40 Years Ago: Apollo 11

[dewline]

Unlike Michael Okuda and many others around the world, I was still too young to remember anything I might have seen that day, somewhere in upper Alberta, two or three time zones away from all the excitement. What I do remember is reading through the Collier's Encyclopedia entry on Space Exploration in the years that followed.

The edition my parents had bought was published at a point where the Apollo program had not yet run the course laid out for it by the Nixon administration in spite of the hopes of many across the world. In fact, the end of it had not yet been written officially when Collier's went to press. The projected mission schedule's forecast still maintained that Apollo flights would number into the 20's before they stopped in favour of the preferred form of space shuttle then expected to succeed Apollo.

I remember the fascination - obsession? - that began with the photography and technical illustrations in that book. It was fed by the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program that ended up being the true last gasp of the first space age. By Space: 1999, by Star Wars, the original Galactica, and eventually Star Trek itself to keep me going until the first of the shuttle launches.

We've been through a lot of flights, good and bad, since then.

And now on this anniversary, we have another first: two Canadians together with eleven others from four nations: the United States, Russia, Belgium, and Japan. One of those is the 500th human to go Up There Into the Black.

From Yuri Gagarin to Christopher Cassidy: only 500 so far.

There should have been much more than this by now. We ought to have done much more than this.

That we've managed this much despite our best and worst instincts is still a miracle when you look at it carefully.

To everyone involved, whether you recognize that involvement for what it is or not: thank you.

Thank you.

Comments

[tartysuz.livejournal.com]

Where in upper Alberta? I'm sure you've told me, but I've forgotten!

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Answered off-LJ.

[mommimus-prime.livejournal.com]

I remember that night vividly. The memory that sticks the most was walking from our house to my aunt's house to watch on their tv and hearing the beep of their radios coming from every single house on the block and it was the only sound. No cars, no voices just that beep. And I was so excited. It was amazing. We were on the moon.

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

I've always been curious by Kennedy's speech:

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

To what was Kennedy referring when he mentions "the other things"?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

The Apollo program had its critics then, as space exploration continues to have its critics today. All we have to do is look at the comments sections of the news articles flagged Payette's Endeavour on cbcnews.ca to see what "other things" Kennedy was likely referring to.

Those problems haven't gone away in the last forty years. You've been coping with some of them yourself since coming "out", if you'll forgive my mentioning personal examples. (Granted that Kennedy, a product of his day living in his day, likely was not viewing the world through that same sort of lens as we are now.)

Hunger relief, international relations and the degree of success and failure we're having in managing them(EG: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Sudan, etc.), and the list goes onward...

[dewline.livejournal.com]

You have my envy. To have been just old enough to understand what was happening and why it mattered as it was happening...