Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: bjrogg on May 31, 2020, 10:05:47 am
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I see so many similar divisions as I did when we lit that first candle. The beginning of the space exploration for Americans and the quest to reach the moon. I remember as a child watching us landing on the moon. The whole country, the whole world watching. I often wonder if we can manage to come together like that again.
As a young child this event had a very deep long lasting impression on me. I thought and still think we can do anything we truly set our minds to. I didn’t get to watch the space x rocket take off yesterday, but I’m so happy that we are going to space again with a beautiful rocket built on our soil and launched from our soil. I’m not meaning to put down any other countries, just happy for mine.
With everything that is tearing us apart, maybe we can find something to pull us together. Not sure anything can. Maybe the return to the moon can. I don’t know. I’m sure looking forward to seeing us bouncing around up there again. Hopefully doing much more this time.
What do you think? Any chance? Nothing like looking at earth from the moon to realize. It’s a small world.
Bjrogg
PS hoping this thread stays positive. Hopefully that’s not to much to ask for
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I understand hedge.
I know we’ve done some absolutely amazing and unbelievable things. Truly unbelievable. I mean over 50 years later some still don’t believe we did it. We have probed the plants of our solar system. Sent unmanned rovers to explore Mars. Voyager is exploring beyond ours. It’s all fantastic and amazing. Nothing like watching a man or woman bouncing around out there. Wacking a golf ball. Kicking up dust.
Taking one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.
Heck I don’t know how it would effect us as a world anymore. We might be disappointed. The si fi movies might be better
Bjrogg
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BJ, I was around for Sputnik, the first satellite to circle the earth, and ever though it was the Russians that got there first it got us stimulated to go farther. I watched the first man(American) in space and until and including the first man on the moon I as did many, watched every maned flight to orbit the earth and into outer space. John Kennedy said we would put a man on the moon by the end of that decade and we all believed it would happen, and it did. We, as Americans and as citizens of this world can do anything when we put our collective heads together.
Look how we geared up for WWII. Our factories were putting out a fighter plane every few minutes, a bomber every hour and a battle ship every week and by the way much of that work was done by the women of this country while the men were at war. We, as a country and we as a member of a global family can do amazing things when we work together.
My wife's grandmother took her bicycle to the Write Brothers bicycle shop in Dayton Ohio in the early 1900s and got to see the first man on the moon in 1969 in her lifetime. Think of the progress that occurred during that relatively short time. The computer that was used to put the first man on the moon would fill a large room and now, 50 years later the cell phone that most folks carry with them everywhere and every day has way more capability than that first room full of electronics. And, incidentally, it was a few humans that made the final calculations with pencil and paper that made that historic event happen.
I loved watching the liftoff yesterday. It stirred memories of the first man in space and everything since then. In the old days it was mostly government money, taxpayers dollars that made it all possible. Now we will rely on American industry and industries from all over the world to achieve the next step and other steps from now on.
Look at the earth from the Hubble telescope, you can't see the earth, you can hardly see our solar system. We, here on earth are less than small. In the grand scheme of things, we are hardly anything at all, just another speck of dust in the VAST UNIVERSE.
I know that we, collectively, can do anything we put our minds to. Nothing is impossible when we work together for it.
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That’s exactly how I feel Pat. Sometimes I wonder if you just had to live through it to really appreciate it for what it’s really all about.
I was surprised how many people said it was impossible when President Trump announced that we were going to send a man or woman to the moon in this decade. Gee should be a cakewalk compared to the first time. I really hope I get to watch it again. This time with my kids and grandkids. With all the sci fi movies now, it might be hard to explain to them. This is real, not a movie.
Bjrogg
PS as I’m riding along in my tractor. That’s steering itself by calculating where it is and where it’s supposed to be going from signals it triangulates from satellites. I heard space x successfully docked with ISS.
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Well said Pat B. :)
Good to have a post that is back on message :)
(...the other stuff is getting tiresome :( ).
Del
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I was not alive for the space race but I did grow up watching 'The Cosmos' and, to me,there is nothing better to make you realize how small our problems are in the great scheme of things than the photo Voyager 1 took, "Pale Blue Dot". It is hard to even fathom the vastness of it all. We should all be proud of our accomplishments as a nation and, perhaps more importantly, as a species.
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It was a very enlightening time to grow up. It made you think you could follow your dreams. I know some thought it a great waste of money, but we learned so much from it. The knowledge and technology we developed has touched every aspect of our society.
I think the unmanned missions have been great learning missions. They have pushed our technology to places I never dreamed of. They aren’t nearly as personal as the human probes though. The human connection makes the vastness seem smaller. Actual colonization would really shrink that vastness. Just a little. We always have been explorers. As vast as our world once seemed. It has become much smaller. Not insignificant, just less vast.
Bjrogg
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Nice thread BJ, i been around to see a lot of it also, very cool stuff and glad they are back at it.Not sure what they will find out there , but most likely something, just hope it's good. :)
Pappy
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Nice thread BJ, i been around to see a lot of it also, very cool stuff and glad they are back at it.Not sure what they will find out there , but most likely something, just hope it's good. :)
Pappy
That’s part of the excitement of exploring Pappy. Never quite know what your gonna find. :o
Bjrogg
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I remember when it happened.
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I agree BJ, just part of what a man wants to do, like hunting/gathering .Just hope we don't find something we don't want to. :-\
Pappy
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Excellent topic and thread "Let's light this candle" for it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
I remember seeing the headline - Sputnik - and later Muttnik in our local newspaper. I remember getting up early to turn on the TV to watch the early flights, The Mercury Space Capsules. The astronauts going into Space. Certainly like nothing we had ever seen before.
I remember "Houston, we have a problem". When our intrepid astronauts set foot on the moon, I was listening to it on a portable radio in a USFS guard station on the Routt National Forest. I was simply amazed, NASA did it.
I recently watched the docking of the space capsule at the space station and the astronauts coming through to the hugs of the members of the space station. What made it unique was a U-Tube poster took the footage and overlaid with Straus' The Blue Danube waltz. It harkens back to 2001 a Space Odyssey, which I saw over 50 years ago.
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The incredible men and women (and dogs, and monkeys, and whatever other critters) that have been strapped to a rocket and blasted beyond anything we could fathom are worthy of every accolade we can give them. The technological advances, as well as the spirit of global cooperation, that take place on the ISS is mind boggling. To think that it's been up there since '98, it's borne witness to some truly formative periods in human history. Let us hope it also serves as a launching point to explore the stars. Alpha Centauri, here we come!
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I was able to watch Allan Shepard, and have watched every launch since ! Sadly, witnessed the Challanger blow-up (A). The countdown always gets My Heart racing. Bob
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I remember the moon walk.It was a proud moment in history.For those proud of this country it still is.The light never went out.Watched the latest manned rocket go up now too.Sadly some in this country have different agendas than being proud of our country and this thread is a good point made.
It's good the adults in the room know the difference.
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I've been able to see so many of the launches from the house or at work I was really disappointed when the clouds were too high to see this one. I watched the Challenger explode while I was at work. Even after the sun set the debris trail of smoke was still visible from that morning. It was a cold, windless Blue bird sky all that day. It was kinda eerie.
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I thought that the rocket that sent the latest astronauts to space was supposed to return to earth landing intack to be used again saving money.Or was the showing of that previously what the future could involve?
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Ed - You are correct in that the rocket did not land on the launching pad like we have seen previously. IIRC The Daily Mail website indicated the rocket did return to earth but it landed on an ship in the ocean. Pretty cool if you ask me. I don't recall if it was a US Navy vessel, like an aircraft carrier or a freighter.
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Yes the booster rocket returned and landed on a drone barge. To be reused, the space capsule took the astronauts to the space station and docked there. I believe the astronauts are suppose to stay there a couple months and then return for a ocean splash down.
Bjrogg
Eddie I was guessing you could see them.
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Had a Friend that used to live in Merrit Island, said the House would shake like a Earth Quake on Launches - Too Cool ! Bob
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They should of shown the landing of that rocket.Pretty cool too.Maybe they will later.
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Ed, they have been landing on the barge that is 200 miles off shore for a while now. Bob, Your friend is right, woke up in a motel at Canaveral inlet one morning with ash trays, lamps and anything not glued day shaking and vibrating off the tables when the shuttle went up. When working at the Cape or Nuc Sub base we had the day off whenever there was a launch. Also, another rocket scheduled to go up this afternoon. Will not be able to see that one either, 5" of rain on the way.
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Cool.
Except for the vibrations....HaHa.I imagine landing does'nt shake anything up.
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I went to college in Jensen Beach, Fl in 1969 through '71, not too far south of Cape Canaveral. I never got to see a rocket launched during the day but we did get to see the night time launch of weather and other satellite launches from the beach. It was pretty cool seeing the rockets streaking through the sky and watching as the first stage of the rockets separate from the rest. It was pretty "trippy" experience in those days. ::)
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I'm sure you could hear the roaring noise of those engines.
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Actually not, Ed. By the time they got to us they were pretty far up and down range. Seeing these rockets without sound was pretty eerie too.
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Then you were'nt all that close to begin with.