#apollo space program

[planetaryalphabet]

Apollo 17 insignia, Acrylic on board by Robert Theodore McCall

[simplicius-simplicissimus]

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.

-John F. Kennedy

[sabistarphotos]

February 14, 2023

Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Florida

[thedandeliongarden]

I mean, you’re wrong about the cement, the steel, and misleading about the violins and the space program:

The Roman secret to cement that doesn’t go bad near the sea is “use seawater, idiot” (all the Roman recipes just say “water”)

We don’t know how ancient civilisations made Damascus steel, the same way we don’t know how the Byzantines made Greek fire. We do know how to make things as good or better that look the same, we just don’t know the exact method they used.

As far as violin makers go that’s a bespoke art requiring extraordinary craftsfolk - it’s not like we don’t know how to make them, we just don’t necessarily have the Freddie Mercury of violin-making alive and working at every given moment

You also don’t know what “missing the technology” means in the context of the late 1900s space programs: it means we don’t use the manufacturing methods, make old and outdated parts, or otherwise have the ability to assemble them exactly as they were. Technology is about what your society can make, not what it knows how to do - we absolutely could manufacture those things that way but why the fuck would we when we have better stuff now?

You’re absolutely right that everything isn’t constantly improving - take a look at the current social media apocalypse, the housing bubble, and the lack of unbroken melee martial arts lineages to name a few things. But remember that what is lost can be recovered, what is gone can be rebuilt, and it is the great folly of assuming the present is always better than the past that stifles innovation (Victorian treatment of historical artefacts comes to mind, as well as their mystification of the sharpness of eastern swords (since most of the western traditions were greatly reduced and not all soldiers cared for their swords as well in the age of guns compared to nations at the height of that particular technology))

So yeah. Your suitcase is lighter than that monstrosity (affectionate) which is more structured.. but wouldn’t it be cool if someone applied drawers and partitions to a modern suitcase?

[xenon1962]

[subversivefashionhistory]

https://www.instagram.com/p/DK7Whbpx_Qu/?igsh=OTFiNjF6d2gzY2c1

[mental-food]

I often tell young kids, and particularly my grandkids - don’t ever count yourself out. You’ll never know how good you are until you try. Dream the impossible and then go out and make it happen. I walked on the Moon. What can’t you do?

-Eugene Cernan, Apollo 17

[adastra-sf]

Happy Moon Landing Day!

On July 20, 1969 - 55 years ago today! - humans first stepped foot on another world.

[planetaryalphabet]

Crew of Apollo 14 (1971)

From top to bottom: Edgar Mitchell, Stuart Roosa, Alan Shepard

[nemfrog]

Proposed moon lander separates from rocket. Beckman Bits, a magazine published by Beckman Instruments Inc., an aerospace company in Fullerton, California. 1964.

Science History Institute

[gemini-enthusiast]

View of heavy cloud cover over ocean, Apollo 9

[lonestarflight]

"Overall view of the Mission Operations Control Room in the Mission Control Center, Building 30, during the Apollo 9 Earth-orbital mission. When this photograph was taken a live television transmission was being received from Apollo 9 as it orbited Earth."

Date: March 4-12, 1969

NASA ID: S69-26301

[simplicius-simplicissimus]

Apollo 13 - „This is it. A few bumps and we're hauling the mail.“

Tom Hanks has been enthusiastic about the American Apollo space program since his youth, which is why he got the role of Jim Lovell from director Ron Howard - but also because Ron Howard likes working with Tom Hanks. After “Apollo 13”, Tom Hanks and Ron Howard produced the 12-part series “From The Earth To The Moon”. It described the early years of the American space program (Mercury and Gemini) up to the last Apollo 17 landing on the moon. One part described the hurdles that had to be overcome by the team that developed the Lunar Module (LM) - the vehicle that ultimately landed the astronauts on the moon. In the final scene you can watch the head of the development team saying „goodbye“ to the LM, which will later make the first landing on the moon. You watch him reflecting in that scene all the crucial moments making this possible. People like to celebrate artists or athletes in public - but there is an incredible amount of creativity, hard work and passion in such technical devices as well. It’s like some kind of art. When I saw this scene, I thought to myself: “This is exactly why I love to be an engineer.”

-Simplicius Simplicissimus

[humanoidhistory]

From Into Space, Macdonald and Company, 1970.

[vieformidable]

The picture of earth from space that we will rarely be shown

[semioticapocalypse]

Jack Weir. A girl holding The Washington Post newspaper about the first Moon landing (Apollo 11). July 21, 1969

I Am Collective Memories   •    Follow me, — says Visual Ratatosk