It's taken me a few days to figure out what I wanted to write about the 40th anniversary of the moon landing... I was 12 years old - and the moon race played a very prominent role in the world view of that nerdy 12 year old.
I remember an evening shortly before "One small step" - I don't remember if they'd already landed or if it was between the touch-down landing and Neil Armstrong's famous descent of the ladder - but I was outside with my father and looking up at the moon. Tom, my father, was talking with his friend "Mr. Hahn" about the landing, and "Mr. Hahn" asked me if I was going to watch it on TV that evening.
For some reason, my response was "No". Perhaps I was just being a contrarian pre-teen, but I definitely remember him reminding me what a special occasion this was. Humans had been standing on the earth looking up at the moon in the sky for thousands of years, but never before had someone been standing on the moon looking back at the earth.
"Mr. Hahn" was a rather profane man, born into the wild-catter-oil-patch culture of West Texas and not predisposed to poetry - but he shook me out of whatever funk I was in and I went home and watched Neil and Buzz with rapt attention.
What amazes me to this day is the undeniable fact that at 12 I was already jaded by the space program before the moon's first footprint. I've been going through my stash of memorabilia weeding things out lately, and I came across a folder bulging with NASA photos and articles and sketches of my own plans for space ships. There's quite a lot of "Star Trek" along with the NASA glossy photos - obviously I was hooked on space.
When I was 9 years old, we were all going to live and work in space. The first astronauts were super-human test pilots - but that made sense. They were blazing the trail that we were all going to follow. Space was not going to be the sole domain of multi-Phd toting eggheads - "Normal people" would be there doing all the things that "normal people" do.
NASA was an agency of innovation. They were constantly unveiling new rockets, capsules, rocket planes, etc. It was always new and exciting.
Perhaps the Apollo One disaster was the beginning of my disenchantment. The inferno that killed those 3 heroes was due to sloppy workmanship, not technical complexity. Even as a 10 year old I was sickened. How could anybody associated with the space program be sloppy?
After the last moon flight it just got worse.
Skylab was a disaster on launch - Solar panels ripping off during launch due to poor construction. The shuttle - supposedly cheap and reliable - just a ticking time bomb of compromises that had more to do with keeping the money flowing to contractors than to accomplishing anything worthwhile.
NASA (the agency) has no luster left to lose - not the people. The people are great. The agency NASA should be scuttled and its responsibilities parceled out to more focussed agencies: NOAA, DARPA, DOE, etc.
My space heroes are now Elon Musk and Robert Bigelow. These guys understand that interest in space has little to do with science - it's about adventure. If it's not exciting, then why go?
NASA's plans for a moon base are about as exciting as the Antarctic Scott Base. How many people do you know who are dying to visit Scott Base? (How many have even heard of it?)
I know many people who would love to take a cruise to Antarctica to see the fjords, glaciers and penguins... but who wants to go sit in an over sized high tech igloo? Compare NASA's 2009 vision of a moon base to their 1970's vision for a space settlement and you'll see how boring the future has become.
Vegas baby... the moon doesn't need a "base", it needs a "strip". Vegas is a city that never should have been - a gaudy exciting bubble of sex, sin and gambling in the middle of absolutely nothing. If Vegas didn't cater to hedonism, there wouldn't be a Vegas.
Musk and Bigelow understand that. They're serious businessmen, and they're following the money that's available now (COTS, etc.), but I think they know that the NASA gravy-train and communication satellites are only going to take things so far. The moon's going to remain forlorn until Cirque du Sole has a lunar venue where they can perform.
40 years ago something truly amazing happened on the moon. Let's hope that 40 years from now we don't have to look back 80 years for inspiration.
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