Well-Aimed and Powerful (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Well-Aimed and Powerful (2015)

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15 pointsdanso12 comments

"Soon, of course, we’ll be doing nothing at all. Faced with the fact that we are losing American spaceflight altogether, suddenly the workhorse shuttle seems as beautiful and daring as the Saturn V did in the sixties."

Hard to believe this was written in 2015, while SpaceX was busy sending dragons to ISS and learning how to land Falcon 9s.

Edit: the excerpt is from Leaving Orbit, published in May 2015, but written in 2009, prior to the last Shuttle flight in 2011, which explains the sense of sadness and loss.

Man has never landed on the moon. Especially not in 1969. Not only would they not have been able to get a person there, but to bring them back as well is ridiculous. Especially in light of the political situation at that time with Russia.

> [...] and refrained from considering the enormity of their undertaking

Sigh. Another perfectly good word dies due to being too similar to another word.

At least we're still adding new words to the language to make up for these losses in expressiveness and shades of meaning. "Bigly", "sexting". "Cromulent".

The dilution of vocabulary to suit spurious agendas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

Hey, deceiving a planet full of people with a made up moon landing seems pretty evil to me :-)

(I actually share your sadness about the massive extinction of expressive terms, but given the discussion in the article I couldn't resist).

It actually pulled me out of the article for a second as I thought, "wait, is this actually about how the moon-hoaxers are right?" before I realized the writer'd meant enormousness —which is still not a great choice for that sentence, but at least doesn't mean something else entirely from what was intended.

Wow, until I read this comment, I had no idea what your parent comment was referring to, i.e. the misuse of enormity. I'm kind of an annoying pedant about the misuse of "begs the question", among other things, but I'll admit to have equated "enormity" with "enormousness", the latter of which I can't remember the last time I ever saw it used in prose.

You're right to point out the flaw; professional editors are supposed to pick that kind of thing out.

Hah, looks like whoever downvoted my comment didn't know the word either!

"Bigly" is about 600 years old.

> This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Bart Sibrel.

If you don't mind giving the antagonist more views, he posted the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OROlF8zB9z0&t=50s

For "some reason" the sound is cut out afterward...

> “Did you get that on camera?” This line of dialogue, spoken so clearly and happily, subsequently helps to acquit Buzz Aldrin, seventy-two years old at the time of the incident, of assault charges.

If you don't mind giving the antagonist more views

Not at all, it's not like he can buy anything with those views. On the other hand, it's awesome to see Buzz Aldrin punch that guy.

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