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They say no one remembers No. 2, but the second manned lunar landing was memorable for a number of reasons. First, almost anyone familiar with the Apollo program remembers the launch. Apollo 12 was successfully launched in a rainstorm from Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 14th, 1969. As the Saturn V lifted from the launch pad, the familiar voice of Mission Commander Pete Conrad was heard on the air-to-ground loop playfully exclaiming, “That’s a LOVELY liftoff, that’s not bad at all!”, and indeed for a time it wasn’t. While normal at first, all hell broke loose about 30 seconds into...

It's blurrier than old MySpace snapshots, but it's there as expected. The Apollo Lunar Modules and the US flag left behind at the Apollo 17 landing site has been caught in a close-up image by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The lander as well as the flag, or rather the remaining flag pole, seen in the image above are exactly where they should be based on this shot by the Ascent Module "right after Apollo 17 lifted off the Moon": Going a step further, the location can be compared to more recent images of the landing site and everything still...

The Man Behind the Curtain and his Drones. ...."In a November 2008 in and interview with Spiegel, Soros made some comments that accurately outlined precisely the course that President Obama's administration would eventually pursue in 2009: "I think we need a large stimulus package which will provide funds for state and local government to maintain their budgets -- because they are not allowed by the constitution to run a deficit. For such a program to be successful, the federal government would need to provide hundreds of billions of dollars. In addition, another infrastructure program is necessary. In total, the cost...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently credited Apollo with helping write the stimulus bill and getting it passed. Yet the stimulus' "green jobs" provisions funnel federal tax dollars to unions, green groups and community organizers -- that is, the organizations that make up Apollo. Jones was a fugitive from justice for 11 years. His own account at his Web site says: "As a leader of the Weather Underground, Jeff evaded an intense FBI manhunt for more than a decade. In 1981, they finally got him. Twenty special agents battered down the door of the Bronx apartment where he was living...

VAN Jones resigned as White House green-jobs czar after the public got a look at his history of radical activism, including his time building the so-called Apollo Alliance -- a coalition of left-wing interest groups unified around the green-jobs concept. But another, even more radical Jones (not related) is leading Apollo's New York state activities.

As a reader asks, how did Van Jones make it through vetting to become Obama's green jobs czar? Though very well regarded by officials of both parties, and a major figure in the new environmental movement, he's the type of figure who typically stays outside government. The only reason his various outrageous statements and affiliations haven't become a major issue yet is, paradoxically, because they're being driven by Glenn Beck.

Don’t you know Obama and his ilk wish to God (or whoever the heck they wish to) that Glenn Beck would fall into adultery with an Argentinean newswoman, or cut his jugular vein while shaving, or show up drunk, high and naked to his FOX show and forever be publically vilified, marginalized and thus muzzled? Beck has formally joined Rush as an Official Pain in Barack Obama’s Backside (OPIBOB). (Are you an OPIBOB yet?) Yep, not only has Obama’s administration called Rush out, but the White House has now phoned Beck during his TV show in an attempt to get...

I came across a book written by David Horowitz and Richard Poe about George Soros. The Shadow Pary. It was written three years ago. With what is happening in our country and the involvemnt of Acorn, Unions, activist groups and media blackouts this is worth reading.

Note these names in particular: George Soros–Multi-billionaire funder of leftwing causes and groups, Tides Foundation’s Wade Rathke (ACORN founder), and Anna Burger–Secretary Treasurer of SEIU, with massive influence over Obama. The Alliance has boasted of writing both the stimulus bill AND Cap and Trade. And it is driving the Obama Reich’s agenda with unbelievable force.

UPDATE! 8/4/09 The Apollo Alliance has now ADMITTED that they wrote the Stimulus Bill AND the Cap and Trade Bill. It will only be a matter of time before America learns THEY wrote the Healthcare Bill too!

President Obama's Shadow Government has begun to attract attention as more is known about the people he has appointed to positions that need no Congressional approval.

FOX News' Glenn Beck is doing an extraordinary job this week walking America behind the scenes of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and outlining who is actually running the White House. Monday night he asked us to invite one friend to watch; tonight I invite all my friends to watch (Rush will be on tonight). -Sarah Palin

I'm in NY where I'll be headed to the Fox studios in a few hours to tape the "Glenn Beck Show." The segment I'm doing will be aired Thursday as part of a week-long series called "The New Republic," which is Glenn's look at the radical agendas of the Obama Administration. Last night, with Pat Caddell as his guest, Glenn made the connection between the trillion-dollar defcits Obama is deliberately running up and the Cloward-Piven strategy devised by two Columbia radicals to bankrupt the welfare system in New York in order to create a crisis that would generate radical change....

Would someone please disprove that which Mr. Beck has been discussing on his TV show this week! Please prove him wrong. It can't possibly be that at least 5 of his closest inner circle advisors are ADMITTED active members of the Communist party. What we are witnessing is the destruction of America. And 99% of the citizens just stand by and gleefully watch the weenie get wiggled up their rear ends. Please prove Glenn wrong.

Van Jones, the man appointed as "green jobs czar" to the White House, previously served on the board of an environmental activist group at which a founder of the Weather Underground terrorist organization is a top director. WND previously reported Jones was as an admitted radical communist and black nationalist leader. He was appointed to serve as the special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. According to the White House blog, Jones' duties include helping to craft job-generating climate policy and to ensure equal opportunity in the administration's energy proposals. Jones,...

Color of Change has an axe to grind with Glenn Beck -- and it's personal. The extremist racial grievance group isn't happy that Beck did several news packages on Van Jones, President Obama's controversial green jobs czar who describes himself as a communist. [...] Jones is a founding board member of Color of Change, but [the group] doesn't want you to know that. Maybe having an avowed America-hating radical on the group's board is bad public relations. The group deleted references to Jones on its "about" page. [...] The old page still exists in the Google cache. [...] The 501(c)(4)...

Forty years ago today, at precisely 8:17PM, two Americans rode a flimsy marvel of engineering down to the first manned landing on the moon. Few slept that night, the heat of another sticky July evening passed unnoticed across the United States. For several hours that night, the world briefly contracted to a square-foot of grainy black-and-white television, and millions watched as a human being set foot on another world. Forty years ago today, the possibilities were limitless. Forty years ago, I was nearly the same age my son is today, that summer that I crossed “the great divide” from primary...

Today is the 40th anniversary of man’s first steps on the surface of the moon. On July 20, 1969, Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended from the lunar module Eagle, with Armstrong uttering these famous first words: “That’s one small step for [a] man; one giant leap for mankind.” A short while later, Aldrin privately added some words to mark the occasion . . . from the Word. On his website author Eric Metaxas shares Aldrin’s little-known story of taking communion on the moon: “In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread...

In this time of VERY JUSTIFIABLE pride in Apollo 11, can we also spare a few moments to remember our Apollo Martyrs of Apollo 1. On January 27, 1969, in a test of the new Apollo Capsule, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a horrible fire. In the next year the Apollo Capsule was so redesigned and reworked that it can hardly be called the same machine.

STENNIS SPACE CENTER — Forty years ago today, millions of Americans huddled in front of television screens to watch two U.S. astronauts walk on the moon, after getting there courtesy of a rocket engine that would become part of South Mississippi history. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to reach the moon’s surface — a feat that, even in these high-tech times, seems incredible. America listened as Eagle, the Apollo 11 lunar module, settled down on the moon and Armstrong made his announcement: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Memories of that late-night event, and...

One of the most stupendous days in the history of man! And a great day to be proud of what America and Americans can do! A short two minute video with the late Walter Cronkite bringing us the news: [video at site] Restored moonwalk video montage here.It was hard to believe that we were actually watching live television images from the moon: "One small step for a man. One giant leap for mankind." -- Neil Armstrong, July 20, 1969 from Tranquility Base Photo Tribute:It was only later, after the astronauts returned, that we saw these color images: The Apollo 11...

On Sunday July 20, 1969 the first people landed on the moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were in the lunar lander which touched down at 3:17 Eastern Standard Time. Buzz Aldrin had with him the Reserved Sacrament. He radioed: “Houston, this is Eagle. This is the LM pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, whoever or wherever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the last few hours, and to give thanks in his own individual way.”

"GREENBELT, Md. -- NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has sent back its first images of Apollo lunar landing sites. The agency will release the images Friday, July 17, at noon and hold a teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT to discuss the photos and future plans for the LRO mission."

Moon Landing Re-created and re-broadcast in real-time.

On Thursday, you can watch online in real time, 40 years later real time, the launch of Apollo 11 and the moonwalk by Michael Jackson....er, I mean Neil Armstrong. http://wechoosethemoon.org/

Families crowded around black-and-white television sets in 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong take man’s first steps on the moon. Now, they’ll be able to watch the Apollo 11 mission recreated in real time on the Web, follow Twitter feeds of transmissions between Mission Control and the spacecraft, and even get an e-mail alert when the lunar module touches down. Those features are part of a new Web site from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum commemorating the moon mission and Kennedy’s push to land Americans there first. “Putting a man on the moon really did unite the globe,”...

Liquid nitrogen, vegetable steamers, Macintosh workstations and old, refrigerator-size tape drives. These are just some of the tools a new breed of Space Age archeologists is using to sift through the digital debris from the early days of NASA, mining the information in ways unimaginable when it was first gathered four decades ago. At stake is data that could show Earth's risk of an asteroid strike, shed light on global warming and -- perhaps -- even satisfy those who think the moon landings were a hoax. The most visible of the archeologists is arguably Dennis Wingo, head of Skycorp Inc.,...

New imagery of old Apollo touchdown spots, from the European Space Agency's (ESA) SMART-1 probe, might put to rest conspiratorial thoughts that U.S. astronauts didn't go the distance and scuff up the lunar landscape. NASA carried out six piloted landings on the Moon in the time period 1969 through 1972... Bernard Foing, Chief Scientist of the ESA Science Program... told SPACE.com that the SMART-1 orbiter circling the Moon has already covered the Apollo 11, 16, 17 landing sites, as well as spots where the former Soviet Union's Luna 16 and Luna 20 automated vehicles plopped down... Foing said that each...

Earth Day may fall later this week, but as far as former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell and other UFO enthusiasts are concerned, the real story is happening elsewhere. Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, asserted Monday that extraterrestrial life exists, and that the truth is being concealed by the United States and other governments. He delivered his remarks during an appearance at the National Press Club following the conclusion of the fifth annual X-Conference, a meeting of UFO activists and researchers studying the possibility of alien life forms. Mankind has long wondered if we're "alone...

The catastrophe, when it comes, will be beautiful at first. It is a balmy evening in late September 2012. Ever since the sun set, the dimming skies over London have been alive with fire. Pillars of incandescent green writhe like gigantic serpents across the skies. Sheets of orange race across the horizon during the most spectacular display of the aurora borealis seen in southern England for 153 years. And then, 90 seconds later, the lights start to go out. Not the lights in the sky - they will dazzle until dawn - but the lights on the ground. Within an...

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System poured $1.71 billion into Apollo Management last year, more than twice as much as it gave any other private- equity manager, Bloomberg News reported. The move was a bet on Apollo chief Leon Black’s historical success in distressed investment, but, Bloomberg says, it hasn’t paid off so far. Apollo, which has posted average annual returns of more than 25 percent in the last two decades, is now struggling to right some of the tottering companies in its portfolio. One of its private equity holdings, Linens ‘n Things, filed for bankruptcy protection. Another, the real...

Fred Haise didn’t set out to be a pilot or go to space. His first job was delivering The Daily Herald, the predecessor to the Sun Herald, on his bicycle and then on a motor scooter. He later became a cub reporter and when he graduated from Biloxi High School at 16, he went to what is now the Perkinston campus of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College to become a journalist. Rather than risk being drafted during the Korean War, he enlisted to continue his studies and became a pilot instead of a reporter — a career move that...

On January 27, 1967, tragedy struck the Apollo program when a flash fire occurred in command module 012 during a launch pad test of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle being prepared for the first piloted flight, the AS-204 mission. Three astronauts, Lt. Col. Virgil I. Grissom, a veteran of Mercury and Gemini missions; Lt. Col. Edward H. White, the astronaut who had performed the first United States extravehicular activity during the Gemini program; and Roger B. Chaffee, an astronaut preparing for his first space flight, died in this tragic accident. A seven-member board, under the direction of the NASA Langley Research...

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Those words have been read both silently and aloud countless times over the centuries since they were first written, but forty years ago tonight, on another Christmas Eve, they were read for the first time by men far up in the heavens, looking down on the earth from over two hundred thousand miles away as they circled its moon. The familiar words staticked across the vast void, and crackled in the speakers of millions of televisions and radios all over the planet, as those with televisions viewed the earth from...

November 9, 1967, T-minus 8.9 seconds: Thousands of gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen begin coursing through the giant center F1 rocket engine: The Saturn V's ignition sequence has begun. Next, two outer engines are lit, followed 300 milliseconds later by the other two, ignited in pairs to avoid toppling the 364-foot rocket above. Nine seconds after all five engines go to full thrust, the first Saturn V rocket begins to lift from the launchpad, taking the unmanned Apollo 4 check-out module into space. The launch was flawless. Forty-one years ago to the day, the Saturn V became the biggest,...

How much will $700 billion get you? Roughly speaking, the widely publicized cost of the financial bailout … er, rescue package … is equal to seven Apollo programs, or 70 state-of-the-art atom-smashers. The magnitude of the figures being thrown around is so much easier to understand when you use our currency conversion chart for mega-projects. (snip) Does all this make you feel better about the $700 billion, or worse? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Sunday, July 20 is the thirty-ninth anniversary of the first manned lunar landing. At the time, it was considered a wondrous achievement. So much so, in fact, that a new phrase arose. “If we can put a man on the moon…” If we can do that, why can’t we cure cancer, end world hunger, achieve world peace, give everyone a pony? Now comes a new call from former vice president Al Gore, for another Apollo program, this time to achieve “energy independence” and save the planet. It is thought by many that this, like landing a man on the moon,...

Alan Bean, Apollo 12 lunar module pilot, Skylab mission II commander, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project backup commander, backup astronaut for the Gemini 10 and Apollo 9 missions and eventually head of the astronaut candidate operations and training group within NASA's astronaut office, spoke exclusively to Flightglobal.com about his time as an astronaut at the Autographica event in London on 12 October. A member of the third group of astronauts named by NASA in October 1963 he became lunar module pilot for what was the second Moon landing in November 1969. He and mission commander Pete Conrad explored the ocean of storms,...

http://www.intheshadowofthemoon.com/index.asp

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, answered questions from Israeli children Tuesday in his first visit to the Holy Land, showing animation and energy in discussing the feelings and justification for space travel. Armstrong was invited by a local investment company to lecture on the subject of motivation. In the morning, he visited the Space and Technology Museum in Haifa, where he talked to a group of children, museum spokeswoman Ahuva Kfir said. ... "How does it feel to be inside a space ship?" a small girl asked him. With a huge smile, Armstrong replied, "You would like...

<p>IT was supposed to be a routine launch pad test.</p> <p>But from the Apollo 1 command module at Pad 34 came a panicked voice saying, "Fire in the cockpit."</p>

NEW YORK - Pallbearers lifted the gold casket carrying the "Godfather of Soul" into a horse-drawn carriage Thursday for a procession through Harlem to the historic Apollo Theater, where thousands of fans waited to pay their respects to the late James Brown. As the carriage began rolling, people followed in the street singing the chorus of Brown's anthem, "Say it Loud — I'm Black and I'm Proud." Brown, who died of heart failure Christmas morning at 73, will lie in repose from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday on the stage where he made his 1956 debut. As Norman Brand...

AP) NEW YORK James Brown's music career will come full circle when his body is brought to rest on the stage of the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem, where he made his explosive debut, and the world changed to his beat. The public will be permitted on Thursday to visit the Apollo to have one more look at a man who helped steer modern musical tastes toward rhythm-and-blues, funk, hip-hop, disco and rap, the Rev. Al Sharpton said Tuesday. The reverend has been a close friend of Brown for decades. "It would almost be unthinkable for a man who lived...

Ever since astronauts returned from another world, scientists have been mystified by some of the moon rocks they brought back. Now one of the mysteries has been solved. "We learned a great deal about the sun by going to the moon," said Don Burnett, Genesis principal investigator at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "Now, with our Genesis data, we are turning the tables, using the solar wind to better understand lunar processes." Ansgar Grimberg from ETH Institute of Astronomy in Zurich and coworkers analyzed the composition of neon in a metallic glass exposed on NASA's Genesis mission. The team's...

Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and prominent investor Ron Burkle submitted a bid today to buy Tribune Co. of Chicago, which owns the Los Angeles Times, KTLA Channel 5 and the Chicago Cubs. Details about the offer and the price that the duo would be willing to pay remained unclear, but the Los Angeles-based businessmen have said for months that they wanted a local group to take control of The Times ADVERTISEMENT"Affiliates of the Broad Investment Company and [Burkle's] Yucaipa Companies have submitted a competitive bid for acquisition of the entire Tribune company," a source familiar with the offer said. Broad...

The state Republican Party has launched a television ad attacking state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi for mishandling the collapse of the Executive Life Insurance Co. The ad targeting Garamendi, a Democrat running against Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, for lieutenant governor, began running Aug. 28 in the Sacramento and Los Angeles media markets. (snip) ANALYSIS: The GOP advertisement attempts to weaken Garamendi, a former gubernatorial candidate and statewide officeholder, by exploiting what is perhaps his greatest political vulnerability. Garamendi has long been dogged by criticism for allegedly mishandling the collapse of the Executive Life Insurance Co. In 1991,...

Dr. Rocco A. Petrone, who served as the third director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., in the early 1970s, passed away Aug. 24 at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif. Born in Amsterdam, N.Y., on March 31, 1926, Petrone graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1946. He served in the U.S. Army in Germany from 1947 to 1950. Upon his return to the States, he resumed his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, where he earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering in 1951. ... Petrone's career in rocket development began...

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - Jim Snoddy and other NASA engineers didn't just go to the drawing board or a warehouse when they needed ideas — and parts — for America's next lunar rocket. They went to space museums. Facing tight deadlines and uncertain budgets as it works on President Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars, NASA is both cannibalizing and analyzing pieces of its glory years, namely the Apollo program that first put humans on the lunar surface in 1969. Snoddy, a manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, has been removing valves and...

Almost everyone on the planet who had access to television watched the first moon landing, back on the night of July 20, 1969. What the TV viewers didn't know is that they weren't seeing the best images. The astronauts actually beamed higher-quality footage back to Earth, but it was only seen by a small number of people at three tracking stations.Those original images were recorded and put into storage -- somewhere. Now, a small crew of retirees, space enthusiasts, and NASA employees are searching for a moon landing that the world has never seen. Houston, The Image Is Degraded One...

NASA posted an interesting account from the 1st moon landing for the anniversary of this historic mission on 07/20/1969 + audio link