On July 21st, 1969, at 4:56 in the morning (CEST), Neil Armstrong stepped off the Eagle lander, became the first human to ever step onto the Moon, and uttered the famous words “one small step for [a]¹ man, one giant leap for mankind.”

John F. Kennedy had kicked off the Apollo program with his famous “Man on the Moon” speech 8 years earlier, challenging NASA to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth within the decade.

At the time, NASA had only been able to send one American to space, and not even into orbit. NASA engineers and scientists had to create pretty much everything they needed to achieve a Moon landing from scratch. There were no rockets powerful enough to get a spacecraft to the Moon, and there were no spacecraft capable of landing a crew on the Moon and return. In fact, at the time, no one was quite sure of how to actually achieve Kennedy’s goal.

But NASA committed $25 billion to the project ($153 billion in 2018 dollars), and eventually employed over 400.000 people and 20.000 companies and universities to achieve this moment. It built the single tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket to this day, the Saturn V². It eventually settled on two, not one, spacecraft for going to the Moon (one to land on the Moon and get back up again, and the other for shuttling the crew from the Earth to the Moon and back).

There were also many setbacks. The crew of Apollo 1, Gus Grissom, Walter White, and Roger Chaffee, died after a fire broke out in their command capsule during a launch rehearsal. Their deaths forced NASA to reevaluate the build quality and the pace they were going at.

Eventually, on Christmas day in 1968, Apollo 8 became the first human crewed spacecraft to orbit the Moon, setting the stage for Apollo 11’s eventual landing³. Apollo 9 would test out the Lunar Module in low Earth orbit, and Apollo 10 was the rehearsal flight for Apollo 11, doing everything except actually land on the moon.

The amount of effort that went into Apollo 11 is incredible. It probably would not have happened without the cold war and the space race with the Soviet Union, and it proved to be an expensive and eventually unsustainable venture. The final Apollo mission, Apollo 17, landed on the Moon only three and a half years later. Since then, no human has left low Earth orbit. Efforts since then have concentrated on establishing a permanent base in orbit around Earth (culminating in the International Space Station), and sending robotic probes into outer space instead of humans.

It remains to be seen whether Apollo 11 will remain a singular event in human history, or if a human will ever step on the surface of the Moon or another celestial body, like Mars. While NASA and others have programs active with the eventual goal to return to the Moon and go beyond, none of them currently have the hardware capable of doing so.

Not So Fine Fines

After GDPR went into effect last year, a big question remained: How big would the fines for violating it actually be? Now we know: Marriott was fined €123m, and British Airways £183m, for failing to protect private data of EU citizens.

Meanwhile, Facebook has been fined a record-breaking $5 billion by the FTC. But you know it wasn’t big enough because Facebook’s stock price went up after the announcement. Investors clearly believe that the fine won’t affect Facebook in any meaningful way.

For this reason, European officials are now looking at other ways besides fines to change Big Tech’s behavior, including forcing them to change their business models.

Living the High Life, Online

Last time, I wrote about how advertisers track you on the internet, and how they categorize you into certain personas so they can best serve you ads (and, of course, sell them for more). But there’s a way to confuse the trackers, at least temporarily. Firefox has written a tool that allows you to experience the online life of a filthy rich person, doomsday prepper, influencer, or a hypebeast: Track This! (And once you don’t want to be tracked anymore, turn on tracking protection in your browser)

Homegrown Pollution

We know that too much CO2 in the air is bad for the planet, causing rising global temperatures and climate change. But too much CO2 in our homes and offices appears to also have a more immediate effect on us humans. As little as 1000ppm (like in a crowded room, offices, or air-conditioned trains and planes) can be enough to lower cognitive functions, and worse. And at home, another menace lurks, polluting your home: your kitchen appliances, especially your toaster.

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Birth control is easily available, it’s easier than ever to find a hookup thanks to Tinder & co, and sex is everywhere. So why are young people having so little sex?

🦄 Unicorn Chaser 🦄

Stunning photo of a lightning storm with undulating asperitas clouds