Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of the First Moon Landings

It's been quite some time since I've written anything here; while I've felt the inspiration to write something on a few occasions, I've always ended up distracted by something else. But the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing really is too good an opportunity to pass up. A few years ago I posted something on the last Moon landing, which took place in December 1972; since I am writing this without referring to that piece, I may repeat myself on a few points, but then they are likely to be worth repeating.

Apollo 11 lifted off on July 16, 1969 and entered lunar orbit on July 19. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went down to the surface in the lunar module on July 20, leaving Michael Collins in the command module, and Armstrong and then Aldrin stepped out onto the surface a few hours after landing (the time was late in the evening on July 20 in the US, but in most of the world it was July 21). After a few hours on the surface, Armstrong and Aldrin returned to the LM and then ascended from the surface to rendezvous with Collins for the return to Earth, which they reached on July 24, fifty years ago today. This was indeed a momentous journey, arguably the greatest single achievement by humans in the few hundred thousand years we've been in existence. But despite the attention that Apollo 11 as a mission and Aldrin and especially Armstrong as individuals receive, it's worth remembering that this was not the only mission to the Moon, and Armstrong and Aldrin were not the only people to walk on its surface.

Though Armstrong and Aldrin were the first to walk on the Moon, they and Collins were not the first humans to travel there. The first flight to the Moon took place in December 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission, with Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders becoming the first people to orbit the Moon. The Apollo 9 mission stayed in Earth orbit, as had the Apollo 7 mission (both were still important tests of the hardware needed for the later missions), but Apollo 10 was a full dress rehearsal for the first Moon landing, in which Tom Stafford, Gene Cernan, and John Young flew to the Moon and did everything short of actually landing, including taking the lunar module down towards the surface before returning to the command module. The lunar module's ascent stage was sent into orbit around the Sun, unlike later ascent stages, which were left in lunar orbit to later crash on the Moon's surface, meaning the Apollo 10 ascent stage is the only derelict once-crewed spacecraft still somewhere in space (a recent study indicates that the asteroid 2018 AV2 is probably the spacecraft). This Apollo mission has special significance for me personally, since I was born while it was taking place.

Not only were there missions to the Moon before Apollo 11, but there were quite a few afterwards. From Apollo 12 in November 1969 to Apollo 17 in December 1972, there were five more successful Moon landings in which Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, David Scott, John Young, Charlie Duke, Gene Cernan, and Harrison Schmidt walked on the Moon, in the later cases staying for as long as three days on the surface of the Moon. The one mission without a Moon landing was Apollo 13, in which an explosion in the service module forced an emergency return to Earth, though they have to fly by the Moon in order to gain the velocity to make it back to the Earth. This meant that Jim Lovell, who commanded the mission, became the first person to fly to the Moon twice (Young and Cernan did it later), and the only one to go twice without landing. In all, in addition to the 12 people mentioned above who walked on the Moon, there were 12 more, including Lovell, Borman, Stafford, Collins, et al, who flew to the Moon without landing. What's unfortunate is that of the 12 who walked on the Moon, only Aldrin, Scott, Duke and Schmidt are still alive, though eight of the 12 who flew to the Moon without landing are still alive (oddly enough, the only Moon mission with all three members of its crew still alive is the earliest, Apollo 8; on the other hand, all three astronauts who flew on Apollos 12 and 14 have died). Lovell and Borman are 91, and Aldrin at 89 is the oldest of the remaining moonwalkers. Charlie Duke is the youngest, but even he is 83. As I noted in my previous post on the subject, there's a danger that if humans don't make it back to the Moon in the near future that there will come a time when there's no one alive who has been there. For now, at least, many of them seem to be in good health for their age. Late last month I attended the Starmus festival in Zurich, and Aldrin, Duke, Schmidt, and Al Worden (command module pilot on Apollo 15) all attended and seemed in good shape. Collins was supposed to come but his trip was vetoed by his doctor, though it was seemingly nothing serious. Regrettably, I didn't manage to meet any of the Apollo guys, though I saw them all up close and did interact a bit with a few of the other speakers.

Incidentally, I have almost finished reading Michael Collins' autobiography Carrying the Fire, which is widely regarded as one of the best if not the best Apollo astronaut autobiography, and is also notable for being written by Collins alone, without help from a ghostwriter or co-author. It is indeed very good and is fascinating reading, doing much to support a reference I once saw to Collins as the most articulate of the Apollo astronauts. He certainly comes across as very knowledgeable on a variety of topics. While a professional co-author might have smoothed out some of his transitions in topics, in many ways his occasional tangents and throwaway remarks make the book more interesting than they would be otherwise. He also manages to inject a fair amount of humor as well as managing to keep up the pacing throughout the book. There are a few bits that are not exactly politically correct by today's standards, but are pretty standard fare for the time it was written in the early 1970s. Collins himself said in a recent interview that he hasn't read it in years and if he did would probably find things he thought were wrong or that he disagreed with, and perhaps those might include his slightly disdainful attitude towards hippies or his relief that women weren't recruited into the Apollo program (his chief reasons were the need to redesign the spacesuits and the awkwardness of having to relieve oneself in mixed company). On the other hand, he expressed regret that they didn't have any black astronauts in the program, and other parts of the book show that he had a fairly progressive outlook for the time.

One of the most impressive parts of the book was the very end, where he talks about the effect that going to the Moon had on him personally; delves into the question of whether the Apollo program was worth it, giving an even-handed overview of the arguments on both sides, though naturally concluding that it was; explains the foolishness of an "either/or" mentality ("Either cure cancer or fly in space") when it's possible to try to do both; and talks about the fragility of Earth as a planet, including the danger of polluting it without restraint (he refers to the pollution residues from use of fossil fuels as "unholy evidence of our collective insanity") and how our common interest in keeping our home planet habitable outweighs the things that separate us. Another impressive part of the book was his prefaces to the 40th and 50th anniversary editions, which make even more apparent that he has a clear and even progressive view of the world's major problems. For instance, he stated in 2009 and restated in 2019 that "we need a new economic paradigm to produce prosperity without growth", a sentiment I heartily agree with, "socialist" though some might think it. He also cited rising global temperatures as a serious problem in his 2019 preface, a refreshing change from a few of his fellow Apollo astronauts, who despite being otherwise very intelligent have in a couple of cases made comments indicating they are (or at least were) climate change deniers. Collins, on the other hand, very wisely recognizes that global warming, overpopulation and endless, unsustainable growth are serious problems.

But to return to the Moon landings, it is easy to underestimate their importance. Yes, to a large extent they were a one-off (even though there were six of them), an outgrowth of the Cold War that were motivated as much or more by geopolitics as a genuine urge to accomplish the incredible. But nevertheless, not only did they force a much more rapid advance in many areas of technology than might have occurred (among many other things, computers had to be miniaturized far beyond what had been previously achieved, though of course now Apollo-era computers seem incredibly primitive), but they inspired a whole generation of scientists, engineers, and innovators, something which is far more important than people realize. Apollo also showed that with a concentrated effort by many intelligent, dedicated people we can things that seem almost impossible at the outset. This is a lesson that we should take to heart today.

Of course, even at the time, there was considerable opposition to the Apollo program, and both then and now people talk about the contrast between the amazing achievement of putting humans on the Moon and the enormous problems that we can't seem to solve on Earth, a contrast that is captured well in John Stewart's contemporary song "Armstrong". Many argued and sometimes still argue that the money spent on Apollo would have been better spent on Earth. But this criticism was and is misguided. Yes, both then and now, more should be spent on addressing poverty, disease, and environmental degradation, among other things. But there are many much more wasteful things that we could take money from to do so, whether it's public spending on the military or tax breaks for the wealthy, or private spending on frivolities like sports and cosmetics. Space exploration, on the other hand, provides profound benefits to humanity, both practical and abstract, and is worth every penny. And as Michael Collins stated in his speech to a joint session of Congress a few months after Apollo 11, "We cannot launch our planetary probes from a springboard of poverty, discrimination or unrest; but neither can we wait until each and every terrestrial problem has been solved." As he says, we can both work to solve our problems on Earth and continue to explore space at the same time.

Another point worth remembering is that while Apollo shows what we can do if we put our minds to it, that doesn't mean that even an all-out, Apollo-type effort will be met with the same success if we try it in other areas. Despite the immense difficulty of landing people on the Moon, it had the advantage of being a clear goal that would either be achieved or not, with no ambiguity. If we set out to eliminate poverty, on the other hand, not only would we be taking on a task that is even more massive than going to the Moon, we would have to agree not only on how to do it, but how to know if we'd succeeded. After all, it's not as if there's even a consensus on how to define poverty. Another advantage we had with Apollo was that there was no active opposition in the sense of people working directly against the goal, though there were many who considered it a waste of resources. But if we set out to bring carbon emissions to zero by a certain date, as indeed we should, while the goal is clear enough there will be many forces actively trying to work against it, such as the powerful interests that make their money from fossil fuels. This is not to say that we shouldn't use Apollo as inspiration for future transformative projects like addressing the climate crises, just that we should understand that as hard as Apollo was, it was considerably easier than some of the things we should now be trying to do.

Finally, there's the question of going back to the Moon itself. Of course this is something I'd like to see happen, and the sooner the better, since as noted above it's hard to tell how much longer the last few living moonwalkers will be around and I'd like to see someone get to the Moon while at least one or two of them are still alive. I will admit that I'd rather it not be the Chinese who get there first, though if they make it there afterwards is fine, and I also certainly wouldn't want to see the current US administration get credit for an American return to the Moon. While it'd be nice to view the exploration of space as something that transcends politics, the truth is even a wonderful achievement like going to the Moon could be misused, particularly by nationalist types like those running both the Chinese and US governments. Of course if the US doesn't have a new president in less than two years we're all in trouble anyway. But I digress. As I said above, space exploration is definitely worth the money, so ideally we'll see more of it by the US, the European Union, Japan, India, and, yes, China too, alongside private companies like Space X and Blue Origin. There are a lot of serious questions to be addressed as soon as possible, like how exploitation of resources in space will be regulated and what measures we need to take in terms of planetary protection (i.e., the contamination of other places by Earth organisms or vice versa), but those should only affect how we explore space, not whether we do so. After all, while the Apollo missions to the Moon may be the pinnacle of human achievement so far, we don't want them to always be so.