May he rest in peace, ensconced with the sublime smile of symbolic immortality.
And in a surreal nod to his disdain for commercial exploitation of his good name, the grey advertising sidebar on the Washington Post obituary failed for me, giving a peek into the media Matrix.
… a rush of memories….
and beholding his lunar globe, his Apollo 11 menu, the prototype build of his lunar flag pole… and the ethereal echoes of those iconic boot prints
and a revelation from one his last, and rare interviews that I discovered while researching the Eagle construction log:
"A month before the launch of Apollo 11, we decided we were confident enough we could try and attempt on a descent to the surface. I thought we had a 90% chance of getting back safely to Earth on that flight but only a 50-50 chance of making a landing on that first attempt. There are so many unknowns on that descent from lunar orbit down to the surface that had not been demonstrated yet by testing and there was a big chance that there was something in there we didn’t understand properly and we had to abort and come back to Earth without landing." — Neil Armstrong
And this was the subject of his recurring nightmares for two years prior to the lunar landing:
A recent Grumman interview sheds some light on Armstrong’s famous first words on the moon. Nobody knew what he was going to say, and it was not written down or rehearsed. He may have been inspired by the moment:
"The famous first words spoken by Neil Armstrong as he descended the LEM ladder toward the lunar surface on July 16, 1969, had a dual meaning. As he jumped onto the lunar surface Armstrong said, "That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." He jumped! This was because the LEM had landed more softly than expected, and the legs did not crumple as much as expected. Some experts say that the astronauts, being jet pilots, actually landed the LEM softly instead of using the agreed-upon procedure to cut the engines when the LEM was within a few feet of the surface. If the expected impact force had occurred, the last rung of the descent ladder, attached to the landing leg, would be located close to the surface. It was not, so Armstrong had to leap to the ground from a much higher level than planned. Luckily, the low-gravity environment allowed him to float gently to the surface."
The Lunar Module has an ingenious single-use shock absorber
This honeycomb was designed to take an impact of 10 ft. per second, but none of the landings were more than 4 fps, so they did not crush very far, and the final step off the LM ladder was thus a longer step.
From the Apollo 11 transcript:
109:22:48 McCandless: Okay. Neil, we can see you (on the TV) coming down the ladder now. (Pause)
109:22:59 Armstrong: Okay. I just checked getting back up to that first step, Buzz. It’s…The strut isn’t collapsed too far, but it’s adequate to get back up.
109:23:10 McCandless: Roger. We copy.
109:23:11 Armstrong: Takes a pretty good little jump.
So sad to live in the world without The First Man on Moon.
He proved that dreams may become reality.
one more good person gone from an era where you did not immediately expect to monetize everything.
just like jonas salk before him.
instead we are left with cheap scum like Myriad Genetics.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/08/20/49415.htm
"Biotech patent attorney Tim Worral of Dorsey and Whitney said in a statement the implications of the decision extended to most corners of the biotech industry.
"Although the decision will probably be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the biotech industry is breathing at least a temporary sigh of relief," Worral said.
For today, he said the decision is "a win" because much of the value associated with DNA-based inventions are based on the notion that DNA claims are patentable."
the contrast in "value" concepts couldn’t be greater.
hey hey, my my.
at least neil young didn’t die.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/multimedia/sns-rt-blooper-errormt...
THE WHOLE WORLD STOPPED that SAT-Sun in July 1969 , it was all MOON WALK COVERAGE 24/7 that week and I got a kick out of the GRUMAN ENGINEERS doing sims at the plant in full Lunar suit EVA when the video was blacked out , sadly by 1972 the moon missions were thought of as kinda anti-climatic and boring..go figger.
Leave a Reply