Tonight, What If EVERYBODY…

July 20th

If you’ve read more than one or two of my rants here, you know what it’s the anniversary (45th) of. Last year I described where I was on that momentous day. Earlier this month I talked about why I love NASA so much, despite some of the recent political and bureaucratic decisions that have frustrated me.

I don’t know if the social media universe (Twitter, FaceBook, and so on) are actually making a big deal of the anniversary or if it’s just my timelines/feed/slice that is. Since I follow a lot of NASA, space, science, and science fiction folks, there very well could be a huge selection effect going on here.

(For the record, looking at Twitter’s worldwide, US, and Los Angeles trends, the two I see trending across the board are James Garner’s death and “Happy National Ice Cream Day”, but there’s no sign of anything related to NASA or Apollo 11. FaceBook shows Gaza, James Garner, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the Open Championship, and Buzz Aldrin all trending. Finally, even if we do have to go to the “See More” button to find something.)

Within my social media feeds it’s about 75/25 between the, “Wow, wasn’t that fantastic & here’s where I was & it changed my life” comments and the, “WTF happened, why aren’t we living on the moon & walking around on Mars & heading toward the outer planets & mining asteroids & & & & &…” comments.

Jim Wright’s essay is spectacular (as they all are) and highly recommended. The best comment I’ve seen there (“Stonekettle Station,” John Scalzi’s “Whatever,” and Chuck Wendig’s “terribleminds” are the only three places where I dare to read the comments) is attributed to Andy Borowitz and says, “1969: America winning space race with the Russians. 2014: America keeping up with the Kardashians.” That’s far more true than I’m happy with.

But we can and should remember well what was accomplished on July 20, 1969, if for no other reason than to inspire us to yet again redouble our efforts to take the next small steps and giant leaps ahead. And it’s about time (literally) to do that.

It’s 13:00 PDT here in Los Angeles right now. Forty-five years ago, at 13:18 PT, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. At 17:56 PT, the first moonwalk began.

This evening, starting at 19:39 PDT (22:39 PDT) NASA-TV will show that original moonwalk telecast will be shown in its entirety just as it did forty-five years ago. Your cable or satellite company does (or should!) carry NASA-TV, or you can watch it here online.

At the conclusion of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” he asks the rhetorical question about what would happen if  one person a day, two people a day, three people a day, or fifty people a day would go to their draft board singing “Alice’s Restaurant.” Would they see it as a movement, or more bluntly, would any of the powers-that-be know or care?”

I don’t know if the Nielsen ratings system and software are even aware of NASA-TV’s existence. But I wonder…

Tonight, what if EVERYBODY watched the Apollo 11 replay? What if tonight, instead of getting two to three million viewers each, “60 Minutes,” “Big Brother,” “Rising Star,” “American Ninja Warrior,” and “The Simpsons” each got a few thousand viewers at most, while ten or twenty million televisions were tuned to NASA-TV all night watching a forty-five year old rerun?

Would that get anyone’s attention come tomorrow morning? Would that keep anyone’s attention through the next news cycle, or through the next election?

Wouldn’t it be really bitchin’ to find out?

I understand that it won’t happen tonight. But the fiftieth anniversary is five years away. That will be more of an attention getter than the forty-fifth anniversaryWith a little bit of planning and some grass-roots activism…

Spread the word. 1,827 days to go.