Forget the Right Stuff

The remastered Director's Cut version:




Tom Wolfe pretty much nailed it:

...That was a small step for Neil Armstrong, a giant leap for mankind and a real knee in the groin for NASA...

Which is what happens when the Company provides the backing for a technology initiative.

As Mr. Wolfe says, space exploration and the expansion of humanity to the stars ranked dead last among all the motivations of NASA. The moon shots were designed to upstage the Soviets. The moon shots were designed to be the focus of extensive national cheerleading, the Right part of My Country Right or Wrong. The moon shots were designed to provide a lot of lip-smackin' pork for the Company.

The moon shots could not fail to fail in all of those endeavors...

The moon shots couldn't fail to fail once the D.o'D. took over.

Star Trek just doesn't work in the Star Wars universe.

I won't address whether or not the landings were faked. There is pretty strong evidence they weren't. Which doesn't mean the Company didn't fake a lot of the footage that came along at the time.

But the original astronauts will get pissed off enough to punch you in the face if you say their real work was faked. For real work it was, dangerous and not glamorous at all. Which is another reason why we didn't go back. After Apollo 13 it became apparent to the Company the astronauts weren't just bellyaching. This shit was no walk in the park.

The astronauts, of course, still want to do it again.

Some people aren't intimidated just because something's difficult.

The astronauts, of course, sometimes see real UFOs when they're up there, too.

All the more reason for a Bu$hCo Regent University graduate mole to make sure the original video was erased. Anything that might inspire curiosity about the world is something the Amerikan Taliban is against. There is a strong anti technology faction in the Company. Anti technology enough to want to keep the grunts in the dirt anyway. Anti technology enough to write speeches for Bu$hie advocating, "Mars, you beotches", while sucking the life blood out of any real effort.

The simple fact is that there will be no real space program until some Mom and Pop (or Mom and Mom, or Pop and Pop) operation figures out how to get there, and stay there, and get back again, and make sure the banksters make a sweet buck off it. Find a way to line the pockets, and the National $ecurity objections will disappear.

We are a long way for that point, but certainly not so far away as we were 40 years ago, when the entire computing prowess of NASA was less than my laptop's today.