We celebrate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11! On July 20, 1969 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to set foot on another world. Our special guest this time is Seth Shostak, senior astronomer with the SETI Institute, co-host of the Are We Alone? radio show, and author of the book Confessions of an Alien Hunter (available at Amazon.com and/or Amazon.co.uk).
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David will podcast new episodes of Secular Nation soon. AtheistAlliance.org/podcast.
Interested in science fiction? Then check out John’s other online project, SciFiDimensions.com.
Theme music by Body Found.
Recorded July 16, 2009. Hosted by John C. Snider and David Driscoll.
I was seven- right on the cusp of eight as my birthday is the twentysecond. I remember being disapointed that the images of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon looked nothing like what I saw on ‘Lost in Space’ or ‘Star Trek’. But I was glued to the TV for all the missions, and in my 5th grade science class we’d watch the missions when televised in the classroom.
Mike Collins’ book Carrying the Fire is a damn good read. He’s probably the most thoughtful and articulate of the Apollo 11 crew, and I highly reccomend it to get an idea of the scope of an astronauts life.
One of the things that depresses me is what we lost as a result of the cancellation of Apollo and the Apollo applications project. Who knows where we’d be by now, lunar bases, people on Mars, and maybe we’d have flying cars by now, too. Oh well…….Where’s my Major Matt Mason?
Great episode. Although I am beginning to think that SETI really does have some sort of limitations primarily because there seems to very little radio noise in space so far.
I’m finally getting caught up on podcasts… In case you hadn’t heard elsewhere, LRO has now returned photos of the Apollo landing sites (except Apollo 12). Phil Plait has details.
These are not the best photos that LRO will be returning. It’s not in its final surveying orbit yet; once it’s achieved that, expect photos with 3x-4x the resolution these ones have.
LRO hasn’t passed over the Apollo 12 site at a low enough altitude to get a good shot yet, so that’s coming up as well.