Ignoring the moon is just plain lunacy
I guess you could say I’m going through the moon phase of life. I’ve always had a love for NASA and space exploration. Lately though, I’ve been enthralled by the Apollo missions to the moon.
I’ve recently read Neil Armstrong’s biography, “First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong” and have previously read Buzz Aldrin’s “Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon.” (That’s “read” as in listened to the audio books.) Years ago I read Jim Lovell’s book upon which the movie “Apollo 13” was based.
One thing that has always puzzled me is the lack of national interest in the great feat that was the Apollo program. Sending men to the moon and returning them safely is mankind’s crowning achievement to date. Yet we celebrate it with a collective yawn.
Every five years NASA trots out Neil and Buzz for a big anniversary soiree. There’s no national holiday in honor of the occasion and most people couldn’t tell you the date of the first lunar landing. (It was July 20, 1969, by the way.)
There were 24 men who have flown to the moon and 12 who have walked on the lunar surface. How many of the dozen moonwalkers can you name? Most people can’t get past Armstrong and Aldrin. After them, in order are Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, David Scott, James Irwin, John Young, Charles Duke, Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt. (And just to be honest, I had to use a cheat sheet to keep them in order.)
Of the 12 moon men, three have passed on – Conrad, Shepard and Irwin. The remaining nine – with the exception of Armstrong and Aldrin and perhaps Cernan (the last man to walk on the moon) – are hardly recognized in public. One would think, given what they have accomplished, that their likenesses would be as well known in public as, say, the Beatles.
I bet if you asked someone on the street who Harrison Schmitt is or what Edgar Mitchell is famous for, you would not get the correct answer nine times out of 10, even in Houston, home of NASA.
The most famous of those who went to the moon without reaching the surface would have to be Jim Lovell, who went there on Apollo 8 and then returned on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. People might recognize the names but not the faces of his crewmates on Apollo 13 – Fred Haise and Jack Swigert. Michael Collins would be a close second to Lovell as the command module pilot of the Apollo 11 mission.
Frank Borman, Bill Anders, Tom Stafford, Dick Gordon, Stuart Roosa, Al Worden, Ken Mattingly and Ronald Evans also went to the moon without walking on it.
Aside from Lovell, can you name the other astronauts who have made two trips to the moon? They are Young and Cernan, both of whom flew on Apollo 10 and later on Apollos 16 and 17 respectively.
I’m still dumbfounded that the nation would so quickly lose interest in the moon landings that the last three Apollo missions would get scrapped. What gets me even more is how there is little support for going back to the moon and onto Mars. That just 40 years after the first moon landing we could have an American president attempt to kill the manned spaceflight program is absurd.
Ending manned spaceflight is not going to solve the nation’s social ills. On the contrary, it will be a setback in the science that is going on in space that will lead to cures for diseases, technological advances and increased understanding of our world and its place in the universe. We cannot take a step forward by taking a giant leap backward.
One has to ask, where will we find the next generation of astronauts – or will we even need them? Is space travel something once accomplished and forever obtained? Or is space travel our future?
If you ask me, aside from maintaining the International Space Station, we should leave development of low-earth orbit exploration to commercial ventures and focus our national resources on the moon, Mars and beyond. Only when we explore what’s out there will we learn the things we need to better understand what we have back here.
Men have gazed as the moon for millennia, wondering what it’s like up there. Only a dozen have looked back at Earth from the moon. I think it’s high time this nation went back into a moon phase and let someone else discover what lies beyond the pull of Earth’s gravity.
I’ve recently read Neil Armstrong’s biography, “First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong” and have previously read Buzz Aldrin’s “Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon.” (That’s “read” as in listened to the audio books.) Years ago I read Jim Lovell’s book upon which the movie “Apollo 13” was based.
One thing that has always puzzled me is the lack of national interest in the great feat that was the Apollo program. Sending men to the moon and returning them safely is mankind’s crowning achievement to date. Yet we celebrate it with a collective yawn.
Every five years NASA trots out Neil and Buzz for a big anniversary soiree. There’s no national holiday in honor of the occasion and most people couldn’t tell you the date of the first lunar landing. (It was July 20, 1969, by the way.)
There were 24 men who have flown to the moon and 12 who have walked on the lunar surface. How many of the dozen moonwalkers can you name? Most people can’t get past Armstrong and Aldrin. After them, in order are Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, David Scott, James Irwin, John Young, Charles Duke, Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt. (And just to be honest, I had to use a cheat sheet to keep them in order.)
Of the 12 moon men, three have passed on – Conrad, Shepard and Irwin. The remaining nine – with the exception of Armstrong and Aldrin and perhaps Cernan (the last man to walk on the moon) – are hardly recognized in public. One would think, given what they have accomplished, that their likenesses would be as well known in public as, say, the Beatles.
I bet if you asked someone on the street who Harrison Schmitt is or what Edgar Mitchell is famous for, you would not get the correct answer nine times out of 10, even in Houston, home of NASA.
The most famous of those who went to the moon without reaching the surface would have to be Jim Lovell, who went there on Apollo 8 and then returned on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. People might recognize the names but not the faces of his crewmates on Apollo 13 – Fred Haise and Jack Swigert. Michael Collins would be a close second to Lovell as the command module pilot of the Apollo 11 mission.
Frank Borman, Bill Anders, Tom Stafford, Dick Gordon, Stuart Roosa, Al Worden, Ken Mattingly and Ronald Evans also went to the moon without walking on it.
Aside from Lovell, can you name the other astronauts who have made two trips to the moon? They are Young and Cernan, both of whom flew on Apollo 10 and later on Apollos 16 and 17 respectively.
I’m still dumbfounded that the nation would so quickly lose interest in the moon landings that the last three Apollo missions would get scrapped. What gets me even more is how there is little support for going back to the moon and onto Mars. That just 40 years after the first moon landing we could have an American president attempt to kill the manned spaceflight program is absurd.
Ending manned spaceflight is not going to solve the nation’s social ills. On the contrary, it will be a setback in the science that is going on in space that will lead to cures for diseases, technological advances and increased understanding of our world and its place in the universe. We cannot take a step forward by taking a giant leap backward.
One has to ask, where will we find the next generation of astronauts – or will we even need them? Is space travel something once accomplished and forever obtained? Or is space travel our future?
If you ask me, aside from maintaining the International Space Station, we should leave development of low-earth orbit exploration to commercial ventures and focus our national resources on the moon, Mars and beyond. Only when we explore what’s out there will we learn the things we need to better understand what we have back here.
Men have gazed as the moon for millennia, wondering what it’s like up there. Only a dozen have looked back at Earth from the moon. I think it’s high time this nation went back into a moon phase and let someone else discover what lies beyond the pull of Earth’s gravity.
posted by Joe Southern | 9:55 AM
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