mons hadley

Commissioned and placed near their landing site on the lunar surface on this day in 1971 by the crew of the Apollo 15 mission, the aluminium abstract eight-centimetre figurine Fallen Astronaut by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck is the sole artwork (it’s debated whether the postage stamp sized ceramic wafer was really smuggled on-board in an astronaut’s suit and left behind) and poignant memorial on the Moon.
Keeping it a secret until after they returned to Earth, the laid the statuette on the lunar soil along with a plaque that records the names of fourteen astronauts and cosmonauts, regrettably omitting the sacrifice of Valentin Vasiliyevich Bondarenko and Grigori Grigoryevich Nelyubov as their deaths were not disclosed by the Soviet space programme and kept secret and Robert Henry Lawrence Jr, an Air Force officer and presumably considered a military asset as he was in training to be part of a crewed reconnaissance satellite experiment.

tc-50

Previously we’ve looked at some of the artefacts that accompanied the astronauts on their mission to the Moon, and now on the anniversary of their splashdown and safe return, we’re reminded how the crew beta-tested new technologies—and not just the obvious ones or Tang—but also the prototype for Sony’s Walkman, the rather revolutionary cassette player becoming commercially available a decade later. Though not quite the soundtrack from Guardians of the Galaxy (I wonder if the plot device was an homage), the best part of learning about this is that the playlist is available and includes Spinning Wheel, Everyday People and Angel of the Morning by Merrilee Rush and the Turnabouts, charting in the previous year
. 

and whitey’s on the moon

While the achievements of Apollo 11 were universally awing and captivating, for those in America who were politically and civilly disenfranchised and marginalised, people were left wondering why such focus and resources weren’t also being committed to bring about social justice and eliminate inequality. This led influential jazz musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron (*1949 – †2011)—best remembered for his essay “The Revolution will not be Televised”—to compose “Whitey on the Moon” in the following year.  Though there’s no evidence for a connection of any kind, the opening cadence makes me think a little bit of the 1979 song from The Police, “Walking on the Moon.”

I can’t pay no doctor bill. 

(but Whitey’s on the moon) 

Ten years from now I’ll be paying still. 

(while Whitey’s on the moon)

statio tranquillitatas

Yet embroiled in a lawsuit levied against the US space agency by the founder of the American Atheist association for the astronauts’ recitation during Apollo 8’s lunar orbit during Christmas Eve of the first ten verses of the Book of Genesis and demanded that they refrain from evangelising while in space, after touching down on the Moon, in the six-hour interim before stepping outside the lander, flight engineer Buzz Aldrin—in that spirit—took Sunday communion in private.
A church elder of a Presbyterian congregation, his kit was prepared ahead of time by his pastor and the chalice used during the lunar ceremony is in possession of the church near Galveston, Texas where Johnson Space Center exists today. The chalice is used for a special commemoration on the Sunday closest to the original date each year. The remander of the time was a designated sleep-period, but too excited, the break was cut short. “This is the LM [Landing Module] pilot,” Aldrin said, taking the com, “I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.”

space race

Via Mysterious Universe, on this fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 from Cape Canaveral we learn that according to one imminent historian, John F Kennedy, who famously charged his nation with committing “itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth,” did not intend for the Space Race to become the bi-polar, ideological struggle and ongoing rivalry that it since morphed into but rather entertained it might be an international collaborative effort that might help foster peace and cooperation.
In an interview granted to the Telegraph (possible paywall) ahead of his book release, John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute and former member of the NASA advisory council. Delivering that speech before Congress in May of 1961 with the Bay of Pigs standoff only recently diffused, US-Soviet tensions were heightened and the private meeting between Nikita Khrushchev and JFK in Vienna a few weeks later was probably dominated by negotiation on nuclear proliferation and spheres of influence, but there is evidence to suggest that Kennedy might have broached the idea of a joint mission to the lunar surface. Later even entertained before a United Nations assembly, it’s a matter of some speculation why this did not occur but is nonetheless satisfying to indulge what the common effort might have looked like for geopolitics. Though crewed landing on the Moon was not itself a shared endeavour, the détente and cooperation was ushered in with the last mission of the programme itself, with the Apollo-Soyuz test project conducted in July of 1975.

for here am i sitting in a tin can

Though lyrically and stylistically informed by the previous year’s release of the Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey (previously), David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” (previously) had a delayed release—a version was recorded back in February—owing to an earlier split with his old record label and Bowie’s new artists and repertoire managing group decided to release the song on this day in 1969, just nine days ahead of the Apollo 11 mission, to capitalise on the publicity of that event. Due to the tone and the unresolved finish, the BBC network of stations refrained from playing the song until the crew of the lunar excursion were safely back on Earth.

6x6

t-minus: the Apollo 11 mission in real time using historical mission footage, via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals

scrip: garbage cryptocurrency from a garbage social media company isn’t crypto at all

that yorkshire sound: hand-drawn animated short illustrates an every day, vibrant soundscape

carissimi auditores: after a thirty year run, Finnish broadcasters are ceasing their news in Latin segment, but no fear as the report gives other resources

deaccessioned: a large auction house will no longer be publicly traded as it goes into private hands

ṝ:“For Want of a Hyphen Venus Rocket is Lost” – programming is unforgiving 

☽

Five decades after NASA successfully landed a human on the lunar surface and returned him and crew safely to Earth with the Apollo programme (aiming for the stars with the Moon being one of several goals when the mission was first conceived), the space agency has committed to returning within five years and the next humans to set foot on there will be a woman and man, naming the follow-on series of missions Artemis, after Apollo’s twin sister and goddess of the hunt, wilderness, the Moon and childbirth.
While we are big proponents for space exploration and happy that the US isn’t poor-mouthing the budget and even bigger advocates for equal opportunity (we’re just beginning to appreciate the role that women scientists played in the background to make the first mission a reality) and finding role models but there’s something a little creepy and sinister about how the whole ambitious plan is being presented and support rallied. What do you think? Considering who the chief cheerleaders are, it comes across almost as messianic, like a second Eden. Achieving equity in representation is challenging and opportunity and accomplishment ought not be conflated with other narratives (despite our penchant for story-telling as motivation), and the further we come in our outlook we also realise how much further we have to go.

project a1119

In response to the Sputnik crisis (previously here and here) and to boost American morale and reassert its dominance in the Space Race, the US Air Force developed a top-secret plan in May of 1958 to launch and detonate a nuclear bomb on the lunar surface.
This planned show of power was underwritten in part by geologists wanting to learn more about the satellite’s composition and formation and the team included a young Carl Sagan (*1934 - †1996). Ultimately better sense prevailed and the US (along with the Soviet Union who had a similar project in the works) called off the stunt for fear of public backlash and the uncertainty about the effects of fall-out for future colonists. The plan itself was not revealed to the public until forty-five years later in the mid-1990s, in part through Sagan’s 1999 autobiography, but did have more immediate impact with the Outer Space Treaty, accorded a decade later.

8x8

shuudan koudou: the Japanese art of synchronised, precision walking

how happy we could be if we’d only listen to our kitschy teacups: cheerfulness is not a virtue and rather an equal opportunity vice

shortlisted: a curated selection of submissions to National Geographic’s travel photography competition

the wookie roars: RIP Peter Mayhew (*1944 – †2019)

tiger on tour: during the height of the Space Race, Esso gave away maps of the Moon

deplatformed: garbage social media ejected a bunch of garbage provocateurs, though the stunt is more publicity for the banned

klimaanlage: researchers in Karlsruhe study enlisting air conditioning units to pull carbon dioxide out of the air

yijin jing: watching Shaolin Kung Fu training from above (previously)

product placement

In addition to the thousands of scientists and engineers behind the Apollo missions to land a manned mission on the Moon and return them safely, there was also a concerted marketing effort not only to supplement the astronauts and enhance the mission but also out of self-interest and garnering interest for their brand. The always amazing Kottke directs our attention to an incredible curated archive of press kits and presentations put together by NASA contractors that made the journey possible and also strove to keep the crew well stocked with pens, cameras, meals in quarantine after splashdown, watches, etc. Much more to explore at the links above.

spider and gumdrop

The mission to inspire an eponymously titled Adam Ant song in 1984, NASA’s Apollo 9—the third crewed undertaking in the programme, took off from Kennedy Space Center on this day fifty years ago for ten days of trials in low Earth, geosynchronous orbit to test extravehicular activities (previously), spacewalk, and decoupling, docking performance of the gangly landing module and the bulbous command and service module that looked like a diving bell were given the title nicknames respectively and had those call-signs for radio communication. This battery of rigorous rehearsal helped ensure the success of later missions to the lunar surface.

payload

In addition to its cargo of satellites, SpaceX’s latest and literal Moon Shot had in its manifest a back-up copy of human civilisation, a thirty-million page anthology of history, literature and genetic code stored in a format meant to be prone to obsolescence.
This lunar library—part of a larger initiative to preserve a record of humanity flung around the Cosmos and lasting a billion of years, irrespective of what transpires on Earth, since other hedging for doomsday seems already under threat—we seriously have to do better. A privately funded landing module (Beresheet, which means “In the beginning” in Hebrew) will ferry this curated disk and primer on the human condition to the surface of the Moon in mid-April.

mcmlxix

Via Memo of the Air, we are treated to a photographic retrospective of the year in pictures, 1969 edition. Fifty iconic images curated by Alan Taylor show what shook the world and beyond fifty years, whose rumblings are still being felt. From Vietnam, Nixon, civil rights movements, the Moon landing, to Woodstock with everything else in between, it was surely an arduous task to pick a range of representative pictures—much less one.

6x6

don’t seem to rouse themselves for anything besides the birth and death days of idolised rock stars: a Stasi guide of negative-decadent youth subcultures in East Germany

backboard: neglected community basket ball courts revived and rehabilitated as canvases for monumental paintings

sandbox: the development of electronic music owes a debt to songs aimed at a very young demographic

what pedantry is this: more questions and answers from the Chicago Manual of Style—via Coudal Partners

i’ll be waiting for you on the dark side of the moon: Earthrise from above the lunar far-side from the Longjiang-2 orbiter

tilt-shift: an immersive tour of the North Korean capital

extra-terrarium or the effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds

Within a tiny biosphere transported to the far side of the lunar surface by the Chang’e-4 probe (previously) containing various plants, yeast and fruit-fly eggs, so far only the cotton seed has germinated and is sprouting. Researchers are closely monitoring the sealed environment to see what happens next. There have been many experiments with plants in microgravity beforehand but this represents the first time to attempt to cultivate something on the Moon.

waxing and waning

The design collective Whyixd has installed an ensemble of whirling LEDs to form a kinetic sculpture on the campus of National Chiao Tung University that illuminates the sky and delivers passers-by with a subjective experience of the lunar phases. Named like a bit of open-ended code, the project, “#define Moon_,” acknowledges that the perspective is unique for each viewer and something to take umbrage with, especially in light of the revival of the Space Race.

chang'e

Via Slashdot, we learn that the Chinese space agency has successfully landed a probe, Chang’e 4, on the dark side of the Moon. Because of the impossibility to communicate directly with the lander, a relay satellite called Queqiao (Magpie Bridge) is orbiting the Moon and can exchange readings and instructions with mission control on each pass.
The landing site, the Von Kármán lunar crater, was a practical location as well as one with an important symbolic message, as the Hungarian-American astrophysicist and polymath Theodore von Kármán, its namesake, was the academic advisor of Hsue-Shen Tsien (*1911 – †2009), the rocket scientist and cyberneticist who founded the Chinese space programme. Though previously studied and charted, this hemisphere of the Moon that is tidally-locked and always faces away from the Earth has never been the subject on direct exploration and this achievement is in follow-up to the Chang’e 3 mission and its Jade Rabbit Rover (read more about Chinese lunar mythology and its connection with the space missions here)—paving the wave for permanent human colonisation by 2030.

мечта

On this day in 1959, the Soviet space programme launched the first interplanetary probe known as Luna 1—or with the alternate designation “Dream” above—and although due to a miscalculation on the burn-time of the last stage of the booster rocket, it over-shot its target, the Moon, but still in the process became the first spacecraft to escape Earth orbit.
The probe was able to take pioneering measurements of the Earth’s magnetic field (and the cosmic rays it protects the Earth from) and flying-by at a distance of some six-thousand kilometres was able to detect the absence of one on our satellite. In transit, the probe released a trail of sodium gas and scintillated like the tail of a comet and was to ultimately crash land on the lunar surface and release two metallic pennants and coat of arms of the Soviet Union on 4 January but veered off course (Luna 2 accomplished this mission of planting a flag in September of the same year) and remains in heliocentric orbit (along with some later cosmic interlopers) between Earth and Mars, designated according to the minor planet naming-convention, like Ultima Thule, as 1959 Mu 1.

earthrise

During the Apollo 8 mission, the first manned voyage to orbit the Moon, astronaut William Anders (it was a collaborative among him and his crewmates) on Christmas Eve 1968 photographed the emerging penumbra of the Earth rising into daybreak with nightfall crossing at the Sahara. This breath-taking image is credited as one of the most influential pacifistic and environmental photographs taken up until that point, preceding Voyager’s Pale Blue Dot by two decades, and brought with it acute awareness of the fragile beauty of our planet.