Does anyone care anymore?
In 10,000 years that garbage you’re taking out today after the little woman nags you about it long enough will become priceless artifacts. Future archaeologists will puzzle over that broken coffee mug with the picture of a naked woman on it and wonder if she was some kind of goddess or perhaps a representation of your wife.
Maybe you should leave a note.
It won’t matter because the paper your note is written on won’t survive. Nor will 50% of the rest of our bio-degradable garbage which will leave a lot of real nasty stuff those future scientists will have to go through in order to extract a few nuggets of history that will tell future humans all about us.
In 10,000 years, no one will remember Nancy Pelosi. No one will remember George Bush either. They may rate a line or two in some obscure scholar’s dissertation on primitive nation-state politics but I doubt it. History will lose track of them as she forgets so many others. Clio is really quite selective about what people and events are clasped to her bosom and carried through the centuries to be examined and debated by those in the future whose calling is to explain the past to their contemporaries.
The millions of words spoken and written in anger or passion or to persuade others over Iraq these last years will have completely disappeared, are already disappearing as the relentless march of time burns away all but the most influential or seminal of events and people. What’s left is in turn ground to powder and the remainder sifted through the ages until the essence of an entire century or more will be distilled for consumption.
This doesn’t make what’s happening today any less important. But it does give us a sobering perspective on how, in the long, tangled skein of people, events, and ideas that make up the history of the last 100 years – the wars, the ideology, the clashes of civilization and wills, – almost all of it will be seen as nothing more than sound and fury signifying nothing if it is remembered at all.
Except for the moon landing, of course.
You can’t find much in newspapers or on the news nets about the 38th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon which was actually yesterday, July 20th (The moonwalk occurred early on the 21st.). Bloggers desperate for something to write about contributed more than a thousand posts to the historical discussion with an unknown number reminding everyone that the landing was a hoax, that all the moon footage was shot on a Hollywood backlot.
I have no doubt that for the foreseeable future, this kind of ho-hum reaction will greet subsequent anniversaries marking the achievement of Apollo 11. It isn’t that the event has lost its importance as much as its distance in time allows for a diminishing in the importance of the actual memory of the occasion. So much has happened between then and now that even though the moon landing may be the only thing remembered about the times in which we live 10,000 years hence, Apollo 11 today has a lot of competition when it comes to available space in our brains for recalling the past.
Then there are those who don’t see what all the fuss is about, that the accomplishment was a waste of resources that could have been better spent or not spent at all. From a purely rationalist point of view, there may be something to that argument – especially given the fact that NASA failed miserably in following up on its achievement in landing on the moon to go on to bigger and better things. No permanent space station – unless you include that over priced, over sold, under performing piece of space junk called the “International Space Station” we have orbiting now.
No trip to Mars. Not even a trip back to the moon to set up some kind of base of operations for future exploration. Only a fairly dangerous, earth orbit bound space truck called the Shuttle whose life has been extended because the NASA bureaucracy can’t figure out how to dream big dreams anymore. Apparently, there is no manual or position paper on how to capture the essential hunger felt by most people for human exploration of the universe to be found in any of the offices of NASA’s top bureaucrats.
A pity. Their predecessors who cooked up the Apollo program in response to a challenge from our ideological opponents in the old Soviet Union were, if nothing else, dreamers. They were also inveterate gamblers. There may never have been nor will there ever be any project undertaken so fraught with danger and risk for the participants as the Apollo program.
Think of it. In 1962 when the program was just getting underway, America had put exactly 3 men into space, only one of them into earth orbit. By making the decision to land on the moon and return safely by the end of the decade, NASA had its work cut out for it. Not only new technologies would have to be developed but entire industries would have to be created in order to meet Kennedy’s ambitious goal. There has never been an effort in peacetime like it in history. More than $24 billion would be spent (about $120 billion in today’s dollars) to make that dream a reality.
Nearly 500,000 human beings would lay their hands on at least one of the millions of parts that made up the Apollo 11 spacecraft. This dwarfs the number of people who worked on the Manhattan Project to build the A-Bomb, the Panama Canal, and the Pyramids put together. A study done in 1972 revealed that more than 25% of all the man hours worked on the project were in the form of unpaid overtime. This is because by 1968, after the fire of Apollo 1 that killed 3 astronauts along with subsequent delays in the delivery of the Lunar Module (LM), Congress was threatening to cut the program off at the knees.
In effect, NASA was launching a 37 story building, aiming it at a moving target orbiting the earth at more than 2200 miles per hour, 240,000 miles away with a spacecraft travelling more than 19,000 MPH. Some engineers in the early days of Apollo privately believed that the feat would be impossible, that the astronauts were doomed. The technical challenges were enormous. The Saturn V booster would have to generate more than 7,000,000 pounds of thrust to get the behemoth off the ground. The Lunar Lander, the first vehicle designed to be used exclusively in space, was the size of a mini-van and contained two stages.
The second stage was supposed to lift the astronauts off the surface when they were ready to leave and on Apollo 11, it had never been tested in space before. If it failed to work, there was no back up, no rescue plan. President Nixon was told that given all the uncertainties, there was a one in five chance that the astronauts would be left stranded on the moon unable to return (Neil Armstrong gave himself a 50-50 chance of coming home). He even had Bill Safire write a speech in case the mission failed.
Why should this date in history lose its significance as the years pass? There has never been an achievement in the history of mankind that summed up all that is good and noble in the human soul as Apollo 11. Yes the reasons for going to the moon may have been petty and selfish. But the achievement itself represents the best of what we are – thinking, rational animals with an insatiable curiosity of what is beyond the next horizon. NASA may have forgotten this. But the dream itself is alive and well thanks to a small group of outriders on the very frontiers of science who have started their own private space ventures. In the next decade, the novelty of space tourism will dominate this industry. But eventually, the drive for profit will send people hurtling into the void to exploit the resources and raw materials found on other heavenly bodies in our solar system.
Like NASA of the 1960’s, their reasons may be selfish and petty. But the very act of exploration will once again confirm the fact that regardless of politics or economics, the destiny of man is out there somewhere and everywhere in the universe. And it won’t be the ossified bureaucrats in governments who will lead this quest. It will be the dreamers and the risk takers whose own small steps will turn into giant leaps for all of us in the not too distant future.
2:10 pm
I remember when our leaders had vision.
Kennedy set a goal and the nation rallied around the noble objective. The threat of
Soviet domination of space was part of what drove us, but it was also a collective sense of wonder at what the future holds. Now we just want to survive life on earth.
How about a National drive for energy independence? Or a new “Manhattan Project”?
What can we agree on? Find those acorns and
cultivate into unanimous agreement. Chance of that happening? I give it the same chance as Kerry getting a blowjob from Laura.
8:51 am
[...] Rick at Right Wing Nut House on a major, and forgotten, even that occured on the 20th and 21st [...]
11:54 pm
Little Noted but Long Remembered…
Rick Moran has a great post the other day in which he wrote, in part:
In 10,000 years, no one will remember Nancy Pelosi. No one will remember George Bush either. They may rate a line or two in some obscure scholarÂ’s dissertation on primitive nation-...
9:40 am
Rick, you put your finger exactly on the issue when you mentioned the Soviet Union. Semanticleo also expanded on the point well. The Cold War was indeed the motivator for the Apollo project. We were very afaid of the Soviet Union and their space program was ahead of ours in lauching satellites and men into space. To acknowledge a technological defeat by the fearsome Soviets threatened the country in a serious manner.
All political steam for space exploration was tied up indefeating the Russians to the moon, and all of the steam escaped once the goal was accomplished. We have coasted on fumes ever since.
Our manned space program has done nothing since, as you stated. The Space Station is an antiquated pile of space debris. The Shuttle is a Model T that lamely carries on to no space exploration avail. Its like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat repeatedly for 20 years and no new tricks. What a waste for manned space exploration.
But I vote with Semanticleo. Let’s put space exploration on hold for 20 years and pursue a Manhattan Project, an Apollo moon landing project, for oil independence. What we learn doing this will also be useful for a renewed space effort in a generation.
9:59 am
Thanks for the post, Rick.
Probably the reason that this gets forgotten (besides MSM fear of publishing anything that might point out American exceptionalism) is, as you say, the lack of follow-through on the part of NASA/US since then. IOW, this is the same reason that we don’t honor the Norwegian explorers to North America hundreds of years before Columbus—they didn’t stay here.
Having said that, here’s to the greatness of America for having the courage to explore the moon, and for having the will and perseverance to make it happen in such short order. We must always take time to honor such spirit.
7:29 pm
In the 1960’s there was. Competition for space with our mortal enemy. Kennedy challenged us to do this peaceful mission to the moon, to vastly expand our space technology, which would assuredly be useful to the military and our defense.
I think the simple answer today is, there is no need today for a grand mission in space. Our existence isn’t threatened. There is no promise of great things to come from sending a man to Mars or colonizing the moon. At least not that can’t be developed at home using those same billions of dollars.
9:32 am
[...] Right Wing Nut House, “Little Noted But Long Remembered†[...]
6:17 pm
I’ll never forget Apollo 11. I was in Japan then, so the landing was late as night, as I was driving home from a night out. The feelings of awe, pride, accomplishment (yes, even though I had nothing to do with it, but accomplishment just because I was human, American human) utterly overwhelmed me. I’m very glad I was blessed with being alive during this epochal moment of human history. Thanks for the post, Rick.
1:03 am
Submitted 07/25/2007…
In discussing What next in Iraq, the Glittering Eye argues that the current troop levels are insufficient to support the necessary operations in Iraq. Though (initially) opposed to the war he at least wants the war to be waged effectively and fears the…
12:16 am
The Council Has Spoken!...
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Little Noted But Long Remembered b…
3:59 am
Council speak 07/27/2007…
The council has spoken and it has named Little Noted but Long Remembered, Rightt Wing Nuthouse’s lament about the decline of the space program the winner among council entries. Do you remember where you were when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moo…
8:53 am
[...] The Watcher’s Council has announced its picks for the most outstanding posts of the preceding week. The winning Council post was Right Wing Nut House’s post, “Little Noted But Long Rememberedâ€, Rick’s thoughts on the 38th anniversary of Apollo 11. Sharing second place honors were Cheat Seeking Missiles’s “Russia vs. the U. S.—No Contest”, a very interesting case study of the differences in business climate between the two countries, and The Colossus of Rhodey’s “Boy, Was Thomas Rightt” about racial and religious integration in the schools in Britain. [...]
9:52 am
Watcher’s Council results…
And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Little Noted But Long Remembered by Right Wing Nut House, and ON THE FRONTLINE / Cpl. JOHN MATTHEW BISHOP: In the Shadows of Fallen Comrades by The…...
6:21 pm
Watcher’s Council Results…
The winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Little Noted But Long Remembered by Right Wing Nut House, and ON THE FRONTLINE / Cpl. JOHN MATTHEW BISHOP: In the Shadows of Fallen Comrades by The Atlanta Journal…...
9:22 pm
The Coalition of the Willing…
As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what we consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around… though I don’t actually vote unless there happens…...
6:32 am
A Time to Win – and a Time to be Crushed Like Jimmah Cattah…
Heh. Well, at least we got one vote. Though it was a second-place afterthought… Worse, through a mixup in our comprehension of the rules, we didn’t even get to nominate a Nouncil post. I thought, since I couldn’t nominate a…...
1:32 pm
[...] On the Council side, first place was Little Noted But Long Remembered by Right Wing Nut House, with second place going to Russia Vs. The US: No Contest by Cheat Seeking Missiles. [...]
12:51 am
Kevin;
Wrong-O. Here’s a teensy clue (there’s lots more where this comes from): ONE 1-mi diameter rocky asteroid nudged into Earth orbit would provide more base and precious metals than have been excavated in Earth’s history. It would provide a wealth equivalent to $1,000,000 for every living human. Metals processing in microgravity has immense advantages, including the production of alloys and crystalline forms of iron etc. with unprecedented properties (strength, lightness, and many exotic electronic features).
The moon is a match for the Earth’s crust in composition, with the addition of various light elements that have been dispersed here. An example is Helium-3, a royal road to fusion power.
If you must know what’s on the other side of every door before you open it, you’ll never leave the small suite of rooms you already know. Which may be just fine for you; others of us have more going on in our heads and hearts.