The Moon Landing - 40 Years On

Forty years ago today, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. It was, as Armstrong declared, one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. Many people viewed the landing as a prelude to a glorious period for space exploration.

It was, in many ways, a mirage. After five more moon landings to explore and gather data on the lunar surface, circumstances beyond control brought the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to an end. Shortly after the final moon landing in December 1972, the economy began to slow as the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam, then the Arab Oil Embargo put the country in a permanent funk for the rest of the seventies. Apart from the U.S.-Soviet joint hookup in 1975 - does anyone even remember that celestial piece of detente - the U.S. space program was restricted to unmanned flights to explore other planets until the first space shuttle launch - the maiden voyage of the Columbia - in 1981. Unfortunately, most Americans remember the Columbia for a different reason - its disintegration upon re-entry from space in 2003. Rivaling that event for our collective memory was the Challenger disaster of 1986. Forgotten was the fact that the Challenger had earlier taken and returned safely Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. Even people who marvel at the photos sent back from the Hubble Telescope may remember that it didn't work as designed when it was first launch, necessitating a repair job that shouldn't have been required.

I must admit I long for the romance of the moon landings, and I almost agree with Buzz Aldrin's recent insistence that we should set about landing astronauts on Mars so that human eyes get get an up close and personal look at the Red Planet. And we did come up with a lot of invaluable scientific knowledge from the moon landings. That said, the space program, ambitious as it was, always had a preposterous side to it. At best, the moon landing was a moral (or morale) victory in the Cold War in addition to the expansion of scientific knowledge; at worst, it was seen by many as an extension of the Cold War's racist, imperialistic, militaristic attitudes. The Cold War was about white men - the American and Soviet leaderships - trying to pick with each other a fight in which, as Muhammad Ali once noted, the brown people of the world would get caught in the middle of. And couldn't we have spent the money on the lunar program to fight poverty and pay for health care, rather than spend it to send a dozen white men to the moon to drive an all-terrain vehicle and hit a few golf balls?

Well, yeah, but, you got to admit, the moon landing was still cool. So maybe it was all worth it.

I keep wondering when technology will get good enough to build a self-contained, self-propelled spaceship like the Millennium Falcon. :-D 

In the meantime, here are some interesting commemorative moon landing videos.