Tag Archives: Buzz Aldrin

More moon base

Posted on February 21, 2007 | Comments Off on More moon base

amoonbase.jpg

More good, if a few trifle far-fetched, reasons to return to the moon, by former moon astronaut Buzz Aldrin who recalls looking back from its surface in 1969 to "…the cloudy blue ball that should only be mankind’s starter home." The plan is to put the base at the moon’s south pole, where there is some evidence of water ice and more shelter from the sun, and rotate astronaut teams in and out every six months. Top of the far-fetched list, it seems to me, is beaming solar energy home, but the argument’s at least as interesting as the space elevator. /NASA

Via Instapundit 

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space

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First word from the moon: Houston

Posted on October 2, 2006 | Comments Off on First word from the moon: Houston

While Times Online claims Neil Armstrong’s planned utterance ("One small step…" etc.) was ungrammatical–and sci fi writer Arthur C. Clarke (writing in 1986) agreed–until an Australian computer expert recently uncovered the missing article. Well, every Texas schoolboy knows the REALLY important matter was the First Word from the lunar surface, not those planned-in-advance words.

That first word? "Houston," as in Armstrong reporting the landing by saying "Houston, Tranquillity base here…" etc. I used to have a colorful poster of an orbiting city made up by the Houston chamber of commerce crowing about it. As a paid scribe, I even once examined the official transcript to confirm it.

Comes Wikipedia claiming the first words were those of Buzz Aldrin: "The first words spoken from the surface were Aldrin’s, who reported ‘Contact Light’ as the Eagle’s landing probe touched the moon."

Harrumph. This is why, as we so often hear, Wikipedia’s encyclopedic veracity is questionable at best. 

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Posted in Space

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