Moon Landing

The media are understandably full of the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing this week. In a normal lifespan, there are always likely to be one or two pivotal, unforgettable moments that seem to transcend our sense of time and place, uniting people across the globe in a single common purpose and making differences of nationality, religion, politics and culture seem utterly trivial and insignificant. To a young mind especially, such events can be enthralling, compelling to live through. They create dreams and spark the imagination. They challenge our assumptions and change the way we think. They move us forward with altered priorities, generating change and progress in human society, moving mankind forward. For this aging writer, the impact of space exploration in the 1960’s on a teenage mind was huge. The sheer drama of the space missions and the human courage of the astronauts, Russian as well as American, was completely absorbing. That was an extraordinary night to live through, when so many of us sat up watching our grainy black-and-white televisions to see the lunar module land on the moon’s surface, and a few hours later held our breaths as Armstrong and Aldrin came down the steps and became the first humans to walk on a surface that was not of the Earth. Unforgettable. Yet it was never the technology that intrigued me. It was always the human drama, and the opening of the imagination. It was being made to think of things that had never crossed my mind before, being forced to see things from entirely new perspectives. As extraordinary as the feats of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins in Apollo 11 were, perhaps with hindsight it was the journey of Apollo 8 a year or so earlier that has had the greater impact on human history. The astronauts were Borman, Lovell and Anders (if my memory is intact), and their mission was to be the first to fly into a lunar orbit, swinging round the dark side before firing themselves away from the moon and back to Earth – a vital test flight before they could proceed with actually landing on the moon. In the process they became the first human beings ever to be literally out of contact with Earth. As they emerged from behind the moon, they saw a vastly reassuring but totally unique sight – Earthrise. From here we see the sun and moon rise, from the moon you see the Earth rise. One of them took that iconic photograph which you have all seen, of a beautiful blue planet partially draped in cloud, hanging in space. It is a picture that has forced us to rethink our place in the universe, to recognize that man is not at the centre of everything, to see that we are totally dependent on this extraordinary planet. It is a picture that did much to inspire James Lovelock in the development of his deeply influential Gaia hypothesis, emphasising the linkage between all life forms on the planet, their mutual interdependence, and the capacity of the Earth to continue without man should we be so stupid as to so despoil the natural resources of the planet that our own survival is threatened. So enjoy the memories of the moon landing, but learn from it too. The media over the decades have always focused on the material benefits from space exploration, from non-stick surfaces to computing (apparently there is more computer power in your mobile phone than there was in the lunar landing module!), once again seeing progress in terms of things, not values and ideas. They had an unlikely opponent. On his return Neil Armstrong was asked what space technology and exploration had done for the standard of life on Earth. His reply was unequivocal: “Nothing. The only thing that can improve the standard of life is wisdom.”