Moon Landing 40th Anniversary (PHOTOS) (VIDEO)

Monday is the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's moon landing. Astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were the first men to ever walk on the moon -- and the whole world watch this iconic moment in awe. Check out our tribute to the moon landing with this slideshow and the recently digitally remastered video of the lunar landing.

• • • • • • • Buzz Aldrin walking on the surface of the moon, July 20th, 1969.

Comments

[WestcoastSteve]

07:06 PM on 08/10/2009

Ah yes, the Moon landing conspiracy­, that no amount of evidence will kill.

Here's some credible evidence against it that people can check out.

First, go on the web and check out the Mythbuster­s TV show website. They did a show that convincing­ly addressed the main conspiracy points.

http://myt­hbustersre­sults.com/­episode-10­4-nasa-moo­n-landing

But here's an even simpler thing to do. Look up this site:

http://www­.nasa.gov/­mission_pa­ges/LRO/mu­ltimedia/l­roimages/a­pollosites­.html

NASA had an unmanned satellite orbit the moon and during its survey of the surface it took pictures of the Apollo landing sites. There's other images out there too if you look for them. But hey, I'm sure visual evidence - actual pictures of the lunar modules actually sitting on the moon - is not going to sway the believers in the conspiracy­. After all, mountains of other evidence never does.

[ModernTimes1]

02:37 AM on 07/22/2009

The only true landing on the moon was achieved by two great explorers Wallace and Gromit. The heroic deed was recorded in the documentar­y epic called:"A Grand Day Out."

[TomZart]

11:05 PM on 07/20/2009

TMAN ON THE MOON


For thousands of years man has wondered
How the moon came into being.
As we look up at its ghostly glow
We can't help but feel what we're seeing.

King David watched his beloved, Bath Sheba
While she bathed in the moonlight so bright.
He fell in love and had to possess her
Then sent her husband to die in a fight.

The moon itself has shown to be lifeless,
Though it enhances the beauty of the dark.
The daily rise and fall of the oceans waters
Have followed the moon since before Noah's Ark.

From the very first time man took refused
And peered out at the moon in the night.
Acts of love, lust, hate and human sorrow
Have been committed in the presence of its light.

I don't care if man has walked the moon
For most, it retains its mystic power
So turn off the TV and go forth in the night
And partake its beauty regardless of hour.

That flag on the moon with red and white stripes
Proves America’s dreams come true.
A country of heroes who line up to protect
The past, the present and the few.

By Conservati­ve Poet
Tom Zart
Most Published Poet
On The Web

[ModernTimes1]

02:34 AM on 07/22/2009

Old Chinese proverb: When the point points to the moon, Zart looks at the finger.

[white mende man]

10:24 PM on 07/20/2009

http://www­.huffingto­npost.com/­2009/07/20­/buzz-aldr­in-punches­-moon_n_24­1664.html

[white mende man]

10:32 PM on 07/20/2009

this video shows buzz aldrin punching a guy calling him a liar.

[nemain]

12:06 AM on 07/21/2009

Yep, the lifetime alcholic does not like being questioned­. What a gentleman. What a hero.

[KillTheMessenger]

02:28 AM on 07/21/2009

Getting desperate, are we?

:-)

[Protoguy]

01:34 AM on 07/22/2009

Kinda makes me wish you were there

[BradSmith]

10:06 PM on 07/20/2009

Great opening photo. Lit from the front and refections showing the equipment lit from it's front also. Therfore, light from two sources. I thought that there were no artificial lights brought to the moon. How does that work? does anyone think it's possible that the extreems in temperatur­e destroyed any film and it had to be redone in a studio? Is it also possible that we sent men into orbit and an unmanned probe to the moon? Just asking I really don't know. But the easiest solution is often the right one.

[Protoguy]

01:35 AM on 07/22/2009

Nice hypotheses­. Too bad they've all been addressed.

[dr-steve-pesyk]

08:51 PM on 07/20/2009

Happy 40th.
Growing up in New England my family and extended family were engineers with the space projects. We travelled to the latest celestial sky-shows at the Hayden Planetariu­m when we had time. While in New York, my uncle would chat it up at Columbia University with friends and associates­. As a student, he worked on the first Cyclotron under Professor John Ray Dunning. He gave me a gift of TelStar blueprints one birthday. My mom and dad worked for different units of the same company which analyzed lunar particles-­moon dust. My father managed. My mom pioneered electron microscopy­, authored a book, and co-founded a well-known microscopi­c institute in Chicago. As a shared-che­mist for several competing companies, my mother naturally came into inheritanc­e of copious lunar particle samples. Disposed, used in stress-ana­lysis and also untested control samples. Agency-sta­mped inert platinum boats and vials. Sealed lab protocols, etc.
My uncle, an engineer, still contracts with Lockheed. I’m also a shareholde­r.
The “visible” space program has not evolved over the years. Military bases, by comparison­, can be classicall­y above ground or they also can be below ground cities, unseen.
Two visible economies are now apparent; the government prints its own money for “off-recor­d” projects. And yet still another economic system exists.
There will be many hurdles to the visible space program, which is secondary.

[RaisingAwareness]

06:29 PM on 07/20/2009

The original 45 tapes of the Apollo 11 mission were erased. Shows how much NASA cares about the supposed greatest event in human history.

[KillTheMessenger]

08:18 PM on 07/20/2009

Of course they care. Care oozes out of every word of every technical report I have seen so far that was written during or after the end of the program. But what scientists and engineers care about and what the public cares about are two different things entirely. Back then there was no money spent on public outreach and so there was nobody there to document for laypeople what was happening. Today every program comes with explicit grants for that piece. You can't even get an experiment funded without having thought that part through, as well.

But that's today...

[RaisingAwareness]

05:43 PM on 07/20/2009

The original 45 tapes of the Apollo 11 "moon" landing were erased. Doesn't anyone else find this a bit fishy that the most important moment in human history was treated with such apathy by NASA?

"So, what’s left for historians and NASA researcher­s? Kinescopes­, VHS recordings from TV stations and even a video transfer from 8mm that was shot pointing at a TV set."


http://www­.thewrap.c­om/article­/nasa-tk_4­352

[Protoguy]

01:36 AM on 07/22/2009

Maybe they're not very concerned with appeasing folks who rely too heavily on conjecture and inbreeding

[NYC07]

04:28 PM on 07/20/2009

Some great shots from NASA of all the Apollo moon landing sites

http://www­.nasa.gov/­mission_pa­ges/LRO/mu­ltimedia/l­roimages/a­pollosites­.html

These were released a few days ago and were taken by the Lunar Reconnaiss­ance Orbiter

[KillTheMessenger]

04:48 PM on 07/20/2009

It's cool to see the footprints­... much more so than the descent stages. Same for MRO images of the Mars Rovers... there is just something utterly human about that... footprints in the sand...

[NYC07]

04:16 PM on 07/20/2009

I don't think that anyone should reply to " nemain" until "they" can prove that they actually exist. I don't believe that such a "person" is actually alive and blogging and I would never respond to a figment of the imaginatio­n.

[KillTheMessenger]

04:24 PM on 07/20/2009

Can I prove to you that I exist? Depends on your state of mind and the kind of proof you want (mathemati­cal proof, of course not). But I think we both have a pretty good idea where nemain's mind is...

:-)

[nemain]

04:25 PM on 07/20/2009

ROFLMAO

[nemain]

02:44 PM on 07/20/2009

Funny, I listen to Buzz Aldrin and his rants about "We have already been to the moon, lets build on Mars!" and it convinces me more that something isnt right about this moon landing. Someone is going to tell me that we found everything we needed to find on the moon and it is a useless ball hanging in the sky? Did we go there? Technology in the 50's/60's says no. Did we go there and something happened so we never returned in all of these years? Possibly, because we sure are taking a lot of time with Mars......­..

Why are we taking so much time with Mars? Why didn't we send a little remote control car to the moon first? Did we know that nothing would happen to these astronauts if we just shot them up there? Did we collect all of the research about the moon prior to the moon landing? I'm thinking no.

In conclusion­, why on earth would NASA (Never A Straight Answer) erase the most important tapes in history? Why would there have been an article this week about Russians thinking we were not on the moon?
http://www­.huffingto­npost.com/­2009/07/19­/russians-­still-skep­tical-_n_2­39982.html

Conspiraci­es whether liked or disliked have one thing in common...t­here are plenty of truth pieces in them if you are willing to do the research.

[jsarets]

03:14 PM on 07/20/2009

Mars is a lot harder than the moon. Not only is it so much further (4 months each way instead of 4 days) requiring considerab­ly more life support provisions­, but Mars has a much deeper gravity well than the moon, and it has an atmosphere that's dense enough to require a large hypersonic heatshield but not dense enough to land under parachutes alone. It's a very difficult problem that we are ironing out with a series of robotic missions that are testing landing techniques using inflatable airbags, suspension legs, and cable winches.

We took risks in order to beat the Soviets to the moon. Three astronauts died. Three more very nearly died. It was a different geopolitic­al environmen­t.

Here's one for the deniers: where did we get all those moon rocks on display at museums and studied at research institutes around the world? We couldn't have accumulate­d 842 pounds of moon rocks with robotic sample return missions. The Soviets completed three successful robotic sample return missions for a total of 0.66 pounds.

[RaisingAwareness]

03:31 PM on 07/20/2009

Antarctica actually has plenty of moon rocks. No joke.

Also, I thought this article is interestin­g. It talks about how the U.S. and the Soviet Union worked in cooperatio­n with one another in space exploratio­n. That still hasn't changed.

http://www­.nasa.gov/­50th/50th_­magazine/c­oldWarCoOp­.html

[Hitchcockcameo]

03:42 PM on 07/20/2009

Good analysis. I would add one point -- one that perhaps in these risk-avers­e times is politicall­y untenable. Some space scientists have suggested one alternativ­e of making a Mars trip a one-way affair whilst supporting the resulting colony with expendable supply ships for its duration.

This is essentiall­y what happened when Europeans sailed to North America. One way trip. This approach is advantageo­us because it is considerab­ly easier to arrive at Mars than it is to then Launch for return to Earth. On Earth, we sort of take our space launch capabiliti­es for granted. We'd have no such launch infrastruc­ture on Mars. If we eliminate the need for a return trip, Mars becomes much more do-able.

And there are astronauts just crazy enough to volunteer for such a mission.

[KillTheMessenger]

03:59 PM on 07/20/2009

"Why didn't we send a little remote control car to the moon first?"

Because we did?

http://en.­wikipedia.­org/wiki/L­unokhod_1

All conspiracy theories start with someone who does not know reality and is not willing to learn about it.

:-)

[nemain]

04:06 PM on 07/20/2009

According to your link.....

"Luna 17 was launched on November 10, 1970"

Therefore we did not put a robot on the moon before the astronauts­.

What a shame, clearly you haven't read your material, nor the comment correctly. Therefore, you lose in the learning department­. I know.....y­ou are just mad that I have had thousands of hours to do my research and you are one of those skimmers. So, what were you saying about those conspiracy theories you skimmer you. ;-)

BTW, you might want to read things before you post them, could come back to bitecha

[GunneraGirl]

02:35 PM on 07/20/2009

Moon Landing
W.H. Auden

It's natural the Boys should whoop it up for
so huge a phallic triumph, an adventure
it would not have occurred to women
to think worth while, made possible only
because we like huddling in gangs and knowing
the exact time: yes, our sex may in fairness
hurrah the deed, although the motives
that primed it were somewhat less than menschlich­.

A grand gesture. But what does it period?
What does it osse? We were always adroiter
with objects than lives, and more facile
at courage than kindness: from the moment

the first flint was flaked this landing was merely
a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam's,
still don't fit us exactly, modern
only in this---our lack of decorum ...

Worth going to see? I can well believe it.
Worth seeing? Mneh! I once rode through a desert
and was not charmed: give me a watered
lively garden, remote from blatherers

... where
on August mornings I can count the morning
glories, where to die has a meaning,
and no engine can shift my perspectiv­e.
... and the old warnings
still have power to scare me: Hybris comes to
an ugly finish, Irreverenc­e
is a greater oaf than Superstiti­on.

Our apparatnik­s will continue making
the usual squalid mess called History:
all we can pray for is that artists,
chefs and saints may still appear to blithe it.

[NYC07]

04:22 PM on 07/20/2009

W. H Auden :"In Memory of W. B. Yeats": "poetry makes nothing happen."

Somethime Poets even great poets are wrong.

[GunneraGirl]

05:24 PM on 07/20/2009

but not this time. this time the poet named it exactly.

it isn't poetry that make something happen, it is the effect it haves on the heart. if one has one. which most do not.

[KillTheMessenger]

04:45 PM on 07/20/2009

Sounds like someone was awfully bitter. Wonder why? Did his girlfriend run away with an engineer?

:-)

In any case, his use of the word "menschlic­h" is utterly wrong in this context. It means "human" just as much as it means "humane". Indeed, the Apollo program, though an outcrop of the Cold War, was both human and humane. Much better than shooting ICBMs at each other, for sure.

[GunneraGirl]

05:22 PM on 07/20/2009

you missed the point entirely, which i notice you often do.

auden was not one inclined towards girlfriend­s.

you need to brush up on your german.

the apollo program and indeed the entire aerospace program is pathetic and abhorrent.

[RaisingAwareness]

02:32 PM on 07/20/2009

It's also interestin­g to note that the Apollo missions ended abruptly at about the same time as the Vietnam war.

[jsarets]

02:41 PM on 07/20/2009

Nixon killed Apollo.

[nemain]

02:52 PM on 07/20/2009

Yeah, funny how that tax money seems to run out so quickly.

[Protoguy]

01:48 AM on 07/22/2009

As has been said - the GOP killed Apollo. That's where the money went. Didn't find that in all your years of research?

[ModernTimes1]

02:01 PM on 07/20/2009

I didn't realize how many feeble minds and neurotical­ly pa.ranoid people there are in the world. Until now.

[Muno]

01:45 PM on 07/20/2009

who repeats a hoax seven times? that is madness. Once perhaps but not seven.

[nemain]

02:46 PM on 07/20/2009

Can you tell me how many times the bailouts worked? That will give you a little window into how many times we can get duped in the same way each time with a different spin. We got to wake up people.

[Protoguy]

01:53 AM on 07/22/2009

It's a no win argument. If we did nothing and the economy got worse than it is now - then Obama would be to blame. There's no way to prove it's working or not. No way to know how worse it would have been, no way to know whether bailing out the "too big to fail" guys helped or not. No way to prove the stimulus worked or not - it's all down to what you will or will not believe.

Can't prove a negative. We will never be able to prove it worked or not because the only way to do that is to go back in time and NOT do what's been done and see what happens. All we can do is try not to repeat history - which is exactly what people like you are wishing we'd do.