and of course despite the guff spouted about poets and artists must have free rides into space to interpret it for the rest of us, the astronauts were also thoughtful human beings: the Apollo 8 Earthrise and Genesis moments; Aldrin coining “magnificent desolation”; Rusty Schwiegert’s philosophical thoughts on the BBC special “Infinite Moonkey Cage”; Alan Bean’s paintings; and so on on. I have feeling that Armstrong wrote his own first words but must check.
Yes he was a professor and the internet seems to be consistent that he composed it himself (it’s on the internet so it must be true).
No wish to reduce Armstrong’s brilliance – he was extremely bright – but in the US, unlike say the UK, every university lecturer can have a “professor” title. I have known a number.
Armstrong did compose this sentence and very few people knew it before he actually said them, I believe only Deke Slayton did.
I encountered Buzz Aldrin at the Lucerne Transport Museum where he held a speech many years ago… but he left a lasting impression.
As for the artist rendition of the moon, that is something Dave Scott talks about in the “making of” of the HBO Series “From the Earth to the Moon” where he states that most astronauts were the wrong people to actually describe the beauty of the moon as their training and capabilities were on the technological side. He mentions Al Beans paintings.
Don’t you think that in that curve the line with increasing knowledge should flatten out rather than go up, as those who really know about something will sooner or later give up to the mount stupid poster as those usually have a much higher insistence that their viewpoint is right?
It depends on the “forum”. There are very small online communities where really smart people continue to contribute for many years. It needs several things
Keeping all of the above balls in the air is a continued challenge; nothing is static.
The Apollo engineering community must be shrinking rapidly now. One of the great technical architects of it, Bill Tyndall, went in 1995. The youngest ones are in the 80s now. It is brilliant that there is a dedicated community of younger people, assisted by those still alive, who are rebuilding the original computer hardware – see youtube. A lot of the documentation has already been lost for ever, mostly due to a lack of organisation/archiving. I think just about everything on the IBM-designed guidance stuff for the Saturn 5 is undocumented now, for example.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Consequently the false “truth” prevails and is no longer challenged.
However the converse is also true. The truth slowly withers and is replaced by false/fake news. Take the UK attitude to whistleblowers. Who fries at the stake? Not the perps, it is almost always the whistleblower who gets flamed. Our recent history is peppered with falseness and the embers of truth seekers and whistleblowers.
1. The mass believes, sorry perceives, that law and order and true justice exists in the UK. False.
2. The mass believes that in moments of crisis the system will protect them. False.
3. For example…. Jill Dando, Carl Beech, The Guildford 4/6, Jimmy Saville, Gary Glitter, Cliff Richard I could go on all day until the page freezes.
Smoke and fire rings a bell.
The nearest that Gary Glitter got to Apollo was wearing a fancy dress astronaut outfit. Shall I move this to the OT/politics thread? It’s fine to carry on with it there. You will need to put in a whole load of live links, for the non UK readers 
Not for me (live links) most of this rings a bell… and whatever doesn’t, there is wikipedia..
BeechBaby wrote:
The truth slowly withers and is replaced by false/fake news.
Well, that is what I meant when i said:
Consequently the false “truth” prevails and is no longer challenged
Tons of examples and some do relate to the Apollo program as well as to other spaceflight programs, where the people who lived through them slowly pass away and those who know get tired of rebuking obnoxious b.s. spreaders.
It’s a great pity that the Internet, having been intended to spread knowledge, in many cases does the exact opposite. And seeing stuff like a flat earth theory I have to say mankind has massively regressed from the days when Neil Armstrong thought that his step was a giant leap for mankind…
The same can be said about highest level politicians who willingly and openly spread lies and get away with it. Some people would not reckognize the truth anymore if it danced naked in front of them. Maybe because it is easier to “believe” what fits into one’s own world view rather than to reckognize that some beliefs hold dear prove wrong at closer scrutiny.
The GG analogy was precisely that. Fact/Fiction/Truth. The piece was an analogy. No need to move it.
My wife reckons the moon landings are fake. She was with me when I met John Young and I asked him straight out. He spoke very eloquently and described it, driving about the place on the ranger.
In the car on the way home she reckoned he was programmed to say and describe it. I cannot convince her that for me the whole event was one of the greatest moments of my life (meeting JY) but an achievement in history (the landings).
What people do not understand that through the internet a lot of these moments are truly demeaned, trivialised. It is the cry wolf scenario on the screen in front of you. I have had a couple of moments of late where I honestly think the whole place has gone mad. What has caused this? What has caused politicians to tell so many lies, even when they will be caught flat out? Are people now so stupid? Anyway I am told on good authority that the earth is not flat, we did go to the moon, and sooner or later a politician will tell the truth/
I cannot help you with what your wife believes but the general issue (with e.g. believing the moon landings were faked) seems to be a combination of
Obviously the vast majority of the population tick the first one. In fact a large chunk have done nothing meaningful at school (except sex, if possible )
The second one needs
You don’t need a lot of formal education to do these last three, but the best way to acquire the first two of them is to have some exposure to an education system where you have to dig out information. The best way to acquire the last is to go to a decent school; reading books also helps a lot with exposure to language (not Confessions of a Barmaid ).
The internet makes it really easy to find information. Both good and crap, but you can compare and draw your own conclusions. For example right now I am looking for a bench top bandsaw (to replace one which has disintegrated after about 10 years’ hard work). It took less than 30 mins to check out a load of models, read reviews, etc. And 1-line reviews obviously don’t rank as high as 20-line nice written ones, etc… Before the internet, one would have to visit a library, which almost nobody ever did due to the hassle.
But if you can’t google, can’t scan search results, then you can’t do any of this.
And, crucially, if your literacy is poor, then you cannot tell if the writer is illiterate, so you cannot tell people who are making up total crap from those who possibly know what they are talking about. Most crap is poorly spelt, poorly phrased, poorly punctuated, tossed in as one-liners… nearly always it is immediately suspicious just from the language.
A bit of logical thinking also helps.
So, there is nothing we can do about some people thinking the landings were faked.
However, some junk science is well written. I remember seeing, in the late 1970s, some religious promotional material on this topic (I stayed in the house of someone who was creating “scientific evidence” that the whole world was created in 7 days). I was surprised at how good it was. They created a really compelling argument around the fact that there was not much depth of dust on the moon (they didn’t deny the moon landings; probably a smart policy because if you are looking for donations to your church, dumb people tend to have no money ) and thus the moon cannot be billions of years old. It would have fooled someone who ticked everything above except the science/engineering education bit.
This is nothing whatsoever to do with politics. Gary Glitter is unrelated too; he was a pervert who got put away.
