Moon Star
After Watching The Moon Landings Broadcast On Television As A Youngster I Have Been Utterly Intrigued By Space Exploration And There Is Much Much More Of The Universe Still To Be Deciphered
When I was very young I can recall being encouraged to stay up very late one day with my father and watch on an little black and white TV as Apollo 11 landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong made history by setting foot on its surface. The anticipation prior to the moon landing and the frequent news reports about the ongoing ‘Space Race’ between the Americans and the Russians made a huge impression on me as a young child and even now I am still intrigued by space and space travel. I make no claim to be very knowledgeable about it all, but the concept of a universe so massive that we can’t even begin to imagine its size is very humbling. We humans really are the most insignificant beings when measured against everything else that exists.
Humans have been mesmerised by the skies since before recorded history. Many ancient civilisations believed in rites and traditions based on the movements of the stars and planets, and even in this day and age our lives are affected by the sun and the moon much more than we truly recognise. Over many millennia, humans must have gazed up at the skies and wondered what those other planets were like. In fact, there is a whole industry that has grown up around the notion of life in other solar systems – aliens, little green men, unidentified flying objects, the entire science fiction genre of films and books, imaginary weapons with light pulsing from a Laser eye – would any of these ideas exist if there was nothing else in the sky for them to allegedly originate from?
With huge advances in technology over the last hundred years, the longing to venture into space and go to other planets slowly evolved from a dream to a possible reality and the Cold War competition between the USA and the USSR resulted in the fairly fast invention of machines which could travel outside the earth’s atmosphere. The V2 rocket, built by the Germans had become the first man-made weapon which could reach space without mechanical problems, and after the end of the Second World War, when both the USA and Russia had gained details of the technology, their first development work was aimed at using the knowledge for methods of warfare. But as soon as the Russians succeeded in sending a human into space in 1961, the Americans immediately made the decision to progress with their own programme of manned space exploration.
The first American to travel into space did so just one month behind Yuri Gagarin and from that moment onwards, both countries began to look to the moon as their target for exploration. In the 1960’s robot crafts were launched to go to the moon and sent back intelligence about its surface, and the Russians also successfully sent an unmanned craft into orbit around the moon, which sent back the first ever images of the dark side of the moon.
Not many years later, the USA launched the first manned spacecraft to fly to the moon. Apollo 8, launched in 1968, orbited the moon and landed safely back on earth. It’s incredible to realise that it was actually the following year when Apollo 11 fulfilled the human dream of satisfactorily reaching the moon meaning that two humans could actually walk on its surface. It’s an even more outstanding feat when you find out that the complete journey to the moon and back to earth was achieved with less computer capability than my computer indoors, a games console, Laser eye surgery equipment or many mobile phones!
Apollo 11 is one of the first actual news stories that I can remember being aware of, largely I suppose because it got so much coverage, but I was completely fascinated by the whole thing and have continued to have an interest in space related news to this very day. But it’s a sad demonstration of the media’s influence as to what is thought of as news, that just two launches later, Apollo 13 was only considered newsworthy when events took a turn for the worse.
Experience gained from the disaster (and eventual triumph) of Apollo 13, as well as the cost of the space programme led to a gradual reduction in manned space flights, and the most recent man to stand on the moon did so in 1972. Since that time, of course, countless unmanned craft have been sent into space by a number of space projects and the International Space Station is orbiting the earth as I type, and is very visible if you are located in the right place at the right time – a flash of light travelling across the sky as if launched from a Laser eye beam.
As science and technology advance (just contemplate how far we’ve come in the last century – from the Ford Model T to the Bugatti Veyron, bi-planes to supersonic jets, fountain pens to computers, monocles to Laser eye surgery – the list is endless), humanity will keep on launching spacecrafts further and further into the furthest corners of the universe and in the future will no doubt discover countless things which are beyond the capability of our imagination at the moment. But I can definitely say that ever since that late night spent watching Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon, I will forever be fascinated by the latest discoveries about the universe.
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