Those are the number of years ago, respectively, that Viking 1 landed on Mars, and Apollo XI landed on the moon. I'll have more thoughts up later, either here or elsewhere. But if you haven't made plans for dinner tonight to commemorate it, there's still time.

[Update on holy night]

Alan Boyle, who I expect to see in Las Vegas tomorrow, has a lot of related thoughts and links.

Rand

Isn't also nine years ago today that Pathfinder landed on Mars?

Dennis

I think that was July 4, if I'm not mistaken.

Rand

You are correct. I was remembering Hoagland's claim about the landing.

:)

Dennis

If you gents want to "relive" those magic moments, I have an internet broadcast of the entire air-to-ground comm of Apollo 11, broken down on a day by day basis. Go to:

http://www.live365dotcom/stations/apollo_11_oda

No nitwit newscasters to spoil the moment, just pure space-goodness.

(substitute the "dot" for a ., cuz some filter rejected the web URL).

Enjoy!

You can always break out the Moon Soup, mind you it isn't freeze dried but it was selected for some of the moon flights. Seems Chalet Suzzanne in Lake Wales was popular with the astronauts. After all it is a classy place with a private airstrip. So their romaine soup was chosen as a personal menu item. You can buy it mail order. see: http://www.thespaceshop.com/asmoso.html

I've said before here, that I grew up watching as many of the flights as my mother would tolerate on TV. From Carpenter right up to it being so routine that the networks showed NOTHING at all. And so routine, they canceled the last two missions.

If this isn't a case of eyes taken off the prize, I don't know what it is. Sad, is the only word I can think of.

Steve, they didn't take their eyes off the prize. To them, bringing men to the surface of the moon and safely back to earth was the prize. Their mission was complete, and NASA's entire reason for being was finished, 37 years ago. NASA should have been disbanded about a week later.

It's interesting how even with the same general management problems we've gotten so much better at unmanned exploration and yet hardly better at all, if not much worse, at manned exploration.