Reflections on the New Moon Landing
After more than 50 years, a spacecraft from America landed on the moon. Since 1972 and the end of the Apollo missions, America has not revisited the moon. This, of course, is extra special as it was private industry that made and paid for the endeavor in collaboration with NASA. This is the first commercial spacecraft to ever soft-land on the moon. It is the first step in the next chapter of colonizing the moon. The private-public partnership is the new model.
First, congratulations to the hundreds, if not thousands of employees at Intuitive Machines, SpaceX and NASA who had anything to do with this monumental success! You know who you are, and kudos to every single person from Mission Control down to the data input and maintenance personnel, as something like this takes everyone doing their jobs to perfection. Bravo!! Well done!!
This aging Boomer – along with many other front-end Boomers- have formative memories of the space race. The space race with the Russians. A race to the moon. I clearly remember going outside with my parents – before bedtime but with a night sky – to watch the Russian Satellite Sputnik move across the dark sky. We could see it with the naked eye due to the low orbit. The Russians did it first!
The Space Race
I remember the front-page news in April 1961 that Yuri Gagarin had been sent into orbit. The first man in space and in orbit. The Russians did it first!
I remember a month later when Alan Shepard – the cool dude of the Mercury 7 astronauts- was sent on a short, parabolic trip into space. It wasn’t even an orbit spacecraft, just a quick trip.
Then, close to a year later, John Glenn was sent into orbit. I remember listening to Glenn live on my transistor radio, which we had been allowed to bring to school that day as history was being made. For some reason, I remember him thanking the Australians in Perth who turned all the lights on in the middle of the night as a form of greeting as he flew far overhead. It was a magical day. A day when America caught up to the Russians.
Then, of course, came the day when American astronauts landed on the moon. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong first, and Buzz Aldrin second stepped onto the moon's surface. I remember being at a friend’s house as we watched the sketchy black-and-white images as Armstrong [ what an appropriate all-American name!] stepped onto the surface.
What was he going to say? What words have been decided? Will he say something about America beating the Russians? That was what we were all waiting to hear as that first boot print was made:
“One small step for man. One giant step for mankind.”
Wow! What a big statement! Equate America with mankind!
One of the few moments in life when the hugeness of history was being felt and shared by tens of millions of people. Something had been overcome. Something had ended. Something was beginning. A vision was started. And, of course…. we beat the Russians!
[Russia never put a cosmonaut on the moon].
The Space Race was a big deal. The U.S. and the Soviet Union. The competition between a democratic and capitalistic country and a communist one. The West versus the East. Much has been written and spoken about the reality that it was this competition that drove the U.S. No question.
The U.S. won the competition in the summer of 1969, and then by the end of 1972, we stopped going to the moon. Why? Did we lose interest as we had won the race? Did we stop because of the battle of expenditures? The Vietnam War was the new battle against Communism so we had to put money to war. Then the “guns and butter” argument kicked in. Why spend more money to go to the moon when we had won the race? Each mission to the moon costs a lot, and that money could better be spent fighting the Viet Cong in a civil war or the social net of America.
We won. We stopped going. We left.
“2001: A Space Odyssey”
The movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” came out in 1968. It was one of the top-grossing movies in that year – second to “Funny Girl”. As we all know, the movie largely took place in the year 2001, with regular commercial flights from Earth to the moon. Now, within the context of the Space Race, the visions that Kubrick created of a moon base in 2001 seemed perfectly realistic and possible.
Yet, we stopped going, so that vision of Kubrick’s has yet to happen. If asked back in 1969 if I thought I might make it to the moon in my lifetime, I would have answered “possibly”, as it was a possibility based on Kubrick’s vision. If it had taken eight years to go from the first manned flight to landing on the moon, why couldn’t commercial travel to the moon be probable in 30 years. Made sense.
Since then, I have thought that the U.S., and humanity lost something big when we stopped going to the moon. We lost a unifying vision as a species. We lost the wonder of exploration of space. We took away the one thing that could unify all humans.
Now, with this new soft moon landing, we open up, or restart, the vision quest.
Bravo!