On the recent events in Canada..

I have no need to comment, as this image

and this cartoon

pretty much say it all.

More on Apollo 11

To follow on from yesterday:

I have a lot of strong opinions and things to say about the Apollo program and Apollo 11 in particular. When the 40th anniversary came round, I wasn't blogging here, but you can find them all on my sadly neglected LiveJournal under the apollo11 tag.

But I will paste one thing I said back then:

Learn. Teach your kids (if you have any) about what happened forty years ago (my son now has a 3' high Saturn V bought voluntarily out of his own money, and the sight of him wandering the Apollo/Saturn V Center at Kennedy in complete awe was wonderful). If you haven't, you owe it to yourself to watch one or more of Apollo 13, From The Earth To The Moon and Magnificent Desolation (if you can get to see this in IMAX 3D, as at Kennedy, it's absolutely awesome). Several of the Apollo astronauts have written (or had ghosted) autobiographies: Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Charlie Duke (I now have a signed copy of this), Al Bean, Pete Conrad, Dave Scott, Gene Cernan, Al Worden (a poetry book that's as rare as hens' teeth), Ed Mitchell, Jim Irwin... and also Flight Controller Gene Kranz's excellent 'Failure Is Not An Option'. Missing from that list? the main one is Neil Armstrong, though he has an authorized biography. 

We will not, should not, forget the story of the Apollo missions.

Now the rest is up to us, and there's a future to be won.   

We will turn our faces outward, we will do what must be done.

For no cradle lasts forever, every bird must learn to fly, 

And we're going to the stars - see our fire in the sky.

--- "Fire In The Sky", Jordin Kare

I don't normally veer this far off tack, but...

...today is a day when I want to celebrate important things.

Today is the 45th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, the capstone of a series of achievements that, even from this distance, must have seemed completely impossible when they were originally suggested.

I contend that this is one of mankind's greatest feats of science, engineering and sheer courage.

I give you "Fire In The Sky", written by a friend of mine (Jordin Kare, who actually IS a rocket scientist) and performed by another friend, Kristoph Klover. I am completely unashamed to admit that this song chokes me up every time.

Neil Alden Armstrong - August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012

"I believe every human has a finite number
 of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any
of mine..."

It's rare I use this blog for non-gaming stuff, but I feel I must mark the passing of a true hero, and a man with whom, for what little it's worth, I shared a birthday.

The 12 men who set foot on the moon, and their crew mates and fellow astronauts, are to my mind some of the bravest, most unflappable, men this world has ever seen. They are my personal heroes, to a man.

Neil Armstrong was, by all accounts, the quietest of the lot about his achievements - he rarely spoke in public, he was among the last to authorise a biography. But if you read the accounts of the Apollo 11 landing, he displayed a level of calm and resolve that just beggar belief: he landed Eagle with (assuming Charlie Duke's callouts of remaining fuel were accurate) of the order of fifteen seconds of fuel remaining between him and Buzz Aldrin and a very un-cushioned impact with the lunar surface.

102:45:21 Aldrin: 30 feet, 2 1/2 down. (Garbled) shadow.

102:45:25 Aldrin: 4 forward. 4 forward. Drifting to the right a little. 20 feet, down a half.

102:45:31 Duke: 30 seconds

102:45:32 Aldrin: Drifting forward just a little bit; that's good. (Garbled) (Pause)

102:45:40 Aldrin: Contact Light.

102:45:43 Armstrong (on-board): Shutdown

102:45:44 Aldrin: Okay. Engine Stop.

102:45:45 Aldrin: ACA out of Detent.

102:45:46 Armstrong: Out of Detent. Auto.

102:45:47 Aldrin: Mode Control, both Auto. Descent Engine Command Override, Off. Engine Arm, Off. 413 is in.

102:45:57 Duke: We copy you down, Eagle.

102:45:58 Armstrong (on-board): Engine arm is off. (Pause) Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

102:46:06 Duke: (Momentarily tongue-tied) Roger, Twan...(correcting himself) Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.

The world has lost a truly great man among great men. I only pray that some day soon there will be more who get to do what he did, and more.