The Big Blue Marble. Taken December 7, 1972
I remember in the late 80s, when I lived in Richmond, there was a considerable amount of hand wringing about how to repair the G Street Bridge over the Whitewater River. I asked my dad how it was that we were able to ever build these bridges if we were unable to even repair them now. I don’t recall what his answer was. At the time, I think I had Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series on my mind. In that series, the Galactic Empire was failing and the men of that time were unable to repair the great works of earlier times.
Today’s announcement of the death of Gene Cernan reminded me of that conversation with my Dad and, by extension, the diminished stature of the Galactic Empire (which was, itself, based on Asimov’s notion of the Roman Empire).
Cernan passed away at the age of 82. Forty-four years ago, at the age of thirty-eight, he was the last person to walk on the moon on December 13, 1972.
As he climbed the ladder to the lunar module and left the surface of the moon, he said:
[A]s 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.
There is a good chance that I’m too focused on the moon as a measuring stick for our capabilities. After all, we (almost) harpooned a comet back in 2014. But it seems to be that the news is full of talk about what we can’t do, what we don’t want to do, what we can’t afford, and what we hate about each other. The fact is, we have not returned to the moon.
Some days, I think we need a Great Purpose to give our lives meaning. Without such a purpose, we take to building up the Other as Great Evils so that we can be heroic protagonists in our own minds. Nobody wants to be an insignificant part of an enormous, indifferent, and rudderless universe. So, we create narratives.
And, if we are not building mole hills into mountains, it feels like we’re drifting toward war just to give ourselves something important to worry about. It would be much better if we had something productive around which to unite and upon which to release our energies and focus our desire to be heroic parts of an epic story. I can think of much worse efforts than space exploration.
This is not, I’m afraid, much of a tribute to Captain Cernan. He was part of a great effort that did incredible things. He said:
“What is the real meaning of seeing this picture? I’ve always said, I’ve said for a long time, I still believe it, it’s going to be — well it’s almost fifty now, but fifty or a hundred years in the history of mankind before we look back and really understand the meaning of Apollo. Really understand what humankind had done when we left, when we truly left this planet, we’re able to call another body in this universe our home. We did it way too early considering what we’re doing now in space. It’s almost as if JFK reached out into the twenty-first century where we are today, grabbed hold of a decade of time, slipped it neatly into the (nineteen) sixties and seventies (and) called it Apollo.”
Hopefully we can build upon his efforts sooner rather than later. I’d rather be of a generation that was part of a continued rise in knowledge, ability, and accomplishment than a generation that was part of a preventable failure in imagination and effort.
Going back to the moon would be mostly reliving old glories I think.
The better purpose would be to create a more permanent human presence in space. Something on par with our presence in Antarctica. Long term that is probably Mars. It’s much more hospitable than the Moon. Lunar regolith is nasty stuff on equipment and humans.
Mid-term I think getting on an asteroid would be a good base and maybe even some resource exploitation. The rendezvous is much easier than the Moon and could be an interesting base of operations.
Short term a better space station. Something to work towards construction in space of vehicles that take us to elsewhere in the Solar System. As they say, orbit is half way to anywhere. Once you are out of the vast chunk of our gravity well things become much easier.
Then again, I might be a bit inspired after having watched Hidden Figures recently.
Maybe a space elevator.
Good point. The amounts of energy required to achieve orbit it and then to return from it are incredible. And pose substantial risks to humans and cargo.
Until I can see a value proposition from human space travel or human space occupation, the money can be better spent on unmanned projects and technology creation to lower the costs and risk of human space travel. Humans may get there, they may not.
The problem with a space elevator is that if it crashes weird stuff will happen. Most ideas I’ve read about have the them made out of carbon nanotubes and other such unobtanium. In any case they are a giant conductor.
Think about have something that is thousands of miles long (about 22K miles since they have to really go to geostationary orbit) falling to earth and generating a huge charge as it does (conductor falling through a magnetic field). Best case scenario it just starts fires and such along it’s length where it falls. Worst case…well, it turns to plasma and goodness knows what 22K miles of plasma would do to our planet.
So, if we do get the tech for a space elevator we should test the prototype somewhere other than earth.
Interesting. Thanks for posting. These are issues I would have never considered.
Twenty-two Thousand Miles of Plasma might be a good punk band or album name.
Good post.
Sadly it reminds me of how we aren’t even close to getting it right.
Just think of if we’d all unite to somehow get every single American affordable health insurance like every other modern country does.
We tend to forget about the international space station (ISS). Perhaps because of the International part? Or perhaps because it is a steady project instead of a splashy one. Never-the-less, orbiting since ’98 and continuously occupied for over 16 years (much longer than the Gemini/Apollo programs) it is a nice piece of space work which is something to be proud of.
But maybe we need something more American to get us excited. If so we will have to get a new acronym.