“THE
EAGLE HAS WINGS”
THE LUNAR MODULE, “THE
EAGLE” CARRYING
NEIL ARMSTRONG AND BUZZ
ALDRIN TO THE LUNAR SURFACE
50 YEARS AGO TODAY
(July 20, 2019 Washington, DC) It was a
moment in time he’d never forget. The fact that today marks the 50th
anniversary of that event renders him a little disoriented. But such is life.
Memories remain fixed points that we drift further and further away from. Some lose
their luster, others become murky or smudged over the years from pawing at
them, handling them. Some never seem to change or become altered in any
appreciable way. What transpired on July 20, 1969, is one such memory. The
thought of men on the Moon has never ceased to amaze and thrill him.
He grew up with the Space Program, the
famed “Space Race” between the United States and the USSR. Even as a kid he was
aware that there was a military aspect to the entire endeavor. All the original
Astronauts were military pilots. He saw that as a tribute to their abilities,
character, and certainly their skills as test pilots accustomed to taking great
risks and solving problems in experimental aircrafts. Actually, he thought everything
about the entire endeavor that 400,000 Americans actively participated in
fulfilling all the needs of the Program was mind bogglingly impressive. How
could any young boy of that time not be infatuated and impressed? There
were rockets and huge tractors, tremendous assembly buildings, lift offs,
splashdowns, aircraft carriers, Navy choppers and divers and the achievements
themselves. And, of course, there were the men; men whose names he’d never forget.
Growing up in our Big Apple, he’d
ride the subways after school to visit various construction sites. He was
fascinated by construction, the cranes and bulldozers; the men who walked the
high steel. He watched them excavate a huge hole in lower Manhattan that would
become the “bathtub” that housed the foundations of the Twin Towers. The World
Trade Center construction progressed as he aged, and he bore witness to it
every day for almost ten years. He would later in life come to live within
their shadows.
The whole notion of men going into
space, orbiting the Earth in tiny capsules no larger than a 1966 VW van was beyond
captivating to him. He could only try to imagine the level of bravery, the
shear courage it took for these men to venture into the truly unknown. These
men were testing theories with their lives at stake. Images of those many
missions, the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions imparted in him a sense of
respect for the military, for the skills of men who flew these machines, the
minds that thought them up and the engineers of virtually every discipline,
fabricators, technicians and mechanics who made them reality. Whatever was
needed was built; it was that simple. It was the vastness of those minds, the
novelty of their thinking and, in a way, the manner in which they made it seem
so matter of fact - this is what we need to do, this is what we need to do it,
so, let’s get on with it. NASA and all her subcontractors were powerful
examples of that ill-defined “spirit” that men of his age today grew up with.
He was a boy of that time, a product of
that age. The 1960’s, as he was coming of age, were filled with historic
moments, tumultuous events that even his Dad could not totally explain. There
was a war in a place called Viet Nam; Chet Huntley and David Brinkley reported
casualty counts on the nightly news. There were long-haired, “peaceniks”,
“hippie “college students downtown burning their draft cards; women’s libers
burning their bras. There were race riots and he stood with his Dad and others
on the rooftop of their South Bronx five story walkup and watched the angry
orange flames in Brooklyn, Harlem and over in Jersey City and Newark. JFK, the
first Irish Catholic President was assassinated and, not many years later his
brother Bobby and, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King. Everything seemed bad,
confusing. That may have been the appeal of the Space Program; it was so exciting;
it was so ambitious and positive. These feats could make up for much that was
not right and show a fresh glimpse of his Dad’s America.
There was nothing ‘off the shelf’, as it
were: from the medical evaluations of the seven original Gemini Astronauts
through every piece of hardware used throughout the history of the programs
that culminated 50 years ago today. Literally every component had to be
designed from scratch often based on ill-defined specifications with scant
knowledge of the real or imagined hazards inherent in a 245,000-mile voyage
through the harsh, unforgiving vacuum of space to the Moon. Engineers and
scientists performed monumental calculations with only slide rulers and
primitive punch card computing technology; far less computing power than there
is in a common “smart” phone of today.
But, Americans had traveled this path,
albeit in a far different pursuit, before. The Manhattan Project that delivered
the first atomic weapons bore many similarities to the Space Program, but its
mission was a finite proposition. Once the devices were proven to be what they only
had been imagined to be, they were utilized to end a terrible war. The
technology from that endeavor ushered in the “Nuclear Age” where nuclear power
was harnessed for peaceful, power generating purposes. He was born as a member
of the Baby Boom and, it would be many years later that the significance of his
birth time would be fully realized and appreciated.
The Space Program dwarfed the Manhattan
Project in virtually every comparable aspect. Actually, it was only after Tom
Wolfe’s best-selling book The Right Stuff and the movie of the same name that
the public learned some of the details of the earliest days, the very birth and
infancy of the manned space flight program. Countless other books,
documentaries and several movies have captured the drama of it all, the
stupendous magnitude of what was unknown, unknowable and what had to be
overcome to achieve the goals set forth.
Once the young President JFK proclaimed
that “we will go to the moon in this decade, not because it is easy, but
because it is hard” the real race was on.
It rained in New York City off and on
for most of July 20, 1969. That did not deter crowds from gathering in public
places like Central Park, Times Square and other locales. He watched on a 15-inch
black and white TV the landing of the “Eagle” shortly after 3:15 that afternoon
and remained uncharacteristically glued to that TV set until well after
midnight. Mom and Dad were as caught up in the moment as everyone else. It
seemed miraculous. The Pope was on TV earlier that day offering prayers for the
Astronauts. The entire world was watching.
The old timers in the neighborhood said
the rain was caused by the launch itself. Some said that every time a rocket
was launched it did something to the atmosphere that caused rain. It sort of
made sense to him but it seemed trivial. These were, after all, the same old
stoop sitters who said heat lightning was caused by the bombs we were dropping
on North Viet Nam.
It was not until the next night that he
saw the Moon again. Looking at it on July 21, 1969 knowing that two men had
just been there, they had walked there, slept there, spoken to us all from
there, gave the Moon a different character. We had been there. That meant
something to him then as it does today.
Since that day he has read and studied
the Space Program and NASA extensively. He satisfied his curiosities by reading
only to find tangential curiosities that spurred the need for further reading
towards a fuller understanding. The more he has learned about the manned space
flight program from 1959 through 1972, the greater is his respect and awe for
all of it, everyone involved in it and the fact that they succeeded in the face
of incredible odds. He thought everything after Apollo was bullshit; he never
watched a shuttle lift off, never cared about any of the post lunar years of NASA.
Low Earth orbit antics were a parody of the NASA he grew up with.
He appreciates all the technological
developments from the Apollo years that became integral parts of our everyday
lives; novel materials like metal alloys, Teflon, Velcro, Mylar, to advanced
communications, radar, navigation, and propulsion all made possible with the
increasing understanding of the potential power of the integrated circuit. It is impossible to overstate the progress
made reality by the entire array of engineering and basic sciences advancements that
were built upon, expanded and broadened to produce the level of technological
sophistication we live with today.
The world at times seems too complicated
to him; it has the feeling of moving too fast without getting anywhere.
Tremendous knowledge and information are available literally at our fingertips
yet, we as a culture, a society, as a people do not seem better for it. People
are certainly not like they were in 1969. That makes him sad. But many things
make him sad today. That is probably just the tendrils of a midlife crisis or
simply the product of having lived this long.
He saw fantastic archival footage of
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins on TV today. They still have his
utmost respect and admiration. What was it truly like for them on the surface
of our Moon?
He still looks at the Moon with
reverence and fascination; the same emotions that have drawn men to it since
the dawn of time. It is our nearest celestial neighbor and we have been there.
Somehow, that still makes a difference to him and, it always will.
Copyright Brooding Cynyc 2019 © All Rights Reserved
Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2019 © All Rights Reserved
