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"...He became fascinated by flight when he watched crop duster pilots flying biplanes from an airfield near his home."

Biplanes -> Looking at Earth from Moon in 40 years. This was my parents generation. I read Andrew Smith's Moondust and remembered how important the Apollo imagery on TV was to me as a child.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/24/biography.featu...

Nixie tube calculators and punched cards -> Macbook Pro with Retina display. Encyclopedia Britannica taking up two meters of shelf space (and often requiring a trip to the library) -> Wikipedia over a 4G network. That's my generation :-)
I completely understand the desire to want to see physical changes in the real world, but the last 40 years have been extremely important in terms of building out learning infrastructure.

I'm very confident that the next 40 years are going to be nothing short of breathtaking in terms of the acceleration of innovation.

Hoping to see first half or perhaps a bit more of that (I'm pushing 60)

In my case: line noise on teletype -> tablets

"Biplanes -> Looking at Earth from Moon in 40 years"

A favourite Mitchell story is telling how is grandparents traveled across the US to Texas in horse drawn wagons with canvas roofs. Forget airplanes, try no electricity, no railways or big towns. From covered wagons to the moon in 100 years ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAyVSylJBuo

Yup: one of my grandfathers walked off the land, got a job as a dockside blacksmith and was a professional soldier in 1913 (bad news, Ypres, Passchendaele, Mons the whole lot).
Rough times. My Dads uncle, first Australian born on his side, quit his job, joined up in 1914, was in the 2nd wave, [0] marine assault of Gallipoli [1] and KIA on the same day. [2] How anyone got out of the European theater, I'll never know.

Reference

[0] http://seldomlogical.com/2015/APR/25/second-wave/

[1] http://seldomlogical.com/2015/APR/25/maclagans-ridge/

[2] http://seldomlogical.com/2015/APR/25/slight-rain-fell-during...

"You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.”"

http://lazenby.tumblr.com/post/30206152130/well-right-natura...

Sadly none of these guys are getting any younger. The youngest person from the Apollo missions is now 80 years old. Humanity really needs to get a move on if we're to avoid the scenario where there is nobody left alive who has walked on the moon.
Why do you need to have humans alive who walked on the moon? It was an interesting experiment at some point, but there's not much to gain to do it over and over again, unless you plan to have a permanent human presence there.
The current astronauts generate significant interest in STEM in school children. For example, Tim Peake took a bag of seeds to space. When he gets down they're going to send the seeds to schools along with some seeds that didn't go to space. Children are going to run experiments growing and comparing both sets of seeds.

Reaction from children is along the lines of "this is so cool; I want to work in space stuff".

I was not saying anything against having astronauts in Space. I was mentioning the point (or the lack of) of repeating over and over moon landings. You can still have astronauts in space without having to send them to the Moon. It's cheaper to keep them in the ISS, and you can indeed generate interest this way as well.
I agree, I think the ISS is an utterly amazing achievement. In so many ways I think it really is a prime candidate for humanities greatest achievement so far.

In many ways you make a very valid point, the ISS is what we've been up to for the last few decades rather than going back to the moon and the research coming from it will be essential in preparing for longer journeys. But for all that I stare up and marvel at it passing overhead some nights, it just doesn't hold the same mystique of say the moon or further afield.

Yes, and ISS like other 2 incredible achievements (Human Genome Project and CERN particle accelerators) are international collaborations.

Even GNU is something inherently supranational.

This should teach us something, I think.

Personally I think it's in our fundamental nature to want to explore things in person. I'm never satisfied with pictures of beautiful beaches or landscapes. I have a need to experience them with my own eyes.

I could understand there being no one left who has walked on the moon if we'd been concentrating on the next challenge, i.e Mars. But that's obviously not what happened.

Ultimately I think it would serve as a marker of our collective lack of imagination over the past 50 years to explore, perhaps because the costs weren't palatable relative to any resources we could hope to exploit.

> Ultimately I think it would serve as a marker of our collective lack of imagination over the past 50 years to explore, perhaps because the costs weren't palatable relative to any resources we could hope to exploit.

Honestly it's not a lack of imagination - Plans to explore Mars and even other planets existed back in the 60s and 70s. Space Exploration was very much a byproduct of the Cold War - developing rockets mean you developed the ability to produce ICBMs as well to strike with nuclear heads anywhere, anytime, and Space programs were simply the tip of the otherwise military Iceberg.

They also served as PR material to give a positive image of rockets development, while actually most rockets are made to nuke the Earth multiple times.

Now, the tensions we had during the Cold War are lower, and the need to develop new rocket tech has decreased, and you get a Space Program on diet.

I like to think of it like gymnastics or performance art: it's "worth it" for its own sake, not to mention other benefits/consequences emanating from the arts. (I use "arts" liberally, in this context)
Everything has costs though. Can you justify why we should spend 50 billions to send again 3 guys on the moon, instead of doing anything else that's actually NEW ?
Because the moon landing is one of the few events that every human coopts as ours. It is one of the few events that transcend nationality. While US made it happen - we the humanity made one of ours go up there.
Yeah, but once is enough. Why do you have to repeat it over and over again ? What is the value in sending Moon Landers on a regular basis ?
Stories
Every human that has walked on the moon was born between 1930 and 1935 except for Alan Shepard, born 1923.
"NASA had hoped that they could climb to the rim of the nearly 400-foot-high Cone crater and collect especially significant rock samples there. But in lugging the cart the astronauts found the climb to be difficult and experienced rapid heartbeats. Mission control, concerned about exhaustion and wary of time constraints, ordered them to turn back. Unbeknown to the men at the time, they were only about 20 yards from their goal."

Missed opportunity. Next landing, Apollo 15 was designated a "J" mission with the LRV to explore the highlands. ~ http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo15.h... These fellas are getting on. Saw Harrison (Jack) Schmitt in '04, Charlie Duke was in the country last year. RIP Spaceman.

It's a bit sad to think that the Apollo program might end up being something of a modern-day Roanoke Colony. I really hope that we manage to get back to the moon before the last of the original moon walkers leaves us.
Mitchell was last man standing from Apollo 14, the first entire moon crew we have lost.
> Mr. Mitchell created a stir in 2008 when he told a British radio station that his contacts in military and intelligence circles had told him that “we’ve been visited on this planet, and the U.F.O. phenomena is real,” but that governments had “covered up” the matter for at least 60 years.

Ingo Swann tells a fascinating story about the moon in his book http://www.amazon.com/Penetration-Question-Extraterrestrial-...

"This small book is divided into three parts. And it is with regard to the first part that I join a very long list of those who have seen and experienced things they cannot prove happened."

I went to Mr. Swann's Las Vegas talks in 2004 and 2006. He told me personally that he should have written more fiction, which paid better than working in the lab, but their first big grant came along at the same time...

Aww, I remember him from watching the excellent documentary "In the shadow of the moon" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0925248/). Highly recommended, seems like astronauts age really well. They all looked like a spry bunch
Edgar Mitchell and the Big Picture Effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE-PUTVULFg
I may be the last HN commenter to see Ed Mitchell. I had lunch with him at the Beach Club a few months ago, before he got sick(er). He was very close with a member of my family; she is very broken up right now.

He was a very interesting and intelligent guy. I'm not really sure what more to say.

Was it really happen, moonwalk NAH
Godspeed.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/893/