Posted on 07/21/2009 7:13:45 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Arthur C. Clarke’s epic 2001: A Space Odyssey was released shortly before I left for Vietnam. My wife and I saw it in New York City, and it mesmerized us. No, not the fantasy about the lunar monolith beeping toward Jupiter or the insanity of Keir Dullea, in his best role ever, trying to complete the mission alone after the HAL 9000 computer (voice of Douglas Rain) has killed everyone else aboard Discovery One because it decided that they were a threat to the mission; not the absurdity of Dullea surviving several seconds unprotected in the vacuum of frozen space; and certainly not him as a decrepit old man in a Louis XIV bedroom or the gigantic fetus floating peacefully in the galactic womb. Great special effects for that time, to be sure, and the symphonic music could not have been more appropriate to them: The Blue Danube Waltz and Thus Spake Zarathustra.
But what did that mean? Clarke was famously silent on the matter. He obviously didn’t know, either. He had become enchanted with the mystical and visual effects he could bring forth, “stretching the envelope” as the fighter jocks and astronauts still say. The proof? Try the dismal and nonsensical sequel, 2010. A view of cosmic evolution? Claptrap.
But what grabbed us that hot summer day was the logical inevitability of the first hour or so: mankind outward bound into the solar system. We’d have permanent competing scientific installations as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. extended the cold war to a very cold spot -- the moon; regular commercial service between earth and the moon provided by Pan American, “The World’s Most Experienced Airline” (1927 - 1991); space-to-earth videophones a commonplace. The moon and beyond for a welcome time took my mind off my actual destination. On Christmas Eve I would listen to the Apollo 8 astronauts -- Borman, Lovell, and Anders -- in lunar orbit reading from Genesis on Armed Forces radio at the 11th Cavalry’s base camp near Xuan Loc.
On July 16, 1969, we watched the Apollo 11 launch on the TV in our motel room in Daytona Beach and then stepped out onto the balcony where we saw a tiny intense streak of yellow light arcing out toward earth orbit, the first phase of the moon-landing mission. Four days later in my parents’ tiny living room in West Orange, N.J., we held our breath as we saw the grainy, live, black-and-white image of Neil Armstrong climbing down the ladder and stepping onto the powdery surface.
The Apollo lunar voyages coincided almost precisely with my law school career. I was attending the Army’s JAGC Basic Course in Charlottesville, Va., when a classmate and I watched the night launch of Apollo 17 on TV in 1972. Apollo 18, 19, and 20 had already been cancelled -- budget cuts. William F. Buckley, Jr., and the poet and novelist James Dickey (Deliverance) were there. Thirty-three years later Bill would write:
“It was very cold and still dark when the moon-bound streak of fire shot up from the launch pad. Dickey the poet was frozen in awe and admiration. At breakfast he threatened to break the neck of a television commentator whom he heard saying that the cost of this lunar extravagance was the equivalent of 126,000 units of low-cost housing. Dickey was trembling with furious indig- nation that such vulgar measurements were being used to discredit the beauty and awesomeness of the enterprise we had just seen coming up from its womb on a Florida beach.”
We’ve heard it all before, of course. “If we can put a man on the moon, we can . . . .” [complete the sentence with whatever benefit you can imagine bestowing on society’s parasites at taxpayer expense]. As a matter of fact, we can’t -- put a man on the moon, that is. We would have to start from “Ground Zero,” where we were in 1961 when President Kennedy said, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” The technology is no longer available, and even if it were, it would be primitive and obsolete. The first high-tech layoffs began at Cape Canaveral at about the time of the Apollo 11 launch in 1969. NASA knew what was coming. As a nation we were about to become the dog that chased the car and finally caught it, and then didn’t know what to do with it.
I stand second to no one in my admiration for the cool, intelligent, and courageous men and women who constitute today’s astronaut corps. It has been a disservice to them that they have had nothing to work with for 37 years except vehicles in earth orbit, principally the Space Shuttle, that ungainly monstrous white elephant. What purposes has it served? Well, let’s see. It was instrumental in the building of the International Space Station. The ISS is . . . uh, oh yeah . . . to be used as a jumping off place for future lunar landings, the establishment of a permanent base on the moon, and future journeys where no one has gone before. Not in my lifetime -- not when President Obama himself has announced that “We’re out of money,” and he’s the guy who can print all he wants.
Yes, it launched, repaired, and maintained the Hubble Space Telescope, a magnificent scientific achievement that has contributed more to our understanding of the universe than anything has before. But in the first 16 years of manned missions, the U.S. did not have a single fatality in space. The Shuttle’s flaws have claimed 14 brave souls. It is due to be retired next year and its successor won’t be ready to fly until 2014, but don’t set your alarm clock by that prediction.
Yes, most of its missions have been resounding successes. But toward what great end? I recall the late Carl Sagan (Cosmos) being asked to comment on the triumphant conclusion of a Space Shuttle mission. He responded: “Ah, yes. Once again we have proved that tomato plants do not do well in Zero-G. This is not the exploration of space.” Some day we will look back at the Shuttle as a major wrong turn in the development of space travel, much as we now look back on dirigibles in the history of aviation.
The surviving Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts are very old men now. Two generations have become voters since Apollo 17. They cannot grasp the magnificence of the era when heroes walked the Earth, and the Moon, from pallid textbooks and old video footage. In 1995 our daughter, then 23, returned home from seeing Apollo 13. “Was it really like that?” she asked me. I told her that I remembered those excruciating days well and to the best of my recollection they hadn’t made anything up or left anything important out. She unintentionally quoted the words of Admiral Tarrant (Fredric March) at the end of The Bridges at Toko-Ri: “Where do we get such men?”
“Not under this roof,” I assured her.
During one of his “Jaywalking” bits on "The Tonight Show," Jay Leno asked a young woman if she knew the name of the first man to walk on the moon. “Armstrong?” she answered tentatively.
Leno said, “Good. What’s his first name?” She replied: “Louis!”
Leno looked directly into the camera and said, “I can’t do this anymore.”
My wife and I were not alone in seeing a straight line to the future in the summer of 1968 as we watched 2001. But Wernher von Braun’s “bridge to the stars” seems now as far away as ever.
-Mr. Rehyansky is retired from the U.S. Army and the Chattanooga, Tennessee, District Attorney's office and now serves as a part-time County Magistrate. He is a former contributor to National Review, and his writings have appeared in The American Spectator and other publications.
The greatest waste of wealth in American history! It's the main reason America can't accomplish anything significant anymore.
Well, the song needs some updating.
I suggest they change the lyric ‘Whitey on the moon’ to ‘Obama in da House’.
Listen to it , and do the substitution yourself. See how much sense it makes?
I know we do have people with that level of intelligence but many of them never made it into the best schools because there wasn't room for them after the race quotas were met. So these people are out in the private sector making their fortunes with the same ability, wit and drive that men like them once brought to bear on the Apollo moon shot program.
But most men of that caliber would never make it into the Space program today in spite of their inteeligence and qualifications. There wouldn't be room enough after NASA met all the hiring requirements for Affirmative Action hirelings. And they would be reporting to bureaucrats and people promoted for all the wrong reasons.
The Apollo program was primarily staffed by the same demographic that made the USA the greatest nation in the world. As society was forced by the government to make hiring decisions on the basis of skin color and sexual plumbing instead of ability and competency the entire US has been slowly crumbling.
Today, even with the aid of cutting edge technology, you can rarely get anything done correctly the first time from a large organization. In 1969 we put men on the moon with electro-mechanical technology only a little more advanced than a 1970 Corvette.
Celebrate diversity if you like - but don't bet your life on it.
This is misleading.
The Space Shuttle’s casualties did not occur in space either. They occurred in the atmosphere. Perhaps not on the launch pad as did Apollo 1 which claimed 3 lives. But never the less not in space.
The Challenger’s external fuel tank exploded during launch destroying the Challenger in the process. The Columbia broke up when it reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Neither accident occurred in space.
Yes the Shuttle program has claimed 14 lives, but the program has had far more launches than the Apollo program. Apollo lasted about a decade. The Shuttle program has lasted 28 years.
I think how ever you would want to figure it the Shuttle program has been safer.
“The technology (manned landing on moon)is no longer available, and even if it were, it would be primitive and obsolete. The first high-tech layoffs began at Cape Canaveral at about the time of the Apollo 11 launch in 1969. NASA knew what was coming. As a nation we were about to become the dog that chased the car and finally caught it, and then didn’t know what to do with it.”
I had a dog like that once; he chased every car that came by only to straggle back home a half hour later panting like a dog — one day he leapt off the porch with a mighty thrust and had that old, smoking clunker right within his reach as they turned the corner out of sight.
Imagine my surprise and delight when came trotting back, head held high and from his grinning, slobbery jaws there dangled a mangled stub of an exhaust pipe.
He never chased another car after that, just sat there on the porch with the smugest look on his face you ever saw.
He’s out back now, resting under his favorite shade tree, the old pipe stub forced tight against his still chest from the weight of the cool earth above him.
It always cracks me up when I hear democrat plantation blacks talk about how whitey wants to keep the black man down so whitey can do spectacular things.
The fact is that whitey (me) wants the black man to succede on his own so we have the money to do spectacular things as Americans.
State the "facts" which prove this.
Until our species has traveled far and wide exploring (at least) our own home galaxy, that can't be stated with any authority.
I do like those sentiments you posted, but I think they would be far more applicable to terrestrial exploration than anything else. The big problem with space exploration is that it involves the movement of human beings into places that are utterly hostile to human existence by their very nature. If Columbus had arrived in the New World and found that he couldn’t breathe the air here, I am certain that the Americas would have remained a desolate, unsettled place 400+ years later.
He never chased another car after that, just sat there on the porch with the smugest look on his face you ever saw.
He’s out back now, resting under his favorite shade tree, the old pipe stub forced tight against his still chest from the weight of the cool earth above him..
Thank you for that incredible word picture that you painted.
And there is a reason.
we need to start figuring out how to live here without killing each other or the future is going to be a miserable place to live.
That's the reason.
Check out the Hoover Dam Bypass bridge project.
Click on the live WebCam icon on the left sidebar.
http://www.hooverdambypass.org/
As others have mentioned, other countries, most notably, China, Russia and India will most likely pass us on the way to Mars simply because those countries continue to make investments in cultivating scientific and engineering talent in college, while we just pop out community organizers.
Yeah, we need something much bigger...like a Ringworld.
...but it ain’t gonna happen with the current technology of chemical rockets and anything else that might work is generation(s) away...
Now, if your going up to install a lunar missile base to give first strike capabilities.
Then, lets get-r-done.
Otherwise, just to go just say we did.....nah, waste of money.
It IS a sad commentary that the electric excitement Kennedy ignited with his challenge to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade (which we achieved), is now relegated to the dustbin of old people’s memories (and I’m one of them!).
It is worse that, in order to reinvigorate the space program to return to the moon (IF we ever do, and I’m not convinced that we will), we have to reinvent the technology to get there.
Finally, how much maoney have the American taxpayers pored into this program?? We paid to develop the technology once, THEN we paid to develop a space-going truck that has never succeeded in going beyond earth orbit, and NOW we have to pay to RE-develop the technology to return to the moon!!! Why??
I’m all for space exploration, what I oppose is politicians who keep changing the priorities AFTER the money has been spent!! How much money has our Congress pored down a rat hole with the on again, off again, Star Wars missile defense program, for example??
This is one practice in Congress that needs to stop. When the Congress appropriates funding for a project, REGARDLESS of which political party is in control (yes, I KNOW that’s potentially VERY dangerous, thank you in advance for telling me!), the project should be continued through to completion unless/until, WE the PEOPLE who OWN the government put forth an initiative to kill it!!! We just keep throwing more money down the same rat holes and getting NOTHING in return!! IOW there’s NO fiscal responsibility from one Congress or one administration to the next. And, WE keep getting stuck with the bill!
It used to be that NASA could solicit ideas from these companies. Now NASA pretty much issues the specifications. There's a lot less imagination in the latter process.
“The second reason is there just isn’t anything up there worth the time and money.”
I’ve read that Helium-3, rare on earth, may be plentiful on the moon. Helium-3 could be our best chance for making a commercially viable fusion reactors for energy production on earth.
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