July 20, 1969. When the first human being landed on our satellite
It was July 20, 1969: two US astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, were the first humans to set foot on the moon. Everything has changed in space exploration since Apollo 11. The deepening of Enrico Ferrone
With the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – two former American servicemen – were the first humans to set their feet on the Moon. It was July 20, 1969. After them, another 10 pairs of legs walked the gray carpets of regolith under a sky as black as freshly melted tar. The lunar missions then ended on December 19, 1972 with the landing of astronaut Gene Cernan and geologist Jack Schmitt and since then no human has returned.
Only shortly – perhaps in a year – with the lunar orbits, will a discourse that was abruptly interrupted because there was not much to do on the Moon, because the costs were increasingly uncontrollable and because popular interest was rapidly fading, reopen with the lunar orbits. And this time the mission will have an articulation that will cross three continents.
Totally different goals and expectations since then.
The Apollo program
Apollo was an unprecedented operation, costing about $ 250 billion updated, which led its creators, the United States of America, to be the country with the highest technological value for entire generations. It is still talked about today, at least among those who were able to watch apparently awkward hops for an entire night with blurry and colorless shots. A shadowy and disturbing show. The only points of observation are the old closed-tube televisions in wooden cabinets.
What was the scenario then?
America was not the paradise he imagined: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the year after making official the human exploration program of the nation he governed, was killed between Elm Street and Dealey Plaza in Dallas by an Italian-made Carcano rifle . And even today the plot of the crime remains obscure to most. A few times after the first launch of the Saturns designed by a Nazi conveniently removed from the Nuremberg justice, the myths of an era of great hopes had been slaughtered: the human rights activist Malcolm X fell in 1965 in Harlem under the blows of three automatic rifles and the Protestant pastor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King was killed in 1968 in Memphis by a 30-06 caliber bullet. In the same year Bob Kennedy, just candidate for the White House, fell to death in Los Angeles; the true intellectual of a universally loved family saga but not without hidden stains and shadows.
And what's worse, warfare was still raging in Southeast Asia, where blood and napalm were strewn like mineral water on a freshly hung tablecloth.
Not much has changed on this, given that as in the late 1960s, fighting continues in many parts of the world; people die of war even in central Europe where a conflict is going on beyond history whose essence perhaps only posterity will be able to understand and define. But without ever being able to justify them.
And as then, even today we look at the Moon as an imminent landing point.
What is space now, from the first moon landing?
Everything is different and there is no doubt about it. Its matrix was reshaped on a world that it had designed itself: when NASA announced the planned program for the human descent on the Moon, among the first duties was that of structuring a telecommunication channel -with the Early Bird satellite- which would allow the Western ally to be able to observe all the moves that a dozen astronauts – all white-skinned and all American – would have made on a ground without an atmosphere, with a gravity very different from the one on which they had trained and above all the American agency made sure that the entire planet – China and North Korea apart but by their choice – could take note of the magnificence of a people who had chosen to carry out a clearly difficult mission.
Since then satellite telecommunications have marched at a rapid pace and the other supply chains that make up space activities have also been refined: Earth observation, navigation, exploration and science and then new and unimaginable directions have opened up, such as a type of tourism to get to know the sensations of microgravity even to passengers without the long preparation of the astronauts. Perhaps the first symbiotic form of the public to space.
Today, therefore, space has passed its first teething phase and has become a mature product, appropriate for making money, especially in low orbits, which are less demanding to reach and more usable for commercial and strategic purposes.
Instead, people go to the Moon to experiment with new environments to explore, to test materials and to prepare for what will be the great challenges of the future, i.e. reaching Mars, collecting new materials on asteroids and implementing energy programs that can change the future. But also, as in the past it was done to compete with the old Soviet Union, now there is an attempt to oppose a common front to China, which has already taken de facto possession of important regions of our natural satellite. In short, alongside the marketable side is a scientific side. That is why there will also be Japanese, Canadian, European components on the Moon.
But in one case or the other – whether it is scientific exploration or commercial activity – to be an economic sector, space must meet the requirements of reducing launch costs and above all, it needs foundations that allow independent access to the regions more or less close to the fourth environment. Indispensable proposition to be able to define an economic policy of each nation's sector, without undergoing the influence or pressure of any other external power. Another hard lesson from the war between Russia and Ukraine!
With the carriers in which the first stage is recovered, there is only one company in the world that has achieved important results, proposing a cheaper and more attractive transmission model even outside its territorial borders. A pity that Europe has done nothing to imitate the technology. And for this reason, despite the strong investments made, the endless narrations represented and the naive ambitions of greatness, it always remains a partner without protagonism in a development in which no retreat can be afforded.
What can be the cause of so much subordination?
Actually, there are many factors. Above all, Europe lacks a class of private entrepreneurs, because whatever nation is observed, there are no large research centers on the model of the Pacific coast. But it's not just this. Every choice in the organizational plan in the Old Continent remains subject to the fruit of mediations and compensations that are affected by a nostalgic nationalism deviated by ambiguous visions. Too often industrial confidentiality is forced into partisan interests and alliance games in which the quantity of profuse power wins rather than the merit of the ideas developed. To this is then added a venal component which is not inferior to those just listed. Salary wages within the European world are clearly unbalanced, so it is not uncommon for entire classes of recent graduates to move towards countries that know how to better value professional quality, thus impoverishing the stingier nations and condemning them to increasingly innovative peripheral roles .
These are serious aspects that deserve various political and social reflections. Because today the use of space activities is part of the life of any territory. The world can be observed from space and its atmospheric and environmental dynamics are foreseen and therefore also those of the agro-economy, health care and mobility. You connect it, check it and if necessary, repack it.
Not evaluating these aspects – which first of all encompass the security and defense of every single reachable meter – is an illusion that is left only to the most naive. Staying out of it represents decline. And it is a luxury that a large economic reality cannot afford.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/allunaggio-20-luglio-1969-oggi/ on Wed, 19 Jul 2023 05:39:49 +0000.