It’s hard to say which is more remarkable — that men were able to develop the technology to land on the moon and return, or that the nation reached consensus on the goal of a moon landing and stuck with it for a decade. Forty years ago this weekend, the Apollo 11 mission succeeded in putting Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon.
It was a goal the nation had moved toward for decades, and was a logical extension, in a way, of World War II. The war forced huge technological leaps forward, culminating in the development of the nuclear bomb. The United States raced first with the Germans, who were working on their own nuclear weapon, and won. Then after the war, the U.S. pivoted into a standoff with the Soviet Union, where nuclear weapon parity or dominance was sought. Rocketry, as a means of delivering nuclear weapons, soon became important.
When the Soviets’ successfully launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, U.S. military and political leaders were chastened to catch up with and surpass their rival. So on May 25, 1961, when President John Kennedy called for, “before this decade is out … landing a man on the moon and returning him back safely to the Earth,” the motivation may have been as much military as scientific.
Interestingly, Sergei Khrushchev, son of Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev, claims Mr. Kennedy approached his father in 1961 and 1963 about a joint U.S.-Soviet venture in space exploration. Mr. Krushchev reportedly accepted the second Kennedy offer, but the president was assassinated before it could be formalized.
Among other things, the Apollo success demonstrates that contrary to current public skepticism, government-sponsored programs can achieve great things. In fact, the moon landing was the result of a dynamic relationship between government and private industry. Just as the Pentagon does with the national defense, NASA relied heavily on private contractors such as Grumman, General Electric and others.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was formed in 1958 as a response to the Soviet’s Sputnik success. This civil aeronautical division, conceived as separate from military research and development, merged some existing entities and began with an annual budget of $100 million. There was tragedy in 1967, as three astronauts burned to death in a launch simulation for what would be Apollo 1. After Apollo, NASA focused on building a space station, Skylab, and then developed the shuttle program, which often undertakes commercial missions.
In the July 12 New York Times Book Review, Thomas Mallon reviewed two books on the subject, “Rocket Men” and “Voices From The Moon.” He writes that after the moon landings of 1969 and the early 1970s, the program stopped cold. “Since 1972, no human has traveled beyond low-Earth orbit, a situation that makes one imagine what things might be like if, after Lindbergh’s flight, the species had contentedly gone back to making do with boats and trains.” Mr. Mallon also writes that CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite reacted to the moon landing by predicting, “everything else that has happened in our time is going to be an asterisk.” Instead, the reviewer notes, the moon landing has become a footnote to the 1960s.
During the Age of Exploration, Champlain, Hudson, DeSoto and others sought knowledge of the world for its own sake. Their ventures were a manifestation of the Age of Enlightenment, when secular humanism dominated thinking. Yet they also were very much in the commercial development business. With this in mind, future space exploration should have a clear-eyed cost-benefit analysis and consider private sector partnerships.
Some of the players in the moon mission suggest today that space exploration might have captured the public imagination longer had NASA communicated in more poetic terms the grandeur and romance of leaving Earth. The “Star Trek” TV series, airing 1966-1969, tapped into this, with the fictional future space ship’s mission “to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Today, shuttle missions are often bumped to a corner of the TV screen by a high-speed car chase; so much for strange and bold.
Astonishment at the achievement of the moon landing is an appropriate response on this 40th anniversary. And inspiration. What might Americans, or nations working together, achieve by chasing the big dreams of today? And what might they be? Inexpensive energy? Reversing climate change? A cure for cancer?
The moon landing set the bar high for human achievement — which is exactly where it should be.