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Space

Failure Is Not An Option 61

Posted by emmett from the houston dept.
Bolero writes: "Gene Kranz, the hardboiled flight director during the Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle eras now has his own Web site here. He recently wrote a book and Mr. Kranz has included a lot of stuff on his site that didn't make it into the book because it was considered too technical." Failure is not an option. Cool.
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Failure Is Not An Option More

Failure Is Not An Option

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  • Why does the mission control story make me think of tech support...

    Thousands of trained men in pocket protectors and white shirts waiting to cooly dissect and fix the latest problem within seconds after the release of a new Microsoft Operating System, while Bill Gates and his lackeys get all the credit...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • i hear what you're saying. but it was pretty damn cool for a twelve year old. it's not stitched on a pillow, but he did write it on a note which i still have. and as obvious as it seems, it can be rather helpful to someone down on their luck.
    --
    DeCSS source code! [metastudios.com]
    you must amputate to email me.
  • What equation would that be though?
  • "I was disappointed that the excerpts were so short. Why can't lengthier segments be published?"

    The entire first chapter was online at the NY Times site - go to their book review section and find the "first chapters" link. Lots of books!

    - Steve

  • Words cannot describe the total shock I feel upon seeing an intelligently argued viewpoint in favor of astrology.

    If this is a troll, it's the best I've ever seen.

    hanzie

  • I met Edgar Mitchell yesterday (Score:3)

    by szyzyg ( 7313 ) on Tuesday May 16, 2000 @02:43AM (#1070518)
    He was at the planetarium talking to the public - so as a 'staff member' I took a few mins to chat with him. His opinion of Apollo 13 is that it's a big budget documentary - they got far more right in that film than they got wrong.

    And it's a bloody good film.

    Edgar was the backup LM pilot for apollo 13 - so he was one of the people on the ground doing simulations to try and figure out how to get them back.

    But - Gene Kranz is one of the heroes of the century - he commanded a team of thousands and had the real power to make the missions work.
  • I agree that umankind seems not to able to cope with the ethical issues derived by the power that science and technology are providing.
    On the other hand, when man was less powerful it wasn't more ethical ( just think of what was the life of an *average* guy one or two centuries ago ).
    So, instead of slowing the technology, maybe we should accellerate the development of human sciences.
    Ant the Internet might be a great help in that, if we all learn to use it for other than buying things and gaping at graphically-cool but content-empty sites.
  • "the energy cost of sending humans and their life-support supplies into space is still too high"

    Yes, but only because we're not pouring sufficient funding into space travel. If spaceflight were still a Grand Dream, we'd be dumping money into R&D, and perhaps the energy equation wouldn't be such a problem by now.

    As you correctly point out, Grand Dreams don't just fall out of the sky into your lap -- they have to be built. If we want spaceflight, we have to lay the groundwork and THEN we can go about the grand adventure.

    The fact that most of the western world has become so focused on instant gratification really bugs me. What ever happened to taking the long view?

  • Gene Kranz is representative of a breed of engineer that is dying out - and the epitome of the "get it done - period" ethic. The space program of the '60s and '70s was a place where impossible things were done on a daily basis, using incredibly crude equipment, with lives at stake constantly - all resting on the actions and work of a staff of nerds and a handful of ex-fighter jocks who liked to tinker and explore. Wow, that's cool.

    The pressures they faced were enormous, and they pulled it off with incredible aplomb, given that the risks were far higher than the chance that stock options may go underwater. The leadership and teamwork principles that came out of NASA's glory days have, unfortunately, not made enough of an impact on everyday business, and NASA themselves lost their way for a long time.

    But basically (I'm rambling a bit here, I know), when we think about hacking, great feats of engineering, and doing the Right Thing at all costs, we should be thinking of Kranz and the amazing group of people he worked with at NASA in those years. Getting three men to the Moon and back safely, multiple times, using about as much computing power as a free solar calculator is truly one of the great hacks of all time. Buy the book, and remember them the next time you need to propose a toast.

    - -Josh Turiel
  • The fact that most of the western world has become so focused on instant gratification really bugs me. What ever happened to taking the long view?

    all of those people work in nanotech

    Lea

  • hey...that sounds familiar!!! didnt ol` kasey use to say something like that when he wasnt doing scooby do voices. and recording hit songs like the hit track `u2` for www.negativland.com

  • A bit late really for that troll, but I may trot out this argument again. I need to work something about Mach's principle into it as well in order to make is sound more believable... But thanks for the praise :)

  • Slashdot interview? (Score:3)

    by arkham6 ( 24514 ) on Tuesday May 16, 2000 @03:30AM (#1070525)
    This gentleman seems to be a fairly friendly guy. Would it be possible that someone from /. contact him and see if he's interested in being interviewed? I'd have a fair amount to ask him.
  • that's free redirection, sure, but that doesn't help me if I don't have a static IP or at least some form of URL in the first place.

    Lea
  • The real question is: where did they film the moon landings, and how did they get such sharp, realistic-looking shadows? I can't imagine it was out-of-doors, unless they filmed it all at night away from any city glow with kleig lights.
    -russ
  • We are indeed the the future, but not in the 21st century yet. That arrives in 6 1/2 months.

    I don't blame a manned spaceflight director for ignoring closeups of Io and Ganymede and asteroids and comets and Martian plains and Venus's topography and so forth, but we should not confuse his parochial perspective with the bigger picture. We have not done everything we could have done in space in the last 30 years if we'd been spared the messy responsibility of actually surviving three decades of Earth history, but we have done a lot, and we have some amazing things to show for it.

    I predict with every confidence that in the year 2201 we will be reading grumpy warnings from the former designer of the Pluto Station, accusing us of "running in place" instead of dashing out to the Kuiper Belt where we belong. It's a useful voice to hear, and you don't want to be complacent, but instead of beating ourselves up, let's just get to work on the next neat thing.
  • > Does anyone know of a way to get a free IP so you can run your own server from home?

    <UI>
    http://www.dyndns.com [dyndns.com]
    http://www.dyndns.org [dyndns.org]
    </UI>
  • First, even if I'm french, I'm not sure that I would classify Napoleon (nor Gengis Khan) into the "great people" category, killing people/conquerring a country is not that great from my moral point of view.

    Second, Napoleon has written a book if I remember well... A book contains mostly the same informations (text and pictures) that you can find in a website, they are just organised diffently (and a website is more fashionable right now).

    Have a nice day.
  • Look, there's a very simple reason that the moon landings were faked. For the whole period, Mars was in Aquarius (remember, "the age of Aquarius"), and it was a completely inauspicious time for outer-space exploration. Any moon landings would have gone off-course, or crashed and burned. So they faked it. What's the big deal about that?
    -russ
  • He was here at the Boston Globe newsroom recently. We talked for about an hour, and he autographed a copy of his book.

    What a cool guy! Friendly, funny, razor-sharp. We had a delightful argument about whether manned space exploration could ever be economically viable. He agreed with me that it'll take massive government subsidies to fund space exploration. But he thinks it's worth it, and that the resulting tech discoveries will more than cover the costs.

    Anyway, we had a great time. Such a cool guy.
  • "the energy cost of sending humans and their life-support supplies into space is still too high"

    The energy cost is perhaps a couple of dollars a pound, at current energy (eg electricity) rates. Yes, it takes a fair bit of energy to get there, but that isn't the driving cost of the system. The fuel costs for a Shuttle launch are perhaps a few million dollars, out of the $500 million or more per launch actual cost.

    The problem is (a) systems engineering (the Shuttle design goals seem to have been to ensure that every congressional district in the US has some involvement in it, a real kludge) and (b) the politics of coming up with something that threatens to break the rice bowls of Big Aerospace. (If you though Microsoft tactics were bad, you ain't seen nothing compared to what NASA and the big aerospace companies are willing to do to defend their monopoly and government handouts).

    A lot of us that had/have the Grand Dream have seen it smashed over and over by the likes of NASA bureaucrats. It isn't the organization it was in the 1960s, at all. (As witness, for example, the recent string of brilliant Mars successes.)
  • Damn straight! Talking to Kranz was like meeting someone from the Heroic Age of American science. He's a real hero.
  • Just try to get an IP from your local Baby Bell, Cable-Internet or DSL provider. Think you could afford it on a fixed income?

    Why do you need an IP? Run on a virtual server or free hosting service if you don't want to spend money. Spend $20-30/month if you want fancy stuff like CGIs, MySQL, etc.. If you don't like the TOS, move, or pony up the $$$.. I don't have a problem with it.

    Why not volunteer your own time and expertise to setup a non-profit ISP project with your own TOS for this purpose, not unlike the New Deal people recording old blues artists?

    I can't imagine hosting static pages is going to get any cheaper than it is now, and IMHO this is a good thing as long as search engines continue to index (and this is a concern, considering they miss whole regions of the Internet)..

    Does anyone know of a way to get a free IP so you can run your own server from home?

    No, and I think your assumptions are a bit off: networking has never been less costly or convenient as it is today. Ever tried to get ISDN? Or, god help you, a T1 to your house? Even having to put up with tech.morons to get DSL was a dream compared to Hell Atlantic or UUNet for T1 service.. My mom+pop ISP has a class B (helps to have started in 1993) and grants static IPs to every customer, including dialups, and my DSL network is a /27 subnet right now.. Of course, I wouldn't have a problem if the price went down, but still, I can't complain too loudly (I remember having to dialup to university terminal annexes to telnet into hosts, and having to run a console SLIP emulator, god forbid we have a dialin SLIP/PPP...)..

    And when IPv6 comes along IP addresses should become portable and super-cheap..


    Your Working Boy,
  • Does anyone know of a way to get a free IP so you can run your own server from home?

    You don't actually need a static IP, just use dynip [dynip.com] or a number of other providers that offer DNS services for dial-up connections. Nearly as good as a static IP, but a lot cheaper.

  • I appreciate the lead.
  • > that's free redirection, sure, but that doesn't help me if I don't have a static IP
    > or at least some form of URL in the first place.

    I believe that there is a way to automatically update dyndns.{com,org} after you have been disconnected and your IP changes. The MOO I wizard for uses both of these services, and aside from a few moments of propagation delay when the host gets disconnected, it works fine.

  • Failyor is not an Option. It's included with every copy of Win2K.

    Ohh... sorry, I thought you were quoting Microsoft, marketspeak.

    NASA is cool in the way they succeed even when Murphy's law takes a turn for the worst.

    Murphy's Law #1 -: If anything can go wrong it probably will. ( I.e. A picnic with No Umbrella means rain. )

    Murphy's Law #2 -: If nothing can go wrong, something definitely will. ( I.e. A picnic with proper shelter means horizontal wind driven rain. )

    Murphy's Law #3 -: If you go in expecting to benefit from a failure or foul-up then things will run smoothly. ( I.e. When you park the car outside expecting that rain will wash it for you, dry weather will come ).

    Just ask the crew of Apollo 13 how much fun they had.

  • Re:Where to go from here.. (Score:4)

    by nick357 ( 108909 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @08:39PM (#1070540)
    When the Europeans set out exploring, they knew that a good percentage were going to die trying. It was the same with those who set off west past the Mississippi -- some were not going to make it.

    Nowdays it is unacceptable to loose a single life. If the odds on a successful flight to mars were 50-50, I bet that there wouldn't be any shortage of applicants, and by using equipment with that kind of failure rate we could probably send 5 or 6 flights for what it would cost for 1 flight now. I don't know what the answer is, because I sure don't want my friend or son or daughter to be one of the unlucky 50%, but yet -- our caution seems to be killing our sense of "gee -- I wonder what is beyond those mountains..."
  • Forget about the Tang.. I want to know where they sent away to get they use to knock people out, while kidnapping potential astronauts.
  • Apparently, in the case of WWW sites, failure IS an option :)
  • *sigh*

    I thought it was a rather amusing analogy. Not FUD at all, really. But if you don't like my choice of targets, I might accept the label, but that I am rather a "Linux bigot of some worth", and also not arbitrarily a Linux bigot.

    Of course, you could extend it to any bureaucracy or system that the public percieves as only one or a few individuals.

    However, you'll notice that I was being rather generous to the mission control guys and the tech support guys for their work, something that seems to have been lost in the translation.

    Also, the U.S. doesn't have royal titles for people; technically he couldn't even be named "Sir Linus" here, let alone "Lord Linus". And he doesn't really have an affiliation to Red Hat. And *please* don't confuse religion ("singing praises") with anything secular.

    Support companies can indeed turn a profit, but it's harder when you aren't trying to rip everyone off with the zeal of a corporation like Microsoft. ...and if you've checked lately, Wall Street doesn't seem to like them much anymore, either, so we'll see what happens.

    In conclusion, if you controlled that temper of yours, I'm sure you too could contribute useful critiques of all the Linux bigots on slashdot, yea, even Anonymously. But otherwise, you will merely look like a fool to many here, even the non-Linux bigots, and give your bretheren a bad name.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • What I love about this site is that there is a list of all the errata in the book. As far as I can see they were not big ones, but I like the idea of being able to look up if there were any errors in it. Sometimes with non-fiction you know the subject quite well and then you see something that might be an error, this way you can look it up and/or notify the writer. A bit like bugtraq.

    The could have done an even better job if they would have put a lot more of the technical stuff online. It is there, no reason to hold it back. Just imagine that in the future you read a textbook on 3d-modelling and you can go to a site to get the models yourself and fiddle with them. Or that you could find extra schematics for building something. Not nescessary to understand the book, or too expensive to include, but easily done on the Net.

  • The problem is that in those days you would die and be forgotten, and anyone who cared about you would have no one to complain to, either because you went on your own and got yourself killed or anyone responsible for the trip could just ignore you. Today your death would be broadcast live on CNN and the media would be ripping NASA to shreds, convincing congress to cut back funding. There are just too many responsible for space exploration, and all of them would suffer for it if anything happened to you, no matter how willing you were to die for the cause.

  • Re:tang (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Tang was NOT invented for the space program. It was invented as a sugary breakfast drink for regular folks. Some really good marketroids got it INVOLVED in the space program.

    Trust me. I lost a game of Trivial Pursuit over this one and was pissy enough to do the research.
  • It's called duty of care.

    The value of life in highly developed countries is high. Have a look at the amount of warning labels, licensing conditions, legal disclaimers, etc you are expected to observe and sign. Safety and comfort seems to be quite a high priority, a lot of people wouldn't even consider visiting another country unless it had 5-star hotels and 24 hour conveniences. Admittedly lacking things like running water and toilet paper tend to be discomforting but then part of the exploration experience is to realise and appreciate the things we take for granted. You also find that unless conditions are extremely harsh, people are disinclined to shift out of their familiar comfort zone. Famines, poverty, political or religious prosecution have traditionally been the mechanisms for large-scale migration.

    How much is a single human life worth? Should a 'western' life be considered a greater economic 'investment' and thus potential loss? Since your Secretary of Treasury Larry Summers noted that as the Third World had a deficit of pollution and it mades sense to export nuclear waste, it seems this attitude is all too common. Is one American solider worth killing hundreds of Sudanese civilians? Much better to sit back in an air-conditioned office and push that missile button? Why not pay to climb Mt. Everest? Or more exactly hire bearers to carry you up to be photographed.

    Perhaps the problem is that we are running out of grand dreams, a challenge that can motivate us to reach new heights of potential. Most of the world is mapped. sports has been thoroughly commercialised, religion has fallen into background noise, and marketing wars don't exactly lead themselves to long-term passion. Star Trek aside, the energy cost of sending humans and their life-support supplies into space is still too high with out current technology level.

    So, are we being suffocated by our own perceived sense of boredom? When more people watch "Who wants to be a Millionaire" rather than spend the time to build up skills to create new wealth (improved productivity of new goods and services). Who'd rather fantasise about Atlantis than fund archeology expeditions. Rather watch a VR flight simulation than take flying lessons? The on-line world sometimes is too seductive for our own good. I would hope that people realise that the only limit is your inner imagination and the passion to go out there and make a difference, if only to understand yourself better.

    LL
  • I noticed a few posts talking about what a great thing it is for great people to set up a website. I think the truth of the matter is that many people could be sharing their knowledge. Just think of the millions of elderly wasting away in retirement homes. Engineers, architects, plumbers...wasted knowledge. The flip side of this is that havin your own piece of the web is getting tougher. Though the price of technology for setting up a webserver has gone down (i.e. and pentuim class computer with Linux installed could do the job) the government acting in concert with big business is constantly raising the hurdle. Just try to get an IP from your local Baby Bell, Cable-Internet or DSL provider. Think you could afford it on a fixed income?

    One could argue that there are tons of free Hosts out there, but that puts you at the mercy and content policies. What if some 80 year old dude wants to talk about his life in the KKK. What if a retired hacker wants to share the knowledge. As recent events have shown, getting your content yanked by your Host takes little more than filling out an online abuse report or making a phonecall. Does anyone know of a way to get a free IP so you can run your own server from home?

  • This ain't 'news for nerds', this is an unmitigated plug for a book. OK, he's a good guy, we like him, he's earned a boatload of respect and all, but how did this make it slashdot.

    I read over the site. It ain't Gene Krantz's web site, and it ain't a personal web site or anything. It's a plug for a book. Simple as that.

    Rant off: That said, I'm gonna go order the book now :-)

  • >Christ, imagine what it would be like to have the
    >likes of Leonardo DaVinchi on the web, in his own
    >words, pictures and creations! (I wonder if Leo
    >would have dug Java or PHP3?).

    Java or PHP3? Are you nuts? That man was all over the place. Did everything. Make simple things simple, and hard things possible. Did the same thing different ways.

    DaVinchi has Perl written all over him.

    -Bill

  • Trained by Yoda (Score:3)

    by Helmholtz ( 2715 ) on Tuesday May 16, 2000 @12:26AM (#1070551) Homepage
    He must have been trained by Yoda .....

    Hence the mantra...

    "Do or do not, there is no try"

  • It comes bundled with every Microsoft product.

    Yeah, I know it's old, but it's still true.

  • Wow, that's a refreshing change. A lot of gurus and self-help types have told me to give up. Or at the very least, they implore, set your sites lower.
  • DaVinchi has Perl written all over him?

    Is that like one of those "This is a Munition" tatoos or something?
  • my father is the senior director of broadcast engineerying (blahblahblah) at WETA television in arlington, virginia. they were filming some sort of documentary for PBS and gene kranz was part of it. my father and he got to talking in the studio and decided on dinner and that's pretty much how it happened. as i related before, a very interesting character to talk to, very knowledgeable on many subjects.
    --
    DeCSS source code! [metastudios.com]
    you must amputate to email me.
  • If I remember correctly, westward expansion into the North American continent didn't really get moving until two things happened:

    1. Railroads - Fast, frequent and CHEAP transportation for passengers and goods filled up the continent faster than anyone could have predicted. Today's rockets are sailing ships. We need the equivalent of a steam engine.

    2. Gold - (or another profit motive). The gold rush in 1849 allowed California to fill up with enough people to allow it the apply for statehood. We need an economic motive to push the masses into space.

  • The Gold Rush came before the railroads did. The railroads only came after the Federal Government promised to guarantee the railroad companies huge swatches of land (and the military power to defend them). Even then, the rail companies didn't build until there was a huge, pent-up demand for cargo transport. Once they were in place, huge depletions of the natural resources ensued (killing the Buffalo, decimating the native American populations, etc.).

    In any case, the Federal Government (especially under Jefferson) financed and conducted the earliest explorations of the lands west of the Mississippi. There was little economic incentive, in the minds of the Eastern Establishment, to do this. The same can be said of today's corporations and exploring Mars.
  • Netcraft says he's running IIS over Windows. [netcraft.com] It seems that failure may very well be an option...
  • there were a complex of things moving the space program of the 60's forward - AISB (as I said before) cold war competition, Werner Von Braun, a post 2nd wwar techno 'can do' spirit, a public primed for a real 'Buck Rogers', presidential backing and congressional funding, etc. Just like they said in the movie version of 13, by the early 70's a moon shot was about as exciting as a flight to Milwaukee. Even then, there were plenty of folks who decried spending all that 'money in space' (as if it were all going to alien banks and not creating interesting jobs here on earth) when there's plenty of poverty on earth still.
    Even colonizing the America's (to further that analogy) was in part a race by several different countries to claim land by populating it, as well as a 'promised land' for the oppressed to go to start over if they're not doing well or are stigmatized in their 'home' land. People seek gold , a pleasant climate and fertile land to raise a family on, like California - the moon just ain't got that appeal! It lacks a really good 'reason' to do it.
  • Not to mention, how did they fake the one where the astronaught dropped a hammer and a feather and have them drop at the same speed (And not earth g speed either)
  • Yeah, I know we're not suppose to complain about a lack of choices, but I'm sick of having to vote "CowboyNeal". I want Failure as an option. Along with the following: Floogle, Smarnal, Desperation, Chicken Chow Mein, and something in unicode, for our international friends.

    Thank you.
  • Personaly I think the people you mentioned and the counterparts of today and tomorrow, would be far to busy to create a web site.IMO.
    DaVinci would need a special system set up so everything on the screen looks like it's in the mirror!
    The idea is pretty cool to think about.
    Napoleon: On one hand I could conquer europe, on the other, I could update my web page.
    Hours later..
    Napoleon: Damn Hotmail spam! screw Europe I'm going to Redmond!
  • This is being done with tech books. Wrox, O'Reilly and others publishs there errata, and example programs on the web. I wish the fact that they did that would lower the price of the book, since they don'e include the disk, oh well..
  • I did studied Astrology for about 10 years, it is inequivically crap. Your arguments are specious at best. The quantim effects of the chair you sit on have more "influence" on you then mars for goodness sake. Quantum probabilty created by an object dimish's as you move away from an object
    example: If I could see you as indevidual atoms where you are standing I would see a large numbers of them. as I moved away from you the the numbers of atoms would dimish.
    It was probably a troll, but when people spout off "headline" science, then use it to spread FUD to the ignorant it pisses me off beyond all belief.
    Astrology has failed under every Scientific test it has been put up against.
    In all likely hood the person who wrote this will deny this post with knee-jerk veihamence, but for those who are truly curios I suggest you start with the Amazing Randi.
  • No. And that is the problem. We never actually developed the technology to allow sustainted occupation of the moon. We went for the quick, multi-billion dollar publicity stunt instead. If going to the moon was a test then we didn't pass, we cheated. Why didn't we even try to go on to Mars? Because we never actually learned the lessons we were supposed to learn going to the Moon.

    Now we have nothing. The Moon is no longer the lure to inspire people to think of space and it's challanges. And yet, the job still isn't done.
    Is it any wonder that space technology has stagnated? The prize is gone. All that's left is the work.
  • Doesnt seem to be more than book selling goin on there. He was one of my favorite characters in Apollo 13 tho.
  • The web site is pretty cool, perhaps better than what's-his-name [zeldman.com], although those fonts are still too small. I was disappointed that the excerpts [genekranz.com] were so short. Why can't lengthier segments be published? Surely if the book is well-written and engaging, it will be an enticement, not a reason to forego buying the book!

    Cool stuff on GeekPress [geekpress.com]: How to Hack a Bank [geekpress.com] / Helmet o'Death, Almost [geekpress.com]

    -- Diana Hsieh

  • tang (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Whatever happened to Tang.
    Surely it was developed for the NASA space program.
  • And it's a great lesson about methodology and control in complex systems. Highly recommended.

    Chris.

  • Gene Kranz (Score:4)

    by David Ham ( 88421 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @08:20PM (#1070570)
    i actually had the opportunity to sit down at a dinner with Mr. Kranz and my father a few years ago. we had a good talk about many things, from space shuttles to his hobby of flying planes and whatnot. one thing he related to me (and has turned out to be a good piece of advice) is to fly high and never let go of your dreams. besides being intelligent, he's also an incredibly wise man and very fun to talk to.
    --
    DeCSS source code! [metastudios.com]
    you must amputate to email me.

  • Imagine If Napoleon Had A Website. (Score:3)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @08:27PM (#1070571)
    This is a great idea. The site ties in a little too much with the book to be useful on its own, but it is great to see someone who played such a part in history -- even in the background of it, share it on the internet.

    I'm not about to compare Kranz to other great people like Genghis Khan or Napoleon or Beethoven or Patton, but could you imagine if all of our great thinkers and leaders had websites where they could share their views and experiences and 'inside stories'? It's too late for the past, but what will it be like 100 years from now when everyone from heads of state to poets and writers, musicians, architects and scientists share what was really behind the scenes.

    Christ, imagine what it would be like to have the likes of Leonardo DaVinchi on the web, in his own words, pictures and creations! (I wonder if Leo would have dug Java or PHP3?).

    I think we're just breaking the tip of the ice-berg. There are a million stories to be told and with the anonymity of the Internet (or the potential anonymity as the case may be if you take precaution) may encourage even more of them to share.

    I'm not sure if these things exist, but I'd love to know more about (and from the mouths of) test pilots, nuclear scientists who were involved with projects in the 50's, officers in the Vietnam war and Word War Two and many other events. The pictures, stories, intricate details... It could be a very impressive thing!

    Okay, I know -- this is all a little too utopian, but I've seen a few good sites like these and this one sparked the excitement along a little further...
    ---
    icq:2057699
    seumas.com

  • From the FAQ:
    I am frustrated. We reached the moon over three decades ago, and since then we have been marching in place. It is as if the American pioneers of the previous century reached the banks of the Mississippi River and decided to quit the westward march.

    This is interesting.. I've been thinking the same thing. Here we are in the future -The 21st century no less, and where is my jet-pack? Where is my rocket car?

    [Insert conspiracy theory] Did we ever actually make it to the moon?
    -
  • I've read this book (bought a copy while wandering through B&N's meat-space store).

    It's QUITE interesting, although I must admit that I kept visualizing Ed Harris as Kranz from Apollo 13, but that's OK, because near as I can tell, Harris was a good likeness for him, both in physical appearance as well as in "demeanour".

    HIGHLY recommended reading. :)

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