Apollo/Moon landing stuff

I don't see how it could have been a con, as there were thousands of people involved - from several sets of astronauts through the instructors in the training courses through the designers and producers of the physical equipment involved and the electrics and electronics needed, the communications systems, the computer programmers, the interpreters of the data being sent back during the voyages and the corrections to the programming need for minor deviations, the photographers, the radio hams listening to every word exchanged, the families of the astronauts.

Then there are the observations, reports and photographs which have been confirmed by further observations and calculations by scientists, astrophysicists and learned academics of many nations, the moon rocks brought back and studied in detail by geologists from many unrelated laboratories and found to contain elements and combinations of materials which are extremely rare on earth.

How could all those diverse people have been in a conspiracy of silence? If it have been faked, surely some of these experts and people with close, intimate contact with the project would have detected an anomaly and been very vocal about how they had been cheated? Or how could some whistle-blower have resisted publishing his inside story and getting his moment of fame?

What have the Romans space researchers ever done for us?
Interactive spin-offs graphic - homeandcity.nasa.gov/
Select Home or City and nteract. Click on the three dots at the bottom right of each page if you just want to see lists. These are not exhaustive, NASA says their spin-off annual magazine describe 2,000 or so. I haven't looked at those, so I can't comment, but the interactive graphics page in the link has lots.)

In short - stop b****y girning. The moon-shot is history, and is in the past and already paid for, so there is no point nagging on about it, as if you can turn back the clock and redivert that money to another cause - and even if it had not been spent on that, do you really think it would have been spent then on causes that you think are morte deserving now

That was the priority then. Perhaps impressing the Russians that the West was just as capable as they were of space travel was a valid priority then We are talking here about the era of the Bay of Pigs and the Russian desire to intimidate the West with their scientific and military capabilities. Had they been allowed to keep the sole ascendancy in space as well as potentially on the ground, perhaps the moon would now be a base for a fleet of Soviet spacewarships poised to intervene if their dependencies of the US, the UK and the countries of western and eastern Europe showed signs of rebellion and trying to secede from a New Universal Soviet Union.

Thanks and returned good wishes to you phoenix
I have no interest in it beyond the event when it happened and a few years afterward when everyone seemed to be sending craft into space.
I have better things to think about and get involved in. Things which are happening right here on earth.

Elegran...you have said it all, so I don’t need to.

I wasn't very interested in the Moon landings then and am still not interested. My sister and I were in bed when it was on the news and Mum came up to wake us up and to ask if we wanted to watch the men on the moon. We said no and I don't feel regretful to have missed it.
There was some coverage at school when we were amassed together in the hall to watch some B&W grainy film. We watched politely but it didn't excite me.
I believe there were demonstrations in the USA about spending the money on better things - there was so much poverty in the Appalachians - and still is.
Sorry, science - fact or fiction - doesn't float my boat.

The only day I seem to watch any TV is Sunday night, the rest of the time I am either reading, talking or asleep after a hard day outside. So I have no idea what tripe is on. Also beginning to get a bit bored hearing abut the moon landing on the radio. I do wonder if it ever really happened.

Well Elegran might be surprised to know, but I entirely agree with her. I also agree with BlueBelle.
I think that America engaged in the ‘space race’ with Russia, and winning that race was the most important thing for them. It didn’t matter to them that they offered a safe
sanctuary to the men who had been at the forefront of the design of the flying rockets V1 and V2, or that these men were vile criminals who should really have faced justice for their crimes.

I stayed up all night when it actually happened 50 years ago. DH and I watched BBC4 last night looking back at archive footage of Sky at Night, early programmes about space travel, James Burke looking back at old footage some of it of him as a young reporter. The scientists were wearing collars and ties - including someone trying on an early 'space suit'. Fascinating.

So was Concorde an amazing achievment Lemongrove....what was the point and where is it now !? The people who paid for these ‘acheivments’ would never have a chance to use them would they!? I’m all for advancement in science ...but confine it to earthly matters that are useful to the majority of us , NOT to an elite few!

Never been particularly interested although thought it an amazing achievement. Brought it home to me last week when I went outside to look at the partial lunar eclipse and thought that people had not only landed there but also walked on the surface.

Saggi homeandcity.nasa.gov/
Just some of the 2,000 or so spin-offs that are in everyday use. Select Home or City and Interact. Click on the three dots at the bottom right of each page if you just want to see lists of what is described in the interactions.

The flushing toilet was only for the elite few when first invented. Should that never have happened?

Apparently Apollo 11 had less computing power than a modern washing machine...
I dunno.
I too feel I should be more into all the fanfare about the first moon landing but I cannot help feeling its all about trying to focus on ANY human achievement when at the moment we don't seem to be able to manage to achieve basic common sense. I know. What a grump.

Corned Beef & Branson sandwich - ah......yummy! Sorry, perhaps that should be on another thread.

It has brought back lots of memories for me so I'm happy to hear more. I remember being got up in the early hours to watch it live on TV. It was also my dad's birthday so I always remember when it was, although I was always confused that it was recorded as 20th of July as here in the UK it was on the 21st! Took me years to work out that the date was that in the USA! It has been good to think of my dad too - something I rarely do as he died in the 1970s when I was only 20.

Fourormore you put my feelings into words exactly!
It's high time we looked after the earth and stopped spending on the ego trip of space travel. Already we've carried our dirty habits to the moon, leaving spent vehicles, machines and even human excrement up there, while
tons of debris circle the Earth.
I know we've learned a lot from it and have benefitted in a roundabout way from the space programme, but I think we could have gained those benefits in a less damaging way.
I actually feel quite angry about it.

I agree with those who think it is a complete waste of money - and of expertise that could be used to improve conditions on this planet and prevent it being ruined.

There have been welcome by-products as a result of space research and space travel but my feeling is that far more would have been achieved if all those resources had been directed towards the earth. We have a beautiful blue planet so why don't we work towards keeping it that way? Instead, every country that can possibly afford it is channeling vast amounts of money into what in my view is the vanity project to top all vanity projects.

They left human excrement? I visited Kennedy Space Center a couple of weeks ago, it's an amazing, informative and inspirational place to visit and I'm pretty sure from all the information I saw there was no way a man could poo on the moon.

On TV, I think yesterday morning, they were discussing the suggestion apparently being made that all our rubbish be dumped on the moon (I think it was the moon or possibly another planet) because more and more countries who formery, for a fee, allowed us to use them as a dumping ground, are no longer willing to do so. (Who can blame them).

So, not content with turning our own planet into a rubbish tip, it's now suggested we do the same to other planets.

I've been to the Kennedy Space Centre too and it was very interesting but I still think there are far more important things to spend our precious resources on.

It was an incredible achievement. Why b so negative. I am in total awe of those courageous men who went into the unknown not knowing if they would return. I suppose people thought the same negative thoughts about flying

I think it's possible to recognise it was a great achievement and required huge technical skills and personal courage but at the same time to feel that the astronomical (no pun intended) cost of all this exploration could be spent here on earth.

Why can't we appreciate and care for what we have here rather than go searching around for other projects. It will, I expect, be put down as an admirable example of the "human spirit". I would prefer the human spirit to demonstrate itself in less grandiose and damaging ways. ("There are millions of pieces of rubbish circling the Earth, everything from dead spacecraft to stray nuts and bolts to flecks of paint. Estimates by Nasa and others suggest that there are at least 18,000 pieces of man-made debris at least 10cm wide hurtling around the Earth – a figure rapidly escalating" - Guardian 2010).

....Because Eloethan there have been people saying what you and a few others have for hundreds, if not thousands of years! Oh, why bother to do this or that, make our cave biggger instead of rubbing those sticks together etc.
Mankind cannot stagnate, and exploring the wonders of our universe, and, in time, beyond it, is surely what we are designed to do.

I stayed up all night to see it.

I am amazed at the negative comments here!!

When future history is written this will be remembered as a great event, boring as it may be to a lot of unappreciative old grans.

Quizqueen, what planet are you on?