Everyone who can, remembers where they were on that July day in 1969. They remember what they were doing, too. They were watching grainy, black and white TV images. There was not much action and not much sound. But this was the moment the Earth stood still. They were transfixed, watching history as it was made.
They were watching two men, high above them, walking on the moon.
The moon has pulled at the souls and imaginations of people through the ages. Its attraction is like the lunar pull of the tides. It carries in its light a mystery, unfathomable and beyond reach, that goes to the core of the universe. It is our nearest touchstone to the galaxies. It fires our imagination and for a frenzied time last century it became the object of our desires. Well, at least the desires of the United States to be the first to walk on its airless plains.
Gerard DeGroot, professor of modern history at St Andrews University, in Dark Side of the Moon explores this mission to fly to the moon. The subtitle sums it up admirably: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest.
DeGroot makes known his attitude in the preface: "Putting men in space was an immensely expensive distraction of little scientific or cultural worth. The American people, in other words, were fleeced: they were persuaded to spend $(US)35 billion on an ego trip to the moon, and then were told that a short step on the desolate lunar landscape was a giant leap for mankind."
DeGroot traces Neil Armstrong's small lunar steps back to a subterranean factory in eastern Germany during World War II. It was there under the guidance of scientist Wernher von Braun, a man singularly driven to reach the stars, that the V2 rockets were built to rain on England. Not for the first time, science was hijacked for military ends. Hitler, on learning of the rockets' capabilities, demanded that 2000 a month be made.
After the war, von Braun and some of his team threw in their lot with the Americans and the US, now having to come to grips with dealing with the Soviet Union and the emergence of the Cold War, took whatever scientific and military edge it could find - including former workers from the Nazi system.
It is entirely understandable after the nightmare of World War II, that Americans were desperate to find a new frontier. They were, after all, the descendants of pioneers and space was the new frontier without equal. Entrepreneurship combined with media, notably films and books, to create a thirst for all things alien. An example DeGroot cites is Walt Disney recruiting von Braun for a TV series on space travel. Tomorrowland quickly followed in Disneyland.
But then into the American fervour a small beep intruded. It came from a tin can called Sputnik, launched by the Soviets in 1957. It set the US back on its heels, although as DeGroot points out, unnecessarily so. In the atmosphere of the Cold War, anything the Soviets did was seen as a dire threat not only to US security but to a way of life. The space race had begun.
The man who tried to pour a bucket of sanity on to the fire even before Sputnik was US president Dwight Eisenhower. Four years earlier he said in a speech: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed . . . We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8000 people."
In the din, no one was listening. Even Eisenhower had to bend, creating NASA to quieten the clamour.
DeGroot goes into the heart of the politics at the time. Space was a vote winner. John F. Kennedy realised this and adopted it for his own purposes. The US would win the space race and put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Privately, as DeGroot reveals, Kennedy really could not have cared less about a man in space. But the mission had other benefits, not least showing the Soviets who was in charge of the world. Much rubbish was spouted in the '60s by politicians who declared that the moon was the key to military domination on Earth. DeGroot, with a sharp wit and razor argument, pricks that balloon and many others about the benefits of the race.
And when man, not any man but an American man, landed on the moon, what did he find? DeGroot quotes not Armstrong but his partner Buzz Aldrin: "Magnificent desolation."
Back on Earth, people were entranced. And then they forgot. The moon had served its purpose. It had pulled at the tides of humanity's affairs and then ebbed back into the solar system. Now, it was just a chunk of rock, without mystery.
They were watching two men, high above them, walking on the moon.
The moon has pulled at the souls and imaginations of people through the ages. Its attraction is like the lunar pull of the tides. It carries in its light a mystery, unfathomable and beyond reach, that goes to the core of the universe. It is our nearest touchstone to the galaxies. It fires our imagination and for a frenzied time last century it became the object of our desires. Well, at least the desires of the United States to be the first to walk on its airless plains.
Gerard DeGroot, professor of modern history at St Andrews University, in Dark Side of the Moon explores this mission to fly to the moon. The subtitle sums it up admirably: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest.
DeGroot makes known his attitude in the preface: "Putting men in space was an immensely expensive distraction of little scientific or cultural worth. The American people, in other words, were fleeced: they were persuaded to spend $(US)35 billion on an ego trip to the moon, and then were told that a short step on the desolate lunar landscape was a giant leap for mankind."
DeGroot traces Neil Armstrong's small lunar steps back to a subterranean factory in eastern Germany during World War II. It was there under the guidance of scientist Wernher von Braun, a man singularly driven to reach the stars, that the V2 rockets were built to rain on England. Not for the first time, science was hijacked for military ends. Hitler, on learning of the rockets' capabilities, demanded that 2000 a month be made.
After the war, von Braun and some of his team threw in their lot with the Americans and the US, now having to come to grips with dealing with the Soviet Union and the emergence of the Cold War, took whatever scientific and military edge it could find - including former workers from the Nazi system.
It is entirely understandable after the nightmare of World War II, that Americans were desperate to find a new frontier. They were, after all, the descendants of pioneers and space was the new frontier without equal. Entrepreneurship combined with media, notably films and books, to create a thirst for all things alien. An example DeGroot cites is Walt Disney recruiting von Braun for a TV series on space travel. Tomorrowland quickly followed in Disneyland.
But then into the American fervour a small beep intruded. It came from a tin can called Sputnik, launched by the Soviets in 1957. It set the US back on its heels, although as DeGroot points out, unnecessarily so. In the atmosphere of the Cold War, anything the Soviets did was seen as a dire threat not only to US security but to a way of life. The space race had begun.
The man who tried to pour a bucket of sanity on to the fire even before Sputnik was US president Dwight Eisenhower. Four years earlier he said in a speech: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed . . . We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8000 people."
In the din, no one was listening. Even Eisenhower had to bend, creating NASA to quieten the clamour.
DeGroot goes into the heart of the politics at the time. Space was a vote winner. John F. Kennedy realised this and adopted it for his own purposes. The US would win the space race and put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Privately, as DeGroot reveals, Kennedy really could not have cared less about a man in space. But the mission had other benefits, not least showing the Soviets who was in charge of the world. Much rubbish was spouted in the '60s by politicians who declared that the moon was the key to military domination on Earth. DeGroot, with a sharp wit and razor argument, pricks that balloon and many others about the benefits of the race.
And when man, not any man but an American man, landed on the moon, what did he find? DeGroot quotes not Armstrong but his partner Buzz Aldrin: "Magnificent desolation."
Back on Earth, people were entranced. And then they forgot. The moon had served its purpose. It had pulled at the tides of humanity's affairs and then ebbed back into the solar system. Now, it was just a chunk of rock, without mystery.
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