Space Shuttle Against the Sun: Despite Interruptions the Age of Miracles and Wonders Continues

Yeah, but it's not Elizabethan England.

Posted by Eric Blair at May 15, 2009 3:13 PM

It is always Elizabethan England. Once and future...

And, if you want to get pedantic, it is Elizabethan England 2.0.

Posted by vanderleun at May 15, 2009 4:17 PM

I, too, remember the thrill of watching the first men exploring that mysterious orb that has inspired wonder and poetry from the beginning of recorded time.

My son explores it from the side of a mountain in Texas.

Decades after the moon landings he and his team discovered the moon's sodium tail during a particularly strong Leonid meteor shower that struck the moon and knocked sodium atoms into the solar wind and past our planet.

Much mystery remains. More poetry to be written.
http://sirius.bu.edu/moontail/#Animations

Posted by Cathy at May 15, 2009 6:57 PM

Aye, Gerard, but will these forty years be nothing more than a rogue wave that washes high up the shore
and then returns no more?

Posted by Cris at May 15, 2009 7:10 PM

I agree with you that that footprint is a defining moment and helped blur the biggest defining moment for me from a few years earlier, when I was a new freshman in college. That was the day Kennedy was shot and almost at the exact same moment that this news was announced the campus boiler blew up and we all felt like the end of the world was happening around us.

My Mother, who was born in 1910 and lived 'til age 94, has the moon landing listed in her journal as the most exciting event of her entire lifetime. I know that she splurged for her first color TV in order to watch it.

I spent that night with friends in a tiny studio apt. where we pulled down a Murphy bed and all 7 of us piled on to watch a small 13" TV. None of us was particularly religious at that time of our lives, but we held hands and said a prayer together as the LEM was about to touch down.

Posted by Sara (Pal2Pal) at May 15, 2009 8:30 PM

Mankind will go to the stars. But it won't include the US. We're too tired and selfish. China and India will lead the way from now on.

Posted by St. Thor at May 16, 2009 6:43 AM

Don't despair of your own country; it's still the only hope for real progress and freedom on this planet. Just delete the Obama phenomenon soonest; it is a glitch that needs urgent rectification and replacement with something better. One hopes that this blog and others of a similar mindset can develop something suitable quite quickly. Your cousins over the pond here now have complete system failure which is beyond repair; watch listen and learn to avoid a similar fate. And Thor: China and India are part of the problem, not the solution.

Posted by Frank P at May 17, 2009 6:07 AM

These pictures alone destroy the argument that the west is nothing more than a culture of me me me tits and drugs....we are so much more.

Posted by thud at May 18, 2009 3:07 PM