History, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

Evoloterra

6 Comments

Get together with friends and celebrate the 48th anniversary tonight. Bill Simon and I will be on The Space Show at 7 PM Pacific to discuss it.

[Update a while later]

Here’s what I wrote on the 40th anniversary. It still holds up pretty well, I think.

[Update early afternoon]

There’s a new version of the ceremony on line now.

[Late-afternoon update]

Seeing comments out there on the Interwebs that Nixon canceled Apollo. No, it happened in 1967, by Congress. Before he was elected. For those of you unfamiliar with the post-Apollo history under Nixon, John Logsdon’s latest book is a good read. Funded by Bill Anders, it’s probably the definitive history at this point. He’s currently working on the space history of the Reagan administration, which I wrote about at the time of Reagan’s passing.

[Friday-morning update]

The Space Show we did last night has been archived.

6 thoughts on “Evoloterra”

  1. It would be nice if the 50th anniversary is not 50 years from the last time men walked on the Moon.

    1. Actually we have until December of 2022 before it will be 50 years since Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt walked on the Moon, which does give us an extra three years. But unless Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos can do something truly extraordinary, having someone on the Moon before that anniversary will probably mean that someone will have a red star on his helmet and his nametape will be written in hanzi rather than the Roman alphabet.

      1. If not a lunar landing perhaps a Dragon V2 lunar orbital mission to mark the anniversary with updated video of Earthrise and perhaps the Eagle landing site taken from orbit.

        SpaceX has tentatively slated a fly-by Apollo 8 style redux for 2018, so an orbital mission for 2019 doesn’t sound beyond the pale. Assuming F9H doesn’t suffer many delays pre or post launch. A big *if* and probably pushing F9H/Dragon maybe too hard. 2022 might be a more realistic timeline for the latter of these.

      3. Wasn’t thinking–of course, you are correct. It just irks me that it’s been so long since we’ve sent humans out of LEO.

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