11 thoughts on “Another December 7th Anniversary”

1. For some reason, I’d always figured they took it on their way home. Thanks for the date reminder and clarification!

   Looks like a nice place to live.

   1. It’s a good place to be “from.”

   2. Remember, on the way to the moon, the CM/SM were traveling backwards so the crew was facing the Earth.

      1. I was speaking figuratively. I know that Apollo had no rear-view mirror, with or without fuzzy dice.

         1. I can only imagine what it must’ve felt like to fly all the way to the moon facing towards the Earth. Unless they could see the moon from the LM (could they?), they flew all the way there more or less blind and had to trust the navigation was accurate. Yeah, they were all trained professionals but it still seems a bit unnerving.

            1. Larry J.

               Given the nature of orbital mechanics seeing your destination is not an asset, since you are not heading for where it is, but where it will be in its future orbit. And you are following a intersecting orbit, so you are also not going in a straight line.

2. They probably airbrushed out the fuzzy dice, since Photoshop wasn’t around…

   1. That’s not all that was airbrushed out. Richard Hoagland has covered this extensively. I’m pretty sure Elvis was on that flight, and the mummified Bigfoot in the meteor-pulverised super-glass ruins was paleontological dynamite. 11!

3. December 1972 was the month I decided to abandon grad work in physics and try grad work in psychology.

   Neither worked out the way I hoped, but both strengthened my tendencies as an open minded generalist.

4. Yes, the greatest gift and achievement of the G.I. generation was the Moon.

5. Seriously, the picture brings back memories. I was in the industrial park at KSC for the launch, along with hundreds of others who had managed to get a VIP pass (one of whom was James Arness, standing a few feet from me). Night launch of a Saturn V…a unique event, one I’ll never forget.

Comments are closed.