Wrapping up Apollo

[fleetfootmike]

It's been a while, due to a trip to the US and not having the kind of keyboard that encourages long-winded typing... Also, I was kind of waiting till after I'd been to Kennedy...

The Apollo program is a story of many things: chief among them are personal courage (though I suspect most of the astronauts would deny that - Armstrong certainly avoids the public limelight chiefly because he doesn't want to be seen as a hero), and a measure of what can be done as a team if the will is there. Part of me wonders if (say) Obama laid down such a challenge in 2009, would it be possible to hit a similar target in 7 years starting from scratch? Clearly the technology is much more advanced - the AGC makes my watch look smart, even the Shuttle runs on 8086s... but I wonder if we aren't so enmeshed with caution and politics as to make an achievement like Apollo impossible. Which rather saddens me. Kennedy's speech was a great challenge, and I sometimes think the words that we most need today are the ones that come after "... not because they are easy, but because they are hard".

"...because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win..."

I have many friends who have not lived through a Moon landing - you only have to be 36 to be born after Apollo 17 (and only 23 to be born after the disaster that befell its namesake). People will live and die (if they're unlucky) before we go back. Sadly, Gene Cernan wasn't as right as he hoped:

"As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come — but we believe not too long into the future — I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record — that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."

(Amusingly, his last words before lift-off were the much more earthy "Let's get this mother out of here.".)

So...

Learn. Teach your kids (if you have any) about what happened forty years ago (my son now has a 3' high Saturn V bought voluntarily out of his own money, and the sight of him wandering the Apollo/Saturn V Center at Kennedy in complete awe was wonderful). If you haven't, you owe it to yourself to watch one or more of Apollo 13, From The Earth To The Moon and Magnificent Desolation (if you can get to see this in IMAX 3D, as at Kennedy, it's absolutely awesome). Several of the Apollo astronauts have written (or had ghosted) autobiographies: Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Charlie Duke (I now have a signed copy of this), Al Bean, Pete Conrad, Dave Scott, Gene Cernan, Al Worden (a poetry book that's as rare as hens' teeth), Ed Mitchell, Jim Irwin... and also Flight Controller Gene Kranz's excellent 'Failure Is Not An Option'. Missing from that list? the main one is Neil Armstrong, though he has an authorized biography.

We will not, should not, forget the story of the Apollo missions.

Now the rest is up to us, and there's a future to be won.
We will turn our faces outward, we will do what must be done.
For no cradle lasts forever, every bird must learn to fly,
And we're going to the stars - see our fire in the sky.
--- "Fire In The Sky", Jordin Kare

We will go back.

Comments

[luis-mw.livejournal.com]

What he said!

Or, to quote myself, writing a couple of years back, after Columbia...

As dreamingcrow said, "Space is a place that a lot of us dream about." That is true for me, and for many others. It is also much more than that, for me, it is a hope for humanity. The same hope that led our ancestors to hollow out a log, get into it and see what lies over the water, to wrap furs around themselves and see what lies beyond that mountain. This is the hope that drives us to explore the unknown and to grow in that exploration.

The ancients looked at the stars and planets and wondered. They built great structures to measure and track their positions. This has been happening for thousands of years, and yet, we have only been exploring space for less than fifty years. All of manned exploration has taken place in my lifetime. We have fitted outriggers and an elementary sail to our hollowed out log, but we have a long way to go still. And we will.

[batyatoon]

This.

Yes.

[grey-lady.livejournal.com]

It's one of the things I tote up on the positive side for turning 50 last month.