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Many people are complaining that the 25th anniversary of the first human steps on the moon, coming up tomorrow, isn't getting the right sort of attention.
Some, like Ayn Rand at the time, whine that Woodstock gets slathered in ink that it doesn't deserve while poor old Apollo 11 languishes in obscurity.
Most, however, act disappointed because Neil Armstrong's
one small step
was just about the last step for
manned exploration of the solar system. We were on the
verge of greatness,
the argument goes, and then we
chickened out and backed away.
Good thing, too. Not that I have anything against space exploration. I like all these electronic wonders that are supposedly spin-offs from the space program. And the availability of dozens of channels from satellites. And how much better weather forecasts are now, thanks to satellite images, than they were in pre-space days.
But an unmanned space program would have provided those benefits, too. There wasn't any good scientific reason to put a man on the moon, and at the time, many scientists argued against it on the grounds that it represented a diversion of resources better applied elsewhere.
The lunar mission was strictly cold-war politics. In 1961, the Soviets had just set Yuri Gagarin around and around the earth for 108 hours, while America had merely dispatched Alan Shepard on a 15-minute up-and-down trip.
The Soviet propaganda edge might have provided
Republicans with a campaign theme in 1964, and President
John F. Kennedy desperately sought a way to restore U.S.
prestige. He asked advisers for a goal that was A) easy to
understand, and B) so far down the road that the U.S. could
overcome the Soviet lead. Thus this nation should commit
itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of
landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to
earth.
That formulation was strictly political, as was the execution. NASA installations went to the districts of powerful representatives and senators, and this pork-barrel operation continues today -- the Space Shuttle is the most expensive, impractical imaginable way to put stuff in orbit, but any presidential candidate mentioning that fact would lose Florida and Texas faster than if he called for abolishing Social Security or bombing the Alamo.
The space program, as much as Watergate or Vietnam,
contributed to American cynicism about government. It's one
thing to feel proud when an American steps on the moon, but
quite another to hear Richard Nixon call it the greatest
week since creation.
We were sold a glorious adventure in pursuit of knowledge, and what we got was Life-magazine merchandising, patronage spending and $40 billion in Cold War propaganda that didn't seem to help American prestige or hurt the Soviet image.
This may be why Woodstock actually deserves more attention than Apollo. It was blue jeans and rock 'n' roll, not American space triumphs, that toppled the Soviet Union and changed the world.
Given that, the Apollo mission is merely a historical footnote, like Leif Ericsson's voyage to North America. It was daring, but it didn't change anything.
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