Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages
Paine was instrumental in acquiring the Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages which rest on the lunar surface today. He personally corresponded with world leaders and coordinated the efforts to enshrine the messages on a tiny silicon disc manufactured by the Sprague Electric Company of North Adams, Massachusetts. Paine's name is also etched onto the disc. Paine discussed the idea of the messages with the State Department's U. Alexis Johnson. A high level committee determined that a plaque declaring that "We Came in Peace for all Mankind" and the planting of a U.S. flag on the Moon were to be part of the ceremonial activities for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface.
Read more about this topic: Thomas O. Paine
Famous quotes containing the words apollo, goodwill and/or messages:
“blue bead on the wick,
there’s that in me that
burns and chills, blackening
my heart with its soot,
I think sometimes not Apollo heard me
but a different god.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practises. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.”
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“The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits in thunder,
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
From livid curtain’s hue, a tangram emerges: a country.””
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)