Word: moonshots
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...BIGGEST meaning-of-the-moonshot mistake running is to identify it with a new bold-face heading in "history," and sigh. Why, this is just exactly like Columbus traveling to new unexplored continents for the first time, editorialized the New York Times, a source of information we've come to know in the past year to be consistently misleading in the most subtle of ways. And shortly after they splashed down, the astronauts were given a big cake in the shape of a history book...
...History" is something we're supposed to all want to make. History is experience remembered by those people who are most detached from the actual event itself and who can in no way really experience it. So when we are told to identify the moonshot with its place in history, we have to keep ourselves as far away from experiencing the event as possible so that we can really get the feeling that it's "history" which is happening...
...true meaning of the moonshot lies in the moment. A given moment is all one can be entirely aware of, can fully experience. During the actual shot, the what would happen was still essentially unknown, a true probe in the imagination; the space capsule could have yoyoed the moon and whipped off towards the sun on a screaming tangent. But more importantly, only we, observing the space shot at the moment it happened, can fully understand the extent of human knowledge, mythology, and curiosity at the time of the experience...
What the Christmas moonshot tells us is that we are pressing forward into space. Like the invention of electricity and the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima, the moonshot is one of those dramatic events that reminds us that the conditions of our lives are always changing. Our civilizations, like a rain-muddied road under the feet of a retreating Union army, is having its very nature reshaped...
...long-range effect of the Apollo tragedy on the moonshot program is as uncertain as the precise outcome of the inquiry. If the experts find some basic design deficiency in the capsule, a year or more may pass before a shot is attempted. For the moment, that seemed unlikely. The most plausible theory is that a combination of improper procedures and some specific equipment malfunctions caused the fire. Whatever the outcome, an Apollo flight will almost certainly be delayed for six months. Meanwhile, as engineers probed the wreckage of Apollo 204, technicians on the sterilized assembly line at North American...