50 Years since the first moon landing

by eyeslice2 20 Replies latest jw friends

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  titch

  Greetings, all! Myself, I was 15 years old at the time. And, that day, guess what? I had just attended the 7th & final day of that year's International Assembly, at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. I got home that evening, just in time to watch the adventure on TV. I had no doubt that humans had put to use marvelous technology to get to the Moon, or, Luna, so I have never been one to believe the "conspiracy theories" that it was all staged in some studio somewhere. But, you know Folks, it's always fascinated me, that in the entire history of humankind, just a "handful" of people have ever had the experience of viewing Planet Earth from the vantage point of that body out there in space, called the Moon (Luna) Most people, in the history of the human race have looked up at night, and looked at the Moon. But, only a few have looked back from "up there" back at Earth. I am pleased that images have been recorded on television, and photographically.

  I plan to watch "Chasing The Moon", next month, on my local PBS TV station.

  Space exploration is "humbling" That leads into another thing that I have thought about. That is the short video, which you can view on the Internet, called, "The Pale Blue Dot." It's a photo of Earth, as captured by one of the Voyager spacecrafts, from billions of miles away from the Earth. Carl Sagan had requested officials of NASA that the spacecraft turn its camera around, to photograph Earth, from that distance. That pale blue, dot, suspended in a light beam, as photographed from billions of miles away, was....US! Our home...our planet. It is a very humbling video/photo to watch, with Mr. Sagan's thoughts about it. It you've never seen it/heard it, try to do that. Best Regards, Everyone.

  Titch
  
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  LongHairGal

  I remember the moon landing in 1969.

  I was not yet in the JW religion and was blissfully unaware of the whole thing. I was new in the workforce.. I didn’t think anything of the moon landing except that one grandmother and one grandfather didn’t live to see it.
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  cofty

  Earthrise taken from Apollo 8

  
  
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  RubaDub

  I bet Trump thinks it was staged in Hollywood.

  Rub a Dub
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  smiddy3

  I don`t think so RubaDub, even Trump is not that stupid , and by the way if you do think of him as being that stupid ,what does that say about all of the Americans who voted him in for president of the United states of America ?

  And to look at the other side of the coin ,if you think Trump is stupid what does that say about all of those people who chose not to vote at all and let him get into the White house ?

  I`m Just Saying .
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  sir82

  Even though I was a wee little one, hadn't even started kindergarten, I remember watching it, and all of the subsequent moon landings also.
  
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  iwantoutnow

  I want my Jet Pack and Hover Car!
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  iwantoutnow

  It says that there are a lot of stupid americans. (not news by the way)

  • Clinton: 65,844,610 (48.2%)
  • Trump: 62,979,636 (46.1%)
  • Others: 7,804,213 (5.7%)
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  iwantoutnow

  Pale blue dot. Best thing ever written.

  To bad the bible writers were not as insightful.

  Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

  The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

  Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

  The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

  It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

  -- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
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  blondie

  50 years ago I was baptized as a jw....I remember the news on the radio every night as I went home from the convention in Chicago that year. The moon landing was amazing, my baptism not so much.