William Shatner is a son of a bitch (in the very best sense of the term)

Remastered images reveal how far Alan Shepard hit a golf ball on the Moon

50 years ago, the Apollo 14 astronaut hit a golf ball that traveled roughly 40 yards.

JENNIFER OUELLETTE
Ars Technica - 2/4/2021,

Excerpt…

The idea for Shepard's golfing stunt came out of a 1970 visit by comedian Bob Hope to NASA headquarters in Houston. An avid golfer, Hope cracked a joke about hitting a golf ball on the Moon, and Shepard thought it would be an excellent means of conveying to people watching back on Earth the difference in the strength of gravity. So he paid a pro named Jack Harden at the River Oaks Country Club in Houston to adapt a Wilson Staff 6-iron head so that it could be attached to a collapsible aluminum and Teflon sample collector. Once NASA's Technical Services division added some finishing touches, Shepard practiced his golf swing at a course in Houston while wearing his 200-plus-pound spacesuit to prepare.

Most popular accounts describe Shepard as "smuggling" two balls and a golf club onto the spacecraft, but according to a later interview with Shepard, that wasn't the case. The astronaut ran the idea past then-NASA director Bob Gilruth, who was initially opposed but relented once Shepard laid out the precise details. Shepard also assured Gilruth that the stunt would only be done once all the official exploration tasks had been completed and then only if the mission had gone off without a hitch.

On February 6, Shepard brought out the club and two balls. His spacesuit was too bulky to use both hands, so he swung the makeshift club with just his right hand. After two swings that were "more dirt than ball," he made contact with the ball on his third swing, "shanking" it into a nearby crater. ("Looked like a slice to me, Al," Apollo 13 pilot Fred Haise joked while watching from Mission Control.)

But Shepard nailed his fourth attempt. He sent the ball soaring out of camera range and declared that it traveled for "miles and miles and miles." And as he had anticipated, the impressive 30-second time of flight perfectly showcased the difference in gravity between the Earth and the Moon. Not to be left out, crewmate Edgar Mitchell used a pole from a solar wind experiment as a javelin, which landed near the first golf ball. Once back on Earth, Shepard donated his makeshift club to the USGA museum and had a reproduction made that is now on display at the Smithsonian.

The location of the first ball Shepard hit has been known for quite some time—it's sitting in a crater next to Mitchell's javelin, about 24 yards from where Shepard stood when he took his swing. Saunders' remastering of archival photos enabled him to locate the second ball that traveled farther, as well as one of the divots in the lunar soil.

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https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/remastered-images-reveal-how-far-alan-shepard-hit-a-golf-ball-on-the-moon/

New Evidence Shows That Gus Grissom Did Not Accidentally Sink His Own Spacecraft 60 Years Ago

Careful analysis of the recovery film showed it was static electricity that doomed the Liberty Bell 7.

By Tony Reichhardt
AIRSPACEMAG.COM , JULY 21, 2021

It’s one of the great mysteries of the early space age. How did Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom, after a near-perfect flight on just the second U.S. space mission, inadvertently “blow” the escape hatch prematurely on his Liberty Bell 7 capsule, causing it to fill with water and sink in the Atlantic? In fact, did Grissom blow the hatch? Or was some technical glitch to blame?

Grissom himself insisted he hadn’t accidentally triggered the explosive bolts designed to open the hatch during his ocean recovery. His NASA colleagues, by and large, believed him. Years later, Apollo flight director Gene Kranz told historians Francis French and Colin Burgess, “If Gus says he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it.” And, as writer George Leopold points out in his 2016 biography, Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom, NASA would later pick Grissom for the first shakedown flights of its Gemini and Apollo spacecraft—hardly what you’d expect if the agency had lost confidence in him.

But in his bestselling book The Right Stuff, author Tom Wolfe played the incident for laughs, reporting that test pilots outside NASA thought Grissom had, in their vernacular, “screwed the pooch.” The episode hung over the astronaut’s head until his premature death in 1967 in the Apollo 1 fire.

Now Leopold and Andy Saunders, a space photo expert and author of Apollo Remastered, think they’ve solved the mystery of what really happened to Liberty Bell 7 that day. An electrical discharge during the recovery operation—not a panicky or clumsy astronaut—caused the hatch to blow. Their detailed analysis is published today in Astronomy magazine.

Here’s how the capsule recovery was supposed to go: While Liberty Bell 7 bobbed in the water with Grissom inside, the rescue helicopter would move in close enough for co-pilot John Reinhard to lean out and snip off a long antenna on the capsule with a cutting tool. The helicopter would then hook onto the capsule and raise it enough for the hatch to be fully above water. Grissom would hit a button to blow the hatch, then climb out through the open hatchway to be hoisted on a sling into the helicopter.

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https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/new-evidence-shows-gus-grissom-did-not-accidentally-sink-his-own-spacecraft-sixty-years-ago-180978240/

A Planet Full of Hitlers

The world's billionaires, led by the Bush "madministration," are acting like a planet of full of Hitlers. They are willing to invade whatever region in the world has what the world needs most -- oil.

Black gold. Texas tea. Petrodollars.

They figure they have all the money. And basically, apart from a Soros here and a Gates there, they do.

And thus, the world's billionaires and their hounds of the BFEE want to spend it all before they die. And they have the plan and cash on hand to do so.

Consider the Bush agenda: All War. All the Time. Government spending for the MI-Complex, transferring trillions to the wealthy corporate owners, war and all.

These are the likes of the "industrialists" Mussolini, Franco and Hitler so loved.

And like the fascist trifecta, the American fascists of the BFEE have bought all the political power. Don't just think Tom Roach Motel DeLay and Mr. Friskie Frist. Remember Prescott Bush and Averell Harriman and Allen Dulles and Rheinhard Gehlen and Igor Orlov.

What can we do about it? They've bought all the legal power, built law schools for Federalist Society AND Opus Dei judges. Think Bill Eagle Eye Rehnquist and Antonin Fat Tony Scalia.

These turds of the BFEE have worked all the tax breaks and bankrupty laws for the rich. Uncle Sam reverse-Robin Hoods wealth to the top 1-percent of country.

And what do these rich turds who prop up Bush use their tax savings on? They certainly haven't invested it in making America a better place to work or live; they've invested in "off-shoring."

Lots of the tax money goes to buy more vacation homes, yachts and jet planes. Most goes offshore to the Caymans and Switzerland.

And of course they want more without having to pay for the damage to the environment. Farmland depletion in the USA. Rain forest depletion around the globe. Oceans getting acidic. Fish stock depletion. Global air pollution and water shortages.

Well. OK. Maybe a case can be made it's the rich folk's money. They can do what they want. But they should pay their fair share of taxes! After all, the rest of society helps keep them in their position. And its our brothers and sisters in the armed forces who are giving their lives to keep their oil and power and privilege.

Budget red ink means no money for middle class. No money for schools. No money for cities and suburbs and farms. No money for roads. No money for science and R and D. No money for the future.

And the media? What media? What Fairness Doctrine?

They cover up their materialism and venality with all the talk about Faith-based this and Conservative-values that. But the reality is these are sinister wolves and satanic bed-wetting bastards in sheep's clothing we are dealing with.

Wasn't that what Bush really meant when he told Bob Woodward "History? Who cares about history? In a hundred years we'll all be dead."

Just like Hitler. And just like Hitler, Bush (and now his political heir, Barr’s boy Trump) wants to take us all with him.