Posted on 07/23/2009 7:45:33 AM PDT by DarkSavant
Glorious citizens of America, this week is your time to unite and commemorate one of the greatest chapters in our nation’s superior history.
This week, just days after we celebrated the birth of our nation 233 years ago, we are allowed to pat ourselves on the back for another one of our country’s accomplishments. This act wasn’t just a landmark moment in the history of the U.S., but in the history of mankind. Forty years ago this week, man first set foot on the moon. And it was the day man’s intellect reached beyond its natural bounds and achieved.
And we beat those stinkin’ commies to it.
Since the Soviet Union and United States never were able to fight directly against each other during the Cold War — as foretold by the 1983 Matthew Broderick classic “War Games” — both governments were able to manufacture some superficial competitions of strength. For a variety a reasons, most of these battles revolved around how effectively one side could kill. Occasionally, death was just a side effect and not a goal. The Space Race was the noble, intelligent way to trounce the people who had different beliefs then us.
Which is why, as an admirer of the Cold War and an American citizen, I feel obligated to inform you — the loyal opinion column reader — patriotism has gotten in the way of good judgement. The U.S. lost the Space Race.
And it wasn’t even close.
The trip to the moon is considered to be finish line to the marathon, but that’s only because Americans decided it was. The moon is the closest body to Earth, so all things considered, it was the least NASA could have done. I’ll grant that it was a sizeable feat, but it was only one of a few victories that the U.S. saw during the competition for galactic supremacy.
The USSR launched the first satellite into orbit, put the first satellite on the moon, was the first to put a man into space, first to put a man into orbit, first to put a woman into space, had the first person to eat in space, the first space walk, had the first casualty from a space flight, and in 1988 they built a shuttle that could launch, orbit, navigate and then land all through computer programming. Literally, the Russians could send people into space without having to teach them how to fly first. Yeah, these guys are the ones who lost the Space Race.
The U.S.’s orbital accomplishments seem more like entries to the “Guinness Book of World Records” than great accomplishments. Aside from the moon landing, the only major record the U.S. has is the oldest person in orbit. Perhaps in a few years NASA can call up that guy in India and we can add “longest fingernails in space” to the list, too.
John Glenn eats some applesauce in orbit and goes back 36 years later on a publicity trip and he’s celebrated as an icon. That, my friends, is an effective use of tax dollars. Billions of dollars spent to put an elderly guy in zero gravity, but elementary schools can’t afford books. Glad to see we have our priorities straight.
Other than establishing America as an alpha male, what really was accomplished by landing on the moon? We got some rocks, gathered some dust, left a flag, hit a golf ball and got some funny footage of the clunky astronauts falling over in light gravity — that’s about it. We were a dog that caught the car it was chasing: We’ve met our goal, but now we have no idea what to do with it.
This wasn’t the starting point to a new era of exploration, either. Since traveling to the lifeless rock circling our world, we’ve made a few return trips and then pretty much gave up. Mars is a pipe dream — former President George W. Bush’s pipe dream, specifically — and no serious attempt has ever been made to go back to the moon. It’s certainly inspired Hollywood, but it doesn’t seem to have inspired NASA.
I don’t intend to diminish the accomplishments of people such as Neil Armstrong, because that’s already been done to a much greater degree. An uncomfortably large portion of our country believes that the moon landing was a hoax, so at this point I think Armstrong would just be happy that I believe his story.
Since we’re Americans, what we’ve been told about our past has been greatly romanticized. Christopher Columbus behaved like a tyrant and didn’t discover America, George Washington had slaves and we lost the Space Race to the Reds. It might go against the proud U.S. tale, but the facts speak for themselves.
And no amount of geriatric space cadets are going to convince me otherwise.
_Ian Johnson is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at john2806@msu.edu.
Good enough reaon for me to want to procede to rapin and pillagin of mars.
You’re gonna love this one.
Awww, GODDAMNIT!!!
I just realized that was my college newspaper.
Unbeliveable.
Alumni myself. Amazingly enough, the editorials were even worse when I was a student there.
The Space Race and the Cold War were “foretold” in 1983? Is the boy stupid or just ignorant?
Ian Johnson has it exactly backwards. Khruschev dictated that the Soviet Space Program continually 1-up the US with trivial firsts -- like putting the first Woman in orbit (sorry ladies, she was an affirmative-action cosmonaut) & cramming a 3rd cosmonaut into a capsule designed for only 2 (to outdo the Gemini flights). The Soviets had some authentic firsts both before & after Khruschev's meddling, but for a while there it was the Soviets who were quite literally doing "Guinness World Record" type feats.
Lots of problems with this kid’s logic. He omits the fact that the first spacewalker very nearly became the first humanoid space junk when his suit swelled up so much that he couldn’t get through the hatch to return to the craft. He nearly killed himself releasing pressure to a level where he could get in.
A russian friend tells me that the Buran Shuttle even did duty as an ice cream shop in a park for a while.
I didn’t realize it till the other day but the Russians crashed a robotic lander on the moon while Apollo 11 was orbiting. They knew they weren’t going to beat us with men so they wanted to return some samples first. The fact that the lander smeared itself across the surface put them out of that race.
Like you I agree that the Russians had some amazing success but their success only pushed us to try harder and put them to shame.
My roommate and I were in Army ROTC at the time (1983-1987) and wrote repeated editorial responses, but very few were ever published. I even made a point of filling out the paperwork to get my forced subscription fees back, every semester.
It always was, and always will be, a RAG.
Lefty staff even participated in the theft of these newspapers when they disagreed with a single article.
Pretty sure that the whole “dog chasing cars” was lifted off of another article. This is laughable.
That’s like saying Columbus discovered America but he didn’t land in Hawaii so it doesn’t count.
The Russian’s reason for launching rockets was for propaganda purposes, they didn’t need anything past Sputnik but they kept trying to push forward their capabilities to put a cosmonaut on the moon.
After they had a disastrous explosion on their heavy launcher months before we sent Apollo11 to the moon, they basically gave up because they knew they were beat.
THEY knew they were beat, not a college newspaper writer’s misguided opinion, THEY knew they had lost. Do you think they would’ve rather had a Russian flag planted on the moon? It’s our flag up there.
Anytime you use “War Games” as a reference then your credibility is shot.
I found it ironic that he bemoans us spending money on the space program instead of books for the elementary schools. He is living proof that our education system is failing.
I’m tempted to write this poor kid back and give him a history lesson.
That was spent to pay John Glenn back for Bill Clinton not being thrown from office by the Senate.
The Buran is one of the factors credited with bringing down the Soviet Union. The incredibly high cost of if used up all their hard currency which was normally used to buy goods from other countries. They simply did not have enough money to both pursue the Buran program AND operate a totalitarian police state.
Poor guys.
Just my opinion of course.
Yeesh. Got us a real Shakespeare here.
The writer of this piece is quite ignorant. Where is James Oberg when you need him? The Russians desperately wanted to land a man on the moon, they just didn't have the resources to do it. Its been clearly documented for quite some time.
The author does, however, make a decent point, that basically, after the moon landing, we haven't done much in manned space flight. Although I do think the Hubble and its servicing missions deserve some credit.
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