Tribute to Neil Armstrong

In 2009 my crazyawesome family threw a party to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing (complete with replica lunar landing module/obstacle course). Since Neil Armstrong has died this week, at the age of 82, my brother Darren has edited some of the footage from the party as a tribute to Neil Armstrong.

The Olympics were good, I admit it, but we've been to the goddamn moon, people.



And, because I can, an excerpt from a certain Harry Potter fanfiction which proves beyond all reasonable doubt that Science is more magical than Magic:

And Harry raced back up the stairs and shoved the staircase back into the trunk with his heel, and, panting, turned the pages of the book until he found the picture he wanted to show to Draco.

The one with the white, dry, cratered land, and the suited people, and the blue-white globe hanging over it all.

That picture.

The picture, if only one picture in all the world were to survive.

"That," Harry said, his voice trembling because he couldn't quite keep the pride out, "is what the Earth looks like from the Moon."

Draco slowly leaned over. There was a strange expression on his young face. "If that's a real picture, why isn't it moving?"

Moving? Oh. "Muggles can do moving pictures but they need a bigger box to show it, they can't fit them onto single book pages yet."

Draco's finger moved to one of the suits. "What are those?" His voice starting to waver.

"Those are human beings. They are wearing suits that cover their whole bodies to give them air, because there is no air on the Moon."

"That's impossible," Draco whispered. There was terror in his eyes, and utter confusion. "No Muggle could ever do that. How..."

Harry took back the book, flipped the pages until he found what he saw. "This is a rocket going up. The fire pushes it higher and higher, until it gets to the Moon." Flipped pages again. "This is a rocket on the ground. That tiny speck next to it is a person." Draco gasped. "Going to the Moon cost the equivalent of... probably around a thousand million Galleons." Draco choked. "And it took the efforts of... probably more people than live in all of magical Britain."

Read it, go on, just the first few chapters...

5 comments:

  1. Excerpts like that always send a shiver down my spine, a sudden, passing sensation of excitement, a shudder of emotion from the epicness of science. Frisson.

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    1. Is this just another coincidence or did I mention frisson publicly somewhere? I swear, we must use reddit in the exact same way or something - I came across r/frisson the other day, having never heard of the word before...

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  2. Haha you're right!! We must use reddit in the exact same way. I came across /r/frisson a couple of days ago.

    After seeing your comment I did a little bit of digging in my Reddit saved comments/links list and discovered that I read this AMA and saw this comment in it. So I ended up in /r/frisson. And I learned a new word! I tried submitting something but apparently they don't accept self posts so I posted it on my blog instead.

    Did you read Barack Obama's AMA yet?

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    1. I win (14 days ago) :P

      RE: Barack Obama's AMA, I keep seeing it mentioned, is he actually doing one on reddit? I haven't seen it. Any good?

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    2. He already did one.

      He answered questions for half an hour and in an interesting turn of events nearly DDoSed reddit. Usually reddit is the one that takes down other sites.

      There were also articles on CNN and BBC about it and reddit user Shitty_Watercolour had his/her shitty water colour which welcomed Obama to reddit featured on Obama's Tumblr.

      I think that just about sums it up.

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