Imagine a picture here.
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And now an ex-MTV reality tv show participant is the head of NASA. How times have changed.
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We watched it at school.
My dad was in Mission Control.
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Same here. We all crowded around a small tv in class.
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On July 20?
Anyway, here’s a bookend for ya.
July 8, 2011 when the final space shuttle launched, my wife and I were running a summer “camp.” We canceled activities for an hour or so and let all the kids watch it.
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Don’t judge me.
LOL I’m doing that on the other thread, not this one.
(But I am curious why you were in school on July 20.)
We watched Apollo 12. Maybe.
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Watched it at home on black and white tv.
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I seen the Challenger blow up.
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I was in my teens and had followed NASA before the Mercury Program. My Dad had friends at NASA. I remember that it was a day where the whole world came together with admiration for the US and pride that we as mankind had accomplished quite a feat.
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Sadly we can’t even do it today even with computers that we have.
I was in diapers.
It was also a Sunday.
Happened literally a year before my mom was born.
Damn I’m both young and old at the same time.
My parents didn’t even exist yet, much less me.
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I think a lot of it comes down to how much money it costs and how risk averse we are to engine design today.
Considering the risk of the Apollo missions, we would never approve them under today’s regimes.
With Walter Cronkite…I remember waiting for hours to see it. Having to go through the build up and talking heads. Finally I gave up but mom and dad finally yelled they’re landing.
They were also simpler missions than what’s being planned now.
Essentially we fired a gas can and little else into space to land a bitty lander on the Moon with landing spots all accessible from equatorial orbit.
The goal then was pretty much just to get there.
NASA is planning so much more now…probably too much given their budget.
We also committed way more in inflation adjusted dollars to Apollo than we commit to NASA today.
