Second Breakfast

I’ve always dug the space program, and am always happy to tune into “Apollo 13″ whenever it is on cable, and really enjoyed the HBO series “From the Earth to the Moon”. Both were produced by Tom Hanks, and are really excellent dramatizations of arguably the most historic accomplishment of the previous century.

Chaikin’s book includes a forward by Hanks, and is the result of an extensive series of interviews with the major players in the Apollo program, including the astronauts and the senior folks at mission control. The result is a very readable account of the manned Apollo missions, including a lot of insights in the character of the astronauts, the tensions that emerged, and the external pressures on the program.

I can’t say I necessarily learned a lot of new information, but it seems like a very accurate portrayal of the program — what happened, who did what, what was important and not.

I think most folks feel particularly disillusioned with the space program as it exists today versus the promise that it held after the moon missions. But even as Armstrong and Aldrin were taking their first steps on the lunar surface, questions about the continued viability of the program were already being asked, and it wasn’t long afterwards that the later planned lunar surface missions were canceled, and the program became mostly an excuse to use up the hardware already built for the purpose. Given the fear and likelihood of another catastrophic failure and loss of life, the sense was to “quit while we’re ahead”.

Chaikin makes an excellent defense of NASA in his closing comments. He says (my paraphrase) “If NASA can be accused of not knowing its purpose, it is because didn’t give it one”. The moon landings were the result of a number of important and simultaneous factors and pressures — the cold war and the prestige game with the Soviets, Kennedy’s assassination, and to some extent the Vietnam war. They came together to create a sense of national will and purpose that evaporated once we got there, and I think with the disillusionment that Nixon’s two terms engendered only served to fuel that feeling.

What struck me also was how quickly the spaceflights became routine. No one pays much attention to a shuttle liftoff today (America’s Space Truck™), but even after Apollo 11, the later missions got less and less TV coverage, so that by the final mission, very little prime time coverage was given to the events on the lunar surface. NASA got really good at sending people to the moon, and as a result people stopped paying attention. This is a normal tendency in our bad-news-is-the-only-real-news mentality, but it surprised me how quickly the manned flights became passe.

Regardless of where the space program is today (Wired has a great piece this month on the burgeoning private space industry), it is still incredibly important I think to remember “we are now a spacefaring species”. Hopefully someday soon we will boldly go back to where we’ve already gone before, and beyond.