Mother, Father, Sister, Brother – The Sound of Philadelphia
An evening pause: This instrumental music, used as the theme music for the 1970s television show, Soul Train, has only one significant vocal line: “People all over the world!” I think the visuals used here, of Earth taken from the International Space Station, make that line seem especially appropriate.
Hat tip James Stephens.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The coming dark age: (there are people that seriously have this discussion, it has been presented to me as such)
https://youtu.be/mtZpyj4vpnM
This video must disturb their theory :)
Enjoyed this clip a lot! One of the most interesting parts is the movement of the solar arrays on ISS. Most of the pictures of the ISS on line are static shots. But ISS is a working machine hundreds of miles up in space. It runs 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Also the lightning flashes very interesting. What a cool place we live in (on, under above)!
Ted,
I, too, enjoy the lightning. I once worked in a lab in which a couple of the scientists were studying lightning. Among their data were some videos from space of storms. One of the scientists mentioned that the estimate was that, worldwide, there were a hundred lightning flashes each second (this would be around 3 billion each year). My own thought at the time, judging from the field of view and he flash-rate of the video, was that the estimate may be an order of magnitude too high, that there might be more like 10 flashes per second (around 300 million per year). Either way, a billion flashes per year seems to me to be a reasonable rough order of magnitude estimate.
The music goes nicely with this video. Although it presents largely the dark side, images of Earth from space are very beautiful. The atmosphere is a pretty sight, as are the city lights, clouds, and coast lines. I especially like the auroras, and the flashing lightning attracts the eye, of course.
No wonder astronauts like to look out the window.