Giant Leap for Mankind?
Ever since Neil Armstrong said "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" after setting foot on the moon in 1969, there has been criticism that the statement was flawed. The critics point out that the word man in his statement means the same thing as mankind. They say that he should have said "a man". Well, it looks like he actually did.
AP News reports that an Australian computer programmer has found the missing "a". Using high-tech sound editing software, Peter Shann Ford says he has verified that Armstrong did say "one small step for a man" after all. Apparently it just wasn't audible in the transmission from the moon.
Since that's settled perhaps we can move on to a more important question regarding Armstrong's statement. What about the "giant leap for mankind" part? Where is it? It's been 37 years since we put a man on the moon. What huge benefits have accrued to mankind as a result of our space exploration in general and our missions to the moon in particular? The answer appears to be very few.
Don't bother telling me about all the technology that we have derived from the space programs. That technology could have been developed without traveling into space and at much lower cost. I hope we didn't take all that risk and spend all that money to produce derivative benefits. And don't tell me about all the satellites we've put in orbit. Their benefits are immense but space exploration is not essential to launching satellites.
I'm asking about direct and "giant leap" kinds of benefits from the space exploration itself. Space tourism is not profitable yet, but that might be about to change since private business is getting into the act. Anyway, I wouldn't classify tourism as a giant leap for mankind. No exotic elements have been discovered that could have revolutionary applications here on Earth. No disease has been brought back that eradicated all life on Earth. (No, wait. That's a good thing.)
What exactly did we think we needed from outer space? Cool pictures? Another class of heroes? It's time to shut down taxpayer financed space exploration. When a real need develops private enterprise will rise to the occasion.
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I think the answer is rather clear. We did it simply because we could. (We also had to beat those darn Russians.) Now if we could only solve the immigration crisis, find a cure for AIDS and eliminate world hunger...
As a teacher I see brillant, creative children that could (in time) solve all these problems. Too bad we'll FCAT them to death and squash all of their desire to learn and explore!
Peter Shann Ford's "analysis" of Neil Armstrong's moon landing speech is completely unscientific, and not a proof at all (and Peter is more a CEO and ex news anchorman than computer programmer). (1). No speech researcher would make a scientific claim using Goldwave software (like making a blockbuster movie in iMovie). (2). The audio used was 11.025 kHz, 8 bit quality. (3). The "control phrase" (for mankind) has shorter syllables because it has more of them. (4). Peter Shann Ford didn't use the first tool of any speech researcher - the spectrogram. (5). Peter's "research" was reviewed by an astronaut who emphasised the finding was "persuasive", and "Ms. Rano Singh, a Physiotherapist with a Masters in Biomechanics". (6). The mouth diagram is from a description of Korean alveolars, and Korean does not have the American English approximant /r/. (this point from http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003639.html#more) (7). There was no peer review by real speech analysis researchers. I believe the whole thing to be a dodgy publicity stunt for Peter Shann Ford and his Control Bionics company. Read more here: http://blog.soundsorange.net
Nick Mariette -- Sounds like you know a lot more about the technical aspects of Ford's claim than I do. I only passed on what AP reported. The point of my post was to question the 'giant leap for mankind'. Thanks for the input though.