Quote:
Originally Posted by Dennis
Thanks Gary - I cannot quite believe that humanity will be returning back to the Moon in such a short time, I thought we had lost both the will and the appetite.
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Thanks Dennis,
Though I believe it would be more accurate to say that "the United States"
or "the United States taxpayer" lost both their will and appetite to return,
rather than humanity.
After all, it was they who set it as a national goal, they who engineered it
and they who paid for the entire bill.
No other country had either the resources, money or absolute willingness
to do it.
Not even the Soviet Union saw it through and quickly abandoned their
half-hearted attempt after the N1 failures and never attempted to try
it again.
When we cast our minds back to the 60's and 70's, it was a period of
social unrest in the United States and elsewhere.
Vietnam, the civil rights movement and poverty were more pressing
concerns for the American public at large. Particularly once the goal
of landing a man on the moon had been achieved.
Meanwhile, Richard Nixon saw an early end to the Apollo project and
changed NASA policy in such a way that it would shape what it did for
decades. Nixon wasn't the biggest fan of the space program.
Historians say what he said publicly about it and what he
thought personally about it were two different things.
Under Nixon, the space program was made to become a domestic policy
that had to compete with other domestic policies and after the Apollo 11
walk was no longer of political interest to him.
It also lead to the decision to put the emphasis on low earth
orbit missions, the Space Shuttle and so on. A legacy that continues
to this day.
With each passing day, it only makes that achievement of 50 years ago
even more impressive in its skill and audaciousness.
As Mike Collins himself said, after the Apollo 11 success, he was touched
by the number of people he met around the world that said "we did it"
rather than see it as a purely American success. So in that sense, it very
much was perceived as a triumph for humanity.