Our next ‘giant leap’
There’s much to celebrate on 50th anniversary of the moon landing, but where do we go now?
Even as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s first steps by a human on the moon, many Americans are wondering why that “one giant leap for mankind” still remains our nation’s single most important achievement in space exploration.
Behind that burning question is an undeniable fact: America’s unmanned probes have successfully traveled far into the stars, but we don’t care as much when living, breathing humans aren’t taking the perilous rides aboard rocket ships. From Buck Rogers to Rey Skywalker (or is it Solo?), our interest in space travel is stuck like duct tape to fictional characters who amazed us with their intergalactic endeavors.
Science fiction became reality on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11’s mission commander planted the first prints of his silicone-soled moon boots into the gray dust of history. Nineteen minutes later, Armstrong was joined by Buzz Aldrin. The pair explored the moon for 21 minutes before rejoining Michael Collins aboard their return vehicle, the Columbia.
Five more times Americans landed on the moon, with the Apollo 13 mission having to abort its planned descent after an oxygen tank exploded. In December 1972, Apollo 17 became the last manned moon mission.
Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt collected rocks while Ron Evans circled above them aboard the capsule America.
With Cernan’s departure as the last human on the moon, America’s ardor for space flight faded. It rekindled when the shuttle program first launched in 1981, but the shuttles were shut down in 2011. Ever since, America has paid exorbitant fees to Russia to provide seats when our astronauts needed to hitch a ride to the International Space Station.
Meanwhile, important scientific voyages continue to be made by unmanned vehicles that have been escaping the Earth’s gravity since long before the first moon landing. But it’s less dramatic when the only humans involved are tapping out code from the ground.
NASA’s Explorer program has been sending satellites into space since 1958. The Pioneer program, which began that same year, sent a satellite to Venus in 1978 that remained in that planet’s orbit until 1992. The Mariner program from 1962 to 1973 sent probes to Mars, Venus and Mercury.
Other successful unmanned missions include the Viking probes, which traveled to Mars in the 1970s. Two Voyager probes launched in
1977 retrieved data from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 was last detected six months ago from interstellar space more than 13 billion miles from Earth.
If any of the probes came close to winning public affection, they were Spirit and Opportunity, two rovers NASA landed on Mars in 2003. The twin probes kept transmitting photos and other data from the red planet until Spirit expired in 2009 and Opportunity stopped transmitting
Science fiction became reality on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11’s mission commander planted the first prints of his silicone-soled moon boots into the gray dust of history. Nineteen minutes later, Armstrong was joined by Buzz Aldrin.
last year.
Armstrong’s first lunar steps would be worthy of celebration even if NASA had been able to send astronauts instead of robots to other planets. But instead of wistfully wondering why we haven’t been back to the moon, we would be discussing our next leap into space. No one knows when that leap will occur, but
NASA’s role won’t be the same when it does.
Private companies have been contracted to develop America’s future spaceships, including SpaceX, founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and
Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO. Some say today’s space race is between Bezos and Musk. Maybe, but for now they must answer to NASA, the faucet that pays them with taxpayer dollars.
Lately, that spigot has been twisted in different directions by its boss. Both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence had for weeks been criticizing NASA for being behind schedule for a manned moon mission by 2024. Then out of the blue, Trump tweeted last month that NASA ought to forget the moon and concentrate on Mars.
“For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon — We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!” the president tweeted.
Even if you disregard that Trump seemed to say the moon is part of Mars (maybe he was referring to the two missions), his comment was confusing, and confusion is the last thing NASA needs. A lack of a clear vision by successive presidents has been the biggest obstacle to plotting NASA’s course.
Even President John F. Kennedy, who boldly urged a moon mission in a 1961 speech at Rice University, changed his tune when the price tag began to grow. In a September 1963 address to the United Nations, Kennedy stunned Americans by suggesting a joint moon mission with the Soviet Union, which would have lowered costs and perhaps weakened the argument of some members of Congress that winning the space race was essential to national security.
Two months later, Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson became president and the rest is history.
There’s much to celebrate on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, but there’s also much to ponder — most of all, where do we go from here?