It was 43 years ago today that the world held its collective breath as Neil Armstrong guided the Eagle landing craft down to the moon’s surface. Although most of us didn’t know it at the time, landing on the moon that day was actually a very near thing, as Armstrong discovered that the planned landing site was strewn with dangerous boulders and he had precious little time to find an alternate site.
With less than 30 seconds of fuel left, the footpads of the Lunar Module touched the surface of the moon and man had achieved what seems even today, the most stunning technological triumph in human history. A thousand years from now, the 20th century may be remembered for only a couple of things; one of them is certainly going to be the voyage of Apollo 11.
Veteran space journalist Jay Barbree gives an account of the day:
Forty-three years ago, Neil Armstrong moved slowly down the ladder. He was in no hurry. He would be stepping onto a small world that had never been touched by life. A landscape where no leaf had ever drifted, no insect had ever scurried, where no blade of green had ever waved, where even the raging fury of a thermonuclear blast would sound no louder than a falling snowflake.
Across a vacuum-wide 240,000 miles, billions of eyes were transfixed on black-and-white televisions. They were watching this ghostly figure moving phantomlike, closer and closer, and then, three and a half feet above the moon’s surface, jump off the ladder. Neil Armstrong’s boots hit the moon at 10:56 p.m. ET, July 20, 1969.
All motion stopped. He spoke: “That’s one small step for a man — one giant leap for mankind.”
Lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin stayed aboard Eagle to keep watch on all the lander’s systems. The LM was Aldrin’s responsibility, and as soon as it was safe for him to leave their lander, he came down the ladder and joined Armstrong.
“Beautiful, beautiful! Magnificent desolation,” Aldrin said with feeling. He stared at a sky that was the darkest of blacks. No blue. No green. No birds flying across an airless landscape. There were many shades of gray and areas of utter black where rocks cast their shadows from an unfiltered sun, but no real color. And there was the lack of gravity. They seemed to weigh a little more than nothing. In spite of their cumbersome spacesuits, both astronauts found moving about in the one-sixth gravity exhilarating and described the experience as floating.
Armstrong had strong doubts that he’d make it back alive, while behind the scenes, NASA gave the mission only a 66% chance for success. Some of the individual engineers and scientists were even less charitable in their assessment of the mission’s chances. President Nixon had a speech all ready to deliver if the worst happened:
Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon in explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.Those two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.
They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, hut our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and will remain the foremost in our hearts.
For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”
Thankfully, Nixon’s heartfelt address is just an historical curiosity.
NASA wouldn’t dare take those kinds of chances today. This is one reason why we won’t be watching any manned space flights in America until at least 2014 and more likely, 2015. Plans to return to the moon are on the back burner and forget about going to Mars for the next couple of decades.
Space news for the foreseeable future will be dominated by private companies and their efforts to get the commercial use of space off the ground. But even they would admit that they are only standing on the shoulders of giants who paved the way for our current efforts to live, work, and explore the cosmos.
NASA’s new mission: Muslim outreach while the Russians charge us outrageously to take our guys to the space station we built using the same boosters Yuri Gargarin beat us to orbit riding… just not the same, is it?
And their boosters were built in shipyards out of steel. How did they deal with the extra weight? Slap one more engine on the ass.
While we burned through titanium and aluminum, they wasted steel, which is made of iron, which constitutes most of planet earth.
That’s why they still have a space program. They can’t afford to waste the money our government wastes on every single thing it does. Right now, they’re turning a healthy profit using nasty old capitalist principles against us.
That’s pretty frikkin’ ironic, ain’t it? The Russians using rational apolitical methods of design, while our bureaucracies fight one another over who can spend more to achieve less?
I wonder just how much titanium rots at the bottom of the Atlantic?
Forget NASA. The future is being made today in Mojave.
Forget Mojave (and the rest of California). The future is being made in New Mexico and Texas.
http://mojaveairport.com/lease-build/active-tenants/
http://www.scaled.com/
http://xcor.com/about_us/spaceport.html
And http://www.stratolaunch.com/
We are going into space. You’re talking about going into space. There is a difference.
But, but, but: the Constitution doesn’t say anything about space travel; that’s just some more of that big government stuff that “true conservatives” want to do away with and Nixon’s speech just shows that the establishment Republicans were for this assault on the small government intended by The Founders.
See, I wrote it for them!
I was sitting with my grandma, who was born in 1893, watching the TV sideways, so we could see what was going on (the direct feed from the camera was tilted 90 degrees, because of the way it was mounted. Eventually, they figured out how to right it, because the picture was so grainy, tilted on its side, you really couldn’t see much, unless you already knew what you were looking at). I asked her how she must feel, since when she was born, there were only horses for transportation, and only birds and bats flew.
She remembered that her father didn’t believe man could really fly until he finally saw a plane with his own eyes, which was sometime around WWI. Looking back, couldn’t we use more of that ol’ skepticism today? How did we become so flippant and gullible?
Here we were, watching it all as it happened. She thought seeing it right there on TV was a far greater thing than the flight, which she thought a logical extension of the Wright brothers (a physics genius, She was not).
I was slightly taken aback, since I had never even seen her watch TV in my life until that day. She was alays sitting in her rocker, reading.
She hated TV. Yet, in all her life, she thought that was the greatest thing she’d witnessed. Because you can only trust what you see, and if she could witness this, as it happened, then that was something special.
Well, Grandma, we know better, now. You can’t trust that, either.
People I knew who were involved with the mission through their work with government contractors told me they were pretty damn sure they could get Armstrong et al to and even on the moon; they were much less sure about bringing them home.
I will confess to being less awe-struck than the average viewer that day. I always felt it was proper and natural for man to reach out into space and that the moon was the logical first step and we were the logical nation to take that step. I had great faith in our ability to overcome whatever obstacles presented themselves. I remember thinking this is a fabulous first step. Oh well, that was then…
I’m an aerospace engineer but I am not old enough to have worked on the Apollo/Saturn project or on the original design of the Space Shuttle. But I did spend a few years working for Rockwell doing engineering work on some of the later Shuttle missions. During that time I had the wonderful opportunity to work closely with a few older engineers and analysts that were around during the Apollo/Saturn programs. It was fascinating to hear their stories about all of the crazy things that happened during that time.
The thing I remember most about those old timers was that they were all top-shelf engineers and analysts. Sadly, they seemed to be much more capable than the typical aerospace engineers today. I am thoroughly convinced that the only reason the Apollo/Saturn projects had such a successful track record was because of the high caliber of the engineers, technicians and crews assigned to the program. Landing men on the moon and returning them safely using the technology available in the 1960′s was a truly amazing feat. I don’t honestly believe it could be duplicated today with the same budget and schedule, given the sorry current state of the U.S. aerospace industry. The U.S. aerospace industry now consists mostly of Powerpoint engineers and managers.
While working at the Rockwell plant in Downey, CA I would occasionally walk through the labs and test facilities left over from the Apollo program. They were government properties so Rockwell kept them maintained in good condition, and it was like walking back in time. I swear I could feel the ghosts of those old engineers and technicians, with their flat top haircuts, white short-sleeve shirts and skinny ties.
Oh the glory days of American aerospace engineering………..
While they were walking in the wasteland of the moon, I was walking in the wasteland of China Beach, Danang, South Vietnam.