There was a bit of drama this week with the setback of the NASA moon project: Artemis. But as Chris Hatfield (my favourite astronaut) pointed out, this is just routine, not a disappointment, just a regular workday. “It’s not like being in an airplane on the tarmac waiting for takeoff.” Just a work in progress on this very sophisticated machine.
I was already an adult and clearly remember when Apollo 11 landed on the moon with Buzz and Neil in July 1969. To say there was such a contrast in technology between then and now is obvious and simplistic. These guys and the whole backup crew did this with less software power than we now have in our smartphones. It was all maths, navigation, design and piloting. Human pilots trained to make decisions. It is now so much more complicated with robots and algorithms. I guess it would just be cheap to suggest it seemed to work fine then…so why all this new tech stuff now? I guess we have it so we have to use it.
Apollo 11 was the height of all that was glorious in human endeavour. Buzz and Neil were the heroes who actually got to stomp around the moon in their boots, but my romantic soul was captivated by Michael Collins. He was the pilot who stayed on the Command module, Columbia, circling the moon and ready to team up with the moon landing crew on their lunar module Eagle when it was time for them to head home. Such brilliant navigation and piloting to all link up. Such pros! When Collins was on the dark/back side of the moon, he was the first person to be totally cut off from the rest of humanity.
When I was little I did not understand why we could not just put up a ladder and climb up there! Our moon is such a constant presence, waxing and waning around us so when they talked of the Artemis and her astronauts off to circle the moon going into deep space I was surprised. ‘Isn’t the moon just a skip and a hop away?’ I mean we are not talking about Mars or Venus or the James Webb telescope, I mean that really is deep space.
Familiarity breeds contempt and though the moon is part of earth geologically, makes our life on earth possible, its 28-day cycle moving the ocean tides and timing women’s menstrual cycle (which I have never heard explored by science, strange!), Lady Moon is 380,000 km away. So, if you plan a road trip there, that is a 6 months drive at 100km an hour.
Remember to bring along some snacks!