Matt Blaze14h ago

An early, but still vivid, formative memory of mine was watching the noisy, black & white video of the Apollo 11 mission. It was partly responsible for my enduring sense of awe and possibility, and probably the moment I knew I had to be a scientist or engineer.

Our world is going to hell in many ways, to be sure, but we're going to the moon again today, and I can't help but get excited about that.

Show threadMatt Blaze13h ago
We had a pretty crappy president then, too.
Show threadMatt Blaze13h ago

The space program was inseparable from the cold war that gave birth to it, but it also transcended it. It was, by design or not, about far more than rockets or space. It was about inspiration and imagination.

For a generation of a certain kind of nerdy kid, there was *nothing* cooler than space, rockets, exploration. For many of us, the feeling stuck.

Show threadSteve Bellovin
@mattblaze Yes. I’m (barely) old enough to remember Sputnik, but the space program always fascinated me.
7:49pmWeb
Show threadNorman Wilson9h ago
@SteveBellovin @mattblaze nyah nyah my father was a writer in the public information office at JPL for all the unpeopled science missions of the 1960s and 1970s. Ranger, Mariner, and Surveyor are old friends. We'll never have another time like that. (Well, I won't.)
Show threadSteve Bellovin8h ago
@oclsc @mattblaze There wasn't a mission I didn't watch. They brought large (for the day) TVs into our classrooms, so we could watch Shephard and Glenn. For family connections, I had an EE uncle who worked on the TIROS weather satellites—he brought be photos sent down from it. My best friend had a toy space helmet—I was exceedingly jealous. And it all culminated in Apollo 11—watching a live telecast from the Moon was utterly mind-boggling.