DailyDirt: One Small Step For A Man…
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Neil Armstrong’s recent passing has reminded lots of folks about the first manned mission to the moon. The whole idea that “we could put a man on the moon” seemed incredible in the 1960’s, and the feat is still remarkably difficult — even if kids today can’t fully appreciate the accomplishment. Maybe someday, we’ll go back to the moon (and this XKCD will have to be adjusted), but in the meantime, here are just a few links about that historic first moonwalk.
- Neil Armstrong’s first words as he stepped on the moon were slightly misheard by everyone on Earth, and audio analysis of the recordings suggests that Armstrong didn’t just mis-speak. “That’s one small step for *A* man, one giant leap for mankind.” [url]
- In 2006, NASA realized that it had lost its original Apollo 11 moon landing videos, but fortunately, archived footage of the moonwalk was found in Australia in 2010. The tapes were restored and digitized — and hopefully we won’t lose them again when nobody remembers what MP4 is. [url]
- President Nixon was prepared for an Apollo 11 disaster with a speech that he thankfully never read to the American public. The “moon disaster” speech is a creepy reminder that space exploration is an inherently risky venture… [url] [page2]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.
Filed Under: apollo 11, exploration, moon, moonwalk, neil armstrong, nixon, space
Companies: nasa
Comments on “DailyDirt: One Small Step For A Man…”
One Small Step For Man Makes No Sense
Thank goodness someone has finally pointed this out.
“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, makes no sense at all, where as
“One small step for A man, one giant leap for mankind”, actually does make sense.
One Small Step For Man Makes No Sense
Which sounds more epic though?
>>In 2006, NASA realized that it had lost its original Apollo 11 moon landing videos, but fortunately, archived footage of the moonwalk was found in Australia in 2010.
Thank heavens for copying.
One Small Step For Man Makes No Sense
Are you implying that nonsense may sound more epic?
Because no. (Unless you’re Lewis Carrol.)
Neil Armstrong was a very very taciturn, humble man and he was very difficult to approach. In a Discovery Channel Documentary about how humans left the Earth, he basically stated in a VERY rare interview that he stayed away from the public because he felt that it would have taken the torch away from the human achievement at whole.
I might go take the wife this weekend to his burial site in Wapakoneta, Ohio.
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Australia carried the world-wide television boardcast through a radio telescope so I wouldn’t be surprised if the was a source.
One Small Step For Man Makes No Sense
How could you get more epic than saying nonse in Lewis Carrol style? 😉
Thanks Mike 🙂
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You’re welcome, Wally. 🙂
The moon landing was awesome. Some of the best special effects work Hollywood ever produced.
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Man it didn’t take long for this kind of taint to appear.
There seems to be one thing conspiracy theorists forget about. Retro Retroreflectors. The US didn’t have the technology to deploy them without human hands in 1969. They helped find the exact distance to the moon when NASA bounced a laser off of them.
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And it’s not the kind of taint we want to see.
I was performing some research into rocket launches and stuff, and it appears that a lot of this type of project management for this occurs across the parking lot from an IKEA located somewhere in Denver, that didn’t exist about a few years ago.
"One giant step fof Manny Kind"
It’s the second line that was mis-heard… what Neil Armstrong actually said was “one giant step for Manny Kind.”
Manny was a friend of his whose wife always refused to give Manny a blow-job, saying to him – “They’ll have to land a man on the moon before I’ll do that!”
Armstrong Himself Wasn?t Quite Sure He?d Said It Right
As I recall, someone did a waveform-level analysis of the audio, to confirm that there was a crackle just at the point where he would have said ?a?, to confirm that Armstrong had in fact said what he intended to say. Until then, even he wasn?t sure.
…one gaint leap for america’s bragging rights
Man it didn't take long for this kind of taint to appear.
I have a recording of that ?Did We Land On The Moon?? pseudo-doco somewhere. It?s very instructive to go through it step-by-step, and point out why every single one of its claims is nonsense.
A good exercise in critical thinking for a budding science class, I would say.
Re:DailyDirt: One Small Step For A Man...
Neil Armstrong’s has set the way to all the peoples to know about the Universe… May God keep his soul in peace…
Man it didn't take long for this kind of taint to appear.
My favorite moment afterwards is Buz Aldrin punching the idiot with a right hook square in th jaw.
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Dude – I’d like to introduce you to Buzz Aldrin
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It was an international achievement to get the broadcast to everyone around the world.
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My uncle actually met him in person once. A bit of a braggart, but a nice person all around 🙂
Why has no one, not even Russia, China, Europe or India ever gone back to the moon? 40 plus years?
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Gregg,
Manned missions are incredibly risky and expensive… and productivity-wise, it’s hard to beat robot missions for doing science. We could easily send a robot to the moon to accomplish any number of scientific tasks, so why send a human? It’s been done before, and there isn’t that much more to learn about it — UNLESS we’re going to try to start colonizing the moon…..
So plans to start living on the moon semi-permanently might take some (more) decades to pull off….
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Watch “Apollo 18”. That will answer your question.
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Don’t know whether serious or joking. It was a movie made to look like it was shot on 16mm film. Still creepy as Hell though.
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There are some fascinating recently declassified documented missions from Russia involving they making a rover named Lunokhod 1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1
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And just like Russian built AK-47….it still works today ^_^
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/03jun_oldrover/