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On This Day, 53 Years Ago, America Landed a Man on the Moon
This is perhaps the most momentous achievement in the history of America. To date, no other country has landed its astronauts on the Moon. Landing ours was only the first tiny step for humanity in its journey to the stars. May it not be the last. And may America be the leader on that great quest.
God Bless America, the Greatest Country on God’s Green (and getting greener) Earth.
Published in History
Despite all the talk and billions (trillions?) being spent, I don’t think there is any point to manned space flight. I say that as someone who loves amateur astronomy and the triumph of being first to the moon. I loved the chest-pounding vibrations of a shuttle launch. But what do we gain by going again? There’s no point to being second, or doing it a second time. Finding water on the moon? There’s a lot more and a lot cheaper water on earth. Finding water on the moon so that we can go to Mars? But what would we gain by manned exploration of Mars that cannot be done cheaper and faster by robotic probes? Mars probes are much cheaper than a manned mission because they don’t have to protect and sustain a human crew for years. And Mars probes don’t require the time-consuming, step-by-step approach of building a base on the moon and testing each phase that a manned crew would require.
Sadly, I think we should shut down manned spaceflight and focus on two areas where space is important and/or exciting:
1 ) Earth-orbiting satellites are vital to everything we do today.
2) Deep space exploration by robotic probes and telescopes – I’m not sure that the scientific results justify the costs, if I look at it in a hard-headed accountant’s view. I’m not sure it’s worth borrowing money from our enemy China to do it. But it sure is fun to see the latest images and read of the discoveries.
I remember watching it at a friends home. I was still in high school but had a driver’s license so I was footloose and fancy free. Incredible.
I worked on the command and service module reaction control systems during the development and testing of the components.
As I watched the events on TV, I was next to a window and could also look out and see the moon and think that is happening up there!
Not an unusual opinion; many felt that way in the 60s. They didn’t care about ceding the Moon landing to the Soviets any more than some don’t care today about ceding Mars to the Chinese Communists. Just for the sake of history’s evaluation of our era, I’d prefer that the planets were first visited by people from free lands whose system of governance and economics were practically and morally superior.
The hard-headed accountant cannot quantify beauty and awe and mystery, which is why a member of that tribe is never elected Pope.
Humanity requires frontiers to explore, in person. When there are no more frontiers, humanity stagnates and dies. Just look at Western Europe today. We need to keep exploring all the frontiers still open to us, including under the seas, and space.
I should clarify that I don’t think there is any point to manned spaceflight NOW. There was a lot of value in our free and prosperous society being first to the moon in the competition with the Soviet Union. And there were a lot of economic and technological spinoffs. But I don’t see that manned spaceflight today is producing the spinoff benefits. Now the technological advancements are happening in other sectors and being applied to spaceflight, so it’s become an economic drain not a catalytic driver of economic growth.
I’ve been forever irked with Neil Armstrong because he was scheduled to make his Moon walk after midnight Eastern Standard Time which was my eleventh birthday. He just couldn’t hold back his excitement to get out and roam. Who in their right minds planned for the crew to take a nap right after landing on the Moon anyway?? What were they thinking? Oh well, I had to settle for it happening on my birthday in the European Time Zone.
We might find Dilithium Crystals.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s impossible to discover some kind of FTL system until we’ve gotten a fair distance from the sun.
I saw this in Imax and suddenly felt catapulted back to my time in the early 70’s as the family was stationed at the Cape during the summer and fall of 71. So much activity, excitement, and wonderous possibilities. It was a future that appealed over the grubbiness of the political zeitgeist of that era.
It still does. Because we have still sent a man to the moon, and none of the “if we coulds” that were used to berate that achievement, despite all of the spending on those “betterment” goals since have been achieved.
Man is flawed, and Utopia is not of this earth, It’s time the left get over it.
There are a number of reasons why we should continue manned spaceflight. At the deepest level, until we get humanity out of this one world, we will forever be at risk of an extinction level event. Slightly up from that at a visceral level @rushbabe49 said it quite well. When we lose the desire to see what is over the next rise we stagnate as a people. This can happen at the personal level, the national level, and at the human race level. I hope that last never happens, because while I’d much rather the US continue to lead the exploration and gathering of resources in space, if it ends up being the Chinese or someone else, that is better than no one. It will happen, or we die off as a species. Our nature is to expand and grow and when we stop doing that, we die. Establishing lunar and orbital colonies, exploring the asteroids and extracting resources from them will drive economic activity on a scale that is much more massive than what we see now. It will be disruptive of course. There was a new story of an asteroid that was found that has a massive amount of gold in it. $10,000 Quadrillion is the current estimate. That single asteroid has more value in it than the entire economy of Earth, 133,000 times more. Sure we can do some of it remotely, but possession is 9/10th of the law and when someone goes there and puts up a habitat the game changes.
I got to watch a shuttle launch from the causeway too.
STS 74 the Atlantis. The pilot James Halsell had been one of the pilots in my squadron who I had flown with a number of times. ( he had an unfortunate life after NASA).
Wife and I also saw a launch from the town of Cape Canaveral of an Atlas. Was not expecting much, but it was really an impressive launch too. Either way I plan on making a launch of either the SpaceX Starship, or the new SLS ( if it ever manages to get off the ground).
Utopia. Coined by Thomas More in 1516 as the title of his book about an island where everything is perfect. Based on from Greek ou “not” + topos “place”.
Literally, no place.
” I’m not sure the investment justifies the cost “
Queen Isabella’s accountant.
We also need gravitic drive . . .
I’d just returned to the US from my first two foreign assignments, newly married and we watched enraptured. I’d been in Dallas prior to joining the FS when JFK was assassinated. Had he stayed alive maybe we’d have dismembered the team we pulled together to make that adventure such an incredible success. But we didn’t and after that, rot took over not just in NASA, but in general. We celebrated what the Federal government could do without understanding why and how and where it was going to take us. That’s the beginning of the end even more than TR and Wilson. Sour puss. Yea but we have to learn from the big stuff.
Heck, I’d settle for contra-grav to negate gravity, or see if carbon nanotubes have the tensile strength to build a space elevator.
1969 was a busy summer. My cousin Steve died in a car accident the week before the moon landing.
August 17 we had Hurricane Camille hit our area. As the storm approached I accidently fell on a wooden sword that went 2 inches into my skull just below my right eyeball. (Another cousin and I were sword fighting during commercials for the pirate movie Double Crossbones with Donald O’Connor). I remember the ER doctor (as he was stitching the wound) was as mad as hornet saying he could think of better things to be doing with a blanking hurricane coming in.
Folks up north had Woodstock going on at the same time. That didn’t mean anything to a pre-teen Southern boy, but it was a milestone to some.
Perfect!
We were at the house of friends from church who had a slightly larger console TV. Watching from Clear Lake City in SE Harris County, we were just miles away from the Johnson Space Center and many of the hotels on Nasa Road 1 had rooftops with TV stations monitoring the proceedings. So it felt a little like watching a game with your home team playing.
That’s what gravitic drive is. It generates negative gravity – anti-gravity, to use the old school term – that can push against planetary gravity.
Well, there is a subset of gravatic tech that is really a gravatic lens that allows gravity to be redirected around an object which means that its weight can be reduced to zero, but doesn’t create thrust. That is often referred to in fiction as contra-grav as opposed to anti-grav.
My dad said that the launch of Apollo 17 at night was magnificent. It was slightly better than another one he witnessed.
Ahhhh. I use gravitic drive as both anti-gravity and thrust in my books . . .
I got angry when I saw the mission ready Saturn 5’s as static displays at Cape Kennedy and the Houston NASA facility. What an unconscionable waste.
I am reading the Terran Uprising series by H. Beam Piper and in his universe they have contra-grav that negates weight. It makes getting into space much easier and they use it for vehicles and even carry pallets for luggage etc. The Traveller design books brought in CG in their third iteration (Traveller: The New Era) where they use CG to negate the weight of the vessel and then use HePLAR thrusters to move ships from place to place.
Do you have a link to your books? I am always looking for a new read.
I can’t stands it no more!
“On This Day, 53 Years Ago, America Landed TWO Men on the Moon”
Yes but, the Mission given to NASA by JFK was to land “A” man on the moon. That mission was fulfilled. The second was just a bonus.