Achievement

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on July 20, 2019.

This editorial was first published in the Medicine Hat News on July 21, 1969, the day after Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

The footprints of man have joined the footprints of time on the surface of the moon.

Momentous achievement, superb performance, stunning success – the United States astronauts’ brief exploration of the Sea of Tranquility was all of those and more.

Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, the first human beings to land on another “planet,” have become figures of history.

So has Michael Collins; they also serve who only circle and wait. For all the excitement of a unique event, the human imprinting of the surface of the moon had its dull side. The reason is plain. The moon is a dull place, relatively speaking. Not to geologists and geophysicists, of course; but for the ordinary person it lacks the most interesting features of a living planet; forests and grasslands, animals and flying things, signs of habitation and intelligent life.

Nothing of that kind may be found by man-in-space anywhere in the solar system. For evidence of living things we may have to wait until men reach the planets of another star, though it is much too early in the space game to discount all possibility of the discovery of life in our own system of planets.

There is some connection, interestingly enough, between the question of life on other worlds and the tedious collection of samples of moon dust and rock which consumed so much of the astronauts’ time.

The samples should tell geologists and geophysicists more about the moon’s composition. This can throw light on its origins; and its origins can throw light on earth’s origins. When men know how earth originated – and at the moment they can do little more than theorize about it – they will have a pretty good idea of how common life is in the universe.

The American triumph on the moon has put the Soviet Union definitely in second place in space. Maybe the Russians did opt out of the moon race, as Nikita Khruslichev said they would, a few years ago; but they are now behind in almost every vital aspect of the exploration of space. Their manned program, in particular, has accomplished very little and has fallen far behind in the past two years.

It has been widely believed that they would concentrate next, in manned flight, on the development of a large space platform orbiting Earth. It was, indeed, thought likely that they would launch their moon-landing vehicle from such a platform, rather than from a spaceship orbiting the moon.

That now seems beside the point. But the platform retains its importance. It probably will be required not only to transport large quantities of material and numbers of men to the moon for development of moon stations but also to launch a manned spaceship for the long journey to Mars. The U.S. therefore will want a platform sooner or later. In all probability, it will build one before the Russians do.

Meanwhile, may the astronauts return safely from the moon to Earth!

13
-12