<VV> My Plans for Monday

[Tony Underwood]

At 07:57 AM 7/18/2009, Bruce Schug wrote:
>On Jul 17, 2009, at 6:09 PM, Robert Marlow wrote:
>
> > On July 20, 1969, I was riding shotgun in my father's 1964 Greenbrier,
> > on a highway in New Jersey known as the Garden State Parkway.  At 4:18
> > PM that day, we heard on the car's radio:
> >
> > "Houston, Tranquility Base here.  The Eagle has landed."
> >
> > How big a moment was that?  To this day, every time -- and I mean
> > every
> > time -- that I drive past the point on the highway where we were when
> > this happened, I think of it.  Every time.
> >
> > Monday will mark 40 years to the day.
> >
> > Dad's been gone over ten years now.  But I still have his Greenbrier.
> > On Monday, at 4:18 PM, with the radio on, I will be driving past -- or
> > stopped at -- that very location.
> >
> > Where you in a Corvair when man first landed on the Moon?




I was a teenager in my room, still living at "home".    I was 
watching intently and keeping up with every word.


It wasn't until N.A. stepped off the LEM ladder with his "One small 
step for a man" comment that it actually occurred to my 
attention-deficit-disordered teenage mind that a human being had 
actually set foot on an alien world.

It came to me like a paradyne shift.









The question I ask myself today is why we did it in less than TEN 
years after JFK decreed that we chose to go to the moon not because 
it's easy but because it's hard...   with NO prior technology in 
existence at the time or any experience on how it would be done...

NOW we're to understand that we will RETURN to the moon but it's 
going to take twice as long now as it did before...  with 40 years' 
worth of technological advancements behind us and it's gonna take 
twice as long this time?


WTF...?

(I doubt it will happen, not with things the way they are going)


Either way, on Monday I'm gonna be driving my Corvair to and from 
work (with its freshly repaired speedo that's getting swapped out 
today, pointer fell off the original one) listening to the radio 
which I'm sure (my favorite talk-radio station) is going to include 
lots of details on Apollo-11.




tony..