The Eagle Has Landed

[DaveKillens]

Today, June 20th, 2009 we mark one of the great landmarks in human progress. Only forty years ago, at 8:17 PM EST on July 20th, 1969 mankind first landed on a planet other than Earth.

[ISLAMATRON]

Huge waste of money, really it was only a cover up for the research money to be funneled for the advancements of rocket propulsion for ICBM's. Only progress was for warfare.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5smPcN8AoE

[Belatti]

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4238&start=0

[sticky667]

last i checked, the moon isn't a planet...

[ISLAMATRON]

I am not claiming that it did not happen, but that the reasons for it were not at all for human advancement, but rather a way for them to hide enormous cold war R&D.

There was no "human progress" in it at all, had they set out to eradicate cancer or a number of diseases, or eliminate starvation it would have been progress. but instead they chose to go to a rock of no special importance of all. And then that moron Bush set aside a whole bunch of money so they can go visit his ancestral planet.

[ISLAMATRON]

last i checked, the moon isn't a planet...

actually the gravitational pull between the Sun & moon is stronger than between the earth & moon so i may very well can be
considered a planet, but then you get all the dorky astronomers together for a week and even they cant come up with an agreement on the definition of a planet.

[DaveKillens]

last i checked, the moon isn't a planet...

actually the gravitational pull between the Sun & moon is stronger than between the earth & moon so i may very well can be

But if the pull between the sun and moon is stronger than earth and moon, how come when the moon is at "new moon", it doesn't just start orbiting the sun?

considered a planet, but then you get all the dorky astronomers together for a week and even they cant come up with an agreement on the definition of a planet.

Yea, as if this isn't good science, applying a specific definition to a situation.

The issue of a clear definition for "planet" came to a head in 2005 with the discovery of the trans-Neptunian object Eris, a body larger than the smallest then-accepted planet, Pluto. In its 2006 response, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), recognised by astronomers as the world body responsible for resolving issues of nomenclature, released its decision on the matter. This definition, which applies only to the Solar System, states that a planet is a body that orbits the Sun, is large enough for its own gravity to make it round, and has "cleared its neighbourhood" of smaller objects.

[jddh1]

last i checked, the moon isn't a planet...

actually the gravitational pull between the Sun & moon is stronger than between the earth & moon so i may very well can be
considered a planet, but then you get all the dorky astronomers together for a week and even they cant come up with an agreement on the definition of a planet.

As a physicist I'd like to step in here and say that the Moon is not a planet.

Moreover, the Moon does orbit the Sun with small perturbations due to the presence of the Earth. (The Earth's solar orbit is affected by the Moon in similar fashion.)

And let's not forget, after all it's all relative.

[modbaraban]

There was no "human progress" in it at all, had they set out to eradicate cancer or a number of diseases, or eliminate starvation it would have been progress. but instead they chose to go to a rock of no special importance of all. And then that moron Bush set aside a whole bunch of money so they can go visit his ancestral planet.

With such an attitude you could consider motor racing just a waste of fossil fuels for no real reason.

[RacingManiac]

There was no "human progress" in it at all, had they set out to eradicate cancer or a number of diseases, or eliminate starvation it would have been progress. but instead they chose to go to a rock of no special importance of all. And then that moron Bush set aside a whole bunch of money so they can go visit his ancestral planet.

With such an attitude you could consider motor racing just a waste of fossil fuels for no real reason.

Yep...all in the progress of going around in circle(well, slightly oblong circle)as fast as possible....

Political, military agenda or not, the guts the astronaut exhibits and the efforts of hundreds of thousands of engineers, technicians, scientists to go out and do that is still undeniably awesome(as if there are more appropreate place to use such a word). You can definitely feel the frustration of the people who were there 40 years ago on little in terms of tangible progress we've made since then, despite the drastic advancement in technologies in all areas in the past 40 years...

[ISLAMATRON]

There was no "human progress" in it at all, had they set out to eradicate cancer or a number of diseases, or eliminate starvation it would have been progress. but instead they chose to go to a rock of no special importance of all. And then that moron Bush set aside a whole bunch of money so they can go visit his ancestral planet.

With such an attitude you could consider motor racing just a waste of fossil fuels for no real reason.

As it stands it approaches that more and more every passing minute, but there was a time when motorsport had many technologies that trickled down to improve the lives of a great many. What benefits did they gain from landing some men on the moon? Tang? Zero G toilets & pens? And at what costs?

Motorsport is probly at its least relevant these days, quite a shame when so many problems face humanity and a couple big ones could be addressed by the superior engineering prowess of the great minds involved in motorsport.

[Giblet]

There was no "human progress" in it at all, had they set out to eradicate cancer or a number of diseases, or eliminate starvation it would have been progress. but instead they chose to go to a rock of no special importance of all. And then that moron Bush set aside a whole bunch of money so they can go visit his ancestral planet.

With such an attitude you could consider motor racing just a waste of fossil fuels for no real reason.

As it stands it approaches that more and more every passing minute, but there was a time when motorsport had many technologies that trickled down to improve the lives of a great many. What benefits did they gain from landing some men on the moon? Tang? Zero G toilets & pens? And at what costs?

Smoke Detectors were developed by NASA for Skylab. Now we have them on the ground, saving countless lives. That is but one small example.

A whole generation was inspired to do more with their minds and lives, and the fact the space race advanced our technology far beyond what it was more than justified it's existence. We are explorers, and by not exploring what we can see and get to, holds us back from learning all we can about the universe around us.

http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html

EDIT: Oh wait, you did say moon didn't you. There were no special things that we got from the moon, other than an entire human history of wondering about it being given an answer.

[Motornic]

There was no "human progress" in it at all, had they set out to eradicate cancer or a number of diseases, or eliminate starvation it would have been progress. but instead they chose to go to a rock of no special importance of all.

It is priceless to inspire people with a great act. Be it landing on a useless rock or winning a race by sure will alone with only one gear, in the rain with slick tires and under exhaustion.

Every Sunday we can be entertained by a red car, a silver car and some other bothersome cars running round a track, and the world stands back and starves so Formula 1 can a waste of billions of dollars every year.

Human kind is largely a consumer of resources of all sort at the expense of another. Whatever one may see as human progression and priority is largely relative.

In the end we will all die, so what progress indeed.

[Ted68]

For those who do not believe that there was a moon landing, National Geographic experiments with all the conspiracy theory hot points.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv1YpXGI3Cs[/youtube]

[ISLAMATRON]

Figuring out if the moon was made of cheese or if there was a man in it definitely was not worth the cost. Skylab was alot cheaper and brought forth much more benefit, but smoke detectors could have easily been designed without skylab.

I'm not against space exploration, I'm just pointing out the Apollo mission for the farce that it was, it was nothing but a way for the government to hide the costs of developing ICBM's. After The US installed nuclear missiles in Italy and then in Turkey, that move was countered by the USSR placing nuclear missiles 90 miles from Florida in Cuba. It was then that they decided to accelerate research into ICBM's but needed a way to cover up the costs, especially with the high costs of Vietnam and Korea still.

Inspiration can come from something that is uplifting to mankind, people can be inspired by finding a cure for diseases just as they can be inspired by landing on a barren rock.

F1 has only started wasting billions over the last decade or so, precisely the same time it started to become less and less relevant to automotive engineering as a whole. When they crossed that threshold to road relevance the costs skyrocketed.

F1 can be so much more than entertainment, it was in the past but there is a shortsided few who have an idea of what they want its "DNA" to be and refuse any deviation to that.

Motornic: I guess I can never understand your point of view because I do not subscribe to the western point of view/way of life. Yes my body may die but my children will hopefully out live me an my soul is eternal, so merely being a "consumer of resources" does not satisfy my life's goals.