My wife and I saw Apollo 11 yesterday.

[Dave Starsky]

It was a literally breathtaking movie. I was crying at the end.

How in the hell did we go from accomplishing that to being an entire nation of science-denying, PROUDLY ignorant dumbfucks?

[Funtatlaguy]

3. That and total domination of talk radio and the pulpits.

[Zoonart]

2. Great movie.

Have you ever seen 'THE RIGHT STUFF'? That one also gets me. I agree... what happened? This nation does not dream anymore. we have let religion stiffle science.

[Dave Starsky]

6. The Right Stuff is one of my all-time favorite movies and books.

I have always been a space buff, but this movie hit me like none other. It contains a lot of pristine, crystal-clear footage that I had never seen before. The Saturn V launch alone is more thrilling than anything I've EVER seen in a theater, and that was just in the first few minutes of the movie.

My wife was literally sitting on the edge of her seat through the whole thing, even though she obviously knew how it all turned out.

I was way too little to truly appreciate the sheer magnitude and complexity of this achievement the first time around. I know we've always lived among idiots (there were people even at the time who thought it was fake), but now we've gone just completely off the rails.

[avebury]

7. I saw The Right Stuff with my mother, sister,

niece and nephew when it first came out. My mother and i were the only one laughing throughout the first half of the movie to the embarrassment of the others. If I remember correctly, John Glenn was running for President at the time and the media treated the film as this serious story. My mother and I had both read Tom Wolfe's book and it actually a pretty honest assessment of the men's behavior and the way the nation treated them like rock stars so to speak. The astronauts were human with human skills and flaws. The movie depicts that with the training scenes switching back and forth between the monkeys and the men doing the same thing. The movie has a lot of humor in it.

[metalbot]

23. I think the "controversy" over climate change makes it seem that way

But our federal R&D budget (including both military and non) is about twice what it was during the Apollo time period, adjusting for inflation. It's a smaller share of of the GDP as a percentage, but the investment is unarguably much higher. That's also not counting industry R&D investments, which are almost certainly higher now adjusting for inflation.

I'm not sure when you would want to point to as a time when we were doing more science than we are right now.

The science we're doing today may not capture the imagination in quite the same way as the Apollo program does, but that doesn't mean it's not there. I'd also argue that much of the science of the last 50 years has had a far greater impact on the average person than the Apollo program.

[exboyfil]

30. I would counter with the CPI not reflecting actual

cost of professional services. For example

1980 General CPI = 78
1980 Professional Services CPI = 74

Today General CPI = 252
Today Professional Services CPI = 380

[Dave Starsky]

44. Of course there's been a lot of great scientific endeavour the last 50 years.

But it has never captured the world's focus like that moon landing did. To the point that any little three-year-old would toddle out of their bedroom wearing a bucket on their head like a space helmet and saying, "I want to be an astronaut when I grow up"! That's how it was back then. Every kid wanted to be smart and physically fit enough to be an astronaut.

[NeoGreen]

4. Faux snooze and...

...and an anti-science handbook:

[Dave Starsky]

8. My wife grew up in the heart of The Bible Belt.

Her family went to church every Sunday, without fail.

Yet, somehow, she her family were always still 100% on board with the science thing. That didn't seem to be so unusual back then.

[llmart]

5. How you ask?

Because we're too interested in what's going on with the Kardashians, oh, and Duck Dynasty and Honey Boo Boo, etc. etc. Fox News is a result of that also.

Too many Americans love watching these so-called reality shows and thinking it's entertaining. Then they opine about how busy they are and they have no time.

[avebury]

9. Reality TV is the 21st Century version of sending the masses to the Colossuem

to watch the Gladiators kill each other off. It is cheap entertainment that helps in the dumbing down of society which is the goal of the 1%ers and Rethugs. They can't have the masses actually paying attention to what is going on in this country and taking a stand against them.

[llmart]

10. What gets me is that people actually pay for this.

They will part with their hard earned money to watch this stuff and not think anything of it.

[Dave Starsky]

11. I was shocked to find out how much my relatives pay for cable.

Like, close to $275 a month.

All to see trash "reality" shows, pharmaceutical ads, infomercials for skin-care products, Phil Swift for Flex Tape, and the My Pillow guy. That is literally ALL there is on cable TV, aside from the occasional game.

I haven't had cable television in nearly 30 years, and I have never, EVER missed it. Every time I travel and turn the TV set on in the hotel room, I am reminded of how on-target 1960s FCC Chairman Newton Minow was when he called TV "a vast wasteland". He had no idea how really, truly bad it would get.

[llmart]

15. Yep.

I haven't had cable for years either. Every once in awhile if I'm at someone's house and it's on, it reminds me of how stupid it is for people to pay for TV. The irony is that back when cable was new, it was touted as "now you'll be able to watch whatever you want without commercials." How long did that last? Now you pay for TV and get the commercials too!

My father used to call TV the "boob tube".

[Dave Starsky]

24. Oh, yeah. Showtime and HBO were all about NO COMMERCIALS.

And now they show them constantly.

[KWR65]

37. I haven't had cable TV in 8 years

I always had the specials or just the basic channels keeping my bill between $30-$40 a month. But I gave up after I couldn't get it that cheap.

[Ilsa]

29. My sister criticized me, harshly, for not knowing who some celebrity

trash couple was a few weeks ago. They were in Thailand and a couple broke up because someone transgendered got into the middle of their marriage. "It was all over the news," she said. I told her she isn't watching anything worthwhile if that is a headline worth knowing for her.

[llmart]

35. Don't fell bad.

Most of the time I have no idea who some talked-about celebrity is. For example, Jessie Smollett. Not a clue who or what she/he is. Don't care.

I just don't understand why so many people in our country are bamboozled into watching this stuff AND paying for it.

[Blue_Tires]

12. Hey, I'm asking the same thing

To be fair, plenty of the science-denying, PROUDLY ignorant dumbfucks were around in the Apollo era, they were usually just marginalized and usually weren't successful en masse at politics... But after the George Bush Jr. era where he normalized a lot of bible-humping nutbars, nobody knows where the bottom is

[Tommy_Carcetti]

13. I had that feeling while touring Kennedy Space Center this summer.

Watching old footage of JFK announcing the start of the space race, and marveling in the achievement of all the astronauts around me, I became rather depressed that from that proudful moment we now lived in a country run by Donald Fucking Trump.

[llmart]

16. That museum at KSC is a wonderful place to go.

And yes, it sure does spark a thought process of how far we've sunk. The GOP has denigrated smart people so much and made it more acceptable for people to revel in their ignorance.

[mercuryblues]

31. I took my son there when he was 16

I forgot whose Vette was there on display. My son asked me what I would do if he jumped in the car, hotwired it and took off.
I told him...tackle the guard so he couldn't stop you.

[FakeNoose]

14. You'd probably enjoy "First Man" about Neil Armstrong's career

I don't think this is still in theaters now but it will probably be on pay-per-view fairly soon. It's another great story about the Apollo astronaut program, in this case it's mostly about Neil Armstrong's career. I found it quite inspiring!

[llmart]

17. My library has it.

I'm on the hold list to see it.

[Dave Starsky]

21. I read the book. It was terrific.

One of the most fascinating biographies I've ever read.

I so badly wanted to see the movie, but it came and went from the theaters during the holidays before I had a chance.

It's available for rent streaming on Amazon, I believe. I just need to find the time.

[FakeNoose]

27. Something you might not know

In "First Man" they make Buzz Aldrin out to be sort of a jerk. I'm not sure why they did that, because Armstrong and Aldrin were good friends and worked together a lot. I haven't seen "Apollo 11" yet, but I'll bet Aldrin got better treatment by those movie makers.

[Docreed2003]

33. Because Aldrin had a notorious reputation for being what some would consider a jerk

There's a scene in "First Man" where Aldrin makes a comment that "I'm just saying what everyone else is thinking" in response to another pair of astronauts' deaths. That was Aldrin's personality: brilliant, outspoken, and sometimes grating. Aldrin was such a strong personality that Deke Slayton actually offered Armstrong the option of having Jim Lovell instead on Apollo 11, but Armstrong stuck with Aldrin instead because his turn in the rotation was up. Buzz was/is the most outspoken of all of the Apollo 11 crew. The movie may have been a bit hard on him but that was who Aldrin was.

[Dave Starsky]

43. He certainly didn't come off that way in the book.

I'm sure they felt they had to ramp up the drama a little for the movie. After all, how exciting can it be to watch three of the most accomplished aerospace professionals in the United States behave like 100% serious, competent, and courteous adults together on the most ambitious and dangerous voyage in history?

There is one segment in Apollo 11 (among many great segments) that is kind of cute. The astronauts were rounding the far side of the moon and were therefore out of complete radio contact with the Earth. They fly over some spectacular craters, and they talk about them like you and I would if we were sitting around the coffee table with a couple of buddies from work. "God damn, that's amazing." "Look at THAT mother! Isn't that something?" Then there is static for a few seconds as Mission Control in Houston regains contact, and the astronauts remain silent. Then they acknowledge acquisition of signal and snap right back into superprofessional astronaut mode.

[irisblue]

18. The long slow subtle decline in education spending

[MarianJack]

19. Great movie.

I was almost 15 at the time and I'd gone to an anti war rally at the time and my mother called me a traitor. Of course when I was almost 17 she'd decided that it was time to get the Hell OUT of there.

RESIST!

[dlk]

20. We Can Thank the GOP

[Red Pest]

22. Dunning-Kruger Effect

Lots of people think that they know what they don't know. This has been reinforced by the internet and the bad information posted, by poor instruction in how to analyze and use information, the propensity of people to believe what the want to believe and to discount what doesn't fit in with their world view (oops - back to the Dunning-Kruger Effect).

I have been a professional scientist for over 45 yr and professor for 36+ yr and I see that people need to be taught how to examine information (data) to see if it can answer specific questions and raise additional questions that can be addressed by observation and experiments. This is an endless process, it is the scientific process. But it is very difficult to push aside and try to ignore our biases, our preconceived notions. It is even more difficult to do it when ignorance is celebrated and scientists are denigrated. When the great Orange buffoon tells us that he knows more than ______ (fill in the blank) or when he tells us that his gut tells him more than anyone's brain....well, we can see the problem.

However, this did not begin with Trump. Reagan did this during his time as Governor of California and as President of the US. G.W. Bush did it as President, too. So do many (most?) orthodox religious leaders and orthodox political leaders. All these people tell their followers that here is the easy answer. Just follow this idea, this slogan and all your problems will end, things will be perfect...

As my father told me many years ago: for every exceedingly difficult and complex problem there is a simple answer....that is undoubtedly wrong.

This is complex. It is not subject to easy answers. But it is how to begin to address the problems.

[Dave Starsky]

26. I love your dad's saying. I'm going to remember that one.

My dad is a college professor, too. Just the other day, we were lamenting the apparent demise of the blue book exam. I remember having to do those for even quantitative classes. They were obviously a lot harder to grade than a multiple-choice Scantron, but the teacher KNEW which students had worked to understand the material and who hadn't.

[iamateacher]

32. Very well said

Thank you!

[WeekiWater]

25. To be fair...

In 2017 a group of scientists successfully "edited" a gene in an embryo linked to heart issues.

We recently successfully transformed hydrogen into a metallic state which could provide great value to society.

We have recently had huge advancements in artificially growing human tissue.

We are refining ways to target cancers by way of biomarkers. This is showing positive signs.

[llmart]

36. Quite possibly all of these advances and scientific breakthroughs were not done by Americans.

I say that as someone who was involved in the hiring of professors and researchers at a university. Many, many of the researchers working in areas of medicine/health sciences/environmental engineering, etc. were here on H1-B visas doing extremely important and difficult research to solve problems. I was always gobsmacked at some of the resumes I read and what some of these people had accomplished by the time they were thirty years old. I had some interesting conversations with many of them.

Just another side of the immigration issues most people forget about.

[WeekiWater]

39. Most all have been collorborative...

That is the world at its best. America at its best.

[PJMcK]

28. I highly recommend the mini-series "From The Earth To The Moon"

Tom Hanks produced this 13-part series for HBO about the beginnings of the U.S. manned space program starting with Mercury through Gemini and onto Apollo. The stories are told mostly factually, (there are a few artistic licenses), with terrific casts, excellent special effects and great music. Not only does the series show what was going on inside NASA and with the astronauts but it captures the era of the 1960s and early 1970s effectively and accurately.

My favorite scenes (of many) are those of the Apollo 11 mission and the descent of Eagle to the lunar plain. It's just as I have always imagined it would look! Also notable is the episode titled "1968" when Apollo 8 circled the Moon and captured the icon Earthrise photo. There's a tiny bit at the end that makes my heart flutter. Another great episode is "Spider" which is about the development of the lunar lander. Fantastic engineering stuff.

[Docreed2003]

34. That's a great miniseries...and still holds up.

Hard to believe that miniseries is 20 years old!

[LastDemocratInSC]

38. For Dave Starsky: Slow motion video of Apollo 11 launch

16 mm color at 500 frames per second.

[Dave Starsky]

42. That's what 7.5 million pounds of thrust looks like.

Still the most powerful machine ever created by humans.

[Vinca]

40. I doubt I'll ever forget watching that when it happened. The whole space program

was so exciting and, in a way, unifying. We were all so proud of what the country had accomplished. How far we've fallen . . .

[Dave Starsky]

45. "We came in peace for all mankind."

That was the first time I started weeping during the movie. They show the plaque on the landing pad while Neil Armstrong, in real (contemporary) time, is talking about it.They had only two and a half hours to deliver their scientific instruments, collect their samples, do their ceremonial duties, and then get back to Earth.

[MicaelS]

41. You forget one thing.

This was a "RACE TO THE MOON" with the dirty Commies. Any price would be paid to win that race.

"I, for one, don't want to go to bed by the light of a Communist moon." - Vice President Lyndon Johnson, 11 May 1963

Once we won the race, people lost interest. "We already did it once, why do we have to go back?" was a popular refrain.

[edhopper]

46. Saw it today

remarkable film. At the end, hearing Kennedy, I had the same thought. How are we ruled by ignorant cretins now?