From time to time it is claimed in connection with an event — usually a demonstration of some sort — that “the whole world is watching.” Practically always, the whole world isn’t. But the whole world certainly was watching 40 years ago this week.
By now you’ve been reminded scores, maybe hundreds, of times that this is the anniversary of the first landing of men on the moon.
I remember that hot summer’s night. My Explorer Scout post, which was attached to the local volunteer fire department, had spent the evening working on the tanker truck we were restoring; it would bring water to brushfires. Then some of us went to the Lundsted home to watch the moon landing. The Lundsteds had a big color television. It never occurred to us that the images from the moon would be in black-and-white.
Think for a second: We had built an enormous rocket, the biggest successful rocket ever. We had put three guys in a little flattened cone on top. We had lit the rocket and sent them to a moving target a quarter of a million miles away. They would orbit it for awhile, then two of them would climb into a ridiculous-looking, extremely fragile contraption, and actually land on that moving target. And then they would come back home in perfect shape.
And while they were on the moon, the two guys would actually transmit television signals that we could see!
The whole idea was entirely absurd in 1969. There was so much new technology involved that it couldn’t all work. But it did.
It is breathtaking to consider, even now. Especially now, because our flights to the moon — there would be five in all — were followed by something even more absurd: our abandonment of the moon.
A few years ago I did a commentary for National Public Radio, and in preparation for that broadcast I did a small survey. I discovered that there were more sites on the Worldwide Web devoted to the claim that we never went to the moon at all than there are describing that truly momentous accomplishment.
It is easy so see why people might think the landings were faked. Anyone under the age of 36 was born after the last Apollo flight to the moon. Never in human history has mankind done something so remarkable, so advanced, made such a stride, then turned around and walked away from it. Going to the moon and abandoning it is contrary to our nature.
Until 40 years ago this week, we had vision. After that, we seem to have gone blind. Instead of establishing a presence on the moon, we created the goofy space shuttle, the most expensive way to discover that low Earth orbit doesn’t have much to offer. To justify the space shuttle, we have the International Space Station, an orbiting white elephant which was supposed to be the locus of all kinds of science but which has proved to be good for nothing that wants doing. Now my erstwhile colleague Joel Achenbach reports in The Washington Post that we’ll knock the thing down in a Skylab-style fireball in 2016.
Suppose we had put the same investment of time and treasure into a base on the moon. There is no better platform for a telescope, and one there would surely have done the Hubble Space Telescope one better. We have had the SETI — Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence — program, but it listens for signals weaker than those made by a fluorescent light a hundred miles away. The moon is free of such interference.
There is so much that we could do on the moon. Our presence there would be good for science, it would be good for technology and industry, and it would be good for our souls. That having gone to the moon we turned away is a crime against the best in humanity.
Every couple of years I re-read one of my favorite nonfiction books, Apollo: The Race to the Moon, by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox. I recommend it highly. The book describes all that went into the seemingly impossible task of fulfilling the martyred President Kennedy’s promise to put a man on the moon by 1970 and return him safely to Earth. It is difficult to write a book that has all the aspects of a thriller and that keeps the reader excited when the reader already knows the outcome. But Murray and Cox pulled it off. If you can find a copy, get it and read it. You won’t be disappointed.
Well, you won’t be disappointed in the book. You will be disappointed in the “leaders” who in an abdication of leadership failed to follow through on what now, due to that lack of follow through, could be characterized as little more than a stunt.
This week we remember the anniversary of one of mankind’s greatest triumphs. Let us not forget the intervening years and remember, too, that it all turned into one of mankind’s greatest failures.