Wednesday, July 03, 2019

On 50 year anniversaries

It seems to me that the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riot, and the month long Pride events, are attracting much more media and pop culture attention than the forthcoming 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.   (Maybe that will change in coming days, but I have my doubts.)

It's a very surprising turn of events, I think, that shows how very hard the job of futurologist must be, especially when it comes to social views and sentiment.      

5 comments:

Jason Soon said...

In honour of the Apollo:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-16-me-56492-story.html

What we had seen, in naked essentials--but in reality, not in a work of art--was the concretized abstraction of man's greatness.

The fundamental significance of Apollo 11's triumph is not political; it is philosophical; specifically, moral-epistemological.

The meaning of the sight lay in the fact that when those dark red wings of fire flared open, one knew that one was not looking at a normal occurrence but at a cataclysm which, if unleashed by nature, would have wiped man out of existence--and one knew also that this cataclysm was planned, unleashed and controlled by man, that this unimaginable power was ruled by his power and, obediently serving his purpose, was making way for a slender, rising craft.

One knew that this spectacle was not the product of inanimate nature, like some aurora borealis, or of chance, or of luck, that it was unmistakably human--with "human," for once, meaning grandeur--that a purpose and a long, sustained, disciplined effort had gone to achieve this series of moments, and that man was succeeding, succeeding, succeeding! For once, if only for seven minutes, the worst among those who saw it had to feel--not "How small is man by the side of the Grand Canyon!"--but "How great is man and how safe is nature when he conquers it!"

That we had seen a demonstration of man at his best, no one could doubt--this was the cause of the event's attraction and of the stunned numbed state in which it left us. And no one could doubt that we had seen an achievement of man in his capacity as a rational being--an achievement of reason, of logic, of mathematics, of total dedication to the absolutism of reality.

GMB said...

Dude. They never left the earths orbit. This was all fakery. Only their orbiter missions are valid. There is no future in taking people to other worlds on the back of a firecracker. You need the anti-gravity technology as we see in the flying saucer. You may need hydrogen cannons. A big buildup of producer goods in near earth orbit. Massive accumulations of water. Water for cosmic ray shielding and ways to stop any phase change.

We need to bring over big rocky objects from the asteroid belt and hollow them out like Phobos (although there are already an object in place with a parallel orbit to us and hollowing that would be safer. If its not occupied already). We need to dig up all the technology that went covert in the 1950's to do with anti-gravity. Pull out the stuff that Townsend Brown found out as a kid.

All this great technology is waiting for us if only we can make the oligarchy stand down. Once we are out in space its all free electricity. Space is chock full with free electricity. Its an endless supply. We could never run out of the free electricity even if we filled up every asteroid with humans.

Anonymous said...

Of course, bird. Of course they never really went to the moon. :-)

GMB said...

We don't know whether they have been to the moon or not. We only know that Apollo was fake and that if anyone has been there and back it is not with rocketry. We do know that our distant ancestors, or someone else, made it to Mars.

GMB said...

Here is what a full-blown farm used to look like on Mars. And not all that long ago. Thousands of years ago rather than hundreds of thousands of years ago:

https://www.supertorchritual.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Mars-glass-tunnels.jpg