Still a giant leap for mankind

20 July, 2009 17:48:00

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"That's one small step for man... and one giant leap for mankind," said Neil Armstrong as he walked on the moon, July 20, 1969.

The measure of what humanity can accomplish is a size 9 1/2 bootprint.

It belongs to Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon. It will stay on the Moon for millions of years with nothing to wipe it away, serving as an almost eternal testament to a can-do mankind.

Apollo 11 is the glimmering success that failures of society are contrasted against: “If we can send a man to the Moon, why can’t we ...”

What put man on the Moon 40 years ago was an audacious and public effort that the world hasn’t seen before or since. It required rocketry that hadn’t been built, or even designed, in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy declared the challenge. It needed an advance in computerisation that had not happened yet. NASA would have to learn how to dock separate spaceships, how to teach astronauts to walk in space, even how to keep them alive in space — all tasks so difficult experts weren’t sure they were possible.

Forty years later, the Moon landing is talked about as a generic human achievement, not an American one. But Apollo at the time was more about U.S. commitment and ingenuity.

Historian Douglas Brinkley called the Apollo programme “the exemplary moment of America’s we-can-do-anything attitude ”. After the landing, America got soft, he said, looking for the quick payoff of a lottery ticket instead of the sweat-equity of buckling down and doing something hard.

In years since, when America faces a challenge, leaders often look to the Apollo programme for inspiration. In 1971, when President Richard Nixon declared a war on cancer, his staffers called it “a moon shot for cancer ”. Last year, then-candidate Barack Obama and former Vice-President Al Gore proposed a massive effort to fight global warming, comparing it to Apollo 11. An environmentalists’ project to tackle climate change and promote renewable energy took the name “Apollo Alliance ”.

Those still-unfinished efforts recall May 25, 1961, when President Kennedy, fresh from a disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, announced that America would land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade and return him safely home.

“I thought he was crazy ”, said Chris Kraft, when he heard Kennedy’s speech about landing on the moon.

Mr. Kraft was head of Mission Control. He was the man responsible for guiding astronauts to orbit (which hadn’t been done yet) and eventually to the Moon.

Mr. Kraft first heard about a mission to the Moon when Kennedy made the speech. — AP