A sobering thought

Today, 19 September 2011, it is 15,401 days since the 'Eagle' landed on the
Moon.

The significance of that number is that the touchdown at Tranquility Base
was, itself, 15,401 days after another famous landing: that of the 'Spirit
of St. Louis', on 21 May 1927.

After today, Neil Armstrong's "small step" will be forever closer in history
to Lucky Lindy than it is to us. And if that doesn't make those of us who
watched it at the time feel old, I don't know what will...
--
Gordon Davie
Edinburgh, Scotland

"Slipped the surly bonds of Earth...to touch the face of God."

From Gordon Davie:
Today, 19 September 2011, it is 15,401 days since the 'Eagle' landed on the
Moon.

The significance of that number is that the touchdown at Tranquility Base
was, itself, 15,401 days after another famous landing: that of the 'Spirit
of St. Louis', on 21 May 1927.

After today, Neil Armstrong's "small step" will be forever closer in history
to Lucky Lindy than it is to us. And if that doesn't make those of us who
watched it at the time feel old, I don't know what will...

First, Gordon, I need to tell you that I meant to specify you as well
in my apology for my British/English mixup.


Now about your sobering thought, my immediate reaction is, "How can
you possibly know this fact?" I'm picturing that years ago you
installed as your screensaver a Lindy v Eagle countdown timer, and
you've been watching it closely ever since in anticipation of today.
Ha!

I agree that it is a significant mark that stirs emotion. But to be
accurate historians, we should caution exactly what it is marking.
Why are we singling out Lindbergh's flight? His was not the first
transatlantic flight. That happened in 1919. His was not even the
first non-stop transatlantic flight. This happened a couple of weeks
later in that same year, 1919. And a distance far greater than what
Lucky Lindy flew had been spanned in a non-stop flight in 1924, years
before Lindbergh, going the other direction - Europe to US.

All three of those preceding milestones were accomplished in
government sponsored aircraft. Accurate history will recognize that
Charles Lindbergh's "envelope expansion" factor was that he did it
solo non-stop, and he did it with private and commercial funding. No
person has yet to fly to the Moon solo. And no person has yet to fly
to the Moon without government funding.

As for the doubling time of that original 1919 flight, it was 50 years
from then to Tranquility Base. So it will not be til 2019 that
Armstrong & Aldrin will have split the halfway mark of that.

Now one might also feel the need to point out that Lindbergh's flight
should be singled out because although he was far from the first to
fly across the Atlantic, his flight was historically important because
he was the first to cross the Atlantic in the manner that it is
crossed today: non-stop over the full distance in an airplane, not an
airship. And if it is this precedent for the routine that is what
makes the Lindy-vs-lunar flight comparison compelling, then it seems
to me that it would need waiting until lunar flights are routine to
ensure that Armstrong & Aldrin set the precedent for how that will be
done. As in, chemical propellants, parking orbit around the Earth and
then again around the Moon, and having your ride home wait for you up
there in lunar orbit as well.


....or maybe it is better to just let go of all these other facts that
can sometimes get in the way. Tomorrow, history will be more than
double the timeline distance from Lucky Lindy to Luck Armstrong &
Aldrin. That certainly IS a sobering thought.


~ CT

"Stuf4" wrote in message
...
From Gordon Davie:
Today, 19 September 2011, it is 15,401 days since the 'Eagle' landed on
the
Moon.

The significance of that number is that the touchdown at Tranquility Base
was, itself, 15,401 days after another famous landing: that of the
'Spirit
of St. Louis', on 21 May 1927.

After today, Neil Armstrong's "small step" will be forever closer in
history
to Lucky Lindy than it is to us. And if that doesn't make those of us who
watched it at the time feel old, I don't know what will...

First, Gordon, I need to tell you that I meant to specify you as well
in my apology for my British/English mixup.

No worries, I'm used to it!

Now about your sobering thought, my immediate reaction is, "How can
you possibly know this fact?" I'm picturing that years ago you
installed as your screensaver a Lindy v Eagle countdown timer, and
you've been watching it closely ever since in anticipation of today.
Ha!

Not quite! I realised several months ago that it was 42 years plus change
between Lindy and Apollo 11, which was itself of course 42 years ago, so
decided to check the exact date. Any spreadsheet will let you subtract one
date from another and give the answer as a number of days, so all I had to
do was *add* that number to 20 July 1969 and it came back with today's date.
I set my calendar to remind me to post this today, and here we are!

Another point though - by the time Apollo 11 landed on the Moon,
transatlantic air travel had become commonplace. 42 years after that, we
can't even get back to the Moon the same way we went the first time. (And I
hope you'll forgive a non-American saying that 'we' went to the Moon - after
all, they did go in peace for all Mankind!)

I agree that it is a significant mark that stirs emotion. But to be
accurate historians, we should caution exactly what it is marking.
Why are we singling out Lindbergh's flight? His was not the first
transatlantic flight. That happened in 1919. His was not even the
first non-stop transatlantic flight. This happened a couple of weeks
later in that same year, 1919. And a distance far greater than what
Lucky Lindy flew had been spanned in a non-stop flight in 1924, years
before Lindbergh, going the other direction - Europe to US.

But Lindy is the one that Americans care about. Ask them who Alcock & Brown
were and most of them haven't a clue. When Ripley stated that Lindbergh
wasn't the first to fly the Atlantic in his 'Believe it or Not' feature, he
got hate mail!

For what it's worth, 25 August 2019 is the date when Tranquility Base is
equidistant between Alcock and Brown and 'today' - 18,298 days. And for the
Wright brothers at Kittyhawk, it will be 21 February 2035 - 23,957 days.
--
Gordon Davie
Edinburgh, Scotland

"Slipped the surly bonds of Earth...to touch the face of God."

On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:49:07 +0100, "GordonD"
wrote:

Another point though - by the time Apollo 11 landed on the Moon,
transatlantic air travel had become commonplace. 42 years after that, we
can't even get back to the Moon the same way we went the first time. (And I
hope you'll forgive a non-American saying that 'we' went to the Moon - after
all, they did go in peace for all Mankind!)

Nor can we cross the Atlantic in a supersonic transport any more.
Concorde made its first test flights in 1969.

From rwalker :
On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:49:07 +0100, "GordonD"
wrote:

Another point though - by the time Apollo 11 landed on the Moon,
transatlantic air travel had become commonplace. 42 years after that, we
can't even get back to the Moon the same way we went the first time. (And I
hope you'll forgive a non-American saying that 'we' went to the Moon - after
all, they did go in peace for all Mankind!)

Nor can we cross the Atlantic in a supersonic transport any more.
Concorde made its first test flights in 1969.

Concorde was scrapped for the same reason that Shuttle was ended.
These programs were born out of government funded Cold War competition
to make grand displays of aerospace superiority ...which indicated
nuclear weapons delivery superiority ...which justified their immense
program costs in the name of national defense. After the Cold War
threat ended, all that was needed was an excuse to pull the plug. For
Concorde, it was that CDG takeoff mess in 2000. For Shuttle, it was
the Columbia entry mess in '03. Also, the justification for funding
ISS was to not be shown up by Mir, again a Cold War competition
holdover, this one becoming moot in 2001.

If space travel or supersonic transoceanic flight was economically
viable for commercial purposes, companies like Airbus & Boeing would
be all over it. But the margins are so unwieldy that Boeing even
scrapped its *Sonic* Cruiser that had been designed to push the fuel
inefficient wall of transonic wave drag and take on heaps of parasitic
drag as well.

I expect that schemes like Virgin Galactic's will be doubly doomed as
far as transportation is concerned. There's the fuel inefficiencies
as well as the huge increase in safety risk. I don't see their market
expanding much beyond the thrill-seekers. The very wealthy thrill
seekers.

The laws of physics are what they are. It was the laws of psychology
and the need for nations to struggle for their very survival under the
threat of nuclear annihilation that created a very unique set of
conditions whereby the extreme financial requirements of spectacular
programs like Apollo, Concorde, Shuttle and ISS could be justified.
It was like the planets aligning for a period of a terror-driven
fiscal aerospace bonanza, and almost as quickly as that alignment had
occurred, it was then over.

So instead of lamenting the fact that programs like Concorde and
Apollo and Shuttle and such are no more, we could uphold the broader
view where we can be glad that we no longer live under the threat of
total nuclear annihilation.

If a magic genie were to appear and give us the choice to bring back
Apollo, Concorde, Shuttle AND nukes on a hair trigger to Armageddon or
chose to simply leave things as they are (all or none), I would hope
our vote would be unanimous to seal that near-gruesome chapter of
history and work out our future from where we stand today.


~ CT

"Stuf4" wrote in message
...

If a magic genie were to appear and give us the choice to bring back
Apollo, Concorde, Shuttle AND nukes on a hair trigger to Armageddon or
chose to simply leave things as they are (all or none), I would hope
our vote would be unanimous to seal that near-gruesome chapter of
history and work out our future from where we stand today.

Although certain aspects of the cold war were unsettling at the time, I have
to say that in retrospect it all actually worked pretty well. At the time I
thought M.A.D really was insane, but now I can see that having *two*
superpowers provides the benefit that each needs to be on its best behaviour
and not do anything too extreme. When there's only one superpower, that
superpower can stomp around pretty much as it likes, and even do things that
it used to accuse the other superpower of doing.

I certainly wouldn't ask the magic genie to 'make it so'; but in many ways
multiple superpowers served as a governor, as well as an incentive.

On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:59:24 -0700, Fred J. McCall
wrote:

rwalker wrote:

On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:49:07 +0100, "GordonD"
wrote:

Another point though - by the time Apollo 11 landed on the Moon,
transatlantic air travel had become commonplace. 42 years after that, we
can't even get back to the Moon the same way we went the first time. (And I
hope you'll forgive a non-American saying that 'we' went to the Moon - after
all, they did go in peace for all Mankind!)

Nor can we cross the Atlantic in a supersonic transport any more.
Concorde made its first test flights in 1969.


But we can certainly cross the Atlantic. We can't get back to the
Moon in ANY way.


True, but both seem to be an abandonment of accomplishment.

A friend of mine has put it as follows. Were the Apollo missions
going to be the equivalent of the Vikings' journeys to the New World,
or of Columbus'. It appears to have been the former.

"rwalker" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:59:24 -0700, Fred J. McCall
wrote:

rwalker wrote:

On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:49:07 +0100, "GordonD"
wrote:

Another point though - by the time Apollo 11 landed on the Moon,
transatlantic air travel had become commonplace. 42 years after that,
we
can't even get back to the Moon the same way we went the first time.
(And I
hope you'll forgive a non-American saying that 'we' went to the Moon -
after
all, they did go in peace for all Mankind!)

Nor can we cross the Atlantic in a supersonic transport any more.
Concorde made its first test flights in 1969.


But we can certainly cross the Atlantic. We can't get back to the
Moon in ANY way.


True, but both seem to be an abandonment of accomplishment.

A friend of mine has put it as follows. Were the Apollo missions
going to be the equivalent of the Vikings' journeys to the New World,
or of Columbus'. It appears to have been the former.

It would, if this Administration has its way. Fortunately, there are members
of Congress in both parties who feel differently. Charlie Bolden keeps
getting asked whenever he goes to the Hill to testify about lunar return-and
the answers he gives don't satisfy the members of the relevant congressional
committees.

On 9/19/2011 1:10 AM, GordonD wrote:
Today, 19 September 2011, it is 15,401 days since the 'Eagle' landed on
the Moon.

The significance of that number is that the touchdown at Tranquility
Base was, itself, 15,401 days after another famous landing: that of the
'Spirit of St. Louis', on 21 May 1927.

Now tell us about the astrological significance of this. Extra points
for bringing Nostradamus into the discussion. ;-)

Pat

On Sep 19, 2:10*am, "GordonD" wrote:
Today, 19 September 2011, it is 15,401 days since the 'Eagle' landed on the
Moon.

The significance of that number is that the touchdown at Tranquility Base
was, itself, 15,401 days after another famous landing: that of the 'Spirit
of St. Louis', on 21 May 1927.

After today, Neil Armstrong's "small step" will be forever closer in history
to Lucky Lindy than it is to us. And if that doesn't make those of us who
watched it at the time feel old, I don't know what will...
--
Gordon Davie
Edinburgh, Scotland

"Slipped the surly bonds of Earth...to touch the face of God."

Too bad there's still no objective proof of those Apollo missions
happening exactly as stipulated.

How many lies and do-overs does our government get nowadays?

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