A friend's great aunt rode a covered wagon from Lincoln, KS to Lincoln, CA before the turn of the century. I met her when she was well along in years. Sharp as a tack, her stories were more entertaining than a Louis L'Amour. Her biscuits were this side of heaven.
In her lifetime were the birth of automobiles, powered aircraft, jet aircraft, supersonic flight, launching anything into space, electric computers, air conditioning, two world wars, splitting the atom, and a host of others.
kind of like what my dad used to say too. he was born in 1917 back in the hills of eastern KY. it was all horse and buggy back there then. saw his first car in the late 1920's a plane in the 1930's then WW2 happen. but after we landed on the moon. he told me it was the wide spread use of electric power that moved this country forward. by the 1990's he used to say progress has stopped or took a detour somewhere ? most cars and trucks made here where junk when compared to just 30 years ago I bought a Honda Accord that he hated until we went on a trip to his home in it. then he knew why I bought it. driving 75 MPH in the rain and steady as his couch at home. used to get a good 20-24 miles per gallon too with it. he even went so far as saying it was a good car to me. that was a big thing. most of the time he would just say it is okay, I guess.
Both of my parents were born in 1917. My dad in Pennsylvania and my mom in rural Mississippi. Mom also talked about going to town in a mule drawn wagon. She was an interesting storyteller and could keep a whole room enthralled with her stories of rural and small town life.
It amazes me that for all the thousands upon thousands of years of his existence Man looked up at the birds in the sky and said, "I wish I could do that", and in the span of one lifetime went from flying like a bird up in the sky to going up beyond it, to another celestial body.
“Put a man on the moon.” Yeah, no Ken, I think that you and other US taxpayers are deserving of reparations from NASA for the scam they’ve pulled on the world since ‘69. Ask a little kid, I watched the live TV transmission of the ‘moon landing’ and was unimpressed, I’m still waiting for proof that it happened, particularly since both the sole surviving Apollo 11 astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, and the producer of the video footage, Stanley Kubrick, both admitted to the hoax.
The evidence is still sitting there and can be seen with from Earth with a large enough telescope. If it was faked, why would the USSR not disclose that to the World in the middle of the Cold War?
You really think NASA - its employees - could keep that kind of secret that long? Even if they killed all the people necessary to carry off that kind of hoax in the 1960s? They barely had what we'd call computers today.
There is an old short story of 'The Time Travelling Nightshirt'. A man from the late 19th century travels to the mid 20th century but when he goes back no one believes him because no one could accept the changes in society and technology could happen that quickly.
This post reminds me of my dad's first cousin Gladys. She was born in June of 1914 .. a few months before the start of ww1, a full 14 years before commercially pre-sliced bread became widely available. My dad (1929-2022) mentioned a few times recalling the horse-drawn ice-wagon for the ice-box. We had come a long way in a couple of generations. Today, maybe not so much. Lately I've been watching / reading a LOT about the Saturn V. That was an AMAZING machine. For example, the turbines which drove the first-stage fuel pumps made 50,000 horsepower. Each. All five engines running full-blast consumed nearly 15 TONNES of propellant PER SECOND. The temp inside the combustion chamber of the F-1 engines reached almost 6,000 degrees fahrenheit. Those astronauts were sitting 350 feet above five controlled explosions. The stored potential energy inside the full-fueled vehicle is about the same as a small tactical nuclear weapon. Floating around the intrawebz is a lengthy video, about an hour, where some fellow interviews an engineer who helped design and implement the Saturn V instrument unit, aka the IU. He was a computer engineer but because he worked on the IU, he understood how all the components of the Mighty Saturn V were supposed to operate. It's worth the hour.
If the one I saw is that interview it was by a youtuber in Alabama, works at Marshall Space Flight Center and his show is "Smarter Every Day". He also had some other great onsite interviews with Tori Bruno who runs United Launch and lets you take a tour of the factory/facility and then another where they ride the gantry back and away from the rocket that put the solar probe in orbit around the sun. It's good stuff.
I saw a Saturn five lying on its side at the Air and Space museum in Huntsville, AL about 40 years ago. I was duly impressed after walking from one end of it to the other.
I got to camp out under the Saturn V at Kennedy Space Center a few years ago with my son’s Cub Scout Pack. It made a heck of an impression on my son, who has become obsessed with anything space related since then. Amazing piece of technology.
Watched the moon landing in the living room at my grandfathers house. He said he remembered reading about the Wright brothers in the news paper as a young man. Quite a series of events to happen in one lifetime.
My grandfather once mentioned how he started out behind a one mule plow and lived to fly on an airliner for vacation. (he also said it hurt when the plow hit a root that snapped back into his shin).
I can't believe how many people today think that we never went to the moon. A lot of these also think the earth is flat. Stop already, you are only fooling yourselves. Hybo
Relax, it's a harmless obsession. But one thought. The Saturn V contained 6 million pounds of highly energetic fuel and oxidizer. Which was ignited in full view of millions of people. It went somewhere.
Starker here, I met the man who designed and/or made the LASER reflectors that are placed in the lunar surface. They are still used to verify the moon's distance from Earth. They had to be adjusted manually after landing. If I'm mistaken about any of this there is another reader here who knows the man better than I. Here is some info. https://www.space.com/apollo-retroreflector-experiment-still-going-50-years-later.html
Paternal Grandmother was born in the 1890s. Took her first airplane flight in the 1970s. Maternal Grandmother was born ... um ... better not say 'cause she'll haunt me tonight. But she saw LtCdr Sousa (USNR) conduct the Marine Band during WWI. HER mother lived 'til the early 1960s and use to tell of visiting farms in northwest Washington, DC. Great Uncle Lawrence would tell of his adventures in Paris in WWI (but not "in front of the younguns.") He never spoke of his (an my grandfather's) time in the trenches.
A friend's great aunt rode a covered wagon from Lincoln, KS to Lincoln, CA before the turn of the century. I met her when she was well along in years. Sharp as a tack, her stories were more entertaining than a Louis L'Amour. Her biscuits were this side of heaven.
ReplyDeleteIn her lifetime were the birth of automobiles, powered aircraft, jet aircraft, supersonic flight, launching anything into space, electric computers, air conditioning, two world wars, splitting the atom, and a host of others.
kind of like what my dad used to say too. he was born in 1917 back in the hills of eastern KY.
ReplyDeleteit was all horse and buggy back there then. saw his first car in the late 1920's
a plane in the 1930's then WW2 happen. but after we landed on the moon.
he told me it was the wide spread use of electric power that moved this country forward.
by the 1990's he used to say progress has stopped or took a detour somewhere ?
most cars and trucks made here where junk when compared to just 30 years ago
I bought a Honda Accord that he hated until we went on a trip to his home in it.
then he knew why I bought it. driving 75 MPH in the rain and steady as his couch at home.
used to get a good 20-24 miles per gallon too with it.
he even went so far as saying it was a good car to me. that was a big thing. most of the time he would just say it is okay, I guess.
Both of my parents were born in 1917. My dad in Pennsylvania and my mom in rural Mississippi. Mom also talked about going to town in a mule drawn wagon. She was an interesting storyteller and could keep a whole room enthralled with her stories of rural and small town life.
DeleteIt amazes me that for all the thousands upon thousands of years of his existence Man looked up at the birds in the sky and said, "I wish I could do that", and in the span of one lifetime went from flying like a bird up in the sky to going up beyond it, to another celestial body.
ReplyDeleteSadly a couple of biggish wars accelerated science in the 20th century but I guess progress cares not for its sponsor.
ReplyDelete“Put a man on the moon.” Yeah, no Ken, I think that you and other US taxpayers are deserving of reparations from NASA for the scam they’ve pulled on the world since ‘69. Ask a little kid, I watched the live TV transmission of the ‘moon landing’ and was unimpressed, I’m still waiting for proof that it happened, particularly since both the sole surviving Apollo 11 astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, and the producer of the video footage, Stanley Kubrick, both admitted to the hoax.
ReplyDeleteThe evidence is still sitting there and can be seen with from Earth with a large enough telescope. If it was faked, why would the USSR not disclose that to the World in the middle of the Cold War?
Deletehttps://www.planetary.org/space-images/moon_lro_apollo17-landing-site_annotated
Put down the joint dude.
DeleteYou really think NASA - its employees - could keep that kind of secret that long? Even if they killed all the people necessary to carry off that kind of hoax in the 1960s? They barely had what we'd call computers today.
DeleteThere is an old short story of 'The Time Travelling Nightshirt'. A man from the late 19th century travels to the mid 20th century but when he goes back no one believes him because no one could accept the changes in society and technology could happen that quickly.
ReplyDeleteMichael in Nelson
Amazing what a bunch of white boys can do.
ReplyDeleteThis post reminds me of my dad's first cousin Gladys. She was born in June of 1914 .. a few months before the start of ww1, a full 14 years before commercially pre-sliced bread became widely available. My dad (1929-2022) mentioned a few times recalling the horse-drawn ice-wagon for the ice-box. We had come a long way in a couple of generations. Today, maybe not so much.
ReplyDeleteLately I've been watching / reading a LOT about the Saturn V. That was an AMAZING machine. For example, the turbines which drove the first-stage fuel pumps made 50,000 horsepower. Each. All five engines running full-blast consumed nearly 15 TONNES of propellant PER SECOND. The temp inside the combustion chamber of the F-1 engines reached almost 6,000 degrees fahrenheit. Those astronauts were sitting 350 feet above five controlled explosions. The stored potential energy inside the full-fueled vehicle is about the same as a small tactical nuclear weapon.
Floating around the intrawebz is a lengthy video, about an hour, where some fellow interviews an engineer who helped design and implement the Saturn V instrument unit, aka the IU. He was a computer engineer but because he worked on the IU, he understood how all the components of the Mighty Saturn V were supposed to operate. It's worth the hour.
If the one I saw is that interview it was by a youtuber in Alabama, works at Marshall Space Flight Center and his show is "Smarter Every Day". He also had some other great onsite interviews with Tori Bruno who runs United Launch and lets you take a tour of the factory/facility and then another where they ride the gantry back and away from the rocket that put the solar probe in orbit around the sun. It's good stuff.
DeleteI saw a Saturn five lying on its side at the Air and Space museum in Huntsville, AL about 40 years ago. I was duly impressed after walking from one end of it to the other.
DeleteNemo
I got to camp out under the Saturn V at Kennedy Space Center a few years ago with my son’s Cub Scout Pack. It made a heck of an impression on my son, who has become obsessed with anything space related since then. Amazing piece of technology.
DeleteWatched the moon landing in the living room at my grandfathers house. He said he remembered reading about the Wright brothers in the news paper as a young man. Quite a series of events to happen in one lifetime.
ReplyDeleteLights!, Camera!, Action! Next time they go to the moon they should do it at night so we can see all the stars.
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather once mentioned how he started out behind a one mule plow and lived to fly on an airliner for vacation. (he also said it hurt when the plow hit a root that snapped back into his shin).
ReplyDeleteI can't believe how many people today think that we never went to the moon. A lot of these also think the earth is flat. Stop already, you are only fooling yourselves. Hybo
ReplyDeleteRelax, it's a harmless obsession. But one thought. The Saturn V contained 6 million pounds of highly energetic fuel and oxidizer. Which was ignited in full view of millions of people.
DeleteIt went somewhere.
No human set foot on the Moon and two aircraft did not bring down three buildings in 2001!
ReplyDeleteWe are living a lie.
Chutes Magoo
Starker here,
ReplyDeleteI met the man who designed and/or made the LASER reflectors that are placed in the lunar surface. They are still used to verify the moon's distance from Earth. They had to be adjusted manually after landing. If I'm mistaken about any of this there is another reader here who knows the man better than I. Here is some info. https://www.space.com/apollo-retroreflector-experiment-still-going-50-years-later.html
Paternal Grandmother was born in the 1890s. Took her first airplane flight in the 1970s.
ReplyDeleteMaternal Grandmother was born ... um ... better not say 'cause she'll haunt me tonight. But she saw LtCdr Sousa (USNR) conduct the Marine Band during WWI. HER mother lived 'til the early 1960s and use to tell of visiting farms in northwest Washington, DC.
Great Uncle Lawrence would tell of his adventures in Paris in WWI (but not "in front of the younguns.") He never spoke of his (an my grandfather's) time in the trenches.
I personally - with my own eyes - watched the launch of Apollo 17 in December 1972. It was very impressive.
ReplyDelete