Back in 1999, when I first started writing my book (ah, how smooth a shill I am), I decided to take on what was then a pretty quiet conspiracy theory that the Apollo Moon landings were faked. Coincidentally, it wasn’t long after that when the Fox TV show came out, and the rest is history (oh, how I wish that were true).
An unexpected benefit of my research was that I became a PAN– a Pro Apollo Nut. I find the missions fascinating. There is a rich, deep history there, filled with danger, excitement, adventure, and oh, what was it was just thinking… oh yeah– guys walking on the Moon.
NASA wants to go back. I want us to go back. I want, somehow, some way, to get the public excited about a return to the Moon. I think that people will get excited, when they see what’s in store.
So in my own subtle way, I will be dropping the occasional pro-Moon stuff in this blog. This entry is the first of those. So much for subtlety.
Anyway, one way to get excited is to see what it was like to be there. Looking at images can be great fun, but let’s face it, somewhat limiting. So Danish photographer Hans Nyberg did a very cool thing: he stitched together several Apollo images to create a panoramic view of the Moon. And using the cool tech of VR, you can see what it’s like to be there, on the Moon.
This is very cool, and Herr Nyberg did a fantastic job. Go ahead! Take a look around– literally. And remember, someone you know might wind up seeing this view for real in the not-too-distant future.
August 15th, 2005 at 11:40 pm
Have you tried google moon? Go to http://moon.google.com/ and try the full zoom…
August 16th, 2005 at 12:13 am
Says on that site that the photographer is Danish, and the domain suffix .dk is Denmark’s suffix… Still cool though.
August 16th, 2005 at 12:15 am
Okay, speaking of shameless self promotion and the Moon, BA readers may be interested in this episode of our podcast, Friday Coffeeblogging. We spend a goood chunk of time in the episode (the first half really) talking about the shuttle program and the future of the US space program in general. The podcast isn’t usually about science and astronomy per se, but we are astro-nerds and often enjoy discussing that stuff.
We record the podcasts in a coffee shop in downtown Burlington, Vermont every Friday, hence the name.
August 16th, 2005 at 4:57 am
Now THAT is just plain cool. I love panoramas like this, it’s as if you were THERE! A great amount of work to make every picture fit and use the right color balance… Really good.
As to return to the moon, I can’t wait for man to be back there! But then we’ll have jerks going “Hey it’s fake they did that with computer animation, look at movies we do now!”
It’ll happen… Unfortunately.
August 16th, 2005 at 5:17 am
Very nice . . . I’m looking forward to the new IMAX joint about lunar exploration, Magnificent Desolation, too. I would LOVE to see us back on the moon. It’s amazing to me that there are only 12 human beings in all of human history who have shared this remarkable feat. Twelve! What an exclusive club, and how incredible it must feel to be in it.
August 16th, 2005 at 7:46 am
Who couldn’t be excited about going to the moon, or even Mars? As I was telling a friend of mine the other night, after I’d read a report on how the inability to shield against radiation may be a factor limiting long-distance space travel, I believe it’d even be worth giving up my future (or even short-term) health for.
As a very young child in the 80s, I was of the mistaken belief that moon flights were a more or less routine thing. (I’m not sure how I came upon this idea — kids dream up weird things, huh?) What a shock to the senses to find out the last time it happened was long before my time. So much science that could be done there; imagine a moon-based telescope, for example. I don’t think it’s a matter of if we’ll return, but when. Hopefully I won’t be an old man by then.
August 16th, 2005 at 7:58 am
Very cool. Several years ago I was working with Artemis Society International (www.asi.org) and put together a little demo to take to conventions to try to get people interested in a privately funded return to the moon. I stitched together some panoramas from one of the landings and wrote some code to make it work with the VFX! headset (http://www.mindflux.com.au/products/iis/vfx1.html). I also had the song “You will go to the Moon” by Moxy Furvous (www.fruvous.com) playing in the headset. It was a very cool demo if I must say so myself!
Rick–
August 16th, 2005 at 8:17 am
actually its Quicktime VR
VRML is a virtually dead internet 3D protocol
August 16th, 2005 at 11:24 am
Nuts. I corrected the two mistakes. Sorry about that!
August 16th, 2005 at 11:37 am
HEY WAIT THERE ARE NO STARS!!!!
Must be fake. LOL
Great site love the panorama.
August 16th, 2005 at 11:45 am
I am afraid that there is a lot of opposition to a return to the moon on the grounds that the problems of Earth should be addressed first, World hunger, health care, the environment etc. As I have mentioned on the boards, in a local paper someone wrote in condemming the Mars rovers on the grounds that the $58m should have been spent on hospitals , schools and such the like.
If you pardon the expression, space stuff does not hapen in a political vacuum. There are special interest groups who want a slice of the dwindling public spending pie, and they are vociferous and are more politically savy. They do not care about people walking on the moon, only their special interests, and as these people have the various block votes, as it were, what politician is not going to listen.
I see the attempts to even replace the shuttle, let alone any further projects to go into deep space, becoming a sacrificial lamb, so some other piece of pork can be funded. That seems to be the way of things. Plus after GW, how do you know the next incumbant of the whitehouse won’t cancel what GW has setup, because it was GW who set it up.
August 16th, 2005 at 12:34 pm
For my money, nothing comes closer to giving the experience of actually being there on the surface of the moon like the last part of [i]For All Mankind[/i].
And it’s been out since 1979.
August 16th, 2005 at 12:35 pm
For my money, nothing comes closer to capturing the feel of actually being there on the surface of the moon than the last part of _FOR ALL MANKIND_.
And that movie’s been out since 1979.
August 16th, 2005 at 12:47 pm
This argument about “Why are we spending this money on the space program when we can be spending it on feeding the homeless, etc…” is not a new thing at all. I distinctly remember seeing people on TV during the Apollo era complaining then about the same exact things. What is unfortunate about all of this is that the general public tends to have not a clue as to the fact that things like space exploration require hard work and sacrifice. They want an easy solution to everything. They wan’t to see people go to other worlds as cleanly, easily and safely as it is in the Star Trek universe.
During the recent Shuttle flight I watched many of the press conferences held on NASA TV, and with a few exeptions (James Oberg included), I was a bit taken aback at many of the questions and comments which were being thrown about by supposedly educated journalists. I kept expecting a couple to ask why they didn’t just use a tractor beam to pull out the tile separators.
August 16th, 2005 at 1:14 pm
There’s a simple answer for the “fix the Earth first” crowd.
We’re never going to fix those problems, no matter how much money we throw at them, so it’s just plain dumb to stop doing anything else. If they continue to whine, slap them and put dirt in their hair.
I’ve reached the point where I don’t give a flip about sending humans to Mars. We should be developing the near-Earth environment first, and establish a space based infrastructure upon which manned missions to wherever we like could be built. Build up Earth orbit and L4/L5 and whatnot. Make things that can support themseves financially.
Boneheadfx: never be suprised by the idiocy of journalists. I know this is anecdotal, but I took a couple journalism classes in college for general education requirements (I like writing in general), and the journalism majors, without exception, we’re, to put it blunty, dumber than rocks. I’ve had similar reports from other non-journalism majors who took similar courses. It just does not seem to be a field that attracts the best and the brightest these days. There’s exceptions, but they tend to be people who went into journalism from another field.
Journalism is a dead art. I recall here in California, our former governor (the miserable fool we recalled) would spout the most ridiculous things, and no one in the local press corps ever challenged anything, or asked followup questions. They just parroted what the politicians said without question.
The same thing happens when, say, The Center For Public Policy Wonks And Protector Of THE CHILDREN self proclaimed think tank releases data claiming too much peanut butter causes a 100% increase in bubonic plague rates in children under 5 years of age (determined by a phone survey and “statistical methods”). The media will just print the press release unaltered and unquestioned.
That’s the saddest thing about this country. We have such a free press (for the most part), but no real brain power taking advantage of it. It’s either lazy parrots or ideological extremists like Moore, Limbaugh, et al. There’s no one taking the high ground. Everyone is in the swamp.
August 16th, 2005 at 2:11 pm
The Galaxy Trio: I especially liked the irony you inserted in your comment. Your phrase “the journalism majors, without exception, we’re, to put it blunty, dumber than rocks” contains two deliberate mistakes (or possibly just innocent typos?) highlighting the inadequate writing skills of journalists.
My guess is, they can’t all be that bad.
Having said that, one British national newspaper, the Guardian, has earned itself the nickname “the Grauniad” due to frequent typographical errors.
August 16th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
The Graunad was a Manchester based paper competing with the London based papers so had to rush even more so to keep up with the London crowd, hence the lack of care over the typing mistaks
August 16th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
As a journalist, I ought to be offended by the Galaxy Trio’s assertion about my colleagues, but unfortunately I find myself having to agree with it. I’ve got nearly 20 years’ experience in the field and learned the old-fashioned way (when there were still cadetships and on-the-job training): I hate to sound like an old fogey, but these new journalism graduates just don’t know anything about real journalism.
Problem is, they spend three years getting a degree in journalism and there’s no way they’re going to start right at the bottom (as we did in my day). They already know everything! Now, I had an honours degree in English Literature but I still had to make the coffee at my first job on a major monthly magazine. I didn’t get a byline for 12 months!
But, getting off my high horse, I think that the problem goes deeper than journalism being a dumbed-down profession: I think the population in general is not being taught critical thinking. That’s a problem with the education system, with schools focussed on getting high academic scores by force-feeding kids facts that they memorise, churn out in exams and then forget immediately.
Just today our daily newspaper has a front-page story on the shortage of science students in our universities, speculating that it’s because kids are being turned off science at high school by pedagogues who stand at the front of the classroom and bombard them with facts — with no context and no room for critical thinking — and simply expect to have the facts regurgitated in exams.
Oh, and by the way, also in today’s newspaper was an article about the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools. It’s finally reached Australia! Our federal education minister said he would not oppose it being taught in schools “if parents wanted it”. So here we go!
August 17th, 2005 at 6:13 am
Speaking of your book, I was at the Natural History Muesum in NYC yesterday and saw your book in the giftshop. There it sat, right between books by Carl Sagan and Steven Hawking. Suprisingly, no books by Richard Hoagland.
August 17th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
What a pleasant surprise!
August 18th, 2005 at 9:17 am
Regarding space exploration costs:
Would you rather spend $2 billion for the Space Shuttle of which most of the $ goes for salaries Or for $2 billion worth of 500 lb bombs, cruise missiles and smart munitions bounding defenseless people and communties into gore, dust and debris?
Just what could more than $400 billion/year accomplish versus the meager and underfunded $14 billion/year for NASA’s space, aviation, and technologies?
That’s why I agree with what The Galaxy Trio Says:
August 16th, 2005 at 1:14 pm
“There’s a simple answer for the “fix the Earth firstâ€? crowd.
“We’re never going to fix those problems, no matter how much money we throw at them, so it’s just plain dumb to stop doing anything else. If they continue to whine, slap them and put dirt in their hair.
“I’ve reached the point where I don’t give a flip about sending humans to Mars. We should be developing the near-Earth environment first, and establish a space based infrastructure upon which manned missions to wherever we like could be built. Build up Earth orbit and L4/L5 and whatnot. Make things that can support themseves financially.”
August 19th, 2005 at 11:04 am
“I’ve reached the point where I don’t give a flip about sending humans to Mars. We should be developing the near-Earth environment first, and establish a space based infrastructure upon which manned missions to wherever we like could be built. Build up Earth orbit and L4/L5 and whatnot. Make things that can support themseves financially.�
The problem is, that was the philosophy of what we were trying to accomplish with Shuttle and Station. First build cheap access to space* (shuttle), then build low Earth oribit infrastructure, then work our way out. Of course all the people whine “we can’t even go to the Moon anymore” and “all we ever do is go around in circles around the Earth” and otherwise complain that low Earth orbit is too passe, too stupid, and we should be “out there”.
*Okay, so the Shuttle didn’t pan out the way it was intended, and didn’t live up to cheap access to space.