[ExI] rocket!

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of MB
via extropy-chat
Subject: [ExI] rocket!

Hey spike, were you there for this one?

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191109.html

Those were good days, spike.  Seems like there was a lot more enthusiasm,
excitment, and hope then.

I have a friend living down that way and she can see, from her front porch,
various rockets going up.  She's never tired of it.  :)


Regards,
MB

_______________________________________________



Hi MB, I sure as heck was there for that one.  That was the first full
Saturn 5 launch, and it was at dawn and the moon was full.  These are some
of my earliest memories, for I had just turned 7.  My father worked at the
cape so he had a pass to get in and knew a place.  After the fact I realized
it must have been due south of the launch site because the glow of dawn was
on my right and the moon was setting on my left as we faced the rocket.

There were some things I didn't understand.  It was hard to get scale on
something like that.  I heard the rocket stood as high as a tall building.
But the tallest building I had ever seen was 5 floors, the tallest building
Titusville had in those days.  What is that, about 50 ft?  The Saturn 5 was
360 ft.  Seeing it from about 4 miles away one couldn't really scale it.

That launch started an industry in Titusville.  Yankees would come down in
their Winnebagos and camp along the Indian River.  There weren't many
stores; we didn't even have a shopping mall in town.  So a kid could sell
souvenir trinkets and newspapers, young women could sell souvenir... eh...
could sell... ummm... a kid could sell trinkets and newspapers, make a pile
of money.  That's how I bought all my first camping gear, profit from a
single day of selling special edition newspapers.

If I could find one of those vintage editions of the Star Advocate Special,
I would be tempted to offer a deal for it.  From what I recall, the editions
that sold like hotcakes were the ones that were mostly about the astronauts
and their wives (?) and had little to do with rocketry.  

This Nov 1967 launch had no astronauts aboard, but they didn't tell me that.
I was told an ape was flying it.  My 7 yr old self didn't know any better.
When the politicians commented "No Buck Rogers, no bucks" we understood
exactly what they meant.  The moon launch was never primarily about science.
There was only one scientist who ever went to the moon.

spike