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Apollo

NASA Ignores Its Own Historic Resonances

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
July 20, 2019
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NASA Ignores Its Own Historic Resonances

Keith’s note: 20 July 2019, the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon, is also the 100th Birthday of Sir Edmund Hillary. Along with Tenzing Norgay, they became the first humans to stand atop the highest point on our planet, Mt. Everest. in 1953. Years later Hillary became friends with Neil Armstrong and the two of them travelled to the North Pole together in 1985.
In 2009 Astronaut Scott Parazynski became the first person to fly in space and to stand atop Everest. He had four small Apollo 11 Moon rocks with him that I brought with me to Nepal. Those Moon rocks and a piece of the summit of Everest are now aboard the ISS in the cupola. A plaque mentions Hillary by name. (larger image) Oddly, despite all of the Apollo 11 hoopla, NASA has not made any mention of this historic resonance of improbable feats of exploration.
In December 2017 Astronaut Randy Bresnik took lots of photos of Everest from the ISS cupola and posted them using the Twitter hashtag #4daysovereverest As he snapped these pictures, mere inches away from his knees in the ISS Cupola was the plaque with the Everest and Moon rocks. Bresnik never made any mention of this. Nor did NASA. NASA HEOMD and PAO have been reminded of this low hanging fruit in terms of a clear historic exploration relevance. They chose not to avail themselves of it.
The whole intent of doing the Moon rock/Everest thing by Scott and I was to offer NASA a chance to invoke a real, no kidding, historic resonance between terrestrial and space exploration. Instead of using this nexus of exploration, NASA simply ignores it. Right now the wave of Apollo nostalgia is giving Artemis a brief surge. All too soon that will evaporate. Artemis needs to avail itself of every shred of historic and cultural relevance that it can muster. If NASA cannot use historic memes that have been deliberately crafted for them then this is going to be an uphill battle for the agency as it explains why tens of billions of dollars should be spent on going back to the Moon.
Just sayin’
Keith’s update: Oh yes, then there is this. This same collection of 4 small Apollo 11 moon rocks led to Scott Parazynski meeting his future wife Meenakshi Wadhwa. Mini was the scientist who had to approve the loan of the Moon rocks to Scott and I – a request made by Bob Jacobs at NASA PAO. As such Bob Jacobs and I are moon rock matchmakers.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

7 responses to “NASA Ignores Its Own Historic Resonances”

  1. Matthew Black says:
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    Thank you for mentioning Sir Edmund Hillary; a hero of mine and a fellow countryman. I was so glad to meet and spend some precious time with him a few years before he passed away. And Scott Parazynski’s ascent of Everest certainly WAS inspirational!

  2. mfwright says:
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    Maybe they have delegated this to you.

    At times I wonder if lack of certain mentions by NASA is the bureaucracy it takes to post this information on websites (even doing websites requires meeting very specific guidelines and lack of authorization by most employees).

  3. fcrary says:
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    Another resonance, or near resonance, is July 23. That’s the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

  4. Al Jackson says:
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    I did post some of my Apollo experience.

    https://www.centauri-dreams

    • Richard H. Shores says:
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      Excellent read. The inclusion of the “Tindallgram” was a nice touch. Bill Tindall has often been overlooked for his contributions to the Apollo program. The MIT PGNCS folks chafe at the mere mention of BIll Tindall. If it wasn’t for him being assigned by NASA to oversee the troubled PGNCS program and getting the MIT folks to get their act together, who knows if the Apollo program would have met Kennedy’s deadline.

  5. Phil Stooke says:
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    Alas, Trump is never going to say anything good about a person called Hillary.