Anybody watch this?
SWMBO and I did and we loved it. But it made us sad in several ways. When we look back at the 60s and the effort to put a man on the moon, and we look at the way we are today, all we could say to each other was, "What the hell has happened to our country? How, in 40 years, did we go from a nation of can-do explorers to a nation of can’t-do pussies?
I’ve said before, and I’ll say again: it is a national embarrassment that we do not have a functioning base on the moon today.
A manned based on the moon? It would be hugely expensive. To do what?
I saw the first episode. Then my Comcast DVR decided to erase everything I’d recorded. I’ve recorded them again, but I’ve been distracted of late. I have ‘Friends and Rivals’, ‘The Explorers’, ‘Landing the Eagle’, and I see that I now have ‘Home in Space’. I think I’ll start cooking a late dinner and start one of the shows up.
I just posted in IMHO a thread about making science popular.
Military applications, perhaps?
Anyway, for whatever reason, the Russians think it’s a good idea. And the Japanese. And NASA, and China.
Scientific research. And to serve as the jumping-off point for voyages to the other planets, and eventually to deep space.
Anything “jumped off” the moon would have to be transferred there in the first place. Making the exercise pointless: just jump off Earth and skip the moon. You’re not going to save any energy by landing it on the moon and then relaunching it. All that does is cost time and a lot of money.
It takes less energy to launch something from the Moon’s surface than from Earth’s, and once sufficient facilities are in place, spaceships (and practically anything else) can be built there from Lunar materials.
“Once sufficient facilities are in place”? It would be enormously expensive to try to construct a spaceship on the moon, much more than on Earth.
Isn’t this thread supposed to be about the show?
I suggest it be moved to GD. It should have been posted there anyway.
If the Soviet lunar program hadn’t flopped, we probably would have maintained a semi-permanent presence there, if only because neither side would have wanted the other to have a monopoly on the moon.
Yes, I was watching it. I was flipping back and forth between this show and Cosmos. It was an awesome night of TV. And apparently I am a big dork. 
Mr. brown asked the same question when we were watching this. I told him, “Nowadays, things don’t happen unless some corporation makes a whole buttload of profit.”
Anyone who want to debate the pros and cons of a moon base can set up a thread in Great Debates.
Back to the show: I just about flipped out when they interviewed Neil Armstrong. Granted, he only talked about Gemini, but still - Neil Armstrong!
In the Shadow of the Moon will be showing tonight, with more Apollo footage. I get to watch in in HD. 
Those astronauts had balls the size of Volkswagens. (Figuratively, of course.)
i always think it’s impossible for us, but
I saw much of it. Pretty cool!
I remember the moon landing, the awe that we actually did it, etc. I also remember how it seemed to become routine. Then, Apollo 13. Then the space shuttle became routine. And then…well, you know.
A functioning base on the moon, hmm. There was some comedian who had a routine about how, being Americans, it wasn’t enough to go to the moon: we had to take a car to drive around once we got there. The ultimate, for me, was deciding to hit a golf ball on the moon. But yeah, with a base there it’s hard to say what experiments scientists might come up with. Maybe a joint venture with other countries?