“That’s one small step for Man, one giant leap for Mankind” was the quote from Neil Armstrong as he stepped onto the Lunar surface at Tranquility Base in the early hours of the morning July 21st here in London and late in the evening July 20th in the USA .
Yet, as Robert Stone says in his film, ‘Chasing The Moon’, “it took millions of steps to take one giant leap.”
Over 400,000 people worked on the Apollo, Mercury, and Gemini programs and it is worth noting that many of the leading roles in this effort were held by British and Commonwealth citizens with input from British, Canadian, Indian, and Australian companies and more.
It is also worth noting that at its height the Apollo program represented 4% of the US Government’s annual budget. A huge investment, yes, but also one that created a host of new technologies and industries that have driven and that continue to drive our economies today.
From computing to communications, to new medicines and more. The US Government estimates that for every dollar spent four dollars’ worth of value was created and more so today.
A sound investment as after all, we must never forget that 100% of the monies ‘spent in space’ are not!
They are of course spent down here on Earth in our economies providing high tech employment and jobs and growth. Spinning off new technologies that benefit our lives. The Apollo program brought a more modern world to us all.
It is one of the shining examples of the truth that investing in science and engineering works, and that this can be a great role for government. Those funds in turn fuel growth in our own economy and provide jobs here at home that attract talent from around the world to our universities and institutions and companies that drive British Industry ever forwards.
The Apollo programme also gave us a new avenue for diplomacy – space!
Some see the Apollo programme as the height of the competition between superpowers, the much vaunted space race.
However, other sounder minds also note this as the beginnings of the end of the cold war. With superpower cooperation in space laying the seeds for our modern world today diplomatically.
Everyone quite rightly remembers JFK’s speech to Rice University in September of 1962 declaring the goal of putting a person on the Moon and returning them safely to Earth before the decade was out.
This led the US and its Allies from a near standing start to putting a person on the Moon in less than 7 years. A monumental achievement for any nation and for the human race as a whole.
After all, the Soviets had the first satellite, the first man to orbit the earth, the first woman to orbit the earth, the first spacewalk, the first space station, the first robotic landing on the Moon…it was a race…but look at what competition can achieve!
It was a race, but it also became diplomacy. After the Bay of Pigs, JFK met with Khrushchev in Vienna and offered to team up with the Soviets to go to the Moon together. Khrushchev declined then.
However, Nixon tried again with Brezhnev in 1972 as the Apollo programme was ending and the Apollo Soyuz program was born.
So at the very height of the Cold War in 1974, Americans and Russians were peacefully working together on a joint mission in space.
Cold war rivals became new world allies.
From this came the Shuttle Mir program in the 1990s and from there to the International Space Station today.
When you speak with some of the Cosmonauts of that era, they will tell you that the Cold War ended for them in 1972 when the first Americans arrived to work together with them in Star City.
Since 2000 Russians, Americans and ourselves have been living and working continuously and most importantly peacefully together in space. Who would have thought that landing on the Moon could lead to an era such as this? Even in the deepest darkness there is always light.
Space unites Humanity today, just as humanity came together as one that night in July 1969 to watch the Apollo 11 landing live, the largest global audience at its time.
As the astronauts departed the Moon they left a plaque stating, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."
Non Americans note. They chose to leave the message ‘for all mankind’. Apollo was by far the best foot forward for all humanity.
The Apollo programme gave us a new human perspective, a new human race up there where there are no borders.
All who have seen the Earth no matter from which nation experience the Overview Effect. Seeing the beauty of Earth changes, them, literally, for the better.
Indeed, the greatest gift we received from the Apollo programme was not the Moon, but rather the Earth!
The crew of Apollo 8 circumnavigated the Moon in December of 1968, indeed Christmas Eve itself, and took the iconic ‘Earth Rise’ photo, an image directly credited with starting the environmental movement here at home.
This was the first time the entire human race collectively saw the beauty of our home planet against the backdrop of the deepest darkness of space.
Our Earth shines like a jewel in space. The jewel of all creation.
“We went to the Moon and discovered the Earth” as Frank Borman, Commander, Apollo 8, said so succinctly.
Whomever could forgive the way we treat the world in which we live? The world on which all our odds depend. There is no second planet Earth that we yet know of. We have just this one and the Apollo program taught us this lesson so very well.
Today space gives us the tools, and satellites and sensors to identify and to effectively fight environmental damage and more. It gives us the ultimate vantage from which to monitor and to protect our environment.
The first powered flight by the Wright Brothers was a Kitty Hawk in December 1903. The first Transatlantic flight was 1919. We were on the Moon by 1969. Since 2000 there have been permanently people living and working in space. Less than 100 years later.
What will the next 100 years bring as we mark this 50th Anniversary of Apollo?
That depends entirely upon us…
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