The most reproduced photograph in the world is Whole Earth, taken from Apollo 17. You see, as everyone knows, a blue-white ball that floats in the darkness. It is our common home, but photographed from a distance of half a million kilometers inexplicably moving image, dream, which communicates the idea of \u200b\u200bfrailty. If this is the reaction
unconscious in front of an ordinary photo imagine what this scene must have been to live immersed in the experience of deep space. A test is shared by few: Twenty-four Americans in all. Twelve went down on the moon.
But what they tried and that is the deeper meaning of their company? If we exclude the media carousel. nobody never investigated these extraordinary lives. This is what occurred in 1999, British journalist Andrew Smith, while he was in a London hotel to interview the former astronaut Charlie Duke on behalf of the Sunday Times. The interview was abruptly interrupted by the announcement of the death of Pete Conrad, one of twelve moonwalkers , who had walked on the moon. For Smith it was like a revelation. It remained alive only nine. We had to hurry, it was necessary to collect the testimony of these courageous individuals who had inadvertently changed the perception of the relationship between humanity and the cosmos around it.
The result of five years of patient stalking was Powder Luna, left for Cairo Editore, close the edition English. An unusual book, because it recounts the experience of those who were marked by the encounter with the unknown. Starting with Neil Armstrong, perhaps less approachable man on the planet.
All the survivors have met Apollo unusual destination. Buzz Aldrin believes can be built first then the incredible 'Mars Cycler', the vehicle should slide around the sun, always hovering between Earth and Mars. Edgar D. Mitchell has become the new age guru of a group that campaigns for the global change of consciousness. Mike Collins provided is still immersed in the ineffable joy that overtook him when, turning around the far side of the satellite, experienced the Earth's total separation from the rest of humanity, due to the lunar mass interposed between the naviclla and radio stations. Alan Bean has instead become a painter, however, single-themed. He painted only landscapes of the moon. Jim Irwin left NASA and founded the High Flight Christian group, then embarking on the first major research expedition to the mysterious Ark of Noah. Charlie Duke also met God, after a hell of alcohol and overwork. Even the rational mind of Harrison Smith, the only scientist of the company, was enchanted by the magic of the silent planet. Today only repeats, unheard, that the border is a great catalyst for freedom, but the border is on the moon or Mars.
Not to mention John Yung, who is fighting to save humanity from disaster thanks to a futuristic project: the museum of life, of course on the moon, an idea endorsed by the physicist Stephen W. Hawking. Heaven, that melancholy!
seems impossible, but in reality the great era of exploration is over more than three decades. Where once there were big plans today, there are distributed networks. The dreams dissolve in the incessant flow of data. Our present seems alien epic, allergic to the values, full of reserve and criticism fades. So what really happened in 50s and 60s?
Perhaps in those years, in several senses, the imagination can we really went. Most of the competition with the Russians to give wings to the Apollo project was the driving force of the counterculture. It is the view of Smith, but for those who lived through those times is obvious equation. The hippie aesthetic, with its immense hinterland fed by movies, comics, science fiction and utopian literature, with its wild idea of \u200b\u200bovercoming any physical or mental chain, provided the necessary emotional wave abnormal, able to launch the Apollo 11, and its predecessors and successors in un'intrapresa not really had anything rational.
In any case, more than any other event, the epic moon issued a new sense of responsibility: the responsibility of the cosmos. No coincidence that the Gaia hypothesis, the 'Living Planet', was developed by NASA scientist James Lovelock shortly after the conclusion of the Apollo expeditions. The suggestions of the counterculture
penetrated deeply into the citadel of science, even beyond the Iron Curtain. If the project was launched in 1960 Ozma, the first radio telescope to hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, the father of the theory of panspermia, disclosed in 1964 in the form of the famous novel A as Andromeda, -written with John Elliot, some of his non-trivial ideas on the real possibility of contacts between galactic civilizations. In '62 the Russian physicist Iosif Shklovskii published universe, life and mind , where he dreamed of galactic civilizations vastly more advanced than ours. The book was promptly translated and expanded by physicist Carl Sagan, who later captained the gigantic project SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). The exobiology, which is the study of life outside Earth, acquired credit. So a crowded universe supposedly catalyzed the expectations of the masses.
So, in the fateful 60 deep space filled the imagination more than any other news. Not by chance the reaction of the artists, fearing an undue encroachment of their territory, it was frosty to say the least. When asked his impressions of Picasso replied sull'allunaggio acid that did not care. Salvador Dali said that it was useless, so everything was already in his paintings. Only the exponents of Pop Art was in tune with the times. Andy Warhol immortalized a bright Buzz Aldrin, and Robert Rauschenberg designed the photomosaic Hot Shot around the size of the mighty Saturn V taking off.
But it was the soul of the popular comic and film the machine multiplied by the new sensibility. Schulz's unforgettable strip, which shows Snoopy with his helmet, one of the lunar craters: "I've done it - satisfied - I'm the first beagle on the Moon. I beat the Russians, I beat all ... I even beat that stupid cat of the neighbors. " Equally unforgettable is the enigmatic 2001: A Space Odyssey , Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, produced by The Sentinel , story by Arthur C. Clarke.
However, in our time, the age of networks, is human spaceflight program on low orbits. Travel routine Space Shuttle are the backdrop to the new class of wealthy but dull space tourists, Dennis Tito founded by in 2001.
For the poor devils there is always the consolation of Google Earth and its future developments, software that allows you to traverse the virtual world on a flying saucer. Yet, among many voyages, in reality you perceive a world as being forced and almost suffocated nell'innaturale stillness of spirit.
Curiously, the figure that epitomizes this forced imprisonment technology was born with the Apollo program. The Silver Surfer, the comic-book hero created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for Marvel: The Silver Surfer of space, which flies at the speed of light, but has been confined to Earth from the terrible Galactus by an invisible barrier Energy, located at the same height of the orbit of the International Space Station. A prisoner ahead of its time horizon land, forced to deal with the eternal return of the same, while his gaze wandering to the ends of the universe unhappy.
Riccardo Night - article published in 2008 on the "Century"
unconscious in front of an ordinary photo imagine what this scene must have been to live immersed in the experience of deep space. A test is shared by few: Twenty-four Americans in all. Twelve went down on the moon.
But what they tried and that is the deeper meaning of their company? If we exclude the media carousel. nobody never investigated these extraordinary lives. This is what occurred in 1999, British journalist Andrew Smith, while he was in a London hotel to interview the former astronaut Charlie Duke on behalf of the Sunday Times. The interview was abruptly interrupted by the announcement of the death of Pete Conrad, one of twelve moonwalkers , who had walked on the moon. For Smith it was like a revelation. It remained alive only nine. We had to hurry, it was necessary to collect the testimony of these courageous individuals who had inadvertently changed the perception of the relationship between humanity and the cosmos around it.
The result of five years of patient stalking was Powder Luna, left for Cairo Editore, close the edition English. An unusual book, because it recounts the experience of those who were marked by the encounter with the unknown. Starting with Neil Armstrong, perhaps less approachable man on the planet.
All the survivors have met Apollo unusual destination. Buzz Aldrin believes can be built first then the incredible 'Mars Cycler', the vehicle should slide around the sun, always hovering between Earth and Mars. Edgar D. Mitchell has become the new age guru of a group that campaigns for the global change of consciousness. Mike Collins provided is still immersed in the ineffable joy that overtook him when, turning around the far side of the satellite, experienced the Earth's total separation from the rest of humanity, due to the lunar mass interposed between the naviclla and radio stations. Alan Bean has instead become a painter, however, single-themed. He painted only landscapes of the moon. Jim Irwin left NASA and founded the High Flight Christian group, then embarking on the first major research expedition to the mysterious Ark of Noah. Charlie Duke also met God, after a hell of alcohol and overwork. Even the rational mind of Harrison Smith, the only scientist of the company, was enchanted by the magic of the silent planet. Today only repeats, unheard, that the border is a great catalyst for freedom, but the border is on the moon or Mars.
Not to mention John Yung, who is fighting to save humanity from disaster thanks to a futuristic project: the museum of life, of course on the moon, an idea endorsed by the physicist Stephen W. Hawking. Heaven, that melancholy!
seems impossible, but in reality the great era of exploration is over more than three decades. Where once there were big plans today, there are distributed networks. The dreams dissolve in the incessant flow of data. Our present seems alien epic, allergic to the values, full of reserve and criticism fades. So what really happened in 50s and 60s?
Perhaps in those years, in several senses, the imagination can we really went. Most of the competition with the Russians to give wings to the Apollo project was the driving force of the counterculture. It is the view of Smith, but for those who lived through those times is obvious equation. The hippie aesthetic, with its immense hinterland fed by movies, comics, science fiction and utopian literature, with its wild idea of \u200b\u200bovercoming any physical or mental chain, provided the necessary emotional wave abnormal, able to launch the Apollo 11, and its predecessors and successors in un'intrapresa not really had anything rational.
In any case, more than any other event, the epic moon issued a new sense of responsibility: the responsibility of the cosmos. No coincidence that the Gaia hypothesis, the 'Living Planet', was developed by NASA scientist James Lovelock shortly after the conclusion of the Apollo expeditions. The suggestions of the counterculture
penetrated deeply into the citadel of science, even beyond the Iron Curtain. If the project was launched in 1960 Ozma, the first radio telescope to hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, the father of the theory of panspermia, disclosed in 1964 in the form of the famous novel A as Andromeda, -written with John Elliot, some of his non-trivial ideas on the real possibility of contacts between galactic civilizations. In '62 the Russian physicist Iosif Shklovskii published universe, life and mind , where he dreamed of galactic civilizations vastly more advanced than ours. The book was promptly translated and expanded by physicist Carl Sagan, who later captained the gigantic project SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). The exobiology, which is the study of life outside Earth, acquired credit. So a crowded universe supposedly catalyzed the expectations of the masses.
So, in the fateful 60 deep space filled the imagination more than any other news. Not by chance the reaction of the artists, fearing an undue encroachment of their territory, it was frosty to say the least. When asked his impressions of Picasso replied sull'allunaggio acid that did not care. Salvador Dali said that it was useless, so everything was already in his paintings. Only the exponents of Pop Art was in tune with the times. Andy Warhol immortalized a bright Buzz Aldrin, and Robert Rauschenberg designed the photomosaic Hot Shot around the size of the mighty Saturn V taking off.
But it was the soul of the popular comic and film the machine multiplied by the new sensibility. Schulz's unforgettable strip, which shows Snoopy with his helmet, one of the lunar craters: "I've done it - satisfied - I'm the first beagle on the Moon. I beat the Russians, I beat all ... I even beat that stupid cat of the neighbors. " Equally unforgettable is the enigmatic 2001: A Space Odyssey , Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, produced by The Sentinel , story by Arthur C. Clarke.
However, in our time, the age of networks, is human spaceflight program on low orbits. Travel routine Space Shuttle are the backdrop to the new class of wealthy but dull space tourists, Dennis Tito founded by in 2001.
For the poor devils there is always the consolation of Google Earth and its future developments, software that allows you to traverse the virtual world on a flying saucer. Yet, among many voyages, in reality you perceive a world as being forced and almost suffocated nell'innaturale stillness of spirit.
Curiously, the figure that epitomizes this forced imprisonment technology was born with the Apollo program. The Silver Surfer, the comic-book hero created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for Marvel: The Silver Surfer of space, which flies at the speed of light, but has been confined to Earth from the terrible Galactus by an invisible barrier Energy, located at the same height of the orbit of the International Space Station. A prisoner ahead of its time horizon land, forced to deal with the eternal return of the same, while his gaze wandering to the ends of the universe unhappy.
Riccardo Night - article published in 2008 on the "Century"
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