More Apollo 11 Memories

In honor of the Apollo 11 landing forty years ago, Northrop Grumman decided to make a video of employee's memories of that event. I volunteered to be interviewed because it was a chance to reach out and tell others about how indelible that event was to me and how important it is to continue that bold expansion into space today. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Apollo program was probably the greatest engineering achievement of the last century, not only because it succeeded in landing men on the Moon, but because it brought the people of Earth together as one, albeit briefly. Michael Collins, the third Apollo 11 crew member, remarked in the documentary "In the Shadow of the Moon," that people around the world came up to them during their post-flight tour of other countries and said, "We did it!" Not "you did it," "You Americans did it," but "WE" did it - we the human species did it. That to me was worth every penny of the Apollo program and worth every effort to duplicate it. Can we catch lightning in a bottle again with another push to the Moon and on to Mars? Reality is seldom so accommodating, but I can hope so. And I do.

As with the Lunar Lander image a couple of days ago, these two shots of the powerful Saturn V launch vehicle and Apollo Command Module were taken at the Kennedy Space Center during our 2002 trip to Florida. It is very, very impressive. I wish we still had some usable ones today.

Since haiku is like Lays Potato Chips (you can't just write one), I've added some more of my haiku tributes to the Apollo 11 anniversary. I'm afraid the last one is a bit melancholy, but some days my cynicism and frustrations win out. I'm sure somebody will prove me wrong; I just hope it's this country.

Eagle

A Golden Lander
and a Flag Red, White and Blue
Give the Moon Color.


Armstrong

Forty Years Ago -
One Small Step, One Giant Leap -
Our Footprints Remain.


Aldrin

Silent Sentinels,
Our Footprints Wander the Moon,
Relics in the Dust.


Apollo

How Soon We Forget.
Reality Turns to Myth
When Memories Fade.

Anniversaries - Part 2

Forty years ago today, two Americans landed on the Moon in a frail, spidery vehicle like the one above. In my mind, it was the most remarkable achievement of the 20th century. A mere 66 years after the first sustained and controlled powered flight by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, NC, men walked on the surface of another celestial body. When the Apollo program ended, twelve Americans would stand on the lunar surface and fifteen more would orbit or loop around the Moon, including the crews of Apollos 8, 10 and the ill-fated 13. We've not been back since 1972.

Forty years...it seems so long ago, and yet I remember that moment well. We stayed up all night watching Walter Cronkite - who ironically pasted away last Friday - as he anchored the CBS news coverage of that remarkable event. I remember being impatient with the delay between the landing and the walk, anxious to see Armstrong step onto the surface, of being transfixed by the ghostly images as he and Aldrin kangaroo-hopped on the Moon in glorious black and white. In retrospect the television quality was poor, but it was coming live from the Moon and at the time it was the most beautiful pictures I'd ever seen.

Forty years ago...in a perfect world we as a species should have been on Mars by now, with colonies on both it and the Moon and in orbit. But we don't live in a perfect world and the pace of grand exploration moves in fits and starts. The European expansion into the Western Hemisphere is a prime example. More succinctly, in the immortal lines from "The Right Stuff," "No bucks, no Buck Rogers." Human beings will return to the Moon someday, and step on Mars, but whether they will be American is another story. Oh, well....

In honor of the anniversary of this amazing event, I composed a haiku called:

Apollo 11 Memories

Ghostly images
of Astronauts on the Moon,
Saluting the Flag.

Incidentally, I shot the above image at the Kennedy Space Center during our 2002 trip to Florida. We were hoping to catch the Shuttle launch scheduled for that day, but it was postponed to a later date.