Forty years ago today Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first two humans to walk on the moon. It was a stunning technological achievement. It inspired someone more eloquent than me to note that we are a fragile but energetic species, capable of greatness.
That greatness was very hard to see during the 1960s. It was a turbulent and sad decade that saw a president, a senator and civil rights leaders murdered, the United States bogged down in an unwinnable war, riots in the streets and the threat of world destruction seemingly ever-present.
Despite that dismal quagmire of uncertainty and discontent, there was the space program. Sure, it was a military effort to show our technological superiority, but to the average American, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the species of Man would no longer be confined to his home planet. We were going to be space travelers.
Our quest to reach into space reflected a universal longing, a dream of Man ever since he first looked up at the night sky and wondered what was out there. The Apollo 11 moon shot was the fulfillment of that dream, and we all would be along for the ride.
In the Soviet Union and Red China, in Africa and the Western Industrialized Countries, people stopped their daily lives to watch the blurry black and white image of Neil Armstrong descending the ladder of the lunar module Eagle, and moving from the spacecraft’s landing pod onto the dusty surface of another planetary body. Perhaps at no time in history has the human race been so united.
I was in my late teens then. The 1960s had not been an easy time to grow up. (Is any time?) As I watched, along with millions of others, I thought I was witnessing a turning point in human history. Surely now we would all become one, the Family of Man finally truly becoming a family. After all, there are no boundary lines on Earth when seen from space.
I thought landing on the moon would change everything; it would change how we saw ourselves, our planet, and our place in the cosmos.
Forty years on that seems terribly naïve. Wars, poverty, prejudice, religious and racial hatred are not only still with us, they seem to have grown worse. The family of Man is beyond dysfunctional; it often seems suicidal. In the context of human history, the Apollo 11 moon shot is an event out of place. It stands apart from the normal cycles of human behavior.
Perhaps my grandfather understood that. Maybe that’s why, as he was dying of cancer, he told me he had lived at the best possible time in history, because, “I have seen men go from using a horse and buggy to standing on the moon. When else would have been a better time to live?”
To witness the one moment in human history when hatred and divisiveness was set aside certainly was a special time to live. We are a fragile but energetic species, capable of greatness. But [as] history shows us, greatness is an anomaly.
Well, I don’t know: the strides we’ve made in fighting cancer and heart disease over the last 3-4 decades are nothing to be sneezed at. Certainly I know people who wouldn’t be alive now if they’d gotten cancer or heart disease then. Every life saved is a victory (unless or until ObamaCare passes, when every dollar saved in treating non-politicians/non-entertainers will be a victory).
And Vietnam wasn’t unwinnable; it’s just that no one really had the heart to, you know: fight it, instead of phoning it in. Plus, it was being fought by a bunch of uncool guys with short, short hair: total squares. How could they know what they were doing?
Still, I’d like to see us start up again, for real. I love Tang, but I’m not sure it’s enough consolation for letting the Space Program languish. I’d like to see it done, however, with private money.
And it will happen. It will. Human nature will not change, though: re-read your science fiction. There will be wars in space. There will.
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My Grandfather saw Comet Halley both times. The first time as a young fellow in his early teens, the second time he was 83. He was a self made millionaire with an eighth grade education, starting his Coca-Cola bottling works during the depression when my Dad was a little boy. In a place called Glasgow, Montana. The building is still there.
Were’s my powered armor ala Starship Troopers?