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‘IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER’: The speech Nixon would have given if lunar landing had failed
07.21.2014
10:53 am
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Prior to the July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 lunar landing, one of President Richard Nixon’s speechwriters, William Safire, who later became a long-standing political columnist, wrote a speech for Nixon to give in case the mission failed and the astronauts were stranded on the Moon. “In Event of Moon Disaster” was originally sent as a memo, dated July 18, 1969, to Nixon’s chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and is yet another argument against the moon landing being a hoax:

IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by the nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.


PRIOR TO THE PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT:

The President should telephone each of the widows-to-be.


AFTER THE PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT, AT THE POINT WHEN NASA ENDS COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE MEN:

A clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to “the deepest of the deep,” concluding with the Lord’s Prayer.

 
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NASA’s 45th anniversary of moon landing original resource reel:

Posted by Kimberly J. Bright
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07.21.2014
10:53 am
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‘Star Trek’ cast at space shuttle viewing, in glorious 1976 fashions
02.06.2013
09:28 am
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After a flood of letters from Star Trek fans, NASA named its first Space Shuttle Orbiter “Enterprise”. On September 17, 1976, Enterprise made its’ media debut at the Rockwell’s plant in Palmdale, California, as the Air Force band fired up the Star Trek theme music. The show’s cast was naturally invited, although somehow William Shatner missed it.

Surely he owned a fabulous leisure suit? He’s Bill Shatner!

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From left: James Fletcher; NASA administrator, DeForest Kelley; George Takei; James Doohan; Nichelle Nichols; Leonard Nimoy; Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, George Low; NASA deputy administrator, and Walter Koenig;

Below, Leonard Nimoy recounts the events that led to the Space Shuttle’s name.
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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02.06.2013
09:28 am
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The Face of God? New NASA video reveals the (psychedelic) surface of the Sun
05.24.2012
10:46 pm
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If you missed the recent annular solar eclipse, fret not as an amazing new video has just been released by NASA which reveals the Sun’s surface in a way never before seen.

This video takes SDO images and applies additional processing to enhance the structures visible. While there is no scientific value to this processing, it does result in a beautiful, new way of looking at the sun.

The original frames are in the 171 Angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet. This wavelength shows plasma in the solar atmosphere, called the corona, that is around 600,000 Kelvin.

The loops represent plasma held in place by magnetic fields. They are concentrated in “active regions” where the magnetic fields are the strongest. These active regions usually appear in visible light as sunspots. The events in this video represent 24 hours of activity on September 25, 2011.

I could stare at this for hours and not get bored.
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.24.2012
10:46 pm
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So, you want to be an Astronaut?
11.16.2011
07:08 pm
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So you want to be an astronaut?

Well, here’s your chance as the people over at NASA are currently seeking candidates for “astronaut positions”:

If you have dreamed of joining the Astronaut Corps, now is the time to apply. NASA is continuing space exploration programs that will include missions beyond low Earth orbit.

NASA, the world’s leader in space and aeronautics is always seeking outstanding scientists, engineers, and other talented professionals to carry forward the great discovery process that its mission demands. Creativity. Ambition. Teamwork. A sense of daring. And a probing mind. That’s what it takes to join NASA, one of the best places to work in the Federal Government.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a need for Astronaut Candidates to support the International Space Station (ISS) Program and future deep space exploration activities.

It was in 1959 that NASA selected the 7 military personnel who became the first astronauts. Since then, 330 have been chose from diverse backgrounds, who all passed the strict physical, technical and academic requirements. The backgrounds of NASA’s latest group of Astronaut Candidates include schoolteachers, doctors, scientist, and engineers. According to Geek Sugar, you could now be one too if you have:

US citizenship

Height between 62 and 72-inches, as well as a resting blood pressure not to exceed 140/90.

20/20 vision, though corrective eye surgeries like LASIK are allowed.

Bachelor’s degree in engineering, biological science, physical science, computer science, or mathematics. Despite the space flight factor, aviation degrees do not qualify.

3 years of relevant professional experience or 1,000 hours of pilot-in-command time in a jet aircraft.

Of course, qualifying doesn’t mean you’ll end up floating in a tin can, but you will have as much chance as everyone else who applies - and the pay’s pretty neat at $64,000-141,000 per year - so, why the hell not?

Check here for details.
 

 
Via Geek Sugar
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.16.2011
07:08 pm
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‘Who’s Out There?’: Orson Welles explores the possibility of Extraterrestrial Life in 1975

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In 1975, a year before NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft orbited Mars, Orson Welles presented Who’s Out There?, a NASA produced documentary examining the “likely existence of non-Earthly life in the universe.”

Thirty-six years on, this is a fascinating piece of archive, and rather timely with the news that NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory is due to be launched in November in a bid to make the first precision landing on Mars in August 2012.

Starting with H G Wells novel, and his own infamous radio production of The War of the Worlds, Welles, together with Carl Sagan, George Wald, Richard Berendzen and Philip Morrison, explore what was then “the new view of extraterrestrial life now emerging from the results of probes to the planets,” and conclude that “other intelligent civilizations exist in the universe.”

Carl Sagan:  The most optimistic estimates, in the view of many, about the number of civilizations that there might be in the galaxy is of the order of a million, which means that only one in a few hundred thousand stars has such civilizations.
 
George Wald:  That would mean a billion such places just in our own galaxy that might contain life.
 
Philip Morrison:  As I believe there’s a society of these groups, not just one, there’re probably very many.  There’s only one, we have no hope of finding them; there’re probably thousands, maybe as many as a million.  They probably already have had long history of this same experience, of finding new ones and bringing them into the network.
 
Carl Sagan:  And I would imagine, an advanced civilization wanted to talk to us, they would say “Oh, look, those guys must be extremely backwards, go into some ancient museum and pull out one of those – what are they called – radio telescopes and beam it at them.”

In summation, Welles says:

In 1976 we’re going to be able to explore Mars for perhaps not so humble microorganisms.  Before and after that, we’ll be searching the planets and the galaxies for clues to fill in the new patterns we’re discovering, the evolution of evolutions that has produced us and the possible millions of other civilizations….
 
...The difference between the spacecrafts of NASA and the lurid flying saucery of that old radio War of the Worlds is the difference between science and science fiction and, yes, between war and peace.  It’s our own world which has turned out to be the interplanetary visitor; we’re the ones who are moving out there, not with death rays but with cameras, not to conquer but simply to learn. We are in fact behaving ourselves far better out there than we ever have back here at home on our own planet.

 

 
Bonus - Orson Welles directs The Mercury Theater’s radio production of The War of the Worlds
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.16.2011
06:33 pm
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The Frontier is Everywhere: Beautiful fan-made video for NASA
01.10.2011
04:44 pm
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Here’s a gorgeous and beautifully edited fan-made video for NASA by YouTube user damewse. Damewse says he made this video because “NASA is the most fascinating, adventurous, epic institution ever devised by human beings, and their media sucks. Seriously.”

There ya have it.

 
(via TDW)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.10.2011
04:44 pm
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Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Jet Propulsion Labs Brings AI to Space
05.03.2010
03:42 pm
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I have the cover story over at h+ magazine today, about the new artificial intelligence upgrades to the space program. (Jet Propulsion Labs has upgraded the Mars rover with artificial intelligence firmware… could intelligent AI nanoclouds be far off?) Read on at the link below for the rest of my reporting live from NASA’s labs.

Though we may not have found intelligent life on Mars, NASA has just beamed up its own.

As announced at the end of March, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories has upgraded the Opportunity rover (already stationed on Mars) with artificial intelligence firmware, code-named AEGIS. Short for Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science, AEGIS allows the Opportunity to identify high-value photography targets — making its own decisions about which Martian rocks to photograph and send back to Earth. As the rover has limited downlink capacity, this is expected to greatly increase its productivity, allowing it to retrieve more data in fewer trips across Mars’ surface. AEGIS isn’t the first artificial intelligence application developed for space, or even at Jet Propulsion Labs — JPL has been in the game as far back as the Deep Space 1 craft in 1998.

I visited JPL on a recent rainy afternoon. Nestled in the mountains near Pasadena, California, the NASA campus dates to the 1940s, and was an early stalwart of the United States’ rocketry and space programs. Beyond security checkpoints, rows of polished, glass-and-steel buildings house the facility’s various projects — major foci at the moment are the Mars rovers and Reconnaissance orbiter, the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, and the Spitzer space telescope. Further up the hill is a simulated outdoor Martian landscape, with volcanic rocks resting in red sand. It’s an eerie thing to see through a gray LA fog.

(h+: Extraterrestrial Intelligence)

Posted by Jason Louv
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05.03.2010
03:42 pm
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To Mars By A-Bomb
11.26.2009
03:07 pm
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Clip from a BBC Four documentary on the US government’s bizarre Project Orion, a plan to send spaceships around our solar system with nuclear power. The extent to which the space program was actually a high-level fusion of hard tech and just batshit crazy science fiction plans has always fascinated me. These guys were looking to science fiction writers as their creative team, basically. The romance of just making insane ideas real, and it actually working (well, at least to some extent)... why isn’t it like this anymore?

The extraordinary yet true account of a secret US government-backed attempt to build a spaceship the size of an ocean liner and send it to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, propelled by thousands of miniature nuclear bombs.

Beginning in 1958 Project Orion ran until 1965, employing some of the best scientists in the world, including the brilliant British mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson. “Freeman Dyson is one of the few authentic geniuses I’ve ever met”, says Arthur C. Clarke. “Orion isn’t crazy. It would work. The question isn’t whether we could do it, but whether we should do it”.

The film uncovers a contemporary angle to Project Orion. Arthur C. Clarke states that today’s generation are once again serious about going to Mars and that NASA has once more become interested in similar nuclear technology as used by Project Orion in the early 60s.

(Swen’s Blog: Project Orion)

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.26.2009
03:07 pm
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Film Buffs To NASA: You Suck!
08.21.2009
02:51 pm
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Never underestimate the wrath—or letter-writing determination—of a pissed-off film fan.  According to Scientific American, those pot-stirrers at Government Attic made what they thought was an innocent FOIA query: what do the residents on the International Space Station (ISS) do, like, for fun?

Well, they asked, NASA answered.  American booksellers seemed okay with the contents of the ISS library—everything from Dickens to Dan Brown—but the list incensed movie buffs, particularly the ominous-sounding Shooting People, a UK-based collective of independent filmmakers.  “Our members would like to see Harold and Maud [sic] rather than Harold and Kumar, that Man on Wire replace Man on Fire,” Shooting People’s James Mullighan wrote to NASA.  Spelling errors aside there, James, I totally agree with you. 

But, in a further sign that the demand for indie fare has, errr, cratered, NASA’s William Gerstenmaier explained that they don’t dictate the onboard selections?

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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08.21.2009
02:51 pm
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Beatles space broadcast ‘risks alien attack’ (they *are* from Liverpool, you know…)
07.29.2009
11:15 am
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Maybe we should add a new “WTF?” category:

NASA started to beam the song towards the North Star, 431 light years from Earth at midnight GMT on Monday, drawing congratulations from former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, who mused that it marked “the beginning of the new age in which we will communicate with billions of planets across the universe.”

But today’s New Scientist asks whether such signals could expose us to the risk of attack from mean spirited aliens.

Beatles space broadcast ‘risks alien attack’

Thank you Mister Mark Jordan of London, England!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.29.2009
11:15 am
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