Enigma

Moon landings could be assembled at staged setups in the Mohave?
Luddites will rejoice at this shot of a shuttle launch obviously created in someone's living room with digital trickery.  And we all fell for it who watched!



See strong invention engines strange devise,
And ope the mysteries of earth, seas, and skies;
Aid curious art to finish works refin'd,
And teach abstrusest science to mankind.
Up the dread vault, where stars immensely roll,
To heaven, Herschelian tubes conduct the soul;
Where proud Orion heads th' immortal train,
And opes his lucid window through the main;
Where, far beyond this limitary sky,
Superior worlds of liquid splendour lie;
Far other suns diffuse th' unsetting ray,
And other planets roll, in living day,
Truth, bliss, and virtue, age by age, refine,
And unknown nations bask in life divine.


From Timothy Dwight, Greenfield Hill (1794)

Unlike most of the other 18th-century writers represented here, who were British, Dwight was American; this poem dealt chiefly with his conception of an ideal society and was dedicated to John Adams.

No, it is true . . .   this photo of  a  NASA camera shot of the separation of the shuttle from its fuel tank was taken of our television screen, the lamp a reflection.
(It has been a slow winter)