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Unit 10 A Glimpse of the Age
Part I Getting ready
In 1969, one of the greatest
technological achievements of the
human
race was accomplished. A human first set foot on
another
celestial body.
Audioscript
：
Thirty-five years ago, on
July 20. 1969. humans first set foot on another
world. U.S. Apollo 11 astronaut Neil
Armstrong descended from a
landing
craft named
moon, a momentous event he
eloquently consecrated.
During their
two-and-a-half hour moonwalk, the Apollo crewmen
planted the U.S. flag in the soil and
received a phone call from
President
Richard Nixon, who paid tribute to what he called
their
immense feat.
man's world. For one
priceless moment in the whole history of man, all
the people on this Earth are truly one,
one in their pride in what you
have
done.
21.5 hours after
descent, astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin fired
their
ascent rockets and rejoined
Michael Collins aboard the orbiting
what Mr. Armstrong has
called Apollo 11's lasting legacy.
humanity is not forever
chained to this planet, and our visions go rather
further than that and our opportunities
are unlimited.
Part II
Standing on the moon
Alan
Shepard is a U.S. astronaut, who walked on the
moon in 1971.
In an interview, Alan
Shepard reminisced about his experience on
the moon.
Audioscript
：
On February 4, 1971, Alan
Shepard, commander of the Apollo 14 space
mission, became the fifth person to
walk on the moon. He and fellow
astronaut Edgar Mitchell spent nine
hours and 2 3 minutes in space suits
on
the lunar surface. Their major job was to gather
and photograph
samples of the materials
on the moon's surface, including rocks and
stones, to take back to geologists on
earth.
When he was asked
about his lunar experience, Mitchell said,
did for me is really force me to get a
picture of the universe from a
totally
different perspective and then start to question
our conventional
ways of looking at
ourselves, our place in the universe, our place in
life,
what it's all about.
A year and a half earlier, on July 20,
1969, the astronauts of Apollo 11
had
made the first landing on the moon. At that time,
Commander Neil
Armstrong was the first
person to walk on the moon. As he took his first
step out of the lunar module, he
radioed these words to the earth:
In a July 1994
interview with a writer for the New York Times,
Alan
Shepard talked about looking at
earth:
fact that it looks so peaceful
from that distance, but remembering on the
other hand all the confrontation going
on all over that planet and feeling
a
little sad that people on planet Earth couldn't
see that same sight
because obviously
all the military and political differences become
so
insignificant seeing it from the
distance.
Audioscript
：
T -- Terry Gross A -- Alan
Shepard
T
：
What surprised you most about how the
surface of the moon
looked?
A
：
I
don't think we had any surprises about the actual
surface of the
moon -- about the
barrenness. We had looked at pictures of our
landing site taken by previous
missions. We had worked with
models
that were made from those pictures. We knew the
general
configuration of where the
craters were supposed to be. We knew
the objective of Cone Crater, which was
the one we climbed up
the side of to
get rock samples. There weren't any surprises
there.
The surprise I had was standing
on the surface after we'd been
there
for a few minutes, having a chance to rest a
little bit, and
looking up at the earth
for the first time -- you have to look up
because that's where it is. And the sky
is totally black, and here
you have a
planet which is four times the size of the moon as
we
look at it from the earth, and you
also have color. You have a blue
ocean(s) and the brown landmasses --
the brown continents -- and
you can see
ice on the ice caps on the North Pole, and so on.
It's
just an absolute, incredible view,
and then you say -- ah -- hey --
um --
that looks a little small to me. It looks like it
-- it does have
limits. It's a little
fragile. You know, down here we think it's
infinite. We don't worry about
resources um. Up there you're
saying,
get along together -- ah -- and think
about trying to conserve, to
save what
limited resources they have.
emotional.
I actually shed a couple of tears looking up at
the earth
and having those feelings.
Part III Nelson Mandela --
The Father
of South Africa
freedom, I knew if I didn't
leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd
still be in prison,
prisoner-
turned-president reconciled South Africa after the
end of the
apartheid. He held a special
place in the consciousness of the nation and
the world. On the evening of 5
December, 2013, Nelson Mandela joined
the ancestors.
Audioscript
：
Just before midnight local
time in South Africa, President Jacob Zuma
appeared on national television to
announce that the father of modern
South Africa had died. Nelson Mandela
was 95.
Jacob Zuma: Fellows
of Africans, our beloved Nelson Rolihlahla
Mandela, the founding president of our
democratic nation, has departed.
Nelson Mandela had been suffering from
a lung infection for some time.
He
spent three months in hospital earlier this year
before being allowed
home for treatment
in September. The news of his death may have been
expected, but that didn't soften the
blow for many South Africans.
The South African president Jacob Zuma
made a televised speech
announcing
details of Mr Mandela's funeral.
Jacob Zuma: He'll be laid to rest on
the 15th of December in Qunu in
the
Eastern Cape Province. We should all work together
to organize the
most befitting funeral
for this outstanding son of our country and the
father of our young nation.
Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in jail,
imprisoned by the white
minority
government to serve his efforts to fight injustice
of apartheid.
By the time he gained his
freedom in 1990, he'd captured the
imagination of people around the world.
His greatest achievement was
to then
take South Africa into a new era without the
widespread
bloodshed that had been
feared.
The memorial
service for former South African President Nelson
Mandela is set to be one of the largest
gatherings of its kind in
generations.
Tens of thousands of mourners and almost 100
foreign
leaders are expected to attend
the event at the FNB stadium in
Johannesburg.
Audioscript
：
The person I admire most in
the world is Nelson Mandela. He was the
President of South Africa during the
1990s, but before that he spent
more
than 25 years, I think, in prison. He was put in
prison because of
his political
beliefs. He wanted to get equal rights for black
people in
South Africa, and the
government put him in prison because of his
political views ... um ... he was a
lawyer before he went to prison and he
represented himself at his trial. Some
of the things he said during his
trial
were amazing. They're still famous speeches, I
think.
The reason that I
admire him is that in spite of the fact that he
spent
such a long time in prison he
never changed his views. It would've been
quite easy for him to perhaps stop
campaigning for the rights of black
people, but he never did that. Right
until the end of his time in prison,
he
was still campaigning. When I went to South
Africa, I met somebody
who was in
prison with him and it was amazing to hear about
how they
were ... they found it so easy
to forgive the government and the people
who'd put them in prison, they weren't
bitter or angry about it.