Fifty-six years ago, on the 20th of July, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped from the lunar module onto the surface of the Moon. One hundred and twenty-five million Americans watched NASA’s live feed, along with countless numbers of people around the planet.
Donna and I were watching too, glued to the TV in our Sacramento, California apartment. My grandfather Estes, at his home in Jackson, Missouri, went us one better, focusing his camera on the TV screen and snapping two rolls of film … we were to see his Moon landing slide show several times on future visits.
Not many people then would have said the Moon landing was faked, or even dared to think so. There were a few, though, as there are today. I don’t think their numbers have grown significantly over the years, but with the advent of social media those few miserable assholes have a louder presence than before, along with chemtrail loonies and flat-Earthers.
Is NASA still capable, especially in the face of cuts the Trump administration is imposing, of returning us to the Moon and beyond? Private industry, working with NASA, is doing a good job ferrying astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, but will it be able to take over more ambitious missions in the event NASA is forced to give up on them?
This science fiction junkie, in the time left to him, hopes to see us return to the Moon and set up a more or less permanent base there. Mars? That too, but it’ll be a stretch.
I shipped off for Army Basic Training in August, 1969, but watched TV at my parent’s house in Citrus Heights, California, in Sacramento county. We sipped beer, my parents being somewhere else, goggled at the tube, then went out during commercials to stare at the moon and marvel.
Like you I was a sci-fi geek, thrilling to space operas from Asimov, Phillip K Dick, and Robert Heinlein. But lately I’m a space pessimist.
The sheer cost of the effort to put and keep meatbags on other planets or moons is beyond us. Remember that the Cold War fight against the big bad Ivans was the impetus and driver to spend the fantastic sums we splurged to beat them.
Voters and taxpayers of that day were living just past the heyday of our wealth and power, where the rich paid up to 90% taxes on any income past a million or so.
So even our middle class had more money then and were proud and confident and scared enough of the Communists to spend the money.
Those conditions no longer obtain in the US or anywhere else here in the limping-before-falling phase of late stage capitalism.
With the help of the traitor Donald trump’s dementia and greed, we stand on the precipice of the mother of all recessions. And not just us, either. It’s a race to a 1917/1989 style collapse for China and Russia as well.
And we ain’t seen nothing yet compared to when global broiling gets into its stride. We need last ditch, heroic efforts to stave off a 4 Celsius rise in temperatures in 30 years or sooner.
And that is not in the cards: it’s drill, baby, drill in the Trumpite, neofascist US of 2025 and beyond for years.
Even if the geriatric, collaborationist, weak sauce Dems gain power they will not use it for progressive change. Our government’s owners and paymasters, the 1% oligarchs, bribe–I mean lobby–both sides, ensuring that business as usual will doom us.
We like to think of ourselves as big brained apex predators, when actually we’re exactly like yeast cells in a wine vat, happily chowing down the carbs and sugars while pissing out ethel methel alcohol until concentrations reach 12% and we all die.
Substitute co² for the booze and that’s where we are today, swimming in 10% hooch and yelling come on in, the water’s fine! No worries.
So we humans might reach Encelades, Titan, Mars or at least our moon someday, but not soon, and not with this creaky old civilization with its chemical rocket technology. Maybe in 500 years, assuming we last that long. Which is not even a good bet. Goodbye to space dreams that were just costly fantasies.
Tod,
My concern is more physiological: we are creatures of Earth. Unless the amino acids and building blocks of life (should there be any) on other worlds match ours, humans colonists will have to import everything they eat. Humans may adapt to the lower gravity of other worlds, but should they stay more than a few months will have a hell of a time re-adapting to Earth gravity upon their return, and children born in low-gravity environments may never be able to live on Earth. And then there’s the expense. I’m with you in being pessimistic w/regard to humans in space, but am bullish on robotic exploration.