Neil Armstrong, Where Are You?
I chose the wrong month - during this panic and hysteria - to develop an obsession with the 1960s space program: In between watching stammering, sweating Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson not calm the nation and seeing the Dow plunge today after George Bush spoke - I've been switching to ancient history on my DVD player.
I am watching the surface of the moon. Neil Armstrong is deftly maneuvering the lunar module above craters and boulders with about 20 seconds of fuel to spare before the engine could shut down, leading to a crash - and two men stranded on the moon. Forever.
Mission Control in Houston is holding its breath, expecting the worst, when the world hears Armstrong calmly say: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."
Almost 40 years ago, this was the news. Now it's just part of the 2007 documentary, "In the Shadow of the Moon."
Neil Armstrong is now 78 and lives in Ohio. He almost never speaks publicly. He never sells out. I don't know his politics - but I wonder what Armstrong is thinking as his country collapses.
Neil Armstrong, are you there? What should we do? Can we ever land this thing? P.S. I want you back.
I also want Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, the other two Apollo 11 astronauts. I want former test pilots who sat on giant rockets and went to another planet and had 850-item checklists - and were steady, brave and landed on the moon with seconds to spare and millions of people watching - and had wry quips.
I also want 1969 Mission Control back. I want all those short-haired, cigarette-smoking guys in front of the giant consoles back. I want to tell Houston we have a problem and have them fix it.
I wouldn't even mind getting a beehive hairdo and posing in a wood-paneled rumpus room in a miniskirt with three toddlers on my lap if it meant Neil Armstrong was back at the controls.
I'm homesick for July 1969 America - the same way Mike Collins felt homesick when he saw the tiny planet Earth from his command module as he waited for Armstrong and Aldrin to return from the moon.
I'm even missing Mike Brady - and he wasn't an astronaut. Anyway, I want him back - him and his blueprints in the den. And Carol. And Alice and Tiger.
I want to go live in a split-level house and talk on a phone with a rotary dial and a cord. Or better yet, I want to join the Partridge Family and travel the country on a brightly-colored bus and sing harmony on "I Think I Love You."
I just don't want Henry Paulson, or George Bush, or Sarah Palin - or the CNN Breaking News alerts that appear on my inbox and can only mean more bad news.
I'm even missing Richard Nixon - now there was a villain worth his salt. Plus, we were vindicated when he did himself in. Bush is like a cipher from "The Matrix" who just walks through the wall every time you want to grab him by the throat and throttle him. So unsatisfying.
It's too hard to even watch President Kennedy. Seeing him in that old black-and-white footage from 1961 boldly calling for a man on the moon by the end of the decade - too difficult.
The right stuff? Just seems now like an historical artifact.
Am I wrong, Neil Armstrong? I wish you could tell me.
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Ij ust watched that same DVD , it was fun to watch. I am old enough to remember where I was during that event. Truly a great time, thanks for expressing what I feel so eloquently.
I frequently feel this same longing - that era was my childhood.
Are we of a certain age simply longing for the simplicity & optimism of our youth?
There are many, I'm certain, who did not live so idyllically during those times, but looking back, I had a happy, comfortable, slightly upper middle-class, suburban childhood - we did not feel rich, but compared to today, we were.
Yes there were some bad times, but to my way of thinking, there was this feeling of hope in all the good things that happened. That we were indeed boldly going where no man had gone before. I hated the people who called it a waste and that we should not spend money on scientific research.
But we WERE going forward. We were winning the fight for Civil Rights, We WERE winning the fight to stop the war in Vietnam, we were winning the fight for more equality for women, we were winning the fight for more fuel efficient cars that were cleaner burning, we were winning the fight for the environment, we were GOING FORWARD more than we were doing anything else.
It was a struggle and good people worked hard and some died for it, but for every step we got pushed back we took two forward.
NOW it's the opposite. And has been so since Ronnie Raygun, THAT is why the right hated Clinton with what can only be called insane hatred. He stopped that backward movement.
And so yes I agree I want that forward momentum of the 60's back too.
See Aleta St. James's Profile
Dana
It is amazing how you have expressed a longing that most of us feel;
the Renaissance of the 1960's juxtaposed against the backdrop of these tumultuous times we are currently living in...
I remember watching Neil Armstrong step out onto the moon, and the extraordinary surge of hope and excitement that accompanied that unique moment.
Yes Dana - I'm with you..
We need some of that rocket fuel right now, to get this faltering ship back on course.
Aleta St. James
Dana, I don't remember the 60s, I was born in 73, but the 80s and its obsession with retro 50s and 60s certainly gave me a feel for the innocence of the past decades and a lot of it rubbed off on Gen X, believe it or not. I grew up watching the re-runs of the Partridge Family, The Brady Bunch, Leave it to Beaver and I know the world you want back. Its the same stuff we had in the 80s, including the nuclear anxiety and the obsession with stocking bomb shelters but with video games added. :D
"I am watching the surface of the moon. Neil Armstrong is deftly maneuvering the lunar module above craters and boulders with about 20 seconds of fuel to spare before the engine could shut down, leading to a crash - and two men stranded on the moon. Forever."
Except that that is not what would have happened. All Neil Armstrong had to do was to abort the landing attempt, separate the manned ascent stage from the now useless descent stage and fly it back to lunar orbit. The descent stage would have crashed and the astronauts would have been safe. Apollo was not a suicide mission. There were fallback solutions for almost every conceivable problem for which such a solution was possible at all.
You can find the technical reality behind the event described on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
You sound like a romantic about all of this. And it sure all sounds romantic to me, too. But reality is that the Apollo missions were such a success because 400,000 people (at the peak) worked 24/7 for almost a decade. Most of them got laid off the day after it was all over.
If you find hard work in crash programs romantic, space is for you. If you don't (like me), you better keep standing on the sidelines and romanticize reality. Because once you are inside one of these missions, you won't have a life any longer.
I was fortunate to have grown up in the 1960s, and share your feelings. The moon landing was like Disneyland's closing time fireworks show, a spectacular climax to the amazing social adventure that was the Sixties. Watch "The Wonder Years" TV show, it really captured the mood of that era.
OK. Now let's be real and watch the other 1960s: racial riots and Vietnam, nuclear standoff and the daily threat of global nuclear war. Still feel good about the 60s?
Oh, but we are living in a fantastic time. This is our generations moment to shine. When things seem the darkest and despair seems to have no end, this is when we band together as a people and overcome. I think Energy Independence will be our Man on the Moon. It's not as exciting as the Space Race, but the impact will be just as profound. That is why this election is so critical. Whichever candidate is chosen will have a profound effect on America. One for the worse and one for the better.
These are interesting times we are living in. I suspect that we will be telling our grandchildren how great it was to live through this turmoil and come out the other side a stronger nation.
I know EXACTLY what you mean. It is not possible to watch footage of the launch of a Saturn V rocket without thinking that was America (and humanity) at the absolute top of its game. What are we doing now? Why is it every nigh-unbelievable, cutting edge engineering project I learn about on cable is happening in another country? Why are we even bothering to organize ourselves into a society? Is it just so that we can all be divided into convenient marketing demographics and sold plastic junk from China? Man, I just don't know what the point is anymore.
Dana-- We had hope. JFK issued the challenge that we would do the impossible, and we would beat the Russians in the process and hope prevailed. People challenged an unjust war, and hope prevailed. We were still on the way up, because we had hope.
So now there is a biracial young man who believes he can challenge the impossible and become president in a country still haunted by racism.
If his hope prevails, then maybe we have hope to face the challenges ahead. Neil is a good man, and we are a good country. We have every reason to hope, Dana.
And we will prevail.
Yes, it was a simpler, more optimistic time. Those of us who lived it are lucky to know what that world was like. I have wondered what people who lived before us, say in 1890, or in 1830, or in 1770, etc. would say about life today--what they would tell us we have lost, things about their lifestyles that they deeply value.
My teenage sons keep telling me "You're so lucky you got to live in the 1960s!" I tell them they are right, but not for anything they can actually sense this far into the future--it's those intangible feelings of the time itself--the optimism and hope that was mixed in with all the trauma of the Civil Rights movement and Viet Name debacle. Most of all there was a feeling that the grown-ups were in charge! That there was some order in the way things were done, manners and gentility underneath the most passionate arguments about politics. We all wore buttons of our preferred candidates! No one wants to do that today--it is too provocative! How weird!
Do you know why there are so many conspiracy theories about the moonlanding never taking place?
Look at the people that have been in the government since those days. Nixon, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Pointdexter, Kissinger,Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43. They have been holding the power for 40 years and they have destroyed the belief of Americans in themselves and in their country. Therefore today considerable amount of people can't grasp the idea that USA accomplished such a huge undertaking 40 years ago, hence the conspiracy theories. It's sad really.
This crew of people destroyed the soul of this country and who knows why so rabidly they worked to accomplish this goal? Any ideas?
National Geographic completely debunked the moon-hoaxers. (Though they've been debunked many times by others.) If you watch the program, you'll feel much better.
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/conspiracy-moon-landing-1150/Overview
One can not debunk paranoid people. One can only medicate them.
Your Post prompted me to finally register at HP!
The 10 year old boy that I was also saw the Amazin' Mets, Jets and Knicks win it all. My biggest problem was that I couldn't play baseball year round in NY. But i always had hope, we all had hope. We need hope again.........
Those days are gone. The cream will rise to the top, but it's going to take all of us to do it. IM PEA CH. You know that's the only way to come back from this. Work on it, or lose your liberty.
Yea! Even David Cassidy looks good in retrospect - at least when it comes to the yahoos in charge now!
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