And scarr'd the moon with splinters

IE complains that I earwormed her with the inevitable "Walking on the Moon" reference. Surely this is the fault of the Police and I am blameless.

Geek time! In honor of the anniversary, the BBC recently presented a haunting photo from the latest pass over Tranquility Base, showing the ant-trail of footprints between the landing module and a set of scientific instruments. So much effort for such a tiny set of dusty waffle-stomper marks.

I got tingles when the rebroadcast reached, "Houston, Tranquility Base here," and damn if it doesn't sound like Armstrong was a little choked up too. It's a long way from home. Glorious, beautiful, frightening, and sad.

Now where's me flyin' Chevy?

NASA is observing the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar mission by streaming the mission's recorded radio transmissions in realtime. Listening to it today, I realized that being up there and hearing that the module was now, say, 25,000 nautical miles from Earth would've made me scream, "Turn this ship around RIGHT. THE HELL. NOW!" in a voice that, vacuum be damned, would've been heard. The engineers and astronauts sound practically bored, which is a testament to their training.

The fortieth anniversary is traditionally celebrated with rubies, which would make a strange match for the cold gray-white of the lunar landing pictures.

The picture he was cleaning showed an armored figure standing in a desolate landscape. It had no weapon but held a staff bearing a strange, stiff banner. The visor of this figure's helmet was entirely of gold, without eyeslits or ventilation; in its polished surface the deathly desert could be seen in reflection, and nothing more. This warrior of a dead world affected me deeply, though I could not say why or even what emotion it was I felt. In some obscure way, I wanted to take down the picture and carry it--not into our necropolis but into one of those mountain forests of which our necropolis was (as I understood even then) an idealized but vitiated image. It should have stood among trees, the edge of its frame resting on young grass.
—Gene Wolfe, Shadow of the Torturer