Aroostook Skies:
A tribute to America’s ‘small step’
July 20 is the day where we honor and remember that for one brief shining moment, the United States fulfilled its Presidential promise and rose to its utmost national technological achievement since the construction of the atomic bomb: the successful landing of men on the Moon.
The brief lunar stroll of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin upon the Sea of Tranquility 41 years ago established American pre-eminence as the world leader of space exploration and extraterrestrial research. Surely the importance of this moon landing project serves as a milestone of the modern American experience as well as a sanctification of American culture and political spirit at its best. Remember, we strove to land on the moon as one nation under an amalgam of unique scientific, political, and cultural impetus.
I hope one day we will formally recognize the lunar landing as a national holiday and recognize affirmatively the organizing principle behind the effort as a source of true national pride. True, the moon program was terribly expensive, took the lives of some precious American space pioneers, diverted our attention from national and global poverty, discrimination and unjust warfare abroad. But along with the sacrifices and the mistakes, all Americans throughout the late 1950s through the mid-1970s not just understood but felt a participatory contribution and truly experienced the uplift of the deep space adventure. Personally, I recall in the immediate wave of triumph that Sunday afternoon in 1969 listening to CBS-TV.
The great American science fiction author Robert Heinlein had just declared, “this is now the year zero” meaning a new era, no, a new reality had begun, carrying all of us upward along with Apollo 11. Heinlein attempted in almost biblical grandeur to encapsulate the vision and optimism translating the essence of Tranquility Base to the long range of adventure of American and really all civilized longing: life with the stars!
I think the greatness of Apollo 11 recalls the essential purpose of American life. This nation remains conceived as an experiment in human liberty and freedom, whose horizons of democratic expression remain limitless. Although Apollo 11 loftily carried us all into deep space it still behind its engineering marvels and mastery illuminates the marvelous human story of vast links of individual human footsteps, collaborating over the decades and beyond. The sheer know-how, supremely documented in the face of cynics and revisionists among us, must forever stand as a focus and beacon of national identification, purpose, and ultimate optimism in our greater destiny.
Larry Berz is the astronomy educator/planetarium director at the Francis Malcolm Science Center in Easton.
