Last Friday, July 21, 2006, was the 37th anniversary of Man's First Lunar Landing. Thus, I have created this image from a photo I took of the moon with my Canon EOS 20D with a Sigma 50-500 lens. I layered the Apollo 11 patch and a flag image I took a few years back. The challenge started when JFK said these memorable words at Rice University on September 12, 1962 :
"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. . . . Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, 'Because it is there.' Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."
And lo and behold, the United States accomplished the task seven years later when Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins took us there. I was four years old and watch the television coverage of Apollo 11 and later Apollo 12 through Apollo 17 when Gene Cernan, the last man on the moon, (thus far), bid farewell to the lunar plane. I never really appreciated the accomplishment given my age. I thought it happened all the time. Growing up in Florida in the 1970's, all the boys, myself included, wanted to become astronauts, voyagers through space. My father bought a telescope in the early 1970's and we would go outside and as I would stare at the lunar craters, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Saturn, I could only imagine being on a voyage through space to a distant world. Sadly, no one wants to be an astronaut today or a scientist. People are more interested in American Idol and the mutant babies of Earth Aliens (otherwise known as Hollywood A-List), and the dating and fashion habits of illiterate dolts. What we as Americans accomplished on that summer day in July 1969 is something that mere words cannot describe. The folks of the space program never cowered. With computers less powerful than a Commodore VIC 20, the Lunar Module landed men on the moon and returned them to the mother ship for a safe return to the good Earth. I hope I will be around to see Man's Return to the Moon.
Fortunately, through books, I can relive the experience. I've read the following books on the Apollo program and suggest them to any afficionados:
A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin
The Last Man on the Moon by Gene Cernan
Deke, by Deke Slayton
Failure is Not an Option, by Gene Krantz
Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell
First Man : The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, by: James R. Hansen
1 comments:
Great job on the photo Mike.
What those guys accomplished back in the 60s and 70s pushing technology to the limits, and inventing new technologies and products as they went along, that we all take for granted today, is truly a testament to what the human mind can do when it sets its sights on a goal.
I'm too glad we are going back and hope to be alive to see it. Last weekend I took out of the attic a huge 1/96 scale Revell plastic model kit of the Saturn V Moon rocket I was saving for a special ocassion. I built it together with my 7 year old nephew Brian. We had a lot of fun as I tried to explain to him how we went to the moon. He was in awe of the whole thing.
Some people don't even know how much Apollo and the other space programs have benefited them in everyday life. All the money that gets spent in those programs eventually comes back to us three fold, if not more in benefits to mankind. Well gotta go to work...cool post man.
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