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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." |
#2
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A sobering thought
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 |
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A sobering thought
"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." |
#4
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A sobering thought
"Stuf4" wrote in message
... There's a very informative YouTube video I first watched a while ago that explains the distinctions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10&t=44s "While you can call them all British, it's not recommended as the four countries generally don't like each other." Not really. The Scots, Irish and Welsh all get on fine. But we all hate the English! -- Gordon Davie Edinburgh, Scotland "Slipped the surly bonds of Earth...to touch the face of God." |
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A sobering thought
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 |
#6
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A sobering thought
From Gordon Davie:
"Stuf4" wrote in message ... There's a very informative YouTube video I first watched a while ago that explains the distinctions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10&t=44s "While you can call them all British, it's not recommended as the four countries generally don't like each other." Not really. The Scots, Irish and Welsh all get on fine. But we all hate the English! Right after that quote, the narrator elaborates to describe pretty much the situation as you are saying. You always have the option to bail out like we Yanks did back in the 18th century. Of course Gandhi's method was a lot less bloody. But if I were to peer into a crystal ball, I'd expect that the trend we're currently in is drawing us in the other direction. Like those Liverpool blokes sang about: Come Together... I believe we are now living the age of the Walrus. And events like landing on the Moon and even tragedies like 9-11 can serve as catalyzing effects toward that end. Maybe even Lindbergh had glimpses of how his feat was going to draw the world closer together into a much tighter community. Today we regularly call the Atlantic Ocean "The Pond". I'm certain Columbus's crews didn't think of it that way. They must have fretted the Atlantic in the way that Apollo crews wondered if they would ever return from cis-lunar space. Kansas could do an excellent reprise with a Space Age version of their classic 'Point of Know Return': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRtgr9n7V9w ....to be played daily at the Kansas Cosmosphere of course. Maybe someone here would like to post a video for that song with interspersed clips of great explorers - Lindbergh, Borman-Lovell- Anders, Columbus... and can include the one's who didn't make it back, like Shackleton, Mallory, Magellan, Volkov-Dobrovolski-Patsayev, etc. ~ CT |
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A sobering thought
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. |
#8
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A sobering thought
On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:47:24 +0100, "GordonD"
wrote: Not really. The Scots, Irish and Welsh all get on fine. But we all hate the English! I'm an American of part Welsh and part English descent, but I'm always conflicted. |
#9
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A sobering thought
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 |
#10
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A sobering thought
"Stuf4" wrote in message
... From Gordon Davie: "Stuf4" wrote in message ... There's a very informative YouTube video I first watched a while ago that explains the distinctions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10&t=44s "While you can call them all British, it's not recommended as the four countries generally don't like each other." Not really. The Scots, Irish and Welsh all get on fine. But we all hate the English! Right after that quote, the narrator elaborates to describe pretty much the situation as you are saying. You always have the option to bail out like we Yanks did back in the 18th century. At the elections to the Scottish Parliament back in May, the Scottish National Party was elected with an overall majority (something the voting system was specifically designed to avoid!) so sometime within the next four years there will be a referendum on independence. -- Gordon Davie Edinburgh, Scotland "Slipped the surly bonds of Earth...to touch the face of God." |
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