I remember the event, but I don’t think it had much impact
on me, then or now. I was a camp
counselor, and we had the campers watch it on a small TV, the director being aware of the significance of the event. I was more concerned with a
girlfriend who was a counselor an hour up the road, planning a surprise visit
on my day off. I vaguely remember having heard there was a music festival coming up in New York, but was so sure I would not be given permission to go to it that I gave it little thought. Also, I was concerned with developing and maintaining coolness in
general, making sure that my sneakers, my hair, my choice of music illustrated
that I was much more with it than other 16 y/o’s, more like a college student
really.
Nor have I ever gotten that excited about it. Just a few years later another girlfriend
suggested it was all a hoax, the first time I had considered such a shocking
thing. Yet even then it was a matter for shrugging. Either way, so what? I had a brief later
interest when Alan Shepard from NH went to the moon and hit a golf ball, but I
don’t even remember which mission that was or what year. The idea of using the
moon to accomplish something, whether research or mining or manufacture, always
caught my attention a bit more.
I can understand admiring the technical difficulty, the
whole desire to do something just to prove it can be done (and that you are the
one who can do it). Because we can.
Because it’s there. To be the first. The joy of accomplishing something
difficult. I can picture myself enjoying being part of such an endeavor. Yet
observing it in others? Mild
congratulations. Yngwie Malmsteen is probably the fastest lead guitarist and
does what others cannot quite manage, but I don’t think he’s often very good. I
don’t see the point. If you are a heavy metal guy, speed is often part of the
allure. Technical precision does have value, but it’s not everything.
I might feel the same way about pure mathematics if it
didn’t have a centuries-long record of turning out to be eventually
useful. I loved playing with numbers and
algebra well into college and recall the joy of discovering a hidden property
of a series or algebraic relationship.* But it’s only mildly interesting to me
to watch someone else have that experience.
I suppose watching my children learn things is an exception to that. But in celebrating great math, I am
celebrating its potential usefulness. Mere beauty and elegance can be found in
many other places.
So. Moon. Fine. I’m still not convinced it’s been a great
leap for mankind, other than its derivative effects of making computers smaller
and so forth. One criticism of going to the moon has not panned out, however. CS
Lewis and others believed that actually landing on the moon would destroy the
romance of it, and I doubt that has proved out in anything other than the most
limited fashion. We just moved our men
from the moon and men from Mars further out in imagination. I don’t know the science fiction genre well
enough to know if the women from
distant planets are still regarded as probably very sexy, but that was apparent
even to a teenager that the fantasy was simply a way to talk more about sex.
Even Heinlein did it. Come to think of it, that was another supposedly very exciting thing that I
had little interest in. Venusian girls always seemed a bit creepy to me. Perhaps I just don’t have much interest in
outer space in general, if I can’t even get interested a moon landing and
potential sexy babes there.
*Here’s one: 1³
+ 2³ = (1+2)², 1³ + 2³
+ 3³ = (1+2+3)², 1³ + 2³ + 3³ + 4³ = (1 + 2 + 3 +
4)²… it’s just fun to notice
I was the opposite, I guess. I'd listened to all the Mercury countdowns I could, and had sent away for a Mercury rocket model kit. I poured over the National Geographic articles. Dad was a science fiction reader, and maybe I picked it up that way--we were excited. It wasn't something a 14-year-old was involved with, obviously, and so not an accomplishment for me, but there was still a lot of "we" in our enthusiasm. We'd have been disappointed if the Russians had gotten there first, but for some of us it was a friendly competition--we could get to the Moon.
ReplyDeleteThe landing was at night, of course, and the shortwave was pretty crackly, and we kids were impatient for the first steps--we couldn't understand why it took so long. (Mom and Dad had to work in the morning, so they eventually went to bed.) We stayed up past 3 in the morning for the "small step." After a little while I went outside to look for the Moon, which was playing peek-a-boo with the tropical clouds. When I finally saw it I went to bed too.
I'd fall somewhere in the middle. Most of the excitement for me was because my mother used this event to justify purchasing a new TV. Even though the most interesting footage was in b&w, we got to watch it on a color TV.
ReplyDeleteI'm something like Donna, in the middle. I don't remember watching the first moon landing specifically or the Apollo 13 drama (I waw 7 when Apollo 11 flew) but I do remember watching the later Apollo flights, the Soyuz link ups, the Space Shuttle, watching SpaceLab fly by at night. I was a bit of a geek, and the technology was interesting, especially as I got more into computers.
ReplyDeleteThose Venusian girls! WowWEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI knew I could count on you, Sam. (aside) "Uh, no more drinks for the guy over by the jukebox."
ReplyDeleteThe primary purpose and benefit of the Moon project was to divert the great powers, U.S. and U.S.S.R., to peaceful competition. Instead of building better nuclear missiles, much of their investment went into building spacecraft instead. Because the effort was so vast, and largely ceremonial nsidered peaceful, the technology was largely open, as opposed to military secrets. The advances included everything from computers to weather forecasting to GPS.
ReplyDeleteAnother science fiction family here. I believe I disappointed my father by being a little blase about it. Of course we were going to the Moon! People in books did it all the time. At 13, I was too old to be literally confused between reality and fiction, but it lacked the emotional impact it had for my elders, especially since I had little understanding of the technical difficulty. Nevertheless, I was glued to the TV set that night.
ReplyDelete