Okay, CoSo.
I wrote a piece to offer some deeper and important history surrounding the latest mess in Canadian Parliament.
Yes, the Speaker has resigned.
But that's where the danger begins: when we have an easy target, which allows us to avoid thinking about the historical illiteracy that underpins these errors and allows old wounds to be opened and leveraged in current wars.
History is always a casualty of war. But if we can lessen the size of the wound, we should.
https://onlysky.media/mclark/war-makes-us-terrible-historians/
@MLClark Reading it now ... An aside about the Yalta photo ...
FDR had only two months left to live. I've always been astounded by how he summoned the strength and courage to fly halfway around the world in a small airplane during the middle of a war.
I saw that plane on display years ago at the USAF museum in Dayton. It had an elevator lift to accommodate his disability.
He was so vulnerable, in more ways than one.
Onto the article ...
@MLClark Re someone having to take the blame for the faux pas ...
Wernher von Braun had a practice that, if someone at Huntsville screwed up, the person wasn't fired. It was viewed as a teachable moment, an opportunity to keep someone in whom time and money had been invested.
I wish our politics worked that way.
Very clever choice of example, Stephen!
History contains such multitudes.
I am so terribly curious how you'll find the presentation in For All Mankind. It's quite possible the verisimilitude of the series will make any deviations from your experience all the more maddening.
How do you bear up to filmic reenactments of space flight history in general? (Not to be confused with straight documentaries.) Do you find any of them tolerable?
@MLClark "For All Mankind" is only available on Apple TV, which I don't have. Hopefully it shows up elsewhere eventually.
I think very highly of Ron Moore, his TNG roots and what he did with BSG 2.0.
That said, the premise for me is a turnoff. There's simply no way the Soviets could have landed a person on the Moon before us. They didn't have the ability, nowhere close.
They tried landing a robotic sample return mission before us, but it crashed on July 21. (1/2)
@MLClark I've seen clips here and there. I guess there are scenes where American and Soviet crew members are on the surface shooting it out?! That would be bonkers, for the obvious reason that one bullet could break a seal and kill everyone. Not to mention the physics with the recoil and whatnot.
And don't get me started on "Gravity" ... 🙄 🤨 🤬 (2/2)
@MLClark I'm sure I'll see "For All Mankind" eventually.
I've been reading a lot in recent days about James Webb, the Apollo-era NASA administrator. Finishing second was not acceptable. I can't imagine the heads that would have rolled, the outrage that we'd spent about $200B in today's dollars to finish second.
We found out years later that, until 1964-5 or so, we were racing ourselves. It was only after Khrushchev was deposed that the Soviets decided they couldn't let us win without trying.
@WordsmithFL
Oh, I wouldn't pay too much attention to the trailers - they pull the most dramatic facets without including the show's *very* gradual lead-up to disaster.
The reason for the "what-if" is psychological; the series is premised less on "what if the Soviets got there first?" & more on "how would the US psyche--& program--have been changed by such a public failure early on?"
It's a thought experiment into whether a little loss might have made things better (or not!) in the long run.