Viewpoint: What Apollo 11 really accomplished

Karen Rubin

Nostalgia is such a beautiful thing. Like a dream, what is recalled are only the beautiful things.

The Apollo 11 landing on the moon on July 20, 1969, is universally acclaimed as a highpoint for American ingenuity, innovation, leadership in technology and quite literally the “one step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

But as this 50th anniversary has come around of an event which virtually everyone who was alive at the time can remember precisely, we get to see in the numerous documentaries, movies, articles, museum exhibitions such as are on at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, more of what happened behind-the-scenes.

There was huge opposition to the space program – by “liberals” (progressives) who said the billions being spent would better be spent on rebuilding cities, combating poverty, improving education; by conservatives who resented taxpayer money being spent; by those who objected to the lives lost in this quest to leave the planet, including astronauts. Indeed, 1968 was a brutal year – the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, rioting, protests for civil rights, women’s rights, to end the Vietnam War.

We hear again John F. Kennedy’s invocation, “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.”

But it is important to understand the politics behind it.

I got a bit of that at the panel convened at the Cradle of Aviation with five of the astronauts (three who actually walked on the moon) and two mission controllers. Asked what was different then and lacking to motivate a new mission with the same Apollo-zeal, they pointed to the absence of a villain to compete with – then it was Russia.

They also remarked that the neophyte agency of NASA hadn’t had time to become fossilized or bureaucratic (which I question and it certainly was a political animal). They remarked how young everybody was. The astronauts were all (white male) fighter pilots who were prepared to die for the mission; the engineers at Grumman were too young, snapped up right out of college, to realize what they couldn’t do, and so filled with idealistic zeal, they worked around the clock.

Today, new adversity with China, which has a vigorous space program (including demonstrating its ability to shoot down satellites), is likely to spur a new race to dominate space, but not for “all mankind” but for military domination.

At a discussion of three who worked at Grumman’s lunar module program, organized by the Gold Coast Arts Center after a screening of “First Man” at Cradle of Aviation Museum, two astonishing points were made: without the horrific tragedy of the fire that took the lives of Roger Chaffee, Virgil “Gus” Grissom and Ed White II, said the moon landing probably would not have been successful. “It showed all the problems….”

Howard Frauenberger, a co-op engineering intern on the LEM project, also noted that Russia might have beaten the USA to the moon and planted its own flag, but its moonshot, on July 3 (intentionally the day before Independence Day), failed. How the world would have been different if Russia had beaten the USA to the moon.

Now people urge a “moonshot” to cure Alzheimer’s or cancer (Obama named Biden in charge of that, but of course it was disbanded by Trump), an Apollo-scale program to green our energy and our economy.

But what is missing is the immediate sense of competition for leadership. That is a gigantic mistake.

The Trump Administration might be trying to re-structure the USA back to the 1950s – the glory days of white male domination, when the USA, the only power with an effective economy left standing after World War II, could strut its power like an Ugly American around the globe – but China and Russia, are forging ahead, using the model of American Empire founded on capitalism, to reestablish their own glory days of Empire.

China intends to dominate 5G, which would give it control over the internet and with its “Belt and Road” policy, is building infrastructure around the world that will eventually give it a foothold to not only control physical space but political; Russia intends to dominate realpolitik, cannily using its cyberweapons to alter the political landscape, as well as edging the USA out of alliances (allying with Saudi Arabia to control oil supply and prices while Trump does Putin’s bidding in squeezing out Iran’s supply, and with Turkey).

Trump’s big idea is a manned mission to Mars, with which he hopes to achieve a legacy on par with JFK (when contradicts his other goal, returning to the Moon by 2024). It is reasonable at this time to question the allocation of resources – at a time when Trump is driving a $1 trillion budget deficit pushing the debt ceiling beyond $22 trillion – instead of investing in cleaning our environment and greening our economy.

Instead of all the technology developed for Apollo that advanced civilization of earth – computers, GPS– would a Mars program instead be a pretext to capitalize Space and devise new military weapons? No more of that sentimental rot, “We come in peace for all mankind.”

Another thought on the 50th anniversary of the first Men on the Moon: how simply because of the desperate need for people, the space program broke down race and gender barriers and opened opportunities.

But any such program on the scale of the Space Race would accomplish that – you don’t need to go to Mars – it’s why at this time of historically low unemployment, there is a renewed emphasis on universal pre-K, parental leave and affordable childcare, which will likely evaporate when the next recession hits.

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