#moon landing anniversary

[athymelyreply]

So I made a moon landing cake…

Happy lunar landing day! I decided to spend some time baking and make a cake to celebrate! :)

It’s half vanilla and half chocolate cake with homemade buttercream and homemade wineberry jam in the middle- all the components I tasted along the way were delicious, so I’m looking forward to eating it tonight. (I’ll reblog this with more pictures later)

[astronomical-bagel]

Out of touch thursday the 20th AND moon landing dash ITS A PARTY IN THE USA

[gay-mormon-wizard]

since we're making Moon Landing Day a Tumblr holiday, I figured I'd get real about it. On Friday I'm throwing a Moon Landing Day party irl and inviting all my friends.

I've got round and crescent-shaped snacks, I'll be getting pizza (round and made of cheese, like the moon), I've got the soda Starry (and peach juice as it pairs well to make mocktails), and I've got gray paint and white foam spheres so the guests can paint miniature moons.

I live in a residence hall that has a community area called the Luna Lounge, which is where I'll be hosting the party.

Happy Moon Landing Day!

[thesinglelogbridge]

[formerly-evil]

Happy 54th moon landing aniversary btw. If you even care

[headspacedad]

Reminder

Tomorrow we party on the moon!

[its-a-beautful-day]

Happy Luner Landing 🌕🚀

[icarus-suraki]

Happy Moon Landing Day!

[sixminutestoriesblog]

moon landing anniversary

Fifty four years ago, the first human footprint was left in the powdery dust of the moon.  For the first time in history, humanity had not just left their own world behind but had set foot on a completely new surface.  For as long as humanity had been humanity, they had looked up at the moon and know it for the brightest light in their night sky, their one ever changing, consistent companion.  Now, finally, man had managed to reach back across that darkness and touch that familiar face.  The moon landing was the culmination of not just a decade and a half of a space race between two world powers, it was the realized dream of humanity back into the very early mists of time when ancestors that weren’t even entirely what we’d call humans today looked up into the night sky and fell in love with the pale light that fell down over them.  The sun gives us light and warmth and life but the moon is what humanity has hung their dreams, their wishes, their magic and their romance on.  

It has always been something we have hung our superstitions on too.

Superstitions are a part of humanity.  And when we went to the moon - we brought them with us.

Instead of talking about goddesses and harvests and animals and omens, I thought, today, on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon, we’d talk about the superstitions that they took with them on that flight and the ones some astronauts still honor today in the space station that orbits between us and the moon and that may one day, hopefully soon, see us back on the moon and then even further.  Sailors have a reputation for being superstitious.  When you cast out into the great Deep, you can’t help but feel that you are very small and the world around and, more importantly under you, is very, very wide and very, very deep.  On land you can sooth yourself into believing that man has tamed nature.  There’s no such comforting lie when you are out of sight of land.  What are astronauts but sailors of the stars?  A ‘star traveler’.  And the space between here and the moon is a much longer and deeper horizon than any sailor on the water ever watched fade behind him.

Let’s start with the light stuff.  I was surprised by how much food factors into space launch tradition.  Not sprinkling corn meal or salt in circles to keep away evil spirits but eating food.  An astronaut’s breakfast the day of the launch?  Scrambled eggs and steak if you’re American.  If it worked for John Glenn and Alan Shepherd, it should work for every astronaut after, right?  Cosmonauts however get a champagne breakfast, because Russians know how to send someone off in style.  NASA has a cake delivered with the mission’s emblem on it.  No one cuts or eats the cake though.  Damaging the launch’s symbol would be bad luck.  When America first wanted to launch probes to photograph the surface of the moon in the early 1960s with the Ranger missions, every mission failed until the seventh one.  A seventh launch attempt that just happened to have everyone sharing the can of peanuts one of the engineers had brought into the room.  It’s been peanuts at ground control ever since.  After the rocket launch, everyone on the ground gets a meal of beans and cornbread, the meal that the original control crew had after the first successful launch.  And lets not forget the bagels and donuts ground crew gets after the shuttle orbiter gets successfully delivered to the launch pad.  Bagels and donuts are round; the shuttle is round.  Obviously.

In Russia, people would lay coins on the railroad track the shuttle would arrive via.  The flattened coins were not only a completely cool way to memorialize the event but were also considered lucky.  Cosmonauts were not allowed to lay coins on the tracks though.  It was considered unlucky for them to see the shuttle arriving.  Instead they were given haircuts during the shuttle’s arrival, as much a tradition as ward against bad luck.

In fact, you’ve probably already noticed that a lot of these seem to be tradition as much as superstition.  At its core though, what is a great deal of superstition but at some point someone did something and got the result they were hoping for and thought ‘if its not broke, don’t fix it’, carrying on with the habit until everyone forgot why it was a habit in the first place?    

For instance, cosmonauts sign Yuri Gagarin’s guestbook in his old office and, in some traditions, ask his permission to fly.  They also leave red carnations in his honor on the Memorial Wall.  And, like Yuri, they too pee on the right rear tire of the bus taking them to the launch pad.  Ladies don’t have to but some of them bring a jar of pee to contribute.

Both astronauts and cosmonauts bring a talisman with them into the shuttle.  Its for good luck, but it also is the first indication to the people inside the shuttle that they’ve left Earth as it starts to float once they’ve cleared the tug of gravity.  Stuffed animals are popular for this purpose.

Before launch in the States though, while waiting to enter the shuttle, the astronauts and the tech crew play cards until the commander of the mission has the losing hand.  This lets him leave his bad luck behind with his cards.  While the crew is playing cards, the launch crew fills the tanks with fuel for the launch and writes a woman’s name in the frost that forms during the process, a superstition picked up from their Russian counterparts.

In 1980, this tradition was left out during a satellite launch and 47 ground crew were killed in an accident.

Baikonur, Kazakhstan, leased by the Russians for their space program, has an Avenue of Heroes where a tree has been planted for every launch.  The successful ones - and the ones that weren’t. Every cosmonaut walks the route past the trees before launch.

Russia will not launch missions on October 24.  A disaster in 1960 was followed by another in 1963 on that date and it was permanently scratched from the calendar after that.

The Apollo 13 mission has put due to the taint already associated with that number for most Americans, though it did have a happier ending.  Incidentally, the vest worn by mission controller Gene Kranz during that mission is on display at the National Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.  His wife sewed him a new vest for every single mission he was involved in.  The Apollo 13 vest was white.

Lastly, every mission after the ill-fated Challenger explosion has seen a bouquet of flowers delivered to mission control.  One rose for every astronaut on the flight and a single white one to remember the ones that have been lost.

[catnipkdodo]

Happy Moon Landing Day!

And also… *checks notes * Out of Touch Thursday? That’s a thing, right?

[queen-tashie]

Happy 54th anniversary of the moon landing!

Cool moon fact: there are currently no Canadians on the moon!

Another cool moon fact: I’m a Canadian that has looked at the moon!

[bringthemoonclosertoearth]

ITS MOON LANDING DAY

[frogeyedape]

Moon madness Thursday: 54th moon landing anniversary

[grievingdeanwinchester]

[smorpher]

Fuck

Happy Moon Landing Day!

[headspacedad]

Chapters: 6/6 Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender, Voltron: Vehicle Force (1984) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Lisa/Shiro (Voltron) Characters: Shiro (Voltron), Lisa (Voltron) Additional Tags: Shiro Ship Week 2019, likashi, he's a bi guy, we have a very small canoe but its got the best oarspeople, Shiro (Voltron)-centric Summary:

its the anniversary of the moon landing and I remembered Chapter Two of this story collection. 

The first colony humanity ever managed to settle on the moon vanished without a trace.  Years later, Shiro felt just as lost when an accident ripped his own dreams of going to the moon away from him.  Now he can only teach others to dream the way he used to.  But you don't love like that and not be noticed. Sometimes - Fate is much quieter than expected when it arrives.