I can’t get as upset about this as you are, Tuckerfan, but I think I’m in love with you nonetheless. 
I am praying for a revitalization of the program, I really am. Maybe I’m a hopeless romantic, but I think NASA needs a few of us on their side along with the scientist types. If they’d let me, I’d go up there in a heartbeat.
I live for the Space program, and even I think that the LUT should come down. Put up a monument on the site, let people make pilgimages to the site, but tear down the rusting junk. Time cannot kill memories…we will remember.
Scrap the Shuttle, start from scratch, hire all-new Administration, and do it right this time!
I understand that the thing has to come down, what with the environmental hazards and all, but I can’t blame Tuckerfan for getting upset over it, either. It’s sad to see an important part of our history go away like that.
What upsets me more is people on this board saying things like “Only two people in the world care about it.” And that attitude is not restricted to this board. Are these people fucking morons? Do they not understand what a colossal achievement the space program was? Is it that they are completely devoid of sentiment, or completely devoid of brains? My awe of the space program is exceeded only by my awe of this attitude.
I’d be pissed if NASA decided to euthanize Neil Armstrong because they thought he was a wrinkled old crapfactory that used up too much oxygen. (No disrespect to Mr. Armstrong, whom I’d absolutely love to meet.) But if a rusting, decrepit tower in the middle of a wildlife preserve is contaminating the soil? Sad, a little. Royally pissed? No.
Oh, and Tuckerfan, I don’t think the footprint of the LUT was one of the footprints elucidator was referring to.
Hey, Rome fell, and people still remember it. I’d like to think that the Moon landings transcend their launch point.
Until the Chinese land. With brooms.
Um… what? 
It had what, a 20 year design life? Which means it lasted at least 16 years longer than it was designed to. It was a temporary structure that has been abandonded and useless for years, not a towering monument to progress.
You left out the Alexandrian Library, Still, however, we manage to remember these, even without tangible proof. We don’t even know where Columbus first stepped ashore in the Americas, yet we remember that event. We have little archeological evidence of the migration across the Bearing Strait, and that story is still told. The Mayflower currently in Plymouth, MA is an inaccurate, poorly-scaled recreation, yet the Puritan migration and the First Thanksgiving remain founding myths of the USA.
IOW, preserving this structure provides little instructive or memorial benefit, and won’t convince the weirdos anyway.
Not caring about this launch platform is not the same as not caring about the space program.
'Cuz, y’know… the Chinese… they wanna go to the Moon… and it’s funny imagery, y’know, imagining them, y’know, landing… with the brooms… and the sweeping…
Y’know, I probably shoulda just made a MSG crack.
Don’t worry, SPOOFE…*I * got it. 
But really…worrying about a rusting piece of obsolete equipment rotting in a swamp is ridiculous. Nothing can erase the memories of our most glorious moment as a species…taking the first steps into the universe. (And hitting a 5 iron shot on the moon!)
The problem with the Chinese going to the moon is that 30 minutes after they’re done, they just want to do it again.
Okay, so it was a creaky structure, rusting, contaminating the soil, unlike say the USS Arizona sitting at the bottom of Pearl Harbor (it’s probably also a hazard to navigation as well). Is anybody here going to claim that humanity is the greater for the loss of the Library of Alexandria, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the pier from which Columbus first set sail? Yeah, we remember these things, but is a cultural memory of something the same as being able to stand in the shadow of the pyramids of Egypt? Of course not. So much of our history is gone because of short sightedness, that it’s a shame to allow another piece of it to be erased as well.
Had this Administration any brains, they could have easily restored the LUT (estimated cost $40 million), slapped a S 5 (or a mock up of one) on it, hired Burt Rutan to design an inexpensive way for getting us back to the Moon, then start tours. You go, visit the LUT, crawl around it for a couple of days, climb aboard the Rutan Lunar Express, and then crawl around the lunar landing sites. People spend huge chunks of change just to go to Antartica to play with freakin’ penguins, I’m sure that plenty of folks would be willing to go to the Moon.
Oh yeah, the National Park Service thinks that the LUT should be preserved.
I object to comparing this launch platform to the library of Alexandria or any of the other ancient wonders. Sorry, they’re just not the same thing. Especially the library, which was still serving a useful purpose when it was lost, and whose destruction was a terrible blow to human advancement. This platform doesn’t serve a purpose anymore. It was an eyesore even when it was brand-new, and it’s not even the most important part of the moon shot: we’ve saved the lunar lander, and we still have the artifacts we left on the moon. This is just waste. It’s not even a good monument to the moon shot: tear it down a build a statue of Neil Armstrong there. It’ll commemorate the Apollo program, and (hopefully) be pleasant to look at.
It is, in fact, quite like the pier Columbus sailed from: meaningless and common, and the very least part of the historic events of which it was a part.
This hijack is simply me taking an opportunity to ask you about your sig line, htns. Did you leave the “x” out of the Dvorak layout on purpose, or was that merely an oversight?
This is something that’s been bugging me ever since I first saw one of your posts, and I’ve only just decided to get off my virtual ass and confirm that it is a Dvorak alphabet layout with the “x” missing.
So are most of the places with the “George Washington Slept Here” signs, and so are the bits of bone, teeth and skin which people travel around the world to view because it is believed that they’re from this or that saint.
And the Library of Alexandria is an apt comparison, if you think about it. The library was one of the greatest endeavors of the ancient world, destroyed because of hatred. The LUT, when the Apollo program was in full stride, was a vital part of the program. A program which was destroyed because Nixon hated Kennedy. The only difference between the two is that the library was completely wiped from the face of the Earth, while the corpse of the LUT was simply allowed to rust away.
No argument from me there.
Which would make this a valid rant if you had posted it thirty years ago.
Well, thirty years ago, had I known what was going to happen to the LUT, I’d have been just as pissed then as I am now. Of course, I wouldn’t have been able to post to the Dope (were it and the internet around) as I was only 4 and thus under the age limit of the board. Hell, Matt Groening’s still so pissed at Nixon over Watergate that he takes every opportunity to savage him he can. (Thus explaining Nixon’s appearances on The Simpsons and Futurama.)
Well, Matt Groening’s funnier than you, which gives him all sorts of free passes. Still, if you want to do a post-dated Nixon rant, knock your self out. Arguing that the LUT should have been preserved thirty years ago still isn’t a compelling argument for not tearing it down today.
I am quite sure that it was intended to be a temporary structure, and as NASA would (in my ideal world) have grown it either would have been preserved or – and I would be 100% for this – be replaced with a launch pad intended for such things as Mars missions. Instead, NASA’s glory days happened before I was even born, and all that’s left is a rotting hulk of metal. Sad, really.
That’s like saying, “Well, we really should have done a better preservation on the Enola Gay, but we didn’t, so let’s just melt the thing down and make pots and pans out of her.” We blew it 30 years ago, and instead of taking the opportunity to correct that mistake now, we’ve decided to add insult to injury. Given how stupidly shortsighted they’ve become with the achievements of NASA, what chance is there for us to expect them to come up with a fitting monument on the site of the LUT? Folks can’t even make up their fucking mind as to what to do with the WTC site, what kind of buildings or memorials should go there, and that is an event which is vividly etched into our minds, not the fading glow of history.
Here’s the site of the Apollo 1 fire as it sits currently. Three men died there in the pursuit of space, and the best they can do is a bronze plaque fastened to the side of a decaying building? Yes, I know, there are other memorials to the Apollo 1 crew, I’ve seen them in person, they’re beautiful, that’s not the point. The point is that the site where those men perished is being left to decay, as if it was something that was best forgotten. I have to wonder if the site had been better preserved, if it wouldn’t have weighed heavier on the minds of those folks in the control room the morning Challenger left on her final mission, or when an engineer pointed out that some foam had struck Columbia’s wing on liftoff.
Allowing the LUT to be dismantled and sold for scrap (quite probably to China) is, IMHO, symbolic of all that’s wrong with the space program today. Instead of doing something, everyone’s running around going “How about this?” or “How about that?” Meanwhile, the Chinese have stated that they’re going to the Moon. And yes, I know that Shrub has given us his “vision thing” for NASA’s future, but what are the odds it’ll survive the November election (regardless of who wins)? There’s the X-Prize as well, but until someone actually pulls it off and says, “We’ll be offering non-stop flights to sub-orbit on a daily basis.” it’s still little more than what the Apollo program became: nothing. Meanwhile, the giant fucking symbol of man’s greatest endeavor gets torn down to be melted into Og knows what.
Since 99.999999999999% of us will never know what it feels like to ride a rocket into space, it would be nice if we could have ridden the elevator up to the top, walked out on the arm, and touched the sleeping beast perched beside the tower. Yeah, it’s a consolation prize, but its better than the nothing we have now.