Apollo

Three test pilots. Two flight surgeons. One molecular biologist. A flight controller, a Pentagon staffer and a CIA intelligence officer. These are the nine people chosen by NASA to be America’s next astronauts. Late this summer they reported to Houston along with two Japanese pilots, a Japanese doctor, a Canadian pilot and a Canadian physicist who will train alongside NASA’s class of 2009. Call them the lucky 14.

Selected from more than 3,500 applicants, NASA’s new astronaut candidates arrive at a pivotal moment in the history of human space exploration. The agency’s bold ambition is to rocket humans beyond the International Space Station for the first time in more than 40 years. The question is when.

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On the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, it seems like every news outlet worth its weight in regolith is reproducing classic content to put the historic moment in the proper content. Well, here’s one Apollo-related news item, printed on July 17th, as Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins were well on their way to the Moon, that I doubt the New York Times wants to draw much attention to today: a retraction of a 1920 article which stated rocket motors couldn't work in the vacuum of space, almost fifty years after the fact.

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Possibly the single most influential event in the public's interest in science and technology (not to mention one of humankind’s greatest adventures), the Apollo 11 mission touched the collective dreams of millions, while pushing science and technology swiftly forward at an unprecedented pace.

But in the decades since man first walked on the moon, science has advanced so rapidly that technology which even a few years ago might have been considered magic has become commonplace. Even so, it would be naïve to assume that Apollo 11 ever represented science and technology’s pinnacle, and that nothing forthcoming will similarly explode the world’s collective dreams and perceptions of what it means to be human.

So what’s next? What will be the next worldwide event or discovery that fundamentally changes the way we look at ourselves and the universe we live in?

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Genius idea from Jason Kottke--he's synced up Walter Cronkite's live call of the moon landing on CBS to real time, forty years forward. And they're just about to land.

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For your convenience, NASA has here superimposed a map of Aldrin and Armstrong's strolls around the Sea of Tranquility onto a standard baseball diamond.

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Earthlings can celebrate 40 years since the first lunar landing by planting their virtual boots back on the moon in Google Earth. Or they can just swoop over the 3-D lunar landscape, Superman-style.

Google unveiled the new "Moon in Google Earth" feature today during a press conference in Washington, D.C. Those in attendance included female space tourist Anousheh Ansari, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and NASA officials.

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If you haven't yet noticed, today we're celebrating the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, and the first humans to step foot on the moon, which happened at around 4:15 pm EST, July 20, 1969. And in perhaps the world's most fitting use of this particular cliché, Things Have Never Been the Same.

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