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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 15 July 2019 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

GRAVITY — That’s the one where Sandra Bullock’s character dies and goes to Heaven, right? At least, I can’t think of any other way to explain that movie.
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Koroush Ghazi
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Posted: 16 July 2019 at 5:38am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Yep, that's it. I shamefully confess I bought the movie on 3D Bluray unseen, anticipating a great night of vivid space exploration on my TV. What I got was basically Blanche Dubois in space, and to appropriate a Ricky Gervais joke, everything was three dimensional - except the characters.
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DW Zomberg
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Posted: 16 July 2019 at 9:24am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

She even thanks God (who let the rest die) as she enters the Pearly Gates at the end...

Don Z
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Koroush Ghazi
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Posted: 16 July 2019 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

This is the official NASA transcript of the Moon landing, recounting exactly what Neil and Buzz said during that historic moment. There's an audio clip, as well as restored video on that page too.

This one has always been controversial: did Neil Armstrong really say "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind", or as commonly heard, the a was absent? Neil said, and his family back up his account, that he definitely did include the "a".


/EDIT: This one I didn't know about: apparently a secret project, dubbed A119, was created by US intelligence in the '50s to nuke the Moon (!) had the Soviets won the space race. Wow. Carl Sagan was part of the project team. Double wow.

Edited by Koroush Ghazi on 17 July 2019 at 3:01am
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Shaun Barry
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Posted: 17 July 2019 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply


Peer into the small, eerie window of an alternative timeline, where the astronauts died on the moon:


Regardless of how one feels about Richard Nixon, just imagining this gave me the chills.  What if we'd been rewatching this speech instead, for the past 50 years, in any/every documentary about the '60s and the Apollo space program?



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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 17 July 2019 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

"one small step for a man" makes a lot more sense to me.
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Koroush Ghazi
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Posted: 17 July 2019 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

It does, but did he really say it?
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Shane Matlock
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Posted: 17 July 2019 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Always thought George Clooney would make a good voice of God.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 18 July 2019 at 7:07am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Always thought George Clooney would make a good voice of God.

••

Nonsense! God is an Englishman!

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John Byrne
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Posted: 18 July 2019 at 7:11am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

This one has always been controversial: did Neil Armstrong really say "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind", or as commonly heard, the a was absent? Neil said, and his family back up his account, that he definitely did include the "a".

••

Parked in front of my parent's TV, as I had been for about 36 hours at that point, I heard the "a". Then and now, I hear Armstrong's midwestern accent slur the words "for a" into "fra", but the "a" is there.

Stan Lee heard it, too. When he scripted FF 98, his and Jack's tribute to Apollo XI, he included the "a" in Armstrong's speech.

(When Roger Stern and I did a similar reference in LOST GENERATION, we also included the "a".)

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Koroush Ghazi
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Posted: 18 July 2019 at 9:07am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

I think you're right JB, but try as I might, I can't hear that "a" - the transmission quality and my ear not being attuned to his accent probably account for that. This recent Space.com article by a linguist is inconclusive as well:


 QUOTE:
Over the years, researchers have tried to comb the audio files of Armstrong's famous words, with mixed results. Some have suggested that Armstrong definitely produced the infamous "a," while others maintain that it's unlikely or too difficult to tell. But the original sound file was recorded 50 years ago, and the quality is pretty poor.


Not that it's all that important, we all know what he meant, and that's what counts.
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Michael Penn
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Posted: 18 July 2019 at 11:14am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

If Neil Armstrong indeed flubbed the line on the first footstep at least that would be appropriately representative of humankind -- imperfection even in amazing achievement.

I've never thought it was an error. As a kid I was surprised to read in a book of quotations the line with "[a]" added. 
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