No Easy Task
June 2nd 2011 10:51
Category: Astronomy
Images courtesy of www.wpclipart.com C More Stars
President Kennedy once said about going to the moon wasn’t going to be easy , I am just paraphrasing but we remember the speech he made about going to the moon.
These words paved the way for new challenges to be overcome with technology that for the most part did not exist at the time.
So began a new resurgence in the race for space. In under a decade failing rockets that tended to explode on take off became more stable. Soon the failures were beaten mankind overcame the seeming impossible, humans ventured into space.
Where has all that spirit gone? The can do attitude seems to have waned, now it’s all about why bother it’s too hard. Perhaps a topic for another philosophical discussion.
They say necessity is the mother of invention and invent they did. Politics aside both the USA and the former Soviet Union made tremendous inroads in the technological advancement that made us what we are today the very things we tend to rely on like computers Teflon, medical research the list goes on.
I still recall the words of wisdom form Professor Julius Sumner Miller who said “Why is it so and not otherwise” listening to his lectures is why I became interested in science. Just seven words I heard 56 years ago are still relevant in today`s world.
The philosophy of Science is much the same as it was when our first ancestors first walked the Earth. It is in our nature to find how things work and why they sometimes don’t. The human spirit is all about facing challenges and trying to find solutions whether they are scientific or personal.
Thinkers like Galileo, Kepler (Cristoforo Colombo) AKA Columbus dared to challenge the current thinking of their day. Columbus proved that the Earth was not flat.
The issue was further resolved some 500years later when the early X-15 high altitude aircraft pilots went to the edge of space and first saw the curvature of the Earth.
Our early view of the universe changed when Galileo made the first drawings of the Moon`s surface and went on to look at distant celestial objects discovering the four major moon on Jupiter. Our world is no longer insular we belong among the stars.
What was just a short journey to the moon was back in the 1960s a monumental task. Now we have the technology and the knowledge to see galaxies that date back billions of years. New discoveries are continuing to find distant worlds with moons of their own beyond our own galaxy.
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Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
JFK would be disgusted with the democrats of today.
Comment by CMoreStars
Astroearth
Camera Sense
It is fair to say that most countries governments have dropped the ball when it comes to financial management. Australia is no exception although it has faired better than most countries during the global financial crisis. Sometimes I think I was better off living in the 1970s than now.