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July 20, 2009
"Apollo - Houston; you are go for landing"
Today is the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon.
So what?
That’s what a lot of people say. I’m not one of them.
I believe in the space programme completely. I think it is vital to our development as a country, as a race, to our very continued existence. If we inhabit just one planet sooner or later our species –as well as every other species on this planet – will be wiped out by an asteroid, gamma ray burst (GRB), or the death of the sun. The only life in the universe (as far as we know), could be gone then, forever. Mozart, Da Vinci, the Constitution, the bald eagle, all obliterated. That would be a shame.
As far as development as a country, the advantages of space exploration are obvious. If there weren’t any, why is it that China and Russia are still spending billions of dollars to try to achieve what we did 40 years ago?
I think the advantages to us as a race are patent as well, but here people try to disagree so I want to elaborate.
I believe a rising tide lifts all boats. The technology developed for the space programme – everything from cordless tools, new materials, research into health and the human body (especially in extreme environments); everything that was advanced and utilised, like Velcro and computers, were promoted and we have reaped the benefit. Technologically we took off in the 70’s and 80’s and we are still the technology leader because of the space programme and I believe that with my whole heart. The shuttle has continued that tradition with research in zero gravity on medicine, fire fighting, breeding of animals, and a whole host of other things.
But there’s something just as key but very often overlooked, although no less important… inspiration. It’s what makes men and women fashion rickety boats and travel from Cuba across rough waters, just for a shot at America. It’s what made Americans take arms up against tyranny, and what made people contrive crafty plans to cross a divided Berlin. And it is what made one quarter of the entire Earth’s population tune in to the Saturn V/Apollo launches more than 40 years ago.
Why do we live, sacrifice, thrive, survive? We have dreams. Why do we, as Hamlet put it, tolerate, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”? We believe. We believe that things aren’t hopeless, that most men are good, that hard work yields fair results, that risks can lead to reward, that by our efforts we can leave things a bit better than the way we found them.
Well what inspires us when things are difficult? Men of incredible courage. Men who risk their lives for freedom, who face daunting tasks with unblinking resolve, men who fail to take the easy, ‘safe’ route and instead opt for the magnificent, the Dream.
People talk of a will to live; we get the example of bravery and courage from people who do things we don’t have the stomach for. That’s okay; we appreciate and understand the sacrifice. I believe it was Frank Borman (Apollo 8, the first manned flight of the Saturn V/ Apollo vehicle), who said they figured they have a 1 in 3 chance of returning home without a problem and a 1 in 3 chance of never getting back at all, but this achievement, this advancement was ‘more important than our lives, our families… anything’.
Who would go to their job if they thought there was a 1 in 3 chance they’d die before they got home? Not too many of us, but we are better people as a race, as a species because we understand that people WILL take that risk to try and make life a little bit better.
We need to celebrate this, encourage this, revel in it; it’s a completely human trait. We need to cultivate it, rather than the self absorption and vapidity that percolates through the youth today and has translated into a disaffected culture who thinks little of greater things that could perform more ‘greater good’ works than all the government programmes in any country on the face of the Earth, combined.
I salute the Apollo 11 astronauts, and all the men of the Apollo programme, especially White, Chaffey and Grissom who gave their lives in the pursuit of the lofty, noble goal of space exploration.
May all of their sacrifice never be forgotten.
God bless them all.
Posted by hanyap at July 20, 2009 9:00 PM