I don’t have a Truly and Fantastically Super Cool category, but if I did, this would be in it.
NASA has clear photos of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites. The photos show the twists and turns of the paths made when the astronauts explored the lunar surface. You can see the stuff they left behind. Some of the photos are interactive. More here.
Here is one shot. Click for a larger version. But definitely go to NASA for more!
So near and yet so far. And farther and farther under this present POTUS.
Emily Dickinson wrote:
I watched the Moon around the House
Until upon a Pane —
She stopped — a Traveller’s privilege — for Rest —
And there uponI gazed — as at a stranger —
[…]
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Really amazing! There are always those who say these photos are faked.
BTW Father, you have no sidebar info at all on your homepage. If you click through for a comment, it’s there.
This is – Truly and Fantastically Super Cool!
Thanks, Father.
Semper Fi!
We should have a base on the Moon and sent men to Mars by now. It’s almost like sailing to Hispanola in the early 1500s and saying, “Look! Columbus was really here. Back to Cadiz.”
We’ve lost our nerve. When we get it back again we will be a great people again.
Amen to that, Theodore!
This is so cool, though, seeing pictures of long-ago footprints and….trash.
On an interesting note, the priest who said our TLM this Sunday mentioned that he visited the Shrine of Our Lady in Loreto, Italy back in 2000. While there, he heard a story that Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, brought a piece of moon rock to the Shrine and placed it at the feet of Our Lady’s statue in the Holy House. And Neil Armstrong wasn’t even a Catholic! My eyeballs just about bugged out of my head when Father told this story! Another cool story!
Our Lady of Loreto is one of the patrons of air and space travel, so she may well have been invoked by NASA Catholics (and pilots wanting to cover their butts).
Yeah, but to this day NASA refuses to release the photos from the Apollo 18 mission.
Just Too Cool.
I remember, as a kid, reading, watching, dreaming (as only a child can do) about being involved with this program. Flew Estes model rockets, dreamt of flying in space…the whole bit. I guess, a bit of a nerd, right?
Well…have piloted myself, solo, up to 25,000 feet…4 and change miles closer to the moon, in any case. What a testament these photos are to American exceptionalism. And an indictment of how far we’ve fallen from those lofty heights. Only God could have given man the intelligence to push back these frontiers. Only man could have squandered the achievement, in the name of…I have no idea.
Thanks, Father Z.
WONDERFUL. And heart breaking.
We’ve lost our nerve… and our spirit of cooperation, our unity, and our national ideals.
Our population is graying, our tax base therefore is crumbling, our public sector is not long for this world, and NASA will go down with the rest of it.
Its all because we have not heeded the Church. I believe this 100% If we had greeted Humana Vitae with faithful ears and open hearts, our society would still be great and thriving.
We NEED to go back. But how can we? With what money? With what causing the political will?
False humanitarianism states that we cannot afford to keep up with the space research.
There is an anti-intellectualism and blindness in this generation of voters as to the value of discovery, and the need that humans have to extend themselves into this type of creativity. The same socialists who want 52% of people on the dole hate scientific space research, which,by the way, has led to great inventions in health care and surgery, etc. Sad that young people no longer aspire to being astronauts or scientists, and the greed of this political system has squelched the ancient, human desire for discovery. Sad, sad and very detrimental to the youth, who no longer aspire to excellence….The people without a vision perish…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44423519/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/us-falls-th-global-competitiveness-survey-shows/?GT1=43001
connect the dots….
Supertradmum-you got that right!
I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, when a lot of us kids wanted to be astronauts. The space program was such a cool thing!
How far we have fallen….and it’s true, ‘a people without a vision perish’.
Suburbanbanshee-I’ve been to the Shrine of Our Lady of Loreto, and there is an ‘American Chapel’ dedicated to her as Our Lady of the Assumption. I think it was given this title because ‘Assumption’ suggests ‘flight’.
One panel depicts Pope Pius XII’s proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption in 1950.
The other depicts Our Lady of Loreto as patroness of aviation. It has pictures of such events as Icarus of Greek mythology fame, Leonardo daVinci, the Wright Brothers’ plane-and three astronauts. They were the Russian Yuri Gagarin and the Americans Neil Armstrong and James McDevitt, the latter holding a medal of Our Lady of Loreto which was taken to the moon and back. At the feet of the human astronauts is a sphere with the Russian dog Laika in it. The center of the picture had four airline pilots in uniform carrying a processional bier with a statue of Our Lady of Loreto (without the tunic that normally covers her).
When I was there with my pilgrimage group of six, a Franciscan friar who spoke English showed us around. I found out during our tour that he met the astronauts in the painting! His name was Father Modestus Papi. He was pretty important at the Shrine! I even took a picture of him with the two men in our group!