Sad
I'm sad that the last man to walk on the moon did so 44 years ago.
Eugene Cernan, the last man to leave footprints on the Moon, has died aged 82. One of 14 astronauts chosen by NASA in 1963, Cernan's space career included two trips to the Moon (the second as commander of Apollo 17), and the second spacewalk by a United States astronaut. His two-hour spacewalk took place during the three-day …
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My understanding is that it's short for "passing over" and as he's American and the US is quite a strongly Christian country, it's something they say out of habit. Even as a Brit I often say "passed on" as it's more comforting to close relatives of the deceased, especially to a work colleague for example, someone I don't know intimately. Personally when I talk about my own relatives I use the word "died" as I believe you live and then there's nothing more once your dead but I wouldn't wish to insult others by assuming they can handle such strong language at a time of personal loss.
Compassion may or may not enter into it - he's passed on. This astronaut is no more. He has ceased to be. He's expired and gone to meet his maker. He's a stiff. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. Soon, he'll be pushing up the daisies. His metabolic processes are now history. He's off the twig. He's kicked the bucket, he's shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! THIS IS AN EX-ASTRONAUT!
Yes, it's sad. But he made it through a shedload of stuff that just as well might have killed him 50 or 60 years ago. He drove a smeggin' car on the smeggin' moon! He joined a very, very exclusive club and he put in the work to do it. He achieved a lot, and by all accounts he did it without turning into an asshole. He died an old man, after a long and interesting life, surrounded by family and friends. Trust me, this is as good as it gets. I raise my glass to salute him.
"it's more comforting to close relatives of the deceased"
No it's not. You only think it is comforting, and it's not "strong" language, it's perfectly normal language - where I come from anyway.
When I die I shall be dead, and no amount of euphemistic language will change that.
I'm sad about the death of a good, humble, brave man, but will be much sadder if the remaining 7 humans to walk on the moon pass away before we manage to return to it. It's like we're living one of the science fiction novels where humanity has lost the ability and the drive to achieve the great wonders of a past golden age.
I was fortunate enough last year to have had the opportunity to see him premiere the documentary film about his life, The Last Man on the Moon. I can highly recommend it for its insight into the US manned space program and the man himself. I think I should watch it again tonight.
RIP Mr. Cernan, thank you for your efforts in an adventure which helped mankind to progress
What buggers me the most is that when I went recently on youtube searching for documentaries on the conquest of the moon, the first results I got where those Nutwing Conspiracy Theories (NCT) claiming Apollo's missions were hoaxes... weird feeling that during these last 44 years mankind went backwards.
My Dad was born in 1897 and was alive from before the first widely acknowledged powered manned flight in 1903 to watching the moon landings.
I don't think I will be lucky enough to see a comparable step forward in manned flight in my lifetime.
Having said that, the space race was probably mainly driven by USA national pride combined with the Cold War. Not something I would like to see again. Memories of the Cuba crisis are still not good.
The big developments in my lifetime seem to be in electronics, mainly computing. A device more powerful than a mainframe computer so cheap everone has one in their pocket? Not mainstream in the SciFi I used to read in my youth. Still waiting for my personal flying belt and my jet car.
Anyway, virtual pint raised to another hero sadly departed.
My 3 year old is very much in to rockets, and every time he sees one, he asks me if it is going to the moon. I have to explain to him that men first when to the moon when his daddy was his younger brothers age (1), and no one has been since his daddy was his age. Worst still, I now have to tell him that those brave astronauts are very old, and half of them have died.
I just hope he keeps up the interest without the spirit of discovery from the manned space program that characterised my childhood in the 70s and 80s, and him and his brother live long enough to see mankind take the next giant leap on to another world.
Heck, to hear the rhetoric from politicians who are old enough to know better, we never knew how to make a rocket as big as Up Goer 5 (1). (Or, rather, they treat launching 120 tons to LEO as a new engineering goal, despite being alive when Up Goer 5 could do better than that.)
(1) See https://xkcd.com/1133/. It's noteworthy for showing that "thousand" is not one of the 1000 most common words.
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