The Man Who Took the Historic "Earthrise" Picture Was a Nuclear Engineer.
It was noted elsewhere in this space that Major General William Anders, one of the first three men to leave Earth's orbit on Apollo 8 died in a plane crash.
He took the famous "Earthrise" photograph that is said to have sparked the environmental movement (although one existed already, but was less prominently recognized):
Of course, what passes for an "environmental movement" as the first quarter of the 21st century draws to a close has been co-opted by slick doublespeak fossil fuel marketing designed to perpetuate the use of these fossil fuels, along with the the destruction of wilderness via industrialization, and a kind of "look at me" self congratulatory (and completely dishonest) consumerism by which people buy or support things advertised as being "green," almost the entire inventory of such consumer junk dependent on unsustainable depletion of resources that might have been preserved for future generations.
One example can be seen with reference to the Sierra Club, which was founded by John Muir for the purpose of preventing the industrialization of wilderness, notably Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley, and is now populated by a set of people who never look at an ecosystem that they feel shouldn't be trashed with wind and solar industrial parks, all of which will be abandoned rotting infrastructure around the time today's toddlers finish college.
Another example:
A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.
You check the people who claim membership in, and/or enthusiasm for, the "environmental movement" - although they understand very little about environmental science and are willing and happy openly to display their ignorance on a Trumpian Dunning Kruger validating scale - and you see them whining obscenely about trivial shit like the cost ratepayers of electric bills.
There seems to be zero interest among these awful people of the cost to future generations. They're dime store consumers.
How one can look at the picture above and whine that clean energy - of which there is only one kind, nuclear energy - will raise electricity prices powering their bourgeois electronic McMansions by $20 bucks a month, this on a planet in flames as a result of their pop ignorance, disgusts me in the deepest part of my being. The venality is appalling.
What is wrong with these people?
Anyway...
As a new generation of nuclear scientists work on the restoration and expansion the only tool that can save what is left to be saved and restore what can be restored with respect to the ecosystem, nuclear energy, I was surprised to learn, when looking at General Anders biography, that he was a trained nuclear engineer.
From his Wikipedia biography:
...He hoped to study aeronautical engineering through the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio of Air University, but the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program was ongoing, and he had to study nuclear engineering instead. He graduated from the AFIT in 1962 with a Master of Science degree in nuclear engineering, and was sent to the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, where he managed the technical aspects of the USAF nuclear power reactor programs.
Anders was the executive secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council from 1969 to 1973, a commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1973 to 1975, and chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 1975 to 1976. He then became the Ambassador to Norway from 1976 to 1977. In September 1977, he joined General Electric (GE) as the vice president and general manager of its Nuclear Products Division and became the general manager of the GE Aircraft Equipment Division in 1980...
The concept of nuclear powered aircraft, which obviously failed if one excludes the many nuclear powered spacecraft that have extended human vision to unprecedented heights, led to the foundation of many interesting concepts in nuclear engineering, most notably the thorium powered molten salt reactor, an old concept that has generated some modern popular enthusiasm as we recognize that antinukism has brought the planet to the brink. (For the record, I am not necessarily a FLIBE molten salt reactor kind of guy, but the creativity behind the concept has certainly influenced my thinking, which I hope to translate to my son, who is a nuclear engineer, like General Anders and unlike me.)
This expansion of engineering concepts, which was, like things like GPS and, indeed the internet itself, a military effort initially, may, as is the case with the internet and GPS, have many applications for broader humanity. Such work may, indeed, save us from ourselves, although the chance to do so is rapidly slimming.
Nevertheless things like this, in this case that the Earthrise photographer was a nuclear engineer, thrill the imagination.
Have a nice weekend.
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