Apollo 11

[GeoffH]

12 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

Thanks for sharing your information and thoughts!

I love to hear about the internationalism (I know that is not a word) regarding space exploration. Maybe we humans can surpass tribalism and become a truly planetary population? At least in someone's time frame?

It's a nice thought and one I would have agreed with when I was younger but over time I've come to believe that humanity is 'hard wired' for tribalism.  ie to say we evolved over tens of thousands of years (as a way of improving ones chance of breeding) to organize ourselves into groups.

I regret to say that I can't really see that changing any time soon (if ever).  Maybe if science improves enough that we can select for other qualities then things might gradually change.

The international trend at this time seems to be actually heading the other way, towards smaller groups.

 

 

Edited July 21, 2019 by GeoffH

[Tommy T.]

1 minute ago, Jack Peterson said:

 careful what you wish for TOM, Remember "Planet of the Apes" there is nothing more Tribal than Apes

Good point, Jack!! Makes me think back too about the question: Is there intelligent life on earth?

[Tommy T.]

2 minutes ago, GeoffH said:

It's a nice thought and one I would have agreed with when I was younger but over time I've come to believe that humanity is 'hard wired' for tribalism.  ie to say we evolved over tens of thousands of years (as a way of improving ones chance of breeding) to organize ourselves into groups.

I regret to say that I can't really see that changing any time soon (if ever).  Maybe if science improves enough that we can select for other qualities then things might gradually change.

The international trend at this time seems to be actually heading the other way, towards smaller groups.

Sadly, Geoff, I think you may be 100% correct...  Without going into politics too far, international relations seem to be regressing - fair enough to say?

I guess "Star Trek" and those fantasies may continue to be fantasies... So I just fantasize in my own mind about a cool future - like Robert E. Heinlein's books?

[Jack Peterson]

16 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

I guess "Star Trek" and those fantasies may continue to be fantasies..

 Maybe but facts can be stranger than Fiction, if we don't want the fantasies why the Space program

16 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

The international trend at this time seems to be actually heading the other way, towards smaller groups.

 There seems to be a  group out there that would not agree with this, where they have a small cell today they can become an overpowering cell tomorrow, I really don't think I have to expand on this 

[Tommy T.]

2 minutes ago, Jack Peterson said:

 Maybe but facts can be stranger than Fiction, if we don't want the fantasies why the Space program

22 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

Good point, Jack... So at least there are some who want to explore the stars...

 

3 minutes ago, Jack Peterson said:

 There seems to be a  group out there that would not agree with this, where they have a small cell today they can become an overpowering cell tomorrow, I really don't think I have to expand on this 

Right you are there too... understood completely...

[hk blues]

With the advent of the internet and subsequently Social Media we should be more able to move towards a global community but it doesn't seem that the major players are buying into that - Brexit and President being headline examples of that.

I think it's in our DNA to be tribal, and perhaps that's what has enabled us to survive this long? 

[Tommy T.]

25 minutes ago, hk blues said:

I think it's in our DNA to be tribal, and perhaps that's what has enabled us to survive this long? 

You might be well right, hk... I guess I am right that I wish I were born 200 years from now? i just hate the tribalism with politics and religion and all...

[Jack Peterson]

21 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

I guess I am right that I wish I were born 200 years from now?

 So "back to the Future" EH? 

[Tommy T.]

1 minute ago, Jack Peterson said:

 So "back to the Future" EH? 

Jack... sometimes I really wonder...

[Beetlejuice]

One Small Step For Hollywood?

In Russia, Denying Moon Landings May Be Matter Of National Pride

July 19, 2019 20:29 GMT

By Matthew Luxmoore

An opinion survey conducted last May by state-backed pollster VTSiOM found that 57 percent of Russians believe there were no lunar landings, and that the U.S. government made a fake documentary in 1969 about the mission. Only 24 percent of the poll's 2,000 respondents aged 18 and over said they believed U.S. astronauts landed on the moon.

But even members of Putin's government are prone to peddling the theory, whether in jest or not.

When John F. Kennedy set a goal in 1961 for the United States to land a man on the moon before the decade was through, the Soviet leadership also took up the challenge. However, parallel efforts to achieve a crewed landing by the U.S.S.R., which had beat the United States in earlier space-exploration milestones, yielded a series of spectacular crashes.

But it wasn't until 1997 that Kaysing's claims began gaining traction in Russia. That year, popular TV journalist Aleksandr Gordon released a documentary in which he cycled through the usual moon-landing conspiracy theories and interviewed Kaysing, among others.

The documentary landed on fertile soil in a country that was still suffering from the effects of the Soviet collapse in 1991 and dreading the very real prospect of economic collapse. Even today, any "evidence" that the landing was staged and filmed in a Hollywood studio -- as many "lunar deniers" hold -- fills a niche for Russians, Yegorov says.

"No one wants to feel themselves a loser nation. So this denialism is not so much revenge, but it brings some calm to people: they beat us in Hollywood, but not in space," he says.

For Moiseyev, Russians' willing acceptance of the conspiracy theory reflects a drop in education levels, a theory supported by the VTSiOM survey, in which respondents with only a high-school education were most likely to believe there was no moon landing.

"There's a demonization of the United States that is left over from the Soviet Union," he says. "Demonization in two ways: as the axis of evil, and as an almighty country that could do anything, including staging such an event."

Russian state TV continues to periodically air programs that give air to the conspiracy theory, ensuring it remains in the public imagination. But Yegorov believes the recent spike in proponents of the notion comes also from a broader perception among Russians that the United States, and the West in general, cannot be trusted.

"It's the result of government propaganda that forms the image of America as a lying nation," he says. "People perform a kind of reverse extrapolation. Their current perception of the country is applied to the past."