Neil Armstrong RIP
Posted by: Reginald Halliday on 25 August 2012
There was a web site I ran across years ago that had all the "back live" telegrams between Khrushchev & Kennedy during that Cuban Missile Crisis - fascinating reading the give and take of 2 powerful men arguing their positions to each other and the veiled and not so veiled threats of what might happen in various scenarios playing out. Both were right, and both were wrong.
Cuban crisis was 1962, JFK's offer was 1963. As a young schoolboy I could never understand in the 70's why people always seemed to protest outside American Embassies, air bases, etc for peace, rather than the Russian. Maybe because they could?
Cuban crisis was 1962, JFK's offer was 1963. As a young schoolboy I could never understand in the 70's why people always seemed to protest outside American Embassies, air bases, etc for peace, rather than the Russian. Maybe because they could?
Maybe it's because the Russians were pretty up front about what they were and who they were - no "warm, fuzzy" bullsh*t like the USA puts out. Like Hillary calling Putin corrupt after the last Russian election - no doubt he is, but talk about the pot calling the kettle black. America is just as corrupt, we're just better at pretending we're not...we use a better grade of whitewash.
Which is probably OK, because if Russia ever got her sh*t together, I believe they would easily be the strongest nation - they haven't even begun to tap their natural resources, and the largest country in the world is very well represented in every column of the periodic table. But their infrastructure and culture (as well as latitude/weather and geographic size) won't permit them to take full advantage.
"There are few things modern human beings should be proud of. This is certainly one of them."
It certainly was. I remember watching grainy black and white footage of the landings on a 14" TV at primary school, not appreciating what it had taken to get there or the risks involved. Still have a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings. Sad to see all the internet rumours it had been faked. Didn't Armstrong hit somebody that kept on asking him about it?
Didn't Armstrong hit somebody that kept on asking him about it?
I think that was Aldrin.
Buzz proves himself an American hero too, and this guy is such a tool...
Personally, I would be much happier if there were some kind og global clean up pact between all the interested nations. This pact would be written in to any space exploration/ partnership and it would be based on ability to clean up after them.
It's absolutely unacceptable to start polluting our stratosphere after the glabal constination On global waste and recycling issues expressed here on earth. And this littering or 'space junk' as its called, is being done without our consent. It's bad enough having a refuse dump the size of California floating around the pacific, we are also going to have floating debri above our heads, what a disgrace.
It just requires some straight forward, joined-up thinking. There are very rarely just benefits and we need to think things through properly to attain true holistic outcomes. Now that we know the problems lets act on the solutions.
However, I am still a space positivist.