
The sculpture on the Moon - anigbrowl
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/12/sculpture_on_the_moon_paul_van_hoeydonck_s_fallen_astronaut.html
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jaysonelliot
The lesson I take from this story (aside from the amazing accomplishments of
all the people involved and the wonderful humanity of making the sculpture a
tribute to American and Soviet astronauts alike) is this:

ASK.

No one had put a sculpture on the moon because no one had thought to ask.
Sure, there were a lot of steps involved, but ultimately it was about one
woman with an idea and the temerity to say "I'll figure out a way." Sometimes
the seemingly impossible is just a matter of thinking to ask.

~~~
cousin_it
Yeah, that's really good advice for a certain kind of people. Let's call them
"marketers" for short. A scientist or engineer won't do a better job by
remembering to "ASK", they're facing a different kind of problem that can't be
solved by convincing a powerful person to solve it for you. But a marketer can
score some major wins, like freeloading some worthless piece of junk on the
public space program and then never shutting up about their "accomplishment".

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rpedroso
The remarkable story aside, I really enjoyed the styling of the article. While
I wish the text were just a pinch bigger, it was truly a pleasure to read.

Some things I noticed in particular:

    
    
      - Subtle highlighting to connect names to photos
      - Unobtrusive but beautiful section headings
      - Anything not pertaining to the article pushed down below it[1]
      - Beautiful use of photography
    

I might be late to the party here because I don't often read Slate, but I
enjoyed reading the article almost as much as the article itself.

[1] I can't be the only one who finds "You might like..." sidebars
distracting. Particularly when they incorporate images, they pull my attention
away from the text and strain my eyes as I read.

I would be more likely to contribute to add impressions if more articles on
the internet were like this.

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ACow_Adonis
Really?

We'll probably have to agree to disagree, but I came into this thread
specifically to comment on the styling of the article, and specifically, how
distracting and irritating I found it. So imagine my surprise when I come in
and find one of the only two comments being a comment about how GOOD the
styling on the page is. I was going to comment that I've seen a few pages like
this increasingly appearing, where a great deal of effort has obviously gone
into the style/layout of the page, it looks very schmick in a "we paid for
modern stylists" kind of way, but its overall effect on me has been negative.

The whole thing had this irritating "asymmetrical" feel to it that I just
found disconcerting when i just want to read the article, and honestly just
left me unable to read it, And for the love of god I will never accept the
current trend of "Take sentence from text, blow it up, and insert in its own
text box on same page" thing that is obviously taking the journalistic world
by storm right now.

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rpedroso
The quote technique you're referring to is called a pull-quote, and they have
been around for decades. They may have seen a resurgence on the web recently,
I couldn't say, but they've been used in magazines as far as I can remember.

Like any typographic technique, they can be used poorly, but I thought their
use was quite tasteful in this article. They take for granted the fat that
many people skim and they help draw attention to key quotes or ideas; I think
that's reasonable.

I didn't get the sense of "asymmetricality", but to each their own, I guess.

In any case, it felt like an improvement over most news sites and blogs.

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ajlburke
Sort of off-topic, but the big banner picture at the top has a lot of obvious
Photoshop rubber-stamping in the bottom left around the edge of the crater.
It's presumably covering up blank bits from the photo stitching, but I worry
it'll inspire conspiracy types.

(For the record, I think it's _easier_ to land a bunch of people on the moon
than to fake it convincingly with 1960s special effects and then successfully
cover it up for 45 years.)

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jonah
S G Collins claims it would have been impossible to fake the landing:
[http://www.openculture.com/2013/01/moon_hoax_not_short_film_...](http://www.openculture.com/2013/01/moon_hoax_not_short_film_explains_why_it_was_impossible_to_fake_the_moon_landing.html)

~~~
alan_cx
For me, end of any ideas that the moon landings were faked, is faking it such
that the monitoring Soviets would have been fooled, or that the Soviets knew
it was faked and kept quiet. The USSR would have absolutely monitored
everything they could have associated with the USA's adventures in space, and
if they detected the slightest hint of US fakery, they would have used that to
thoroughly discredit their great enemy. Even if not for some odd political
reason, by now, the information would have leaked. But I cant see any way it
would have served Soviet interests to allow the USA to get away with faking
it.

Not saying other evidence doesn't prove that the US landed on the moon, just
saying that for me, what ever theory any one wants to put forward to suggest
it was faked, this one point is a 10ft thick lead wall in their way, and as
yet I have not see a solid reason for the Soviets to play ball with a grand US
fraud.

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ytNumbers
The part about Wikipedia was quite amusing.

> We ask: Why didn’t he get a friend to log in and correct the entries? He
> responds with a startled pause. “Is that right?

> I didn't know you could do that!”

Good luck with that. Those corrections would be reverted faster than you can
say Jack Robinson. For the pages dealing with important historical events,
it's quite a collection of petty kings they've got over there.

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rbanffy
I learned about it watching this performance:

[https://vimeo.com/23527768](https://vimeo.com/23527768)

I make his words mine:

"This is what space exploration should be. To sing space... not just measure
it. To look deeper... not just farther"

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CmonDev
Let's just hope Chinese and Indian astronauts will not be saying any think-
tank generated "historical phrases".

