40 years since first lunar landing

I’m not sure but they had a unique sound. I like them a lot. Now I get the space references on their covers. Favorites album Good Looking Blues, I especially like the spoken word track ‘Badtimes’

It’s also interesting how the Space Race influenced contemporary popular culture in the 1960s.

There was ‘space pop music’ by the Spotnicks for example, check it out:

[url]THE SPOTNICKS ROCKET MAN - YouTube

Of course there was also sci- fi movies and TV series like Star Trek, and even before that there was the West-German Raumpatrouille series in 1966.

And there was movies with a ‘space theme’ a well-known example is the Bond movie You Only Live Twice in 1967.

The Space Race even influenced fashion in the 60s.

There was also ‘space age architecture’ like these Czech and East-German TV towers:

And the wealthy Danish business man Simon Spies had his futuristic ‘Villa Spies’ in the Stockholm archipelago:

It seems many people had a belief in the future in those days, at the same time there was of course the Cold War between East and West.

There was also radical political movements in the West that led to the student uprisings in 1968.

There was hippies and drugs.

And after all there was also fairly cynical movie genres like the Spaghetti Western that we all know.

It seems the 1960s was a melting pot of many different objectives?

Re: Space Dog Laika

Officially for many years it was claimed by the Russians that she lived a whole week, there was water and food in a gel form, she was then to have been put to sleep by poison in some way.

But in 2002 it was revealed that the dog died of stress and overheating after only 5 to 7 hours. The thermal control system in the capsule malfunctioned and led to a painful death.

One of the lead Russian scientists expressed regrets about Laika’s death:

The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it… We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.

In 2008 a monument was unveiled in Moscow to honor the memory of the pioneer kosmonaut Laika.

A shame really. I am glad someone feels remorse for doing that to Laika. I don’t agree with any of the testing done on animals.

@Lindberg: Thanks for the pics. Do you know or have ever seen the TV Tower in Riga? Quite impressive. It’s one of the highest TV Tower of Europe with 368.5 m (1,209.0 ft).

I wonder why nobody is wearing these futuristic clothes today. :smiley:

Poor Laika. It’s good that she became a monument and that one of the scientist is feeling sorry for what they have done.

Re: Laika I read Sputnik-2 (her satellite) was never intended to return. So even though she died early in the flight she was doomed from the start. That sort of mentality is absolutely evil and unforgivable. Let’s hope other agencies give up wasting life needlessly.

I love this stuff. I remember thinking as a kid how great it would be when we all lived in houses like this. It turned out only this guy, George Best and a whole bunch of Gerry Anderson characters ever did.

Lind, I never pick you for an astrophile. Great passion for what has become barely a blip on the radar. Such a shame.

Agreed! As someone who lost their dog recently, it is beyond my comprehension also. How this was meant to gain support for their side of the space race or further human progress is beyond me.

Love the fashions and the architecture tho’ Lindberg.

I wanted to be a moonlanding sceptic/conspiriscist-theory twat, for a short while, (after reading Capricorn One ages ago) … but altho’ I am somewhat cynical at times - I have to go with the view that it holds up that they landed… 99.9%.

No I’m not an astrophile, but I’m interested in history, and the 1960s was a fascinating period of the 20th century and the space projects was a big part of it.

Yes Laika was sent to space without the intention to retrieve the capsule, they didn’t yet have the technology for this.

However there were animal rights organizations that objected to this at the time in the 50s, so it didn’t go unnoticed.

Great that she finally got a monument at least.

If you want some good NASA conspiracy themed book check Dan Brown’s Deception Point. Absolutely top notch high speed thriller.

I agree - glad she has gotten more attention even though it was too late to save her.