Would like to share some key ideas from the book - Apollo’s Legacy - Perspectives on the Moon Landings by Roger D Launius. These ideas are culled from the prologue of the book. The chapter begins with the description of the first moon landing. “The astronauts who first landed on the Moon half a century ago carried with them the hopes and wishes of all whom they had left behind on Earth, as well as uncertainty about what they would experience on the lunar surface.” The name of the Lunar module (LM) was code-named Eagle - Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin travelled in the weirdest looking contraption ever to invade the sky. The first words ever spoken on the Moon were ‘conflict light’ - as a sensor on one of Eagle’s legs had encountered the surface and triggered a light inside the lander. Armstrong called Mission Control and said ‘Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed’. Armstrong later admitted that he had he misstated the famous line - “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind,” It all happened in the excitement of the moment. Both Armstrong and Aldrin in their two hours moonwalk had a lengthy list of duties to perform. They both were like a five-year-old boy in a candy store. They had to collect rock and soil samples, unfurl the American flag in the lunar surface, salute it and take pictures. They also left a plaque there which read: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon - July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind”
The prologue reminded me of the following cultural references:
1.
The character of Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story series
2.
The MoonWalk dance of Michael Jackson
3.
How the Native Americans occupied Alcatraz Island as part of the Red Power movement in
1969. The same year the US started its interstellar expansion.
4.
The Moon-landing deniers and their theories.
5.
The celebration of the 50th year of Moon Landing.
The three-member team consisted of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins. After his return from the lunar mission, Armstrong taught Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
Aldrin was an extrovert person and he enjoyed the spotlights and the camera. Aldrin held a PhD in Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was an expert in manoeuvering, rendezvous and docking of two space crafts in Orbit. His work in Extra-Vehicular Activity ( EVA) or spacewalking, made it possible for astronauts to depart their spacecraft and undertake pioneering work in the vacuum.
Collins remained in the Columbia command module orbiting the life-less grey orb. He talks about the fragility of Earth as he viewed it from the perch.
'From the space, there is no hint of ruggedness to it, smooth as a billiard ball, it seems delicately poised on its circular journey around the sun and above all, it seems fragile'
Armstrong was known for his modest practicality. Aldrin for his boisterousness and Collins for his sensitivity and self-reflection.
They were only the point of a spear made of thousands of NASA engineers and scientists, managers and administrators, clerks and technicians. There were comparisons made between Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong.
In the case of Moon Landings, memory operates in many powerful ways. Most remembrances of the landings have been dominated by a celebratory perspective, one emphasizing the uniqueness that is America as it overcomes challenge and adversary. The successful Appolo program can be viewed as a representation of American history writ large and indeed has become the standard way to remember it. The dominant American perspective on the past is sustained.
Each of these recollections of Appollo the mainstream one and those from the left, the right and fringes has its place in the American consciousness. The ways that Apollo has been remembered over the five decades since the Moon landings and bringing to the fore the passionate cultural debate.
