When Young People Imagine the Future...

Volume XVII, Issue IV

Young People Imagine the Future

It was a week of wild creativity as students unleashed their imaginations to build the “World of Tomorrow.” We assembled Leonardo da Vinci’s Bridge, rolled paper into struts to build tetrahedrons, got mentioned by Michelle L. Mitchell [1.] in the News Virginian and most of all stretched our collective ability to imagine things we have not seen yet. We drew our ideas and then found ways to build what we imagined.


Some 'example pavilions' that I created to help the creative juices flow...


...included a Pavilion of Tyrol, complete with stained glass windows that have glass organ pipes embedded in them as designed by Xaver Wilhelmy...


...and the Pavilion of the Bering Strait Bridge Corporation with a reproduction of a mural painted by myself and Kristina Elaine Greer of children of the world entitled Journey to Jesus.




Our campers worked at architectural drawing and imagined buildings they would like to create. Then they built them!




















We photographed our finished pavilions against the sky to get a sense of the scale and presence they would have as actual buildings. Photos by Bob Kirchman.



The 'City of Tomorrow' in 1939



Envisioning the future can be dangerous. In a world mired in the drabness of the Depression, city planners created Greenbelt, Maryland. The open spaces and cleanliness are a wonderful contrast to the often polluted and overcrowded world of the present, but it is worth noting that some of the ‘industrial’ solutions presented in the movie have created problems of their own.


Bicycles in the 1939 movie 'The City' speed through Greenbelt, Maryland.


Fiona and Jonas with bicycles in the screen adaptation of 'The Giver.'

Democracity, Greenbelt, ‘The Community.’ All citizens needed to do, according to the planners, was “assent democratically to the centralization of planning.” It sounds real good in the midst of prolonged depression or the stagnation of the Wiemar Republic. But what is the true result of such centralization. Greenbelt kids are shown riding bicycles, painting pictures and playing at life situations such as a miniature post office. In actuality education itself was being ‘centralized.’ The Baby Boom had resulted in overcrowded classrooms (my first grade class was over fifty). Creative Wonder had to be sacrificed as we sat in orderly rows and learning itself became ‘industrialized.’

So what is the answer? I suspect it has less to do with urban design and more to do with humanity than planners would imagine. Decades later, the planners are now decrying the automobile suburbs and celebrating the grid cities they once liberated us from. Would that they would look at the wonderful ‘streetcar suburbs’ and urban open spaces that we actually enjoy – giving us a certain amount of messy freedom while organizing infrastructure and preserving openness – actually preserving ‘color!’ We like cul-de-sacs. We love our gardens. We like to choose the color of our dwelling. We like driving in open spaces.

We need to embrace the richness in our human expression of design. My children had a book in which two urban settings were presented as illustrations. One was ‘sameness,’ a very Soviet modernist city of tall bland buildings. The other – ‘uniqueness’ was – Paris! It was a very compelling argument!

C. S. Lewis on Free Will

God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free.

Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

The 2014 movie adaptation of Lois Lowery’s The Giver[2.] is a very instructive portrayal of what Lewis is saying. If you are not familiar with this novel, it is the story of a future world where security and freedom from want is secured by an enforced sameness. Gone are the joys of color and music. People see in black and white. Art is decorative but uninspired. Climate is regulated and people live in a community reminiscent of the ideal New Deal City, Greenbelt, Maryland.[3.] Greenbelt was Eleanor Roosevelt’s experiment in creating a ‘garden city’ to replace the hodgepodge of sometimes chaotic architecture of the time. Americans living in the Depression and Dust Bowl days were quick to embrace such a vision. Down the road from Greenbelt was the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. Modern chemical-dependent farming and methods were being developed there.[4.]

In The Giver, emotion is carefully suppressed with drugs and ‘precision of language’ is used to eliminate Love, Anger and any sort of emotion.

But as the film unfolds, the elimination of pain and struggle has come at a cost. Elimination of Love also comes with the elimination of Faith and Hope. Mankind is deprived of those three qualities that Scripture says are the three things that last! Though the book and the film adaptation are classified as ‘young adult’ dystopian fiction the film adaptation is worth note on a higher level. I do not think Lowery set out to write a book about deep truth (she herself says that it is simply an idea that came to her visiting her father in a nursing home – that memories are important) but that makes it all the more intriguing as it explores the value of life and the question of what gives life value. The movie ending is less confusing than that of the original novel in that it suggests that Lewis’s thoughts on what is really important are worth the risk and suggests a remedy. It is a thoughtful message for all.

Ravi Zacharias [click to read] explores the subject further.
Zach Dawes  Explores Love, Human Choice and C. S. Lewis [click to read]

The references to free will in Lewis’s books are one of the most prominent features the reader encounters. Indeed, even a cursory reading of a number of his works would reveal his belief in God’s gift to humanity of a free will to choose between two equally available choices. That is, to choose between good and evil, right and wrong.” – Zach Dawes


'Seeing color' in The Giver.


Future 'sameness.'


Greenbelt, Maryland.

Everyday Life in Modern Coruscant
Asian Megacities as Political Theater


What Le Corbusier would have wrought in Paris has become the new reality of Bejing and Shanghai.

Le Corbusier once wrote of his Plan Voisin for Paris: “Since 1922 [for the past 42 years] I have continued to work, in general and in detail, on the problem of Paris. Everything has been made public. The City Council has never contacted me. It calls me ‘Barbarian’!” -- Le Corbusier’s writings, p. 207.

Fast forward to the Twenty-first Century and Shanghai [Le Corbusier on steroids]. It all seems like the realization of the fictional Coruscant from Star Wars... a completely urban environment that stretches as far as the eye can see. The entire planet of Coruscant is one continual city.

Guy Sorman discusses the rise of Asian 'Super Megagopolises' [click to read] in City Journal. Looking at the Mega-model of Shanghai, one could begin to wonder: "can Coruscant be that far off." Sorman points out, however, that Shanghai is largely a political creation...designed to create the impression that China is ready for business with the world. [5.]

Every day the city teems with life and every night the workers necessary to make it function vacate the pristine city. It is like Disney World, where the 'cast members' descend into 'Utilidor,' remove their costumes, and disappear to homes elsewhere.

For Shanghai workers, 'homes elsewhere' often means crowded and substandard. Just as China's factories are seldom seen by Westerners, those who maintain the stage for world commerce live in a vastly different world than the one they 'portray' in their 'day jobs.'

Or perhaps, the Death Star in Star Wars is a better analogy. Its scale is way beyond human. It is intended to convey a sense of awe. Might we be looking at the work of some latter day Nimrod, seeking to elevate himself to the heavens?

Sorman points out how the mad rush into the 21st Century has obliterated the traditional spaces of Shanghai and Beijing, which were much more human in size and scate. Again Star Wars comes to mind. Green beautiful planets like Naboo and Alderon risk elimination as the Empire expands its grasp.


This scale model of Shanghai dwarfs the people in the room...


...and calls to mind the fictional city of Coruscant.

In the 'Sixties America sought to 'remake' her major cities. Le Corbusier style housing blocks were constructed to elevate the urban poor. Many of these 'projects' have since been torn down. While we were building them Moscow was building similar blocks of apartments. Today in Moscow, urban youths flock to the rooftops. [6.] Called 'Roofers,' these young people seek the rooftops simply for the openness and the view.

How to Return to the Village
Returning Government to the People in the 'Audience'

Nineteenth Century America was a nation of villages. Great centers of commerce existed, but they were fed by a vibrant countryside. When Thomas Jefferson created his ideal 'Academic Village' to house the University of Virginia he purposefully left one side open to the surrounding agricultural land. From the steps of the Rotunda one could look upon the rolling hills of Albemarle County.

Architect Stanford White convinced the University to fill the void with Old Cabell Hall a long time ago. The recently completed South Lawn attempts to recreate a space leading off into the trees of Charlottesville. The challenge of getting back to the garden is ever before us. Rooftop Gardens [click to read] offer one method of getting people and open spaces together. Reclaiming existing environments is another. Aging strip malls could be recycled into village centers for the surrounding suburban homes, offering a place residents could walk or bicycle to. Vacant lots and neglected riverfronts can become parks and gardens.


Proposed Renewal of the Crozet Shopping Center. 
Drawing created by the Kirchman Studio.

Suburb bashing has always been a fashionable intellectual pastime.That is one reason I like Robert A. M. Stern. He sees the reasons people seek out single family dwellings of a traditional form. I have a friend who lives on the upper West side and his penthouse with a view of the Hudson is very nice but give me my gardens.People put up with the wretched infrastructure overload and strip centers because the village is still appealing. The residential areas become landscaped oasis for their residents. Kids play outside the house in view of the kitchen window. People visit at the back fence. Moreover the suburbs are seen by their dwellers as affirming opportunity and safety. If people had no emotion for their homes they would be fine with Le Courbusier type high rises but that is simply not the case.The problem is really one of infrastructure and public space [or lack therof]. Strip malls and box stores create a sterile wasteland but they may become the village centers of the future.

Time magazine once featured a piece called 'Repurposing Suburbs' which shows some fine examples of recreating this type of public space. This Crozet project turns a tired strip mall into a village center. One cannot wait for Crozet's redesigner to get his creative hands on some of the new "Town Center" projects which are now just collections of big box stores. Some time ago I drew a concept where the CSX tracks between Staunton and Charlottesville became a light rail line connecting Staunton, Fishersville, Waynesboro, Crozet, Ivy, The University of Virginia Medical Center and Downtown Charlottesville. The result would be a series of village centers and a better utilization of existing infrastructure.

City Journal's writers draw conflicting conclusions. Houston is touted as encouraging its middle class while Gotham offers limited options. Dense urban areas do tend to create energy efficiency. The trick is to see opportunities to improve the communities we have already created.That would certainly involve offering condominiums and a pedestrian friendly center to suburban communities and reclaiming all those wonderful old low density neighborhoods of our cities.


Front Yard garden, Arlington, Virginia. Photo by Bob Kirchman.


Front Porch, Arlington, Virginia. Photo by Bob Kirchman.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” – Jeremiah 29:11

Blind to the Prosperity Around Us
[click to read]

By Alyssa Ahlgren

My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. (read more)

Laney’s Palette Art Show
Saturday September 14th, 2019 in Crozet, VA

Works by Kristina Elaine Greer will be on display at the gallery space of Tabor Presbyterian Church, 5804 Tabor Street, Crozet, Virginia 22932. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, September 14th, 2019 from 1:00 to 4:00pm at the church. All are invited. The show will feature Laney’s Acrylic Paintings and Pencil Drawings from 2004 – 2019.

Rethinking College (and Education), Einstein

Volume XVII, Issue III

A 'Best of THYMEs' Feature...

Rethinking College (and Education)


My Dad, Ed Kirchman, did his part to help put men on the moon. He almost didn't make it through the education system.

The 'other' weekly news magazine's U. S. Edition presents The Class of 2025 [click to read]. They ponder what they will have learned... and how they will pay for it! Clearly changes are needed. The average US student graduates with $26,000 in college debt, with total college debt around one trillion dollars. Unfortunately the job market often presents a hostile reality, the field they have prepared five years to enter isn't hiring. TIME's Amanda Ripley looks at new trends, such as online learning and how the way we learn is already changing in a Previous Article [click to read].

The rise in online learning and for-profit colleges is challenging the traditional academy. Ostensibly this is the underlying tension behind recent events at Charlottesville's University of Virginia, where popular President Teresa Sullivan was forced to resign and then quickly reinstated.

College costs are rising at a rate outpacing the economy at large. At the same time many are questioning its value, even as it is being touted as "being as essential now as high school was in the 'Fifties." Many young men are foregoing college and entering fields such as technology, finding that to offer a more rapid path to a paycheck. The trades are experiencing a renaissance as young people rediscover the joy and purpose of skilled work.

My Father became an engineer in an era where Engineering schools did not bother to teach Literature. He struggled in high school, and framed a letter from a high school adviser stating bluntly that he should pursue a field other than Engineering. Undeterred, Dad enrolled in Junior College, then transferred to Notre Dame. He worked for Wright Aviation before taking a job at the Martin Company's Middle River Plant in Baltimore. He framed the letter.

Dad worked on the seaplanes that were used in WWII, then as Middle River closed down, he started his own test lab. He opened it in one of those buildings with spaces for contractors that had a garage door and an office. His neighbors were plumbers and HVAC companies. He hired a lot of his old colleagues from Martin. Then he was hired by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where he wrote the procedures for testing spacecraft.

Though his education did not include great literature, Dad was a Renaissance man who built his own great library. He read the classics for the pure joy of learning, and was as knowledgeable about literature as many who teach it. When I was young he would read to me from great volumes such as the works of Rudyard Kipling. What magical moments those bedtime stories would become! Little did Dad know he was innoculating me to survive industrialized education.

My point? Learning can be more pragmatic, learning should be lifelong. More people need to read thick wonderful books to their kids. Making young minds cram great literature for exams may leave a bad tasteI  and leaves no room for rumination. Dad often let me work alongside him doing projects. He taught me how to work, how to design a greenhouse, and most importantly; Dad taught me how to teach others.

I was the right-brained child who struggled in school. Dad apprenticed me in the skills I needed to eventually overcome that. It is my sincere hope that Apprenticeship will experience a Renaissance as we seek to develop the G-d-given gifts of the generations to follow. Will we again find deep satisfaction in training our own replacements? It is my sincere hope that industry, the professions, and most importantly gifted individuals will step up to the challenge!


The Lawn of the University of Virginia originally opened to the surrounding community and countryside. Photos and rendering overlay by Bob Kirchman.

The Genius of Albert Einstein


He was a master of Sitzfleisch, the ability to sit still and ponder or perform a task for a very long time. Here is a man who found genius in endurance!

The Genius of Benjamin Franklin



Unlocking Young Imaginations
[click to read]

From 3D pens, fluid art and model miniature World’s Fair projects, campers in the Fun’dudle Art Camp spent all week creating art. [read more]


The 2019 Waynesboro World's Fair was created by campers at Tammy Hornek's FunDoodle Art Camp.

Baby Praying Mantis
Photos by Bob Kirchman





Moonwalk Montage
July 21, 1969, Apollo 11 Landed on the Moon



Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
The First Humans on the Moon


Neil Armstrong is reflected in the visor of Buzz Aldrin, the first two humans to walk on the moon. Scratchboard, 12" x 12" by Bob Kirchman.

Laney’s Palette Art Show
Saturday September 14th, 2019 in Crozet, VA

Works by Kristina Elaine Greer will be on display at the gallery space of Tabor Presbyterian Church, 5804 Tabor Street, Crozet, Virginia 22932. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, September 14th, 2019 from 1:00 to 4:00pm at the church. All are invited. The show will feature Laney’s Acrylic Paintings and Pencil Drawings from 2004 – 2019.

Man on the Moon, Apollo 11, Fifty Years Ago!

Volume XVII, Issue II

The First Humans on Another World


The crew of Apollo 11 (from left to right): Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin (“Buzz”) Aldrin. NASA Photo.

Fifty years ago on July 16th, the mighty Saturn V rocket carrying Apollo 11 lifted off from Cape Kennedy. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Aldrin flew with the first Lunar Module capable of actually landing. Though the astronauts had practiced this over and over in simulators, there was no way of knowing what their chances would be of actually landing. Armstrong even admits that he considered this to be merely the first attempt.


Apollo 11 liftoff. NASA Photo.

Armstrong and Aldrin would proceed to fly the Lunar Module toward the lunar surface. Their descent would not be an easy one. Their computer overloaded, almost prompting an abort. Then the computer guided them to a landing area strewn with boulders. Armstrong took manual control of the spacecraft and skimmed along until he saw a better landing sight. Running critically low on descent stage fuel, Armstrong pushed on and brought the Eagle down. With five percent fuel remaining he gently eased the lander down onto the moon. “The Eagle has Landed!”


The Lunar Lander, Eagle. NASA Photo.

John F. Kennedy
Address at Rice University on the Space Effort

September 12, 1962

Speech Transcript

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far out-strip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter.

Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight. This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward-and so will space.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it - we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the Office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48-story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union. The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard lines. Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade we shall make up and move ahead. The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community.

During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous 8 years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year-a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman, and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, reentering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun - almost as hot as it is here today - and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out, then we must be bold. I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute.

[Laughter]

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the terms of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Thank you.

NOTE: The President spoke in the Rice University Stadium at 10 a.m. In his opening words he referred to Dr. K. S. Pitzer, President of the University, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Governor Price Daniel of Texas, Representative Albert Thomas of Texas, Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, Representative George P. Miller of California, James E. Webb, Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration., David E. Bell, Director of the Bureau of the Budget.

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, v. 1, 1962, pp. 669-670.

Apollo 11, The Moon Mission
[click to read]


The crew of Apollo 11 relaxes during a training exercise. NASA Photo.

(see more photos)

On Board Apollo Moonships
[click to read]

By Carlos Clarivan

On Board Apollo Moonships contains 100 pages and more than 200 3D-illustrations and images that show in detail the spacecrafts that allowed to travel to the Moon and explore it in the late 1960s and early 70s: from the mighty Saturn V rocket and the Apollo mothership up to the the Lunar Module and the revolutionary Moon Rover. (read more)


From the Earth to the Moon. Illustration by Carlos Clarivan.

Interview with Neil Armstrong!


The first man to set foot on the moon!

In this rare series of interviews, Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, tells the story of the historic mission from his own perspective. [1.] Alex Malley of Australia's EvoTV's The Bottom Line looks at the life and leadership of the lunar mission's commander. Fascinated by aircraft, even at a very early age, Armstrong obtained his pilot's license at the age of fifteen!

He went on to fly combat missions during the Korean War and later became a test pilot. He then became an astronaut as NASA geared up to meet President John F. Kennedy's challenge to put a man on the moon in the decade and return him safely to earth.

The Russians had already orbited the first satellite, Sputnik, on October 4, 1957 and subsequently orbited cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin as the Americans struggled to develop a dependable booster. After Alan Shepard's short suborbital flight in 1961, President Kennedy challenged the fledgeling space agency to go to the moon.

Armstrong is refreshingly honest in his discussion with Malley. The interview is presented in four parts and is worth watching to the very end. Neil Armstrong expresses very real concern that the space agency lacks the vision and sense of purpose it had in those early years. He ends with a challenge that we as a people would do well to heed and pursue in our own time!

The Full Interview may be found Here [click to listen].


Forty-seven years ago two human beings changed history by walking on the surface of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it.

The First Humans on the Moon
Neil Armstrong Reflected in Buzz Aldrin's Visor




NASA Photos

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
The First Humans on the Moon


Neil Armstrong is reflected in the visor of Buzz Aldrin, the first two humans to walk on the moon. Scratchboard, 12" x 12" by Bob Kirchman.

60 Years of NASA
[click to read]

Celebrating Where Art and Science Meet



To celebrate NASA’s 60th anniversary this year, the agency partnered with the National Symphony Orchestra to present a concert in Washington entitled “NSO Pops: Space, the Next Frontier.” NASA mission images complemented performances of space-inspired music in the Kennedy Center’s concert hall, including Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” (“Moonlight”), with a video of the Moon created by NASA science visualizer Ernie Wright.

At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Wright works in the Scientific Visualization Studio, using NASA data to create accurate visuals of celestial bodies. Wright made the lunar imagery accompanying “Clair de Lune” with data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). (read more)


LRO Photo of Earthrise over the moon. NASA Photo.

The World of Tomorrow
Eighty Years Ago the World Came to the NY Fair


Model of the Trylon and Perisphere, symbols of the fair.

When Frank Baum wrote the Wizard of Oz he based the Emerald City on the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition – the Chicago World’s Fair. The fair’s colossal white classical buildings and those of many fairs to follow, would inspire the civic architecture of a young nation coming of age. Baum’s Emerald City was white – until you put on the green glasses! The 1939 World’s Fair, forged in the middle of the Great Depression, sought to bring a new vision for American life as well. It brought more central planning and a stark modernism in its architecture – adding a bit of Art Deco for good measure. The Emerald City of the movie version, made in 1939, looked to the New York fair for its inspiration. That fair was ‘a horse of a different color.’ The Trylon and Perisphere were white, but the buildings were many different colors as they were arranged around the central iconic building. The ‘World of Tomorrow’ is seen from the eyes of a ten year old boy who visited with his family in the Summer of 1939.





This week I will be working with students of Fundoodle Art Camp as they construct a miniature World’s Fair. Here is an introductory video I prepared for them.







The 1964 World's Fair
55 Years Ago, The World Came to New York Again!



Lift your vision high,
   we're in a way we've never been before.
Lift your vision higher,
   and you will see the glory of the Lord.

For without a progressive vision
   we dwell carelessly.
Without a progressive vision
   we dwell carelessly.
So lift your vision higher
   and you will see the glory of the Lord.”
– Unknown


On Saturday, July 6, 2019 the moon was roughly the same waxing phase as it was on July 20, 1969. In honor of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, Michal Warzecha took 50 shots with his Canon T3i and 80mm Orion refractor and stacked the images with Autostakker. 
Photo by Michal Warzecha.