21 July 2014
The Only Thing More Amazing Than The Moonwalk 45 years Ago Tonight
Posted by Dan Satterfield
Exactly 45 years ago tonight, everyone who could see a TV, was in front of one. The clip below is the actual coverage from CBS News that evening. You can actually watch all of the Moonwalk online, and if you were not born yet, I highly recommend you do so. A lot of folks do not realize that when the camera came on (and a lot of folks doubted it would!) that the picture was upside down. A billion people on Earth turned their heads upside down to see that fuzzy gray image of Neil Armstrong’s boot coming down the ladder.
The only thing more amazing to me than that day, is the stunning fact we have never returned after Apollo. From Alan Shepherd to the ISS, NASA has spent less than the U.S Defense department spends in 6 months. In 1969, we had the best road system in the world, and the most modern airports.
We don’t anymore.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
I worked to try to find a direct quote online, but could not, but I remember a brief interview with Neil Armstrong on one of the earlier anniversaries, possibly 1979, but could have been 1989, when he was asked what disappointed him the most regarding technological progress since the manned lunar landing. His answer has always stuck with me. And that was, that he felt there was a certain engineering approach developed along with the space program, one which continues, and that it was not adopted or applied to other problems which society has besides space exploration. He also said, we did not seem to be anticipating problems, as we had the capability of doing so, merely reacting to them.
One of the aspects of what Professor Armstrong was speaking about was something I encountered when hearing about a potential project to try to raise the ”Endurance” from the sea bed of the Weddell Sea. This is exceedingly difficult. A suggestion was made to the team contemplating it to check in with NASA about how they think about these kinds of things. A visit revealed that NASA approaches these by subdividing and imagining. So, in this case, they proposed separating the problem into that of recovery, assuming you had everything you need when you get there, and into getting there, assuming that the recovery was going to be done in some way you did not need to worry about. They work out the interactions or, as they call it, the “interface” betwen the two subproblems later.
I agree with you. The decline of America’s leadership in the world is well underway. Our infrastructure is crumbling, along with our democracy. Our students turn away from careers in math and science. We still maintain the most powerful military, but to me that speaks to American paranoia and desire for world domination, not America’s greatness as a leader of humanity into a brighter future for all mankind.