It was put into motion 48 years ago.
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish” – President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961, address to joint session of Congress
Then, 40 years ago, mankind set foot on a celestial body that we had admired in awe, fascination, wonder, and sometimes even fear, since the day that God put our ancestors on this planet.
We committed ourselves to a goal. And we achieved it.
It must have been a wonderous f
eeling to watch – as the Saturn V rocket launched forward from its launchpad on plume of 7.6 million pounds of thrust; as our astronauts, Neil, Buzz and Michael, soared through the vastness of space toward the moon; as the Eagle descended and then landed; and as Neil put his boot down on the surface of the moon.
He stumbled a little verbally as he searched for the words he wanted to say.
But he said the phrase that we all know: “That's one small step for a man – one giant leap for mankind.”
Awesome.
We had put a man (actually two men that time - 10 more would follow in their footsteps) on the moon.
And guess what…. There’s an AMERICAN flag on the moon. WE did it. It was our boys who were up there. The United States of America achieved that goal.
Granted, it wasn’t all for the nature of satisfying our curiosity. It wasn’t all just to inspire people. There was a Cold War going on. We were in a space race with the Soviet Union. It was a constant game of one-upsmanship and power plays.
Kennedy himself was known to have only set that goal of the moon and of NASA’s rapid rise in the 60s for the purpose of having the edge in the Cold War.
Even still, it’s amazing to think of. In less than 100 years, mostly since the turn of the 20th century, man had pioneered the telephone, radio, car, airplane, television – and space travel. And we put a man on the moon.
I would say that landing a man on the moon was probably mankind’s greatest technological achievement in modern history, if not all of history. It was definitely the most inspiring achievement to the most amount of people at probably any time in history.
But it’s been 40 years. And we haven’t been back in almost 37.
I can honestly say that I don’t think there have been any achievements of any kind anywhere near that magnitude, let alone that inspiring, in the last 40 years. We need to be inspired. We need to have something that we all collectively want to achieve.
It was a moment in which the WORLD came together in fascination. One which still captures the imagination.
We can all say we want world peace. That isn’t likely to happen soon. That would be the best achievement we could ever reach for. But more realistically, we can all reach for the moon. It’s out there. We've been there before. We know it’s not made of cheese. And we know that no cow can jump over it without a rocket system engineered for that specific purpose, with sound life support and environmental controls and an adequate supply of grass for it to chew on.
Man did it though – and we will do it again. We need something to recapture that fascination and imagination.
But by the time we make it back, given no delays on the proposed timeline, it will be 2020 and it will be 48 years since man last set foot on the moon. That’s too long of a time.
Space exploration is something that we can’t hold back on. It’s in our nature to be wonder – to explore – to see what’s out there past our newest frontier. We’re never going to be satisfied to sit here on this rock we call Earth and not explore the heavens.
God made it all for us. He made a race of explorers. He gave us a curious nature. And he provided us with the tools to satisfy that curiosity and to send ourselves out on new adventures.
I think we owe it to the men and women that built NASA, that built our space program, and pushed this nation and mankind to that new frontier to go back to the moon.
But we’ve been spinning our wheels. We’ve lost 17 fine, brave souls in the process, 14 of those in a program that should have long since paved the way for something even more amazing.
We owe it to them to go back. They would have wanted it. We owe it to them to go even further.
On Sept. 12, 1962, President Kennedy, in an address give at Rice University on the space effort, declared “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
We chose to go to the moon. And we did. Now let’s get back on track and go back to the moon - go to Mars, go further out, and “boldly go where no man has gone before.”
Stay tuned for Part 2: You Call This Support?
