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#11
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A sobering thought
On 9/20/2011 1:00 AM, GordonD wrote:
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. Threaten to decrease whisky exports if the British government doesn't go along with the idea... alternately, threaten to _increase_ haggis exports if the British government doesn't go along with the idea. ;-) Pat |
#12
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A sobering thought
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. |
#13
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A sobering thought
"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. |
#14
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A sobering thought
On 9/20/2011 8:46 PM, Matt Wiser wrote:
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. We're going to steal the Selinite's gold and silver, and drive them off the Moon to be resettled on Mercury? If Cortez had come home to Spain with his ship's holds bulging with New World rocks and soil, he would have not been very popular. In fact Columbus wasn't very popular with the stuff he showed up with after his first voyage. "Where's the God-damn pepper? Where's the God-damn cloves? That's not a porcelain cup, it's a God-damn seashell." "I have the skin of a strange green lizard also, your majesties." "And we will soon have the skin of a strange green Italian sailor..." Pat |
#15
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A sobering thought
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? http://translate.google.com/# Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet” |
#16
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A sobering thought
"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. |
#17
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A sobering thought
On 9/22/2011 7:36 PM, Waimate01 wrote:
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. MAD was pure genius; the big problem with it was trying to talk the military of the US or USSR into the concept, which was entirely antithetical to standard military philosophy of the time, which fully embraced the concept of ideally being able to completely destroy your opponent while suffering zero harm yourself. Reagan never could figure this out with his drive for a ABM system that could defend the whole US from a Soviet attack. Pat |
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