40 Years From The Moon Landing-Now What?

If you asked ANYONE in 1969 after they witnessed Neil Armstrong cavorting on the lunar surface exactly what we’d be up to in the year 2009, it is likely the answers would have been a variation of one of the following:

a) Americans will be making regular trips to the moon as a vacation destination
b) We would have landed a man (or woman!) on Mars by now
c) We would have a space station/city in orbit
d) All of the above

So…..what happened?

It is somewhat ironic that we lost Walter Cronkite this past weekend-as he was likely the voice you heard describing the Apollo 11 landing 40 years ago today. I think that he, too, was a bit disappointed that we had not made more progress in space.

National priorities change. In the early 60’s, the Cold War fueled the race into space. We had security incentives to conquer the upper atmosphere and beyond. The wartime potential of supremacy in space was obvious. This sense or urgency, articulated by President Kennedy in his “deadline” to get us to the moon “before this decade is out” helped to crystallize the mission ahead of us.

After we arrived, there was euphoria, a sense of relief, of pride----and a heavy dose of “NOW WHAT?”

The Space Shuttle program-to design, build and fly a reusable spaceship made sense, but once we did it, what were we going out there for anyway?

I was a HUGE fan of the space program-and I distinctly remember gathering with my family around the TV 40 years ago today. It was SO surreal-that a part of me can understand those people who STILL believe it was all staged by NASA-that we never actually landed on the moon. It was all an elaborate deception.

The question of “what’s next”? still haunts us. At a time that when dollars are scarce-and no clearly defined reason for being in space exist, it is hard to justify the fact that more is spent yearly on the U.S. Space program than on the search for alternative energy sources, clearly a higher priority.

Maybe there is an energy source out there that we can harness. It will take something of that magnitude to galvanize American sentiment that we should re-direct the Space Program to new “heights” (sorry)

A new mission is in order. What is the nature of that mission? What is the end game? The space program of the 60’s created an explosion in advances in technology from computers to consumer electronics. This time, it will take more than commercial leaps in technology to justify the expenditure of our national treasure.

I hope we can define a new focus—one that captures the imagination of the entire world, not just the United States.

If you want to get the goosebumps all over again, watch the video clip below-historic footage of the mission 40 years ago that defined our supremacy as a superpower:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCp2jTtay0w

If you’d like my blog in your inbox daily, just let me know-it’s really easy- a small step for man (or woman), but a giant leap for mankind!tim.moore@citcomm.com