I have a degree in physics. I'm guessing that English is maybe a 2nd language for you? Your explanation of mass and weight is a little confusing. With regards to our astronaut on the moon, it's the difference in weight that matters. He should be able to (approximately) lift six times the weight he could on earth.
(Sidebar: It's often been said that Olympics on the moon would be fantastic because a man who could high-jump 7 feet high on earth would be able to high-jump 42 feet high (7x6) on the moon. In fact, he would only be able to jump about half that. Do you know why? I'll leave that with you as a challenge.)

Insofar as faked moon landings, I'm 90 % sure we went to the moon. However, bear in mind that Americans didn't know their own government was spying extensively on them til last year. It's the old joke... "Just because your paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't watching you..."

Alternative 3 is an interesting study of conspiracy dynamics. I first heard of it 30 years ago. It started as an April Fools joke in Britain on a science news TV show. It was brilliant in it's conception...

Short version:
1. Global warming will lead to total collapse of earth's eco-systems in two centuries or less.
2. Global governments are co-operating to move the cream of earth's leaders, scientists, etc to bases that have been established for decades on the far side of the moon and on Mars. (Alternative 3. Alternative 1 was huge underground bunkers, Alternative 2 was huge geo-synchronous cities... both were deemed too impractical to carry out.)
3. Mars is actually very liveable. We landed there in the 60s, established bases, using flying saucer technology developed here on earth by scientists.
4. The general population is being kept ignorant of the impending disaster, our advanced technology, the true state of Mars, etc. Governments worldwide are co-operating at the highest levels to perpetuate the myth that our progress in space is a slow, laborious process. (Which explains why the Soviet Union did not expose the Apollo programs as fake...) They don't want to cause a panic while they advance their agenda.
5. They have even developed psychic assassins capable of killing with their minds via spontaneous human combustion.

Due to TV schedule changes it was shown at a later date convincing the general public there that it was the real deal. (You can actually see the original show on YouTube... you'll even recognize some of the 'real scientists' etc as British character actors if you're old enough.)

It's a long convoluted story but thanks to a couple of follow up books and the Internet which gave it new life it has now 'morphed' into this vast conspiracy that involves alien / government co-operation at the highest levels à la X-Files. (The original conspiracy did not involve aliens...)

Adding to the fun and mystery is that some real world events -- too complicated to explain here -- later played right into details of the conspiracy.

I always thought it would make for a brilliant Hollywood movie -- the original version, not the 'updated' version.

>> ^MonkeySpank:

What bothers me even is the stupid pawn shop show on the History Channel! Talk about a major WTF!


I like where they show "Real and Not" or something, where they show a historically-accurate movie about the Apollo program, culminating in Armstrong's first step.

Then they show 2001:A Space Odessey because like, there's like moon stuff in it.

Why not spend the money on the next big thing...

This country needs a goal, like the manhattan project or Apollo program.
Spend the money and create jobs at the same time and give science a boost..

man you did it before!

>> ^Farhad2000:

The problem is you can't do that. You can't quantify that at all.
It's like Big Pharam, you spend billions of dollars in R&D to find the next possible pill to alleviate heart problems and suddenly you create Viagra.
>> ^chilaxe:
I was hoping for more analysis of the quantifiable return on investment in the sciences... like the Apollo program yielding $14 for every $1 (over an unspecified period of time).
Talking about a sense of wonder and possibility is great for the culture, but to really get the machine of capital and policy rolling, you have to speak the language of profit and self-interest.



Exactly. his entire point is that we need explorers precisely because we dont know what they'll find out, thats what exploration is. It is a widely believed myth that the people who were against Columbus' attempt to sail around the world to reach India(which was the original plan for the exploration) all thought the earth was flat, they didnt actually think so, their main argument was that the distance would be too great, and as such they were completely right, not only did they figure that Columbus wouldnt make it, so the investment in the ship would be wasted, but even if he DID make it all the way to India, the distance would still make commercial traffic unfeasible. And they were actually right on all points. The entire beauty and nature of exploration, however, is that you can bump into America on the way over there, and there is no way to tell you this in advance. To tell you in advance what the return on the investment in exploring is, we need to explore.. well, you get the point.

The problem is you can't do that. You can't quantify that at all.

It's like Big Pharam, you spend billions of dollars in R&D to find the next possible pill to alleviate heart problems and suddenly you create Viagra.

>> ^chilaxe:

I was hoping for more analysis of the quantifiable return on investment in the sciences... like the Apollo program yielding $14 for every $1 (over an unspecified period of time).
Talking about a sense of wonder and possibility is great for the culture, but to really get the machine of capital and policy rolling, you have to speak the language of profit and self-interest.

I was hoping for more analysis of the quantifiable return on investment in the sciences... like the Apollo program yielding $14 for every $1 (over an unspecified period of time).

Talking about a sense of wonder and possibility is great for the culture, but to really get the machine of capital and policy rolling, you have to speak the language of profit and self-interest.

I thought this was already sifted, but regardless, upvote for something very beautiful.

The Apollo program was humanity's greatest triumph. As something of an engineer, it saddens me that I can't be a part of something comparable.

QM,
"And if you think government research is ever going to surpass private enterprise research: HA"

I guess we should have put out bids on the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program... I'm sure that would have succeeded wildly... Also, I say this as an R&D engineer, private research is very good at developing technologies, but... Private research sucks at creating technologies, and it sucks at science, it always has, and I suspect it always will. The pay off in doing basic science research is so far down the road, and such a gamble that little or no private enterprise is willing to touch it.

Also, I used to be fiscally conservative, and socially liberal. I have read Adam Smith, and Thomas Malthus... But after I finished school, and entered the real world, I realized that it just doesn't work that well. If you look at economic history of the US, it is the times that we had liberal presidents that our economy grew the fastest, unemployment dropped the fastest, Carter was the one aberration.

The University of Nevada-Reno uncovered the following while conducting the economic comparison between Republican and Democratic presidential administrations from 1949 to 2005:
• Unemployment Rate- Republicans 6.0%, Democrats 5.2%
• Change In Unemployment Rate- Republicans +0.3%, Democrats -0.4%
• Growth of Multifactor Productivity- Republicans 0.9%, Democrats 1.7%
• Corporate Profits (share of GDP)- Republicans 8.8%, Democrats 10.2%
• Real Value of Dow Jones Index- Republicans 4.3%, Democrats 5.4%
(in logarithmic growth rates)- Republicans 2.8%, Democrats 4.4%
• Real Weekly Earnings- Republicans 0.3%, Democrats 1.0%
• CPI Inflation Rate- Republicans 3.8%, Democrats 3.8%

In short, it looks like Keynes is spot on.

Ideologically, I like fiscal conservatism, but pragmatism demands liberalization of fiscal policy. I am a liberal now, because of pragmatism, something I think you would understand with your comments about how great religion has been for the world (a statement I disagree with, btw. Sure good things have been done in the name of religion, but I am not so sure it outweighs the bad.).

Don't tell me that liberals know nothing of conservative thought. I used to think it my self, but then I looked around and grew up, became a liberal.

Also, calling our congress communist shows a complete ignorance of the definition of the term communism. Same with your use of the term socialism. Palin, and W are much more socialist than Obama. Bush with the buying of banks, and Palin with the paying of every citizen of Alaska.

Beautiful. If anyone denies that the Apollo program was the greatest achievement of humanity I will fight you.

The sentimental and emotional side of me thinks it's tragic that humans haven't left low Earth orbit in 36 years. The rational side of me knows that robotics are hugely more effective per dollar. The poetic side of me knows that humanity's future is beyond this pale blue dot.

The Marshall plan was entirely in self-interest. Here's historian Howard Zinn on the Marshall Plan:

The motives for the Marshall Plan were both economic and political. Just to point to one aspect of the economic motive: George Marshall was quoted in an early 1948 State Department bulletin: "It is idle to think that a Europe left to its own efforts...would remain open to American business in the same way that we have known it in the past." Most of the money went to American businesses exporting to Europe. At least 10% of the aid money went for European purchases of oil, moving them away from coal-dependency (which involved dealing with troublesome trade unions) to oil dependency, with the U.S. dominant in the world oil market. The political motive was to shore up anti-Communist governments in France and Italy. Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson said at the time: "These measures of relief and reconstruction have been only n part suggested by humanitarianism. Your Congress has authorized and your Government is carrying out, a policy of relief and reconstruction today chiefly as a matter of national self-interest". You can read much more about the Marshall Plan, that is, realistic evaluations, in Michael Hogan's book "The Marshall Plan" (Cambridge Univ. Press 1987) and in Melvyn Leffler's excellent book "A Preponderance ofPower" (Stanford Univ. Press, 1992)

The Apollo Program was indeed a large project of the cold war - and it was arguably also a massive waste of money that was greatly needed elsewhere. I should have made it clear that by "great" I mean great in both the ethical sense as well as scale.

US history is like a clogged toilet; the more you flush the shit keeps rising.

How about the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after WW2, the Peace Corps and the Apollo Program, oh and how about the Internet?

According to someone on YT the tracks are both from "Apollo Atmospheres & Soundtracks" by Brian Eno.

Track 1 is "Deep Blue Day" and track 2 is "A Secret Place".

The artist actually has a pretty extensive Wikipedia entry, but here's the pertinent one for this album: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo:_Atmospheres_and_Soundtracks

It turns out he actually composed this album as an accompaniment to footage of the Apollo program, so I think it works well with this footage.