h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Afternoon all,

What do posters regard as The greatest journey a person, or group, has undertaken?

For me personally it was Apollo 11. Allowing for all the training my mind cannot comprehend what Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins must have felt at 'lift-off' into the unknown .

I liked Aldrin,s (alledged) remark that as the giant Saturn 5 trembled beneath them he realised that " the whole damned thing had been built by the guys who put in the lowest tender" apocryphal I expect.

Novo

Death.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I would have to agree with PC....

It is the only journey we make truly on our own.

No passport required, you can't take anything with you, you don't have to worry about anyone stealing your wallet, and you don't have to worry about whether you can speak the language.

Interesting idea you two,, but I was thinking of journeys those who made them intended to survive!

Is it the right moment to bring up The Land Before Time?

P.S. Gagarin > Armstrong. 'nuff.

We're on it

Our vessel is called 'Spaceship Earth'

Bon voyage to us all!

I'm always pretty impressed by the Shackleton expedition, even more the survival and rescue mission after it all went wrong.



blub-blub

I agree with you novo, and I guess Chris Columbus and Magellan stand out also. Especially Chris, since he knowingly faked the estimate of the circumference of the Earth so that he could get Queen Isabella and Co. to buy into his mission. He's really lucky they found the New World first, because otherwise his starving sailors would have had toasted on his liver before feeding the leftovers to the fishies...

"journeys those who made them intended to survive"

Ahhh... but how do you know you don't?

I would have to think about this question a while to choose one greatest.

I am in awe if those going deep into the darkest ocean bottoms, those going to both poles and into space
First submarine ride must have been daunting.

Columbus Day is becoming increasingly irritating for obvious reasons. Why not honor explorers?

I would like the US ( World too) to have an Explorers Day and fly an earth flag(the astronauts picture off earth from space).

We need to do more to get people moving and exploring the sciences hands on, encourage positive risk taking and new interests in the sciences

particle physicists, exploring smaller and smaller distances.

Morning Mudhooks,

Nice one, and I mentally predicted that would be posted after nos 2 & 3. Congrat's anyway, you get the prize - but no cigar!

Novo

Morning Taliesin,

Liked you post too...... absolutely right of course,

Another great journey was that of Stanley down the course of the river Congo. How that man survived is beyond me. Whether he *deserved* to survive is of course a different story - given the brutality of his treatment of the indigenous tribes he met along the way, and the huge number of his own people killed during his expedition. He then joined forces with the execrable King Leopold of Belgium in a naked attempt to subjugate the whole region, setting off the land-grab for Africa that the world is still coming to terms with 150 years later.

Who says great journeys have to be performed just by nice people?

I think the physical journey you make to tell people you're gay for the first time is pretty amazing and it's something that you never get to do again. Not always pleasant but usually amazing and certainly memorable

The colonisation of the pacific islands....
BCNU - Crescent

<> (Iago)

I think I'd count that as more of a personal journey. Which I also think are some of the greatest journeys we can make. To truly understand ourselves and discover who we are and how to live well within our specific societies.


az

What I meant was actually travelling to the place where you intend to tell people i.e the walk into the living room to tell your parents, or the bus journey into school the day you decide to tell your friends

I have great admiration for women travellers of the 18th and 19th centuries (as well as some who did so in the 17th century) who, at a a period when men were perceived as the "adventurers", travelled to remote and dangerous places, often alone.

Isabella Bird (perhaps the most published woman writer of her age) http://www.ganesha-publishing.com/bird_intro.htm

Lady Wortley Montague (began her travels in 1717; we also have to thank her for bringing us the smallpox vaccine) http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Lady%20Mary%20Wortley%20Montague

Margaret Fountaine (who cycled alone over the Alps, fending off one amorous fellow with her umbrella - her bequest of her collection of 22000 butterflies and caterpillars, collected around the world and now called The Fountaine-Neimy Collection, to the Norfolk Museum)

Mary Kingsley (who was saved when she fell in a tiger trap and was saved by her thick woolen skirt and carried in her hat a severed toe given her my a "cannibal king") http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa011002a.htm

Alexandra David-Neel, the first foreign woman to reach Lhasa, capital of Tibet, in 1926 at the age of 57. http://www.alexandra-david-neel.org/anglais/acca.htm

Marianne North, whose drawings and paintings of plants reside at Kew Gardens in their own pavillian

Anna Leonowens

Amelia Edwards

Just to name a few....
http://www.trotamundas.com/travelers.htm