Forty-Four Years Ago Today

Forty-four years ago today we all held our breath until the Eagle had landed. It was one of the biggest moments in human history, right up there with the discovery of fire, domestication of animals, development of agriculture, invention of movable type & printing press, discovery of America, and the development of flight.

 CBS

And it was live on television. Walter Cronkite was as nervous as we had ever seen him, on pins and needles, and (dare we say it?) almost speechless. We listened to the radio transmissions, heard the calls as master alarms were going off, heard the warnings from Houston that fuel was running out, heard the warnings from Neil Armstrong that the autopilot was putting the Eagle into a boulder field and he was taking over the controls.

Were they going to have to abort? Or worse, were they going to crash or be trapped where they couldn’t take off again, dying so very far from home? We had seen failure and death on the pad just thirty-one months earlier when we had lost Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Armstrong had almost died on Gemini 8, along with David Scott. Success was by no means guaranteed.

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

Do you remember the cheering? The insane, out of your mind relief and release of tension? The hugging of total strangers in every corner of the world? The pictures on the news, and in Time and Life and Look and Newsweek and National Geographic magazines, and on every newspaper in the world?

Denver Post

Do you remember the crowds watching and cheering along with us in London, Paris, Bangkok, New Dehli, Cairo, Johannesburg, Rio de Janerio, and tiny little villages in the middle of nowhere on every continent. Do you remember 600 million people all watching together?

Where I was a 13-year old in the Chicago suburbs, it was late in the evening by the time the moon walk started, six and a half hours after landing. It was coming up on 10:00 at night when the hatch opened and Armstrong started down the ladder. He pulled a lanyard, a hatch on the side of the LM folded down, and we had live video! From the moon! With a guy climbing down the ladder in front of us!

 NASA

“That’s one small step…”

I don’t know how much my seven younger brothers and sisters remember from that night. I know my parents had us all there in front of the television, but it was late and I’m sure that many of them slept through most of it.

 NASA

I did not. I still vividly remember the first step, the ghostly black & white televised images as the contingency soil samples were taken, Buzz Aldrin coming down the ladder next with Armstrong’s help, the installation of the science experiments, the set up of the US flag, the call from Nixon.

One of my most distinct memories is from when the plaque on the lander’s leg was unveiled. As Neil read the plaque, the video was clear enough to see inside his helmet and you could see his face as he read.

“We came in peace for all mankind.”

NASA

Soon enough it was done. They hustled to get the rock boxes and cameras and experiments back into the LM. After less than an hour, the first moonwalk in human history was done. The crew, and the world, got some sleep. The next day Armstrong and Aldrin blasted off from the moon, docked with Mike Collins in the Columbia command module, and returned safely to Earth three days later. Their film got developed and we’ve had iconic images as a part of our lives, our culture, and our history for forty-four years.

NASA

Now it’s forty-four years later. A generation and more not only don’t remember Apollo 11, they weren’t born until fifteen or twenty years after Gene Cernan left the last footprints on the moon at the end of Apollo 17 in 1973.

Why haven’t we gone back? Why haven’t we learned about living on another planet by living on another planet?

Why haven’t we gone further? Why haven’t we put boot prints on Mars? Or an asteroid? Or a comet?

Why haven’t we gone permanently? Elon Musk and others are now talking about colonization, not just travel. Why aren’t there opportunities for people like me, middle aged, healthy, kids grown, to go and live the rest of our lives building a colony on the moon or at L5 or on Mars?

Given the chance to spend the next forty or fifty years here on the ground becoming a part of the Lazy Boy lounger or going to Mars for fifteen or twenty years building the first human colony on another planet, I’m outta here in a heartbeat.

Forty-four years ago I wanted more than anything to follow in Neil Armstrong’s and Buzz Aldrin’s footsteps.

I still do.