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In a dark room at Houston's Space Center, the visitor's center outside NASA's Johnson Space Center, attends the latest spacecraft to return humans from the moon, the Apollo 17 "America" control module. . Aligning the walls is more of a relic of the Apollo program – space costumes, a flag worn on the moon and lunar rock samples that visitors can see and even touch.
A few blocks away, inside an unassuming metallic building, lies one of Saturn V's remaining three rockets, the same one that sent Apollo crews on the moon. Nearby, historians have restored the Mission Control Room from which flights such as Apollo 11 were managed 50 years ago.
It is here that Apollo returned home to retire, his defining goal being achieved, but his underlying mission remaining to be accomplished.
July 20, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the first steps of humanity in another world. At 10:56 pm, just when Neil Armstrong first entered the moon in 1969, look at the sky for a moment to think about what it meant and what he said about it. ;America.
Imagine the unwavering commitment and national commitment that had to be made to land Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin at sea of tranquility less than 70 years after the Wright Brothers' first flight. Barely eight years before the lunar landing, President John F. Kennedy appeared before a joint session of Congress with a call to arms that became Apollo. He urged the United States to "put a man on the moon and bring him back safely to Earth" by the end of the 1960s. The day Kennedy set this goal, the United States did not had launched only one human space flight with a duration of 15 minutes.
Before the deadline set by Kennedy, NASA had reached the goal of JFK twice, bringing Apollo 11 and 12 before 1969 and ending. It was an achievement born of an era before America agreed to limits on what it could do. This was before social media, blogs and talk radio found so many ways to defeat the initiative and convince people that "it's impossible to do it." It was an achievement that would be hard to duplicate in these divided times without a consensus on what America wants to do or what it wants to be.
Current wisdom is that Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon is a political goal, designed solely to prevent the Soviet Union from fighting us once again in space, as was the case during the Sputnik launches, Yuri Gagarin (the first human to turn around the Earth). ) and Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space). But in the call to Kennedy's weapons, you will not find anywhere the following words: "We chose to go to the moon during this decade and once we win the race, we will return at home, we will turn towards us and we will stop. "
Yet, we are still wondering, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Armstrong's giant leap, how to follow in the footsteps of Apollo. America, at least as far as human exploration of space is concerned, has remained stuck in neutral since the end of Apollo. Over the next decades, American, Russian, Canadian, Japanese, European and Chinese astronauts accumulated decades of low-Earth orbit time aboard space stations, circling the block, never leaving our planet to explore beyond our goals and reach.
On July 20, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the famous 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, an American astronaut will travel again aboard the ISS, aboard a Russian spacecraft Soyuz. Fifty years after Apollo defeated Russia on the moon, eight years after the end of the space shuttle program, our only way to access the space is to hitch a ride with our former one ( and sometimes occasionally) opponent.
Apollo has inspired a generation of innovators and explorers, including some from northeastern Indiana. The children who saw the heroes of Apollo do the impossible decided to do it too. There were people from northeastern Indiana who worked on the Saturn V rockets and the International Space Station who followed years later. James Hansen, a graduate of Elmhurst High School, spent part of his career writing on the history of spaceflight and finally convinced Armstrong to let him tell the life of the astronaut. His book, "First Man", has become an Oscar-winning film. The impact of spaceflight is an investment in man even more than in an investment in machinery.
The exploration then mattered and now. It's important now, perhaps more than ever, because of its ability to inspire people, broaden their horizons and convince them that: can do this.
In my lifetime, no American president has thought much about the future of space. The current call for astronauts to return to the moon by 2024, NASA's Artemis program, does not have the financial support to make it a success and a reason to return. This is one of the many false starts that the United States has undertaken to relaunch their mission in space. The first fierce promise to return to the moon took place 30 years ago, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11, when President George HW Bush declared that America would return to the moon then go on Mars.
"We rested on our Apollo laurels long enough," said Michael Collins, a member of the Apollo 11 crew, at the time. "It's time to move again," added Aldrin that day in 1989. "The time to take initiative in the space is upon us." The Bush 41 lunar program is shut down quickly, without a single mission being carried out, yet to Apollo designed since.
I want a president during my lifetime to deliver a speech that commits the country to the cause of exploration. But if no other leader does, we may be able to rely on Kennedy's original. Because Kennedy saw an American future in the space that went beyond the moon. "So that the eyes of the world now look in space, towards the moon and towards the planets beyond, and we have sworn that we will not see it ruled by a hostile conquering flag, but by a banner of freedom and peace, "he said. said in 1961, in the same speech that sent America to the moon. "We have set sail for this new sea because there is new knowledge to acquire and new rights to win. They must be earned and used for the progress of all. "
As long as humans looked to the stars, they wondered, "Are we all here?" Although the geology of the moon is important, what the ancients (and every millennium of humans who have followed) have wanted to know, is "Is there life there? The United States had had the idea of looking for life on Mars with the robotic Viking Lander mission in 1976, but its results (indicating that life was actually present on the Red Planet's soil) did not occur. were inconclusive. But the idea of biology on another planet, building blocks like those from which life on Earth was born, excited the world.
None of the six robotic landing and rover missions to successfully land on Mars since Viking has directly addressed the issue of life.
Answering this universal question once and for all would engage the world again in the exploration of what lies beyond the Earth. This would give Americans today their Apollo moment. Like the Apollo missions during the tumultuous 1960s, this would give Americans a compelling reason to look up. This would inspire another generation of leaders, innovators and explorers.
Answering this fundamental question is the most useful goal for humans in space. It's the deepest tribute that the world can offer to Apollo's heroes on the occasion of the silver anniversary of the first lunar landing. This would answer a question as old as humanity itself. By all accounts, the soils of Mars are probably full of microscopic life – and they are within the reach of explorers. In our own solar system, there are other places where conditions are conducive to life in its most basic form. But Mars is within our grasp and offers the answer to the greatest question of all time.
Life. It's something we all understand. Let's go find him.
So, on July 20, toast to the triumph of Apollo 11. But also wear it today, hopefully soon, when space exploration will come out of the pages of the 39 story to get back to the diary pages of today.
The moon was to be only the prologue to the history of America in space.
John McGauley, a resident of Fort Wayne, studies and writes about the history of manned spaceflight since the 1980s. He works in local government.
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