From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Tue Dec 24 2002 - 12:23:37 MST
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote,
> For me, the sixties were about NASA, culminating with my fondest
> memory of childhood: watching Neil Armstrong flub his one line in
> front of the biggest audience in history.
My Dad worked at NASA. I remember watching the moon landing on television.
My Dad was yelling at the TV when the astronauts were bouncing around and
generally ignoring safety procedures they had practices over and over on
earth. He also told me internal stories that never reached the press. For
example, how they broke off the ignition button inside the capsule and
delayed stepping outside until they could jury-rig a method to blast off in
a hurry if they got into trouble.
My other memories from that period were the old space exploration schedules.
We were supposed to have a permanent moon base in the 1970s and a Mars base
in the 1980s. By 1990, we were supposed to be exploring asteroids and maybe
reaching Jupiter. It was not for no reason that the movie 2001 showed us
going to Jupiter by now. NASA had predicted it, congress was planning to
keep approving these budgets. I really thought that by now I would be off
planet with multiple different worlds to choose from. I am not joking. I
really thought I was living in the space age, only to be stuck on earth with
no way off. I really feel marooned in a non-technical world compared to
what was predicted. This is probably the biggest basis for my belief that
things don't always progress as fast as predicted.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <http://HarveyNewstrom.com>
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