Comments on: Tranquility Base

By: Обнародована глобальная статистика украинского интернета за ноябрь

Обнародована глобальная статистика украинского интернета за ноябрь — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:44:50 +0000

[...] Tranquility Base [...]

By: impulse

impulse — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:00:45 +0000

Apollo 11 – my 11th birthday when this occurred. Especially thrilling as both NASA and I celebrate the completion of 50 orbits around the Sun this year.

By: RL

RL — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:32:33 +0000

As long as the records exist, OF COURSE, historians will remember the day that humans first set foot on the moon. After all, its a matter of no small debate when the first humans reached any part of the world. This debate happens when discussing spreading from Africa and to the North American and South American continents to…just about anywhere. Given the amount of documentation, historians will have it easy with this one. I’m not sure if it will be the dividing line between two halves (all by itself), but it definitely is the start of a new era.

Another point I’d like to make, is that human migration and exploration historically happen in waves. It starts as a trickle, just a few, and then others follow. Sometimes the waves are separated by big swaths of time. The colonization of North America is an example. Whether you start with the Vikings or Christopher Columbus, there was a separation in time from the first explorers to the next round, and the next and then colonists. The same is true of space exploration and travel. And in this case, we’re talking about going to the fraking moon and stars, not just croosing the ocean in a boat (which used to be pretty difficult but not today). In the historical persepective 40 years is not that long of a time.

So celebrate! Its a big start. Stop being so pessimistic.

By: Jack Hagerty

Jack Hagerty — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 06:09:49 +0000

ND Says: “Here’s another shot of Buzz coming out of the lem.
http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5862HR.jpg”

There appear to be stars in this picture! I know he mentioned cosmic rays further down in his post, but if you look just to the left and above the RMS quad you’ll see two bright specks. They don’t appear to be artifacts since it takes some magnification to see them and their edges are still soft. They are also of different brightness.

- Jack

By: Plasmafrag

Plasmafrag — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:32:58 +0000

I guess it’s appropriate that I went to the Kennedy Space Center on the 20th. And hey, the 21st is my birthday, too!

By: amphiox

amphiox — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:10:14 +0000

Are we so certain that all the living fossils survived because of the contingency of stable niches? We don’t know enough about the evolutionary history of most of them to say for sure. Not all the ancient coelacanths were deep water fish, many were shallow water species, and we don’t know which one the modern species descended from. Same for the modern nautilus. And for many of these species, we only know that the physical anatomy stayed constant. We have no idea how much their biochemistry and behavior may have changed. Sharks have not changed their physical shape much in hundreds of millions of ears, but what about their senses? How old is the lateral line? Did ancient sharks have as keen as sense of smell? The hammerheads for example, are very young.

By: dave

dave — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:17:11 +0000

Michael L

It would’ve been 2.56am Greewich Mean Time, but it was summer time so you need to add an hour.