Today is the 40th anniversary of man finally stepping onto the surface of a world on which he wasn't born. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to do that, and shortly after Buzz Aldrin became the second. For a few brief hours they froliced on the surface of our moon, totally alone except for the tenuous radio link to earth and with their orbiting comrade, Mike Collins.
For those of us watching from our living rooms, bedrooms, diners and wherever we could gather to watch those static-filled TV images of this historic event, it seemed that we Americans were finally stepping onto a path that would take us to the stars.
If it were only so. Here we are 40 years later, and we haven't returned to that outpost that circles us a quarter of a million miles away.
That's right. We sent six other crews to the moon and five of those were able to land and send back breath-taking images of our engineering prowress. Unfortunately, the politicians of the day from the White House and Congress couldn't wait to shutdown the program. Three missions were cancelled, and the vast engineering system that built the powerful Saturn V rocket was dismantled. Instead of looking to the outer planets and dreaming of further adventures, we decided to build a space bus and for almost 30 years have been satisfied with NASA's version of Ralph Cramden circling in low earth orbit.
Don't get me wrong. The Shuttle was able to put into space the Hubble Space Telescope and when it proved near sighted as heck, we found men who could go aloft and fix it. That alone justified the program and proved man has a role in space. But the dream, the adventure, the mystery of deep space exploration was left to our imaginations. And we American quickly filled our minds with Star Trek, Star Wars, Alien, and numerous other nameless space westerns.
Of all the movies about space, the one I like best is Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones in "Space Cowboys." Why? Because it showed us what is really true about our present space effort. The adventure of space is dying off as quickly as our mid-70-year-old former moon walkers line up for the rest home and death. How much longer can a 78-year-old Neil Armstrong try to ignite the flame of adventure once again for a generation that sees him and his deeds as just words on the page of a history book?
I remember those days. I was home on leave from the Marine Corps. I was stationed at Cherry Point MCAS in North Carolina, and being around pilots and high-performance aircraft was a real ego booster. I remember sitting in the bedroom of Steve Neighbors, a friend of my brother, watching the images as Walter Cronkite acted like a teenage boy who has just been told by the prettiest girl in the class that she would go to the prom with him.
How were we to know that in just a few short years it would all be over and the only monuments to this achievement would be a few crumbling concrete foundations that marked the spot where once mighty, thundering rockets shook the world as they carried a few lucky men on the greatest adventure ever.
A couple of years later I was stationed in Iwakuni, Japan, and while there purchased a Moon watch. The Omega Speedmaster Professional was the only watch certified by NASA for space missions. I still have that watch. Of course it is like the space program. The seals and gaskets that keep out dirt and moisture have long since deteriorated to the point that if I wear it on a rainy day the crystal will cloud up. It needs an overhaul. But like our country I can't affort the price of sending it to a recognized Omega repair facility for this work. The United States talks big about going back to the moon and setting up a base there. It talks equally as brave about going to Mars. But so far there isn't a spacecraft on deck to do either mission and probably won't be for many years to come. Our shuttle, that aging delivery van of a spaceship, will be retired after a few more mission to the International Space Station. And the space station, despite hundreds of billions of dollars and the efforts of several countries to manufacture and place in orbit the various components needed to build it, will be decommissioned and crashed into the ocean in 2016.
Talk about lack of vision. It's no wonder we haven't made it back to our nearest space neighbor. Perhaps it's time we overhaul the space agency. Start over with new people, those who haven't bought into the current stagnant and fetid play it safe pond that has worked so hard to lower our sights. Let's dream again.
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