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.
on or about

2 comments:

  1. XR650L_Dave1/27/2011 3:29 PM

    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.

    ReplyDelete
  2. tom1/27/2011 5:31 PM

    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

    ReplyDelete

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