Week of 07/22/2019

Fifty Years After The Moon Landing – Giant Leaps Back For Mankind
– by David Matthews 2

A little more than fifty years ago, as of this column’s posting, mankind made the first steps out into the universe. 

We put two men on the Moon.

Over two billion people watched it live on TV; myself included.  Granted, I was too young to fully understand the significance, but I do remember watching it on a black-and-white TV.

We did it for ego.  We did it for bragging rights.  We did it because we didn’t want the Soviet Union to upstage America in this like they did with the other firsts in space.  We did it because the late President John F. Kennedy promised that we would, and do it in a decade.

It was a race.  It was a competition.  The Soviet Union had made so many gains being the first to launch a satellite, the first to put a man in orbit, the first to venture outside the capsule... America didn’t want the Soviets to plant their flag on the Moon first.

But we did it.  We put two men on the moon and planted the American Flag in the ground, where it remains there today along with all the other junk and litter that we left there.  Hey, we’re Americans.  It’s what we do.  We plundered the ground, took some rocks, and left our trash and mementos there.  U-S-A!  U-S-A!

And yet... fifty years later, this commentator and science fiction fan/author seriously doubts that we could repeat that magic.

The first reason why we can’t go to the Moon right now is that we – as in America – do not have the means to get there ourselves. 

We used to have a great fleet of space shuttles, and we used to be able to go up into space on a regular basis.  We’d launch a shuttle, drop off a satellite, fix another satellite, do a few experiments in low orbit, then land the shuttle and get another ready to launch.  We put up space-based telescopes and helped assemble the International Space Station!  We were talking about going to Mars!

And then some genius decided to put control of our space agency in the hands of a mealy-mouthed bureaucrat who didn’t want us in space anymore.  It was too dangerous.  It was too scary.  So when the aged shuttle Columbia burned up in re-entry, this same mealy-mouthed bureaucrat decided that it was time to stop putting shuttles into space.  He retired all of the shuttles.  The problem being, we had nothing to replace the fleet with.  We had to hitch a ride with the Russians and the European Space Agency.

Nice going, dumbass.

Even today, America’s only way to get to space is through the private company SpaceX, or, again, through the ESA or the Russians.  America sent twelve men to the Moon, and now we can’t even go the ISS on our own, never mind fix those space-based telescopes we put up there.

But, even if we did have our own spacecraft again, this commentator seriously doubts that we would have the determination to go back to the Moon.

First there is funding.  Going to the Moon again is a pricey endeavor.  We have Democrats that think that the money would be better spent on needed social programs, and we have fascistic members of the GOP that think that the only things that tax money should be spent is on war and police and prisons and a certain narcissist’s ego-wall.  And whatever the Democrats want, the fascistic GOP does everything in their power – by hook and by crook – to deny it.  So even if the Dems that control the House of Representatives wanted to further fund space exploration, the sociopaths and psychopaths in the fascistic GOP will pull out the stops to shut it down just out of spite.

By the way, the reason why we stopped going the Moon in the 1970’s was because the Dems in Congress said that we should stop spending money on space and instead spend it on social programs.

Then there is the biggest cheerleader for us going back into space... the orange-skinned narcissistic space cadet known as President Donald Trump.  Only he doesn’t see us as explorers.  He envisions a “Space Force”; a division of the military that would be dedicated to saving America from space.  I’m sorry, but we’ve seen this vision before, and it’s not great.

Even if we didn’t have the Spaceball-in-Chief in office, though, America really doesn’t have the vision or the drive to go into space.

We didn’t want to go to the Moon because it was there.  We weren’t looking to put up colonies or try to find little green men or to see if it was made of cheese.  We went to the Moon out of fear of losing to the Russians.  It was for ego, not for exploration.  It was for bragging rights, not for bold ventures into the great unknown.  We did it.  It’s done.  America will always be the first to put men up there.  We have the boot-prints and the American flag and the junk up there to prove it.

Instead, we are focused on the Middle East, and terrorists, and immigrants, and predatory healthcare costs, and whether or not that Russian-made app is spying on us, and whether the Russians will interfere in our elections again.  The only space that we are interested in nowadays is cyberspace and the space between our ears.  Never mind the chunk of space rock that has enough gold to make every human being a billionaire; we’re worried about whether or not we will have a chunk of money for us to survive through our golden years.  

Let’s get brutally honest here... America took several giant leaps back when we decided to stop looking to the Moon for our future.  We took the achievements made by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and the ten others who followed them, and we put it in the national trophy case called the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum along with the model of the U.S.S. Enterprise from “Star Trek”.

Hell, there’s a significant number of people who think that we did not go to the Moon at all!  There are people that firmly believe that we faked the whole thing.  That’s only one of the many falsehoods that we have bought into since then that have done a disservice to mankind itself.

We need inspiration to go back into space.  We don’t have it.  We need to be challenged to go out there.  We can’t do that if we’re focused on the latest iPhone app and asking why the price of our medication is going up and focused on all the hate being churned up by the orange-skinned space cadet in the White House and his hate-filled bigoted myrmidons.  Look up?  I’m looking for the giant asteroid that is supposed to wipe us out.  It can’t come soon enough.

Fifty years ago, Neil Armstrong made one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind.  Today, we have reversed his giant leap and have taken two more backward.  Never mind finding aliens... we can’t even find our humanity.