Aloha_Shooter
06-18-2016, 22:49
The 47th anniversary of Apollo 11 is coming up next month. On a whim, I decided to watch "From the Earth to the Moon" again last night (bad decision starting last night -- after episode 4, I realized it was 0300 ...). Now, I could go all maudlin about how society has changed from a nation of pioneers and explorers just 50-60 years ago to a nation of safe zone-needing, trigger warning-required pajama boys today but I'd rather be positive. We as a people can do remarkable things when we set our mind to it.
12 people (Armstrong, Aldrin, Conrad, Bean, Shephard, Mitchell, Scott, Irwin, Young, Duke, Cernan, Schmitt) have set foot on the moon and trod its surface. 13 more orbited the moon (Borman, Lovell, Anders, Stafford, Young, Collins, Gordon, Haise, Swigert, Roosa, Worden, Mattingly, Evans). 2 of them made the trip twice (Lovell and Cernan). Behind them lay an army of Americans who made the voyages possible.
This capability is not limited to Americans (although our nation has been responsible for some truly remarkable things that the community organizers and social justice warriors never recognize). Humanity -- as individual group or as a whole -- can moan and groan about mistakes of the past or debate what's "fair" until the cows come home. We can piss and moan and try to be "low impact" so that the passage of time will eventually erase any sign that we ever existed, that we ever mattered ... or we can dare to achieve, to set our mark on the universe.
Building something concrete used to be a good thing. It still is even if society has become more virtual and less virtuous.
We can learn from the past but we don't have to live in the past (positively or negatively). Rather, we can continue striving forward to the future, a future envisioned incompletely by our Founding Fathers but filled in by explorers, farmers, ranchers, scientists, engineers, industrialists, mechanics, and so on for the last 200-plus years. We can defend freedom and liberty and basic human decency as the doughboys and grunts and service personnel of World Wars I and II did. We can push the limits of our boundaries as Lewis and Clark and Cousteau and von Braun and all those others did.
12 people (Armstrong, Aldrin, Conrad, Bean, Shephard, Mitchell, Scott, Irwin, Young, Duke, Cernan, Schmitt) have set foot on the moon and trod its surface. 13 more orbited the moon (Borman, Lovell, Anders, Stafford, Young, Collins, Gordon, Haise, Swigert, Roosa, Worden, Mattingly, Evans). 2 of them made the trip twice (Lovell and Cernan). Behind them lay an army of Americans who made the voyages possible.
This capability is not limited to Americans (although our nation has been responsible for some truly remarkable things that the community organizers and social justice warriors never recognize). Humanity -- as individual group or as a whole -- can moan and groan about mistakes of the past or debate what's "fair" until the cows come home. We can piss and moan and try to be "low impact" so that the passage of time will eventually erase any sign that we ever existed, that we ever mattered ... or we can dare to achieve, to set our mark on the universe.
Building something concrete used to be a good thing. It still is even if society has become more virtual and less virtuous.
We can learn from the past but we don't have to live in the past (positively or negatively). Rather, we can continue striving forward to the future, a future envisioned incompletely by our Founding Fathers but filled in by explorers, farmers, ranchers, scientists, engineers, industrialists, mechanics, and so on for the last 200-plus years. We can defend freedom and liberty and basic human decency as the doughboys and grunts and service personnel of World Wars I and II did. We can push the limits of our boundaries as Lewis and Clark and Cousteau and von Braun and all those others did.