History – Page 2 – The Chiles Files

October 23, 2013

Taming the Beast

Via Behind the Black, a harrowing story of steely-eyed missile men that arrives just in time for the 30th anniversary of that space-age classic, The Right Stuff: Debugging a Live Saturn V.

As we got closer to the Saturn V it was shrouded in a white cloud of venting gases which relieved the pressures building up inside the vehicle fuel tanks.

Our goal was to enter this two level hermetically sealed, all welded steel coffin called the Mobil Launcher Base topped by a fully loaded 363 ft. high Saturn V, weighing 6.2 million pounds, and the permanently attached 380 ft. high Umbilical Tower, weighing 500k pounds. We finally stopped and left our van to walk up and into the second level of the Mobile Launcher Base. About this time, it came to my mind that during one of our training sessions we were told that one of the fully fueled prototype S-II rocket stages had been exploded out in the desert. The results showed that all buildings better be at least three miles from the launch pads – which they are. We were now within 25 feet of this 363ft tall bomb that sounded like its giant fuse had been lit, and we were soon going to get much closer.

…

As we climbed up the last step prior to opening the sealed submarine type entry door that led into the second level. We slowly opened the heavy steel hatch-type pressurized door it was like stepping into the jaws of a huge steaming dragon. The nitrogen fog, used to suppress fire, and the dim red glow from the emergency lights of level A made it look like a hollywood swamp scene. We started making our way through the 21 compartments to find our Relay Rack as the noise took on a more penetrating tone that seemed to bounce from wall to wall.

Read the whole thing.

September 25, 2013

By Their Fruits Shall Ye Know Them

Pogroms didn’t end with the Nazis, they just shifted their target: Can We Finally Start Talking About the Global Persecution of Christians?

To weed out the infidels, according to news reports, the terrorists asked people for the name of Muhammad’s mother or to recite a verse from the Quran.

And that wasn’t even the worst terrorist attack of the weekend.

The Washington Post reported that one British mother and her young children survived when captors who shot her allowed her to leave on the condition she immediately convert to Islam. The siege of the mall, which included the taking of hostages, lasted four days. Three floors of the mall collapsed and bodies were buried in the rubble.

And that wasn’t even the worst terrorist attack of the weekend.

Read the whole thing, but here’s another snippet to keep things in perspective:

We’re talking about Christian persecution by Muslims because of a particularly macabre issue: Jews have already largely been driven out of many Muslim countries.

Lela Gilbert, a journalist who writes about Jewish and Christian persecution, tells of encountering jihadi graffiti in Jerusalem that read “First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday.” She didn’t get the meaning at first. A friend explained that it referred to Jews worshiping on Saturday and Christians on Sunday and, more subtly, about the order that non-Muslims would be targeted.

Coming soon to a civilization near you.

July 20, 2013July 21, 2013

It would be neglecting my space-nerd cred if I failed to recognize a little event that happened 44 years ago today. It’s fitting that just this week, Jeff Bezos confirmed the Saturn V engines they recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic a few months ago are indeed from Apollo 11. No word on what they’ll be going for on Amazon.

I was five years old and hopelessly obsessed with the whole space program. My parents let me stay up late to watch the first moonwalk, something I am grateful for to this day because I remember all of it. Sadly there aren’t enough people who can say that, not to mention the men who went there who are no longer with us.

A precious few are left – and I wouldn’t recommend trying out any ridiculous moon-hoax theories on them:

That’s how old fighter jocks roll.

UPDATE: Here’s a fantastic shot of Buzz stepping out onto the LM’s porch 44 years ago. Note the Star Trekky lens flare!

July 4, 2013

Happy Fourth!

Saw this pic at Ace of Spades and couldn’t resist reposting:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

June 12, 2013June 12, 2013

Patriot Games

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF MAJOR-LEAGUE DOUCHEBAGGERY.

Call me lazy, but I’m a firm believer in learning from the mistakes of others rather than making them myself. Via The Anchoress (h/t Ace), an essay from 1941 that’s as fascinating now as it surely was 72 years ago: Who Goes Nazi?

The answers may surprise you. Or not:

It’s fun—a macabre sort of fun—this parlor game of “Who Goes Nazi?” And it simplifies things—asking the question in regard to specific personalities.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Wow. Any of it sound familiar? Know anybody like that?

The longer I live, the more interesting history becomes thanks to a perspective which can only be gained by living a full life. The sweep of time became blindingly obvious to me when too many of our citizens so easily forgot the economic and cultural lessons of the 70’s and 80’s. Keynesian economics never works, and Socialism is just Communism with better manners.

Though we like to pretend otherwise, we’ve absolutely forgotten the brutal lessons of the 30’s and 40’s, namely that appeasing tyrants works out exactly the way Churchill described: like feeding an alligator in the hopes that he ignores the really tasty meal…you. Doesn’t work. Never did. Never will.

And by the way, Keynesianism didn’t fare any better back then either. While a lot of people have come around to the realization that the New Deal actually prolonged and worsened the Great Depression, it wasn’t entirely ended by WWII either. It would only end when FDR passed from this Mortal Coil, taking his “bold, persistent experimentation” to the grave with him.

Never mind that such a construct implies that we citizens are the lab rats…all for our own good, of course, which is how this stuff always begins. Tyranny is sneaky like that.

So the question is, which era are we about to repeat? I suspect the answer is “a little of both,” which raises another question: which side will we be on this time? Which side do you choose?

May 27, 2013

Remember

Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o’er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Dream of battled fields no more.
Days of danger, nights of waking.

-Sir Walter Scott

“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.”

-Gen. George S. Patton

April 5, 2013

Something Funny Happened on the Way to Mount Doom

All shall wonder and despair, for the One Ring has been found!

The ring is believed to be linked to a curse tablet found separately at the site of a Roman temple dedicated to a god named Nodens in Gloucestershire, western England. The tablet says a man called Silvianus had lost a ring, and it asks Nodens to place a curse of ill health on Senicianus until he returned it to the temple.

An archaeologist who looked into the connection between the ring and the curse tablet asked Tolkien, who was an Anglo-Saxon professor at Oxford University, to work on the etymology of the name Nodens in 1929.

Since I’m not nearly as smart as Tolkien was, I simply Googled “Nodens” to see what turned up. It had also attracted the attention of seminal horror writer H.P. Lovecraft:

And upon dolphins’ backs was balanced a vast crenelate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss… Then hoary Nodens reached forth a wizened hand and helped Olney and his host into the vast shell.

—H. P. Lovecraft, “The Strange High House in the Mist”

Happy Easter

Today is the day we celebrate Christ’s resurrection. I don’t typically flog my religious views much here, but today is different. It doesn’t take much to look around this world and see how mankind has fallen and cannot be redeemed by our own actions. We are imperfect and to think we can each somehow achieve perfection by even our own standards – much less the Creator’s – is wishful thinking.

God knew this, because he knows us. Much better than we know ourselves, I might add. Our Creator became human to take on our failings, in order that we could be redeemed into His glory.

How? Like this:

March 15, 2013March 22, 2013

History Ain’t What it Used to Be

So this little snippet of world-shattering news slipped under the old e-mail door yesterday:

Wright Brothers Not First to Fly

As determined by Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft. I doubt they’d put their considerable reputation on the line for a crank theory, so read and discuss.

I predict the hardest hit will be North Carolina and their insufferable “first in flight” license plates. Because we all know Dayton is just a suburb of Cape Hatteras…though one could be forgiven for thinking the Outer Banks and Grand Strand have been annexed by Ohio during certain parts of the year.

January 6, 2013

Keeping the Blog Alive

Just found some great quotes while reading about our first principles at The DC Clothesline:

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

-Benjamin Franklin

And this, from the original George W:

From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to insure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable . . . the very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that is good.

-George Washington

Talk amongst yourselves, as I still have that next book to write.