The Risk of Loss of Space Flight’s Awe Factor

What defines America’s manned space program from 1958 to present day? The scientific experiments performed on various Apollo and Space Shuttle, missions are no doubt part of them, but as the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 approaches that is not what we remember and what defines those programs.

What we do remember the highs: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” and the planting of the Stars and Stripes on the Lunar surface, the image of men driving the lunar rover on the moon as one does on their neighborhood streets, the Christmas reading of Genesis from the crew of Apollo 8, and Alan Shepard smuggling a makeshift six iron on board Apollo 14 to play golf on the moon.

We remember the heroes: the men of Apollo 13 and those who fixed the Hubble Telescope and their predecessors who road to space as part of the Mercury and Gemini programs.

And we remember the tragedies: Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia and the human stories afterwords. Teacher Christa McAuliffe was supposed to prove that space flight could be open to everyone, instead the country watched the shuttle blow up on live television. Shuttle Launch Director Michael D. Leinbach’s book Bringing Columbia Home inevitably tells the story of how NASA screwed up to the point where they lost a second orbiter in less than 20 years, but it also tells the human story of how NASA worked with the communities in East Texas and thousands of volunteers to find the shuttle and crew remains. Read any history of a single ship sunken in battle and you will find accounts of crew members will talk as if they lost a part of themselves, the same is true of all those who worked in the shuttle program from the astronauts to the scientists and engineers.

Finally, both Apollo and the Shuttle programs, when concluded, felt like the end of an era. The last man to step foot on the moon, Eugene Cernan declared as he prepared to depart:

As I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come — but we believe not too long into the future — I’d like to just (say) what I believe history will record. That America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus- Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17

It was perhaps more profound when Atlantis touched down in 2011, because there was and still is nothing to replace it with. The Trump Administration has talked about going back to the moon as a stepping stone on the way to Mars, but there just simply isn’t the excitement there was when President Kennedy said that we were going to the moon “and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

There is no Sputnik Moment to galvanize NASA or the nation at large and with the nation’s finances in bad shape and without a geopolitical space race, NASA’s importance seems to have diminished, especially as private space companies enter the fray. Sending rovers to Mars and getting back pictures from the surface is intensely fascinating at first. When you see all the rocket scientist nerds letting loose all the bound up nervous energy when the rover finally lands and the first pictures come back, but after that the rover’s mission fades to the background maybe to re-emerge when the mission ends. The Apollo and the Space Shuttle programs fell victim to the same malaise only re-entering in the public conscience when something went terribly wrong for the second moon landing is not nearly as exciting as the first.

Back in the 60s, the nation was enthralled with landing on the moon, astronauts were household names. In fact, we still remember names like Armstrong and Aldrin and before them names like Glenn, but far less today. As we approach the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the moon, may we consider the remarkable fact that this country put men on the moon in a very human and very American urge for exploration is just that, remarkable. We put a man on the moon and the scientific term for that is “pretty cool” in and of itself.