Today is the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing.

Monday, July 20, 2009 | |

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Genesis 1:1

How much choice did God have in constructing the universe?
Albert Einstein

If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the Universe.
Carl Sagan

We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.
Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time

The sky is a huge dome of hard material arched over the flat earth. On the outside there is light. In the dome there are a large number of small holes, and through these holes you can see the light from the outside when it's dark. And through these holes the spirits of the dead can pass into the heavenly regions. The way to heaven leads over a narrow bridge which spans an enormous abyss. The spirits that were already in heaven light torches to guide the feet of the new arrivals. These torches are called the northern lights.
Inuit legend
Way North magazine

We see the universe the way it is because we exist.
Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time

We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars... We live in a galaxy that is about one hundred thousand light-years across and is slowly rotating; the stars in its spiral arms orbit around its center about once every several hundred million years.
Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win [, and the others, too. ... I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. ... Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
John F. Kennedy, Spetember 12, 1962

Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.
Plaque left by Apollo 11 on the Sea of Tranquility

As we leave the moon and Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return; with peace and hope for all mankind.
Cpt. Eugene Cernan
Cdr. of Apollo 17, upon leaving man's last footsteps on the Moon

And then, the Earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet and sun from sun. The Earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the Universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds.
Winwood Reade
The Martyrdom of Man


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