hit that cut straight to the heart of the matter, with this interview with Neil Armstrong... And this was hitting the jackpot, because the story is told by Armstrong's official biographer, author of First Man, James Hansen:


------------------------
https://www.space.com/22510-neil-arm...emembered.html

The Truth About Neil Armstrong (Op-Ed)
By James Hansen, Auburn University | August 23, 2013 07:08pm ET

Quote:
--------------
One story that Neil told me that he never told anyone else concerned a flight he took over North Korea while on a dawn combat patrol in 1951. Passing over a ridge of low mountains in his F9F Panther jet, Neil saw laid out before him rows and rows of North Korean soldiers, unarmed, doing their daily calisthenics outside their field barracks. He could have mowed them down with machine-gun fire, but he chose to take his finger off the trigger and fly on. As Neil told me, "It looked like they were having a rough enough time doing their morning exercises."

No one else in his fighter squadron that I interviewed ever heard the story, because Neil never told it, but they accepted it without hesitation as true. They themselves would have all fired their guns, they admitted, but there was something too honorable in Neil for him to kill men who were in no position to defend themselves. Neil was quite adamant that he didn't want the story in his biography, and I tell it now, after his death, with some reluctance.
------------------------


It would be fascinating to learn what other stories Hansen left out of the bio. Along with stories that are known by others who were very close to Neil Armstrong.

And seeing how this article was published back in 2013, this also raises the question of what director Damien Chazelle decided to do with info like this that didn't make it into the book. Did he even do his homework well enough to learn about this story? If he did, did this scene make it into the movie?!

It is a very easy guess to say that, no, this story did not make it into the movie. Because if it had, this would be something that those who screened it at the VFF would have been talking about.


Now I'm not holding my breath regarding responses that will be posted here. We can dismiss this story as James Hansen trolling us. Right? Yeah. NO.. It is only certain human beings that we treat like **** here on this forum. And James Hansen is not one of them. He is a respected author. Whereas certain others, that's when this forum has so often and so consistently turned to cyber-bullying. Crapping on an obviously sincere post as "trolling". So many other times dismissing obviously sincere posts as "conspiracy theories". That is the MO that I experienced soon after arriving to this forum back in 2001. And I'm very sad to know that it has never changed throughout all of these nearly two decades later.

Earlier this year, I had stated that NASA uses racist clocks. No one was so much as interested to hear exactly how they do that. It was just another of the wealth of information that I have shared here that has been attacked with the most vile of hostility.

This continues to happen even after things I have posted here and were attacked have eventually been accepted into the main stream understanding of what is accurate versus what is bogus.

I have come to accept that this forum is, and will remain, a cesspool. There is only so much that one person can do if others are not willing to help toward achieving a goal.

A respectful place for a rational exchange of ideas. SSH never was this in 2001. And it is nowhere near this today in 2018.

I had some hope that there would be significant improvement when the most acerbic members of this forum had died off, literally. But that has proven to not be the case. The problem that runs rampant in this forum cuts much deeper.

The irony here is that the original post stated:
"... the concept of kindness, and treating each other with mutual respect."

It is this very same problem that leads to human beings killing each other with bombs and guns on the battlefield that is the root cause of the word-atrocities that happen right here, in our little corner of Usenet.

Spending billions of dollars to fly a rocket out to the Moon and back seems like a silly waste of money when there are these most fundamental problems here on the surface of the Earth. That was the complaint back in the '60s.. And it is the same criticism being offered right now, here in 2018.

But then again, there is a chance that Yusaku will succeed in his vision. Perhaps there is a chance that what he and his crewmates will accomplish will serve to inspire us all. And maybe even enough so that the next time someone has the thought of ****ting on a fellow human being with words, or by other means, Yusaku's art will give us pause. And something inside us will be uplifted and we will have the thought that we ourselves can do better. We can treat each other more decently.

Yes, even here on Usenet.

~ CT




On Friday, September 21, 2018 at 2:08:19 PM UTC-5, Dean Markley wrote:
On Friday, September 21, 2018 at 6:15:41 AM UTC-5, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

Huge week this week with Elon Musk's announcement that Yusaku 'YouSuck/MZ' Maezawa is slated to be SpaceX's first paying customer on the BFR to fly to the Moon.

Here is a question that I am intrigued by, yet no one asks...

Who was the first person on the Moon who didn't kill anyone?

b.s. snipped

Hey Stuffy, go eff yourself.

That is all.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.


I concur with you. That's nothing but a poor attempt at trolling.


  #6  
Old September 23rd 18, 10:40 AM posted to sci.space.history
Stuf4
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Posts: 554
Default "First Man" ...revisited: YouSuck-MZ

From Jeff Findley:
In article ,
says...

I see this to be a very important topic. Ways that we as human beings
can figure out how to get along without killing each other.

snip

Off topic for sci.space.history. It's well known the first groups of
astronauts came from the US military. Beyond that, you're delving into
political, social, and military issues. None of these have anything to
do with sci.space.

I really don't know why you insist on posting deliberately inflamatory
and/or off topic posts.


Neil Armstrong and flying to the Moon is off topic from ssh? Now that's a curious response that I never would have predicted.

Why have I highlighted the topic of Neil and other lunar astronauts having killed people? This was clearly explained in the original post:
Yusaku Maezawa has shared his vision of how his BFR SpaceX circumlunar mission can serve to inspire peace and harmony around the globe, amongst us who remain back here on Earth.

The Apollo lunar missions had this same effect.

Many would say that this is the *most important* impact of the Apollo Program. If we could pick one instant in time from that entire decade, it might be the moment that Bill Anders clicked his shutter to capture Earthrise.

And those 24 astronauts, to this day being the only 24 human beings to ever venture beyond Low Earth Orbit, all came from military training backgrounds. I am not even citing Schmitt as a lone exception to that, because as it was explained, he too had at least one year of military training (USAF UPT).

That original post was met with a visceral rejection. So I followed it up by posting that story of how Neil Armstrong, during the Korean War, had the opportunity to mow down dozens of Korean soldiers with strafing passes of his F9F Panther jet. Imagine if that scene had been depicted in the new movie First Man. Say that Neil wakes up from a cold sweat where he just had a dream that he actually put all those soldiers through the meat grinder. IRL, he says he refrained from doing this. Given the story as told, it is said that all of his squadmates, without exception, would have done it.

Now think of all the stories that Neil took to his grave, without ever telling any of us. Or maybe just telling those who were closest to him, like his squadmates who had done the same kinds of things that he did.

Imagine if just one such incident were presented to the public on the big screen. That one vignette of his warrior past would forever change how people would see Neil's legacy. When he stepped onto the Moon that day and spoke about it was an event that was a huge milestone for all of humanity, we would know that it was the words of a cold-blooded killer.

....or at least a person who had faithfully executed his duty to kill with extreme prejudice.

Had he killed dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? I do not know. These are things that he didn't talk about. Things that people didn't ask him. Not something that is discussed in polite company. And if you raise the topic in a space history forum, people will tell you that you've strayed off topic.

The idea of Neil and Buzz having killed people has nothing to do with space history, right?

A consistent goal that I have had here ever since Day 1 is to help correct the errors of space history. And ignoring an important aspect of history can be seen as a major error.

Humanity has had a severely violent past. And we have carried that legacy with us into the stars. This was shown clearly in Kubrick's 2001 with the ape-man scene tossing that killing bone into the sky and the scene transitions to a satellite orbiting the Earth. It is not explained in the movie, but that is no ordinary satellite. It is a nuclear weapon that is orbiting the Earth, terrorizing the entire planet, ready to deorbit anywhere at a moment's notice.

Last Monday, Yusaku Maezawa shared a refreshingly beautiful vision. A singular change that deviates from humanity's entrenched legacy of violence. While others are beating the war drums of creating a Space Force, he offers a vision of sending artists into space.

I'm well aware that me raising this issue can be seen as unnecessary "trolling". "Inflamatory". But the only way we will ever transcend our Dark Side is if we confront it. To ignore it is to perpetuate it.

This is why I highlight the issue of "First Man" being sexist.

This is why I raise the issue of John Young's racist naming of Stone Mountain at the landing site of Apollo 16. This is why I raise the issue of NASA's racist clocks. Because you must first become aware of the shadow if you have any hope of shining light on it.

The first time that people here on this forum freaked out over something I had shared was when I explained why Neil was the first. There are very specific and very logical reasons why this happened.

The mainstream version of space history says that it happened due to "luck of the draw". That he was simply at the right place at the right time. That anyone could have done what he did.

This is an utterly bogus story. Space history is broken. And I've been working diligently to help fix it. In a couple of weeks we are going to get a new movie on Neil Armstrong, and it is going to be GARBAGE. I know this with certainty now because last night I watched this talk by author James Hansen. His talk was titled "Why Armstrong?" He talks for well more than an hour, and he gives the lamest of reasons why Armstrong was first. He utterly failed to do his homework.

- In his talk he never mentions the LLRV/TV. It is only during the Q&A when he is asked about its significance is it discussed.

- He never mentions the critical importance of Rendezvous Experience, and how Neil had been picked to fly the very first rendezvous in Gemini. I didn't hear the word 'rendezvous' stated a single time throughout that entire talk, as far as I recall.

- He dismisses the importance of Neil having been a civilian. This was highlighted in my thread posted back in 2001 about how Michael Collins, in his book Carrying The Fire, makes it clear that Neil being a civilian was of key importance to NASA during the selection process, a selection in which he was rejected, while Neil was picked.

- He makes no mention of the fact that Neil had no formal Test Pilot School training. Neil was competing against others who had been through ARPS, let alone TPS. Yet Neil was picked over them to do the sweetest of Gemini missions and then the sweetest of Apollo missions. Deke deliberately lined up Neil for these sweet spots.

- He makes no mention of Paul Bickle. In an earlier post, I had mentioned how I did not see anyone cast as Bickle in the IMDB page for First Man. This was my first warning sign that the movie is going to be garbage. In talking to the Edwards AFB crowd for well over an hour, he never raises the name of Paul Bickle one single time. He never shows a single photo of Paul Bickle, let alone a photo of Bickle & Armstrong together (as far as I recall). This is the most egregious of errors, especially considering the location of his talk and the audience he is speaking to.

Here is the talk I am criticizing:

The First Man on the Moon: Why Neil Armstrong?” Dr. James Hansen (at AFRC, Aug3,2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPqsWgEqqBc

Utter garbage. And if his talk is this shallow, then his book must be garbage too. And since he was a prime consultant for the movie, and the movie was based on his book, I am now expecting a mere fluff piece.

I still intend to watch the movie. But after seeing this talk, my expectations for the film could not be any lower.

For anyone wanting to know the full reasons why Armstrong was first, you can find the thorough explanation posted here on this forum way back in 2001, a full four years prior to Hansen's book being published. That thread is titled:

LLTV as the Key to Landing Assignments

My very first post to Usenet was on May 27, 2001. Info shared in that thread goes way deeper than anything I've seen from Hansen, the one and only official biographer of Neil Armstrong.

Back in 2001, ssh was a vibrant forum, with members including well respected space history authors and others who actually lived space history. Today this forum is all but dead. I post this thread on what I see to be the most important aspect of space history, and my contribution gets attacked for being off topic. Quite curious.

Even if those who have voiced their opinion here in this thread see no value in it, I remain hopeful that there will be other readers who do see some value. Perhaps these words might reach James Hansen, and he will be challenged to reconsider facts he never looked at, or looked at and dismissed. Perhaps these words might reach Yusaku Maezawa and Elon Musk, as confirmation of the vital importance of the motivation behind their mission. Perhaps these words might reach someone who works for Donald Trump and they will reconsider their push to create a US Space Force. Maybe Neil deGrasse Tyson will have an epiphany for how his efforts are serving to perpetuate the long history of human violence.

Maybe these words will reach no one, other that those few who have been severely aggravated by the ideas I have shared.

I don't know if there will be any positive effect of the effort put into this thread. But I DO know that there has been amazingly positive impact of past ideas that I have shared here on this forum (along with efforts on Wikipedia, etc). I have witnessed dramatic change in people's understanding of the militaristic nature of human spaceflight programs. Even people with their understanding of how "zero gravity" is a bogus term, and that the proper term is weightlessness.

There has been excellent improvement between 2001 and today. And people like Yusaku Maezawa and Elon Musk give me hope that there will continue to be great strides toward improving our global society as we continue ahead.

Many decades from now, people will look at photos of Neil & Buzz on the Moon and be woke to the darkness of the history behind it. Darkness in the nuclear terror that Apollo grew out of. Darkness in the personal histories of strafing fellow human beings into hamburger bits. And they will, by then, also have the images from the following voyages to the Moon by people like MZ. They will have a clear understanding of how humanity has progressed from being a primitive species toward becoming an enlightened species.

That is the future that we have to look forward to ...thanks to the efforts of those like Elon & MZ. Standing on the shoulders of those who came before, like Neil & Buzz. Every new day that dawns presents us with an opportunity to improve ourselves, and to make a contribution toward improving humanity as a whole.

There will be those who choose to use these opportunities to attack and kill. But even those events themselves present platforms upon which something new can be built. Even here with all the negativity on this forum. New life can spring forth from even the darkest of soil. **** can serve as the richest of fertilizer.

~ CT
  #7  
Old September 23rd 18, 10:47 AM posted to sci.space.history
Stuf4
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 554
Default "First Man" ...revisited: YouSuck-MZ

I wrote:
From Jeff Findley:
In article ,
says...

I see this to be a very important topic. Ways that we as human beings
can figure out how to get along without killing each other.

snip

Off topic for sci.space.history. It's well known the first groups of
astronauts came from the US military. Beyond that, you're delving into
political, social, and military issues. None of these have anything to
do with sci.space.

I really don't know why you insist on posting deliberately inflamatory
and/or off topic posts.


Neil Armstrong and flying to the Moon is off topic from ssh? Now that's a
curious response that I never would have predicted.


I did not word that very well. What I meant to say is this:

["delving into political, social, and military issues"] surrounding Neil Armstrong and flying to the Moon is off topic from ssh?

~ CT


____________________________________________


Why have I highlighted the topic of Neil and other lunar astronauts having killed people? This was clearly explained in the original post:
Yusaku Maezawa has shared his vision of how his BFR SpaceX circumlunar mission can serve to inspire peace and harmony around the globe, amongst us who remain back here on Earth.

The Apollo lunar missions had this same effect.

Many would say that this is the *most important* impact of the Apollo Program. If we could pick one instant in time from that entire decade, it might be the moment that Bill Anders clicked his shutter to capture Earthrise.

And those 24 astronauts, to this day being the only 24 human beings to ever venture beyond Low Earth Orbit, all came from military training backgrounds. I am not even citing Schmitt as a lone exception to that, because as it was explained, he too had at least one year of military training (USAF UPT).

That original post was met with a visceral rejection. So I followed it up by posting that story of how Neil Armstrong, during the Korean War, had the opportunity to mow down dozens of Korean soldiers with strafing passes of his F9F Panther jet. Imagine if that scene had been depicted in the new movie First Man. Say that Neil wakes up from a cold sweat where he just had a dream that he actually put all those soldiers through the meat grinder. IRL, he says he refrained from doing this. Given the story as told, it is said that all of his squadmates, without exception, would have done it.

Now think of all the stories that Neil took to his grave, without ever telling any of us. Or maybe just telling those who were closest to him, like his squadmates who had done the same kinds of things that he did.

Imagine if just one such incident were presented to the public on the big screen. That one vignette of his warrior past would forever change how people would see Neil's legacy. When he stepped onto the Moon that day and spoke about it was an event that was a huge milestone for all of humanity, we would know that it was the words of a cold-blooded killer.

...or at least a person who had faithfully executed his duty to kill with extreme prejudice.

Had he killed dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? I do not know. These are things that he didn't talk about. Things that people didn't ask him. Not something that is discussed in polite company. And if you raise the topic in a space history forum, people will tell you that you've strayed off topic..

The idea of Neil and Buzz having killed people has nothing to do with space history, right?

A consistent goal that I have had here ever since Day 1 is to help correct the errors of space history. And ignoring an important aspect of history can be seen as a major error.

Humanity has had a severely violent past. And we have carried that legacy with us into the stars. This was shown clearly in Kubrick's 2001 with the ape-man scene tossing that killing bone into the sky and the scene transitions to a satellite orbiting the Earth. It is not explained in the movie, but that is no ordinary satellite. It is a nuclear weapon that is orbiting the Earth, terrorizing the entire planet, ready to deorbit anywhere at a moment's notice.

Last Monday, Yusaku Maezawa shared a refreshingly beautiful vision. A singular change that deviates from humanity's entrenched legacy of violence. While others are beating the war drums of creating a Space Force, he offers a vision of sending artists into space.

I'm well aware that me raising this issue can be seen as unnecessary "trolling". "Inflamatory". But the only way we will ever transcend our Dark Side is if we confront it. To ignore it is to perpetuate it.

This is why I highlight the issue of "First Man" being sexist.

This is why I raise the issue of John Young's racist naming of Stone Mountain at the landing site of Apollo 16. This is why I raise the issue of NASA's racist clocks. Because you must first become aware of the shadow if you have any hope of shining light on it.

The first time that people here on this forum freaked out over something I had shared was when I explained why Neil was the first. There are very specific and very logical reasons why this happened.

The mainstream version of space history says that it happened due to "luck of the draw". That he was simply at the right place at the right time. That anyone could have done what he did.

This is an utterly bogus story. Space history is broken. And I've been working diligently to help fix it. In a couple of weeks we are going to get a new movie on Neil Armstrong, and it is going to be GARBAGE. I know this with certainty now because last night I watched this talk by author James Hansen. His talk was titled "Why Armstrong?" He talks for well more than an hour, and he gives the lamest of reasons why Armstrong was first. He utterly failed to do his homework.

- In his talk he never mentions the LLRV/TV. It is only during the Q&A when he is asked about its significance is it discussed.

- He never mentions the critical importance of Rendezvous Experience, and how Neil had been picked to fly the very first rendezvous in Gemini. I didn't hear the word 'rendezvous' stated a single time throughout that entire talk, as far as I recall.

- He dismisses the importance of Neil having been a civilian. This was highlighted in my thread posted back in 2001 about how Michael Collins, in his book Carrying The Fire, makes it clear that Neil being a civilian was of key importance to NASA during the selection process, a selection in which he was rejected, while Neil was picked.

- He makes no mention of the fact that Neil had no formal Test Pilot School training. Neil was competing against others who had been through ARPS, let alone TPS. Yet Neil was picked over them to do the sweetest of Gemini missions and then the sweetest of Apollo missions. Deke deliberately lined up Neil for these sweet spots.

- He makes no mention of Paul Bickle. In an earlier post, I had mentioned how I did not see anyone cast as Bickle in the IMDB page for First Man. This was my first warning sign that the movie is going to be garbage. In talking to the Edwards AFB crowd for well over an hour, he never raises the name of Paul Bickle one single time. He never shows a single photo of Paul Bickle, let alone a photo of Bickle & Armstrong together (as far as I recall). This is the most egregious of errors, especially considering the location of his talk and the audience he is speaking to.

Here is the talk I am criticizing:

The First Man on the Moon: Why Neil Armstrong?” Dr. James Hansen (at AFRC, Aug3,2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPqsWgEqqBc

Utter garbage. And if his talk is this shallow, then his book must be garbage too. And since he was a prime consultant for the movie, and the movie was based on his book, I am now expecting a mere fluff piece.

I still intend to watch the movie. But after seeing this talk, my expectations for the film could not be any lower.

For anyone wanting to know the full reasons why Armstrong was first, you can find the thorough explanation posted here on this forum way back in 2001, a full four years prior to Hansen's book being published. That thread is titled:

LLTV as the Key to Landing Assignments

My very first post to Usenet was on May 27, 2001. Info shared in that thread goes way deeper than anything I've seen from Hansen, the one and only official biographer of Neil Armstrong.

Back in 2001, ssh was a vibrant forum, with members including well respected space history authors and others who actually lived space history. Today this forum is all but dead. I post this thread on what I see to be the most important aspect of space history, and my contribution gets attacked for being off topic. Quite curious.

Even if those who have voiced their opinion here in this thread see no value in it, I remain hopeful that there will be other readers who do see some value. Perhaps these words might reach James Hansen, and he will be challenged to reconsider facts he never looked at, or looked at and dismissed. Perhaps these words might reach Yusaku Maezawa and Elon Musk, as confirmation of the vital importance of the motivation behind their mission. Perhaps these words might reach someone who works for Donald Trump and they will reconsider their push to create a US Space Force. Maybe Neil deGrasse Tyson will have an epiphany for how his efforts are serving to perpetuate the long history of human violence.

Maybe these words will reach no one, other that those few who have been severely aggravated by the ideas I have shared.

I don't know if there will be any positive effect of the effort put into this thread. But I DO know that there has been amazingly positive impact of past ideas that I have shared here on this forum (along with efforts on Wikipedia, etc). I have witnessed dramatic change in people's understanding of the militaristic nature of human spaceflight programs. Even people with their understanding of how "zero gravity" is a bogus term, and that the proper term is weightlessness.

There has been excellent improvement between 2001 and today. And people like Yusaku Maezawa and Elon Musk give me hope that there will continue to be great strides toward improving our global society as we continue ahead.

Many decades from now, people will look at photos of Neil & Buzz on the Moon and be woke to the darkness of the history behind it. Darkness in the nuclear terror that Apollo grew out of. Darkness in the personal histories of strafing fellow human beings into hamburger bits. And they will, by then, also have the images from the following voyages to the Moon by people like MZ. They will have a clear understanding of how humanity has progressed from being a primitive species toward becoming an enlightened species.

That is the future that we have to look forward to ...thanks to the efforts of those like Elon & MZ. Standing on the shoulders of those who came before, like Neil & Buzz. Every new day that dawns presents us with an opportunity to improve ourselves, and to make a contribution toward improving humanity as a whole.

There will be those who choose to use these opportunities to attack and kill. But even those events themselves present platforms upon which something new can be built. Even here with all the negativity on this forum. New life can spring forth from even the darkest of soil. **** can serve as the richest of fertilizer.

~ CT


  #8  
Old September 23rd 18, 11:40 AM posted to sci.space.history
Stuf4
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I need to post another correction. I was overly harsh in my criticism of James Hansen's talk, and his book and his movie. I was mistaken in speaking in the broadest sense that communicated that there is no value to the information he shares. My characterization of it being "garbage" is with respect to the one aspect of the issue of how Armstrong got to be first.

Surely there is plenty of value to other parts of Neil's story that he has gone into, far more deeply than most everyone else. And a prime example of this is the story posted earlier in this thread of how Hansen tells an intensely intimate story from Armstrong's combat days that Armstrong had shared with almost no one else, including his Naval aviator compatriots.

And just now I also listened to the audio clip of his book, the sample given here at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/First-Man-Lif.../dp/1501153064

There he tells the story of the Silicon Disc left on the lunar surface by Neil & Buzz. THAT is a beautiful story that is perfectly in line with the goals expressed by Yusaku Maezawa on Monday.

That audio clip of Hansen's book highlights the book by Tahir Rahman which focuses on this one piece of the Apollo 11 mission. A "forgotten" piece. Amazon lists Rahman's book as having its 1st edition published in 2008, so I don't know how the chronology works out with Hansen's 2005 book covering Rahman's work.
We Came in Peace for All Mankind: The Untold Story of the Apollo 11 Silicon Disc
https://www.amazon.com/Came-Peace-Al.../dp/1585974412

I would guess that that Amazon listing is the special 40th anniversary edition, and that the actual 1st edition came out prior to 2005.

Here is the disc story told in Rahman's own words:

Apollo 11 Silicon Disc Story (Fox4 News interview w/author Tahir Rahman)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0HmCF_Z_Ms

Apollo 11 Trailer for We Came in Peace for all Mankind (silicondisc)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThXGx-zQnKc


It would be GREAT if this is covered in Damien Chazelle's movie. And considering the rationale that was given in why the scene of the US flag being planted was not portrayed, we might expect that a central focus will be given to this Silicon Disc. That would be absolutely excellent if they did this.

~ CT



________________________


I wrote:
snip
In a couple of weeks we are going to get a new movie on Neil Armstrong, and
it is going to be GARBAGE. I know this with certainty now because last night
I watched this talk by author James Hansen. His talk was titled "Why
Armstrong?" He talks for well more than an hour, and he gives the lamest of
reasons why Armstrong was first. He utterly failed to do his homework.

snip

Here is the talk I am criticizing:

The First Man on the Moon: Why Neil Armstrong?” Dr. James Hansen
(at AFRC, Aug3,2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPqsWgEqqBc

Utter garbage. And if his talk is this shallow, then his book must be
garbage too. And since he was a prime consultant for the movie, and the
movie was based on his book, I am now expecting a mere fluff piece.

I still intend to watch the movie. But after seeing this talk, my
expectations for the film could not be any lower.

  #10  
Old September 23rd 18, 02:11 PM posted to sci.space.history
Jeff Findley[_6_]
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In article ,
says...

I wrote:
From Jeff Findley:
In article ,
says...

I see this to be a very important topic. Ways that we as human beings
can figure out how to get along without killing each other.
snip

Off topic for sci.space.history. It's well known the first groups of
astronauts came from the US military. Beyond that, you're delving into
political, social, and military issues. None of these have anything to
do with sci.space.

I really don't know why you insist on posting deliberately inflamatory
and/or off topic posts.


Neil Armstrong and flying to the Moon is off topic from ssh? Now that's a
curious response that I never would have predicted.


I did not word that very well. What I meant to say is this:

["delving into political, social, and military issues"] surrounding
Neil Armstrong and flying to the Moon is off topic from ssh?


This is still just one step away from the discussion of Von-Braun,
former German aerospace engineers, and Nazis which has been done
countless times on these groups. I personally won't entertain this sort
of topic. It just ticks people off and never results in anything
positive.

snip

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.
 




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