Apollo-11 50th media coverage -- all politics all the time?

A NY Times book review by a Harvard history professor is setting an ideological slant to the mainstream media spin on the Apollo-11 50th anniversary. Here's the piece: www.nytimes.com...

Here are excerpts and my comments:
"The footprints are still there, the striped tread of Neil Armstrong’s boots, caked into dust. ... This summer marks half a century since Armstrong first walked on the moon,..." Uh, aren't you guys overlooking somebody? Buzz who?

"“That’s one small step for man,” Armstrong said, immortally, as he stepped off the ladder of the Lunar Module" -- Another moron writer. Armstrong was already off the ladder, he stepped off the footpad as he referred to his 'small step'.

"Fifty years later, floods made more frequent by the changing of the climate have begun to wash away the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, from which Apollo 11 was launched ..., and hurricanes worsened by the rising of the seas threaten the site of Apollo 11’s mission control, the Johnson Space Center in Texas. " -- Uh, if true, why hasn't the NY Times already reported it?

Professor Lepore refers to " the record-breaking pilot Jerrie Cobb, who in 1961 became the first of 13 women to qualify to become an astronaut. NASA refused to allow them to fly,... She died this spring, at the age of 88. Her footprints are not on the moon."

FACTS: She never qualified. NASA had NO influence in her not flying.

This is fake history of the most irresponsibly inflammatory sort.

Next, the Harvard history professor writes: "Edward Dwight ...became the first black Air Force pilot to be trained at the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base. But... he was all but forced out by his commander, Chuck Yeager, who instructed the other trainees not to speak to him."

FACT: Dwight completed both test pilot courses. He was assigned to a top flight testing job for the US bomber team.

HE WAS NOT FORCED OUT. He was on the USAF list of candidates for the next astronaut selection, and like 3/4 of them, Dwight was not picked by NASA.

The claim about Yeager is fourth-hand gossip contradicted by all other witnesses at the school.

NOT mentioned are few additional complaints from Dwight that provide calibration of this Yeager accusation.

Dwight's other accusations included Yeager's allegedly diabolical scheme to sabotage Dwight's school performance by fiendishly acquiescing to his request for weekends off so he could fly around the country giving speeches, while the other students were allowed extra flying and study time.

Dwight's autobiography also suggestd Yeager had hired male and female prostitutes to approach Dwight at hotel bars while he was on his speaking tours [and not studying], in an attempt to get blackmail photos.

There's a lot more anti-factual fake history in the article. I expect to see these bogus claims all over the media in the coming weeks, and I'd appreciate anybody else coming across them, to report them here.

a reply to: JimOberg

Journalism really is dead

All we have now is propagandists.

a reply to: JimOberg

Here's a little more information concerning Captain Edward Dwight.

In J. Alfred Phelps book, They Had a Dream : The Story of African American Astronauts, it is mentioned how the Kennedy Administration was actively looking for qualified black men to get into NASA's astronaut candidate program.

When Capt. Ed Dwight got into the program, Colonel Chuck Yeager knew that Dwight couldn’t pass the requirements to be an astronaut.

Meanwhile, Colonel Yeager’s dim view of Dwight’s abilities grew. Yeager later maintained that Dwight’s abilities were so lacking “we set up a special tutoring program to get him through the academics, as I recall, he lacked the engineering [background] that the other students had.”

Yeager further observes that Dwight worked hard, as did his tutors, but adds that “Dwight just couldn’t hack it… didn’t keep up in flying.” Yeager claims to have worked with Dwight on his flying, but he noted that “our students were flying at levels really beyond his experience. The only prejudice against Dwight,” Yeager recalls, wagging a literary finger,” was the conviction that he was not qualified to be in the school” in the first place. (p. 20)

a reply to: shawmanfromny


Thanks for getting Yeager's view. Here's another angle on him. The last time Yeager was even a runner-up in any 'Mr. Congeniality' contest was about 1943. He was a hard-ass in a universe of either hard-asses or broken hearts or crippled casualties. Both in WW2 combat [true quote: "The first time I saw a jet, I shot it down"] and as a test pilot he had seen gruesome ways to die all around him, and he realized that some people had the mental steel to remain rational under terror [to think their way out of trouble if there was a methodical way, but which often there wasn't anyway], and others just didn't [they froze, or freaked out]. This trait [the 'right stuff'] rarely made a difference in everyday life, but in combat and test piloting, it was the difference between surviving or destroying both yourself and a very expensive piece of government property. So when he was in charge of the test pilot school, according to men I've talked to who were there, he aggressively challenged EVERY student's total commitment to the profession despite the very high odds of crippling or fatal outcomes -- privately bullying each of them to quit because he sneered that he didn't think they had the stamina and the skills to survive. The best of them doubled down to prove him wrong -- EXACTLY his strategy. Others developed self-doubts [fatal in that profession] and withdrew. Dwight apparently went through the same verbal gauntlet and just assumed it was uniquely aimed at HIM. Since he was convinced he had White House backing, he didn't HAVE to get Yeager's approval.

The competition to go the the Moon was intense! There were lots of (professional) dirty tricks, to get the slot.

It was a big deal. And, rightfully so.

Sad, there aren't the same overflowing quantity of candidates we had back then to go do it now!!

We don't have candidates who who are so overly qualified as pilots, as engineers, as scientists, that they can use underhanded (professional) tricks to take a competitor out of the game. Instead, we have a whole cadre of people who can play gender and race games to get the "ride" in lieu of true experience and pure "GUTS"!

Sad.

a reply to: JimOberg

Seas have risen one inch. You think this is a joke or something?

originally posted by: LookingAtMars
a reply to: JimOberg

Journalism really is dead

All we have now is propagandists.

They've always been propagandists. It's just much easier to out them these days because we have access to information like never before in history.

What's more discouraging is what we are witnessing now is reverse propagandists where information is placed onto the web and made to look as if it is old information in an attempt to discredit present day information.

Articles, research papers, etc. are planted all over the web and made to appear as if they preceded certain current narratives of today in an effort to debunk them.

a reply to: JimOberg

wow Jim. Didnt expect this kind of thread on your part.

amazing times, imagine where space program will be in another 50!

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
a reply to: JimOberg

wow Jim. Didnt expect this kind of thread on your part.

Just what did you find surprising?

The controversies over Apollo-11 are complex enough to discuss in hindsight [and I really liked the book that PBS ‘Chasing the Moon’ is based on] but I wish they had left out the bogus 'NASA-was-mean-to-minorities' narratives, such as the absolutely false assertion about NASA mistreatment of "Ed Dwight, the US’s first black astronaut." Dwight completed two test-pilot courses, allegedly despite some negative feelings from some other students [NOT astronauts] plausibly engendered by his blatant and self-styled cocky attitude he had the White House's blessing so was a shoo-in [nothing to do with his race – I experienced that culture first hand and saw how any officer seen to be claiming influential people advancing his career was shunned because they were considered dangerous flying accidents waiting to happen]. School commandant Chuck Yeager, a hard-ass of the old school, reportedly told EVERY student that they didn’t have what it took to be a test pilot, with the intent of seeing them buckle down to prove him wrong [instead, it seems, Dwight called the White House]. Accusations he told other students to shun Dwight are founded on hearsay, recent work by journalists including the NY Times found NO other students who recalled such a directive]. After graduation, the USAF then assigned him to an appropriate post as flight test director for US bomber command [I’ve FOIA’ed his training records, like PBS ought also to have done], then the USAF included his name on its list of astronaut nominees to NASA, but NASA passed him over like 3/4 of the other USAF nominees [Dwight claimed that the reason his test pilot class standing wasn’t top drawer was because he was deviously given permission to take weekends off to give speeches around the country, to intentionally make it harder for him to study, and also that somebody hired male and female prostitutes to try to entrap him at the hotel bars where he was staying]. He never even WENT to NASA, much less got driven out by fictitious 'astronaut racism'. These are inflammatory allegations that dishonor genuine victims of the loathsome racism of that period. The false claims also insult the NASA team and its from-the-start activism for equal opportunity both at work and in the often-reluctant communities around NASA facilities. I suggest these baseless accusations in ‘Chasing the Moon’ are a disgrace to this otherwise-admirable program and to PBS.

The moon landing was 90 percent political and 10 percent science in the first place. If it wasn't for the Cold War and Kennedy not being able to actually just bomb the Russians directly, he wouldn't have even had his "dream."

It's not unexpected. Any big and expensive project like that is going to create all kinds of political turmoil, and particularly when it never really had a practical goal. When the US built the transcontinental telegraph and railroad systems, they were huge political hot potatoes, even when it became obvious that they would be good for pretty much the entire country.

The unfortunate part these days is that we don't have anybody in charge who has any vision for the future. Trump wants to turn back the clock. It's written on his hat! America is like a rudderless boat heading full speed in no specific direction.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Beating the Russians was JFK's brilliant history-based strategy, he didn't really care WHAT the 'finish line' was, he wanted one that was far enough out that we had a good chance of overtaking the apparent Soviet lead in 1957-1961. He accurately sensed the influence of the graphic appearance of leadership in high-tech would have all over the world in diplomatic, commercial, technological, scientific, and even military terms, and he was spot on with his choice and expectation of the enormously beneficial consequences to the US and the West. Once that feat had been achieved there was little chance the US would have continued that level-of-effort anywhere at that budget level -- that should not have been a surprise to folks who dreamed of going on to Mars next, but it was.

But once the goal had been achieved, there was also little chance the USSR -- where people endured the intellectual bondage, the daily drabness, the destitution and physical unhealthiness, the information isolation from the 'normal' world, the need for terror and violence to keep hopes and resentments suppressed, the spiritual starvation, all in the desperate hope the sacrifices WOULD lead to a brighter future of science and international respect -- could endure another generation of dashed hopes. And it didn't. The American flag on a pole on the moon had made the first great puncture of that balloon of desperate hope, and the hole grew wider under additional stresses until the balloon [and the communist regime of the USSR] utterly collapsed. That was Kennedy's dream, too.

Come 2024
I hope NYT
Will be
No more