Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Remember That Fine Day in 1969 When Cosmonaut Nikolai Armstrokov First Walked on the Moon?

Me neither, for of course, the Soviet Union never landed a man on the moon.

But that's not the way that Bible Spice remembers it. (She presumably is an expert on the space program because she can see the Moon from her house.)

The editorial cartoonist Herbert Block had a cartoon after the launch of Sputnik. In the background, the cartoon showed a caveman shooting an arrow into the air. In the foreground, a caveman holding club assured another that archery "is a nice trick, but it has no significance."

That was the mindset of the Eisenhower Administration.

Republicans have not changed in sixty years. They want the fruits of technology, but they are not willing to be a part of planting the seeds or growing the trees. The GOP is as short-signed as the CEOs of most American corporations.

2 comments:

XR650L_Dave said...

Was she running with this little tidbit?

http://seeoverthehorizon.com/2011/01/26/our-sputnik-moment/

"It was Washington’s fault that this country was unable to launch a satellite when they had the means – many months ahead of Sputnik.

That embarrassment was due to a United States government edict from President Eisenhower that said “no military vehicle would be used to launch a satellite into orbit”; hence, the government-ordered, failure-plagued program “The Vanguard” to build a “peaceful” launch vehicle was created.

Four months later, after numerous launch vehicle explosions on the pad and in mid-flight, Wehrner Von Braun was finally allowed to use a military launch vehicle to put Explorer I into orbit. The Explorer I satellite built by William Van Allen had been put on hold by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Had Washington not interfered, there would be no space race, as we were clearly ahead on orbital launch capability when Sputnik was launched. "

So on another board I ran into this used as evidence of "goverment liberal interferance that prevented us from being first into space".

My reply to that was:

A) there were excellent reasons to not militarize space, or at least to slow it. It was not even determined at the time if satellite overflights of foreign countries was legal.

B) Vanguard was a naval (NRL) project

Timeline:

Sputnik 1 : October 4, 1957
Sputnik 2 : November 3, 1957
Explorer 1 : January 31, 1958
Vanguard 1:March 17, 1958

C) Explorer (really Juno) was a very crude rocket compared to the vanguard: juno was a throwaway which did not really contribute.

D) The DOD picked vanguard to make the first attempts at our 1st satellite launch

E) Projects involving von braun were kept somewhat out of the public eye (nazi rocket scientist and all that)

F) Eisenhower was a liberal????

The vanguard 1 satellite is still in orbit.


Stupid: it can be fought with a little time and effort.

tom said...

Well they don't believe in science so that is part of it
We all learned about the Scientific Method (not to be confused with the rythem method) in sophomore science class in HS
alas the TeaKlanFascist baggers did not