"We choose to go to the moon. 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, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
The speech at Rice University from which this is lifted was back in 1962. The passage occurs at about the nine minute mark but the entire speech is worth watching and I encourage anyone reading this, especially those under 40 who attained adulthood in an age of advance communications and computers listen carefully. I promise it is worth twenty minute of your time:
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=yfp-t&p=jfk+rice+university+moon+speech#id=1&vid=85383d030838107620abffd49f608c6d&action=click
The quote at the beginning of this diary is history, yet at the same time is both prescient and current if one changes the concept of going to the moon to that of confronting climate change. Today’s announcement from the White House Rose Garden was expected, yet still appalling. I’m well aware that many older voters (I’m almost 60) were crucial to Trump’s being in a position to make such a horrible decision and speech. I would (and will) ask any of those who voted for this despicable man to think back on the 1960s, and how they felt as they watched us catch, then pass the Soviets in space and ultimately become (still) the only nation on the face of this earth to have our citizens walk on another world. I’d ask them if like me they alternated from looking at their TV screens and running outside to look up at the moon while our guys were on it. I’d ask them how proud they were in the face of such much turmoil that we accomplished this.
It’s impossible to fully explain to someone who lived through it, much as someday it will be impossible to fully explain to someone born decades after the fact the country’s emotions in the aftermath of 911. For all our faults, and the giant struggles of the 1960s (civil rights and Vietnam were exposing fault lines in the American ideal) we could and did take enormous pride that for all that wasn’t going well, for all the turmoil WE could still do great things. Things that no other nation on the face of the earth could do. Our national will, our scientific and engineering prowress was the envy of every other country including the Soviet Union/Russia.
At the time there were many in the U.S. who questioned the enormous sums of money spent by NASA. But as Kennedy noted in his speech (if you watched it) we had yet to invent the technology and materials that would be needed to accomplish the goals of Project Apollo. Many of the needed developments have become essential to life as we now know it. Who knows how long, perhaps not even now it might have taken to develop modern telecommunications (and cell phones), or not only high speed computers but computers that not only didn’t take up an entire room but could fit into the tiny cockpit of a spacecraft – and ultimately not just on a desk top but in the palm of your hand? Even old school flip phones had more computing power than the Lunar Module that landed on the moon, and your smart phone has far more capability than the on-board computer in the Apollo Command & Service Module that navigated across a quarter million miles of space.
Let me give you a couple of examples of what I’m talking about. The Lunar Modules had two onboard computers, one primarily for landing (the “AGS”) and one (the “Pings) for aborts to be able to ascend and rendezvous with the Command Module. The AGS was a 39 BIT (you read that correctly!) system and the Pings was 16 BITS! Think about that for a second, and consider whether you’d trust your life to such a system in a “one-shot-get-it-wrong-and-you’re-dead-and-American prestige-with-it situation a quarter million miles from the earth. As for the Command Module, it had a more robust computer but cars have long had more powerful computer chips than was the whole of what was on board the CSM. And keep in mind how precisely that computer had to navigate. Returning home after crossing a quarter million miles of space they had to hit a very narrow corridor for re-entry. To shallow and they’d skip off the atmosphere at a speed that would send them hurtling through space to die. Too steep and they’d burn up. I mention this because the approach corridor was 2.5 degrees. To put it in context imagine setting a basketball (the earth) and a softball (the moon) twelve feet or so apart. That 2.5 degree approach corridor was less than the thickness of a sheet of ordinary copy paper!
But it was state of the art technology developed at the time for these missions and the astronauts, having strong engineering backgrounds themselves trusted it. And they were right to do so. But that much progress that quickly was only the beginning, and as I said we have long lived in a world where far better, far more powerful & reliable communications and computers are essential parts of life and business on which we all depend. THAT is the measure of the fulfillment of the brash promise JFK made to Congress in May, 1961 after Al Shepard’s flight (the first American into space) of less than fifteen minutes. There is a relevant quote from that address to Congress as well — I’ve highlighted it but the whole passage is worth the read if (again) you think climate change instead of moon shots:
Finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. Since early in my term, our efforts in space have been under review. With the advice of the Vice President, who is Chairman of the National Space Council, we have examined where we are strong and where we are not, where we may succeed and where we may not. Now it is time to take longer strides-time for a great new American enterprise-time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.
I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment.
Recognizing the head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines, which gives them many months of lead-time, and recognizing the likelihood that they will exploit this lead for some time to come in still more impressive successes, we nevertheless are required to make new efforts on our own. For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last. We take an additional risk by making it in full view of the world, but as shown by the feat of astronaut Shepard, this very risk enhances our stature when we are successful. But this is not merely a race. Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.
I find myself asking, as I have so often on so many matters (health care being one) what the hell has happened since I was growing up? We went from a country that proudly led so many innovations that benefited not just us but the world, from a country that was proud to expend treasure, expertise and even (as two World Wars proved) blood for the advancement of mankind, from a country that not only proclaimed we could do the impossible but relished the challenge to a country that says “We can’t do that” because it’s too hard and/or too expensive.”
We have been ceding too much ground for too long a time on climate change and development of renewable energy. To China and others – even Saudi freaking Arabia! We made up quite a bit of ground during President Obama’s two terms but not enough. And now, just so Trump can satisfy his man-baby need to give the finger to his predecessor (even he knows the coal miners he’s sucking up to aren’t enough to get re-elected even if he wasn’t screwing their towns on health care!) we are abandoning the race to lead the development of renewable energy. Here’s another question for the folks I mentioned earlier, and Republicans/conservatives in general:
“I know very well that Trump doesn’t care that one day his beloved Mar-A-Lago will be underwater because he’ll be dead by then. He’d sell out anyone and anything to stroke is ego and to hell with the consequences., But do YOU really think it’s a good idea to let China and other authoritarian regimes attain a stranglehold on renewable energy technology & production? Because that’s essentially what the pitiful excuse we now have as a President is setting in motion. Are you SO desperate to privatize Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid, the VA and the rest of the Koch brother’s agenda and get your payoffs that you will sell out your children’s, grandchildren’s and beyond to ‘win?’ Is your contempt/hatred of Democrats/liberals so great you are willing to screw US ALL, figuring that by the time the shit really hits the fan you’ll be dead & it will be someone else’s problem?”
It sure as hell looks that way to me. You go around beating your chest and rousing up your core voters will your “Mur-I-Cuh first” talk, but all I’ve been hearing for a long time is excuses on why we CAN’T do great things for our people (ALL of them) and the world. Well, I came of age and lived in a time when even if we got knocked off balance by events America was PROUD of the fact it COULD do what others couldn’t! Despite some mistakes along the way, our country led the world in social, scientific, industrial & technological and economic achievement and led the free world to victory in two World Wars. AND built what was once the greatest middle class the world has ever known. And despite all that in 1980 you convinced the country that it wasn’t enough and that your ideas were better. Since then you’ve consistently talked about what we CAN’T do, or at least can’t do without giving virtually everything to the relative handful who already had more than most could ever dream of. And now we are a country led by someone and an entire once proud political Party who focuses on what we CAN’T do, and makes excuses about why other countries CAN do what we can’t (universal health care & renewable energy to name just two) do. So take your faux, lapel flag pin patriotism and chest beating and STFU so others who remember and still believe in the American that proved over and over again it could do what other’s couldn’t get back to leading our country and the world.
Fifty years ago the world looked at us with wonder at how we could keep doing so much, and leading in so many ways. Now they look at us and realize George W. Bush wasn’t an aberration but the beginning of a trend of an America full of goobers who proudly voted against not only their own interests, but those of the free world. And a GOP that is only too happy to take the money of American oligarchs every bit as horrendous as those in Russia. And I mourn for what we once were:
For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last.
That America is gone. Like virginity it can’t be recovered. IF we are lucky and fight like hell, in a couple of generations we might at least have virtue around the world.