I was born 16 months too late to have witnessed the Apollo 11 Moon Shot & landing. I am, however, a wee bit of a space junkie. (not the astronomy & astrophysics part of it, I don’t get that AT ALL.)
Perhaps it’s growing up in Central Florida, where you would run outside whenever there was a launch just to see the jet trails. You’d watch them travel to infinity and marvel at the sight, or know immediately when something had gone wrong. (I’ll never forget hearing about the Challenger disaster, as many of you remember, but I remember running outside my high school cafeteria, seeing the split in jet trail and standing there in shock knowing that a trail like that meant whatever happened was awful.)
Or, perhaps it was an occasional visit to Cape Canaveral to see a launch in person. Having a Mom who grew up on the Space Coast and dated engineers from the Cape taught me the excitement of that time … that feeling of hope … an understanding that the world as we knew it was changing. Her stories are pretty good, particularly the ones about the lack of security. Maybe it was that my grandfather worked out on the Cape and with the program, even though I don’t know the details of what he did.
I’ve seen all the movies and the miniseries. I know the astronauts names; I still believe that Chuck Yeager was shafted; I can’t get enough of the stories. And, this week, I’ve DVR’d the specials because I have a crazy week at work. These astronauts, who were test pilots to start with, were no-fear cowboys. I’m proud to live in Tom Stafford’s home state and always knew exactly who John Young was when I rode, and eventually drove, down the parkway named for him in Orlando. I don’t personally understand their fearlessness, but I am fascinated by it.
From Mercury to Gemini to Apollo and even all the way to the Space Shuttle program, the early space pioneers had more guts & gumption than almost anyone except, perhaps, those explorers from early-mid millennium (the last one) or the pioneers who saddled up and rode out West or the Founding Fathers who started a revolution and created this democratic republic experiment in which we live. There was a strong likelihood these astronauts could die. Every mission was built upon the learnings from the last, especially learnings from the disasters. The designers and engineers from Bell, Boeing, Lockheed and Martin had never built space-going craft. Yet, they believed. And, they did.
The optimism is what made it all possible. President Kennedy announced that we would go to the moon, and we did. People believed. The 1960s were full of strife: civil rights unrest, hippies, Vietnam. Yet, there was hope in the space program. Nearly every man (and, yes, there weren’t women in the program until much later because of the role women played in our society at that time, and yes, they were all white) said that going to space changed them, changed them fundamentally. The saw Earth as a whole and complete planet; it was beautiful and completely awe-inspiring.
So, as we look back to celebrate the Ruby anniversary of landing on the moon, let’s try to recapture the hope & optimism of that time. We need it.
