The pucker factor went up exponentially at the American space agency NASA, still in its infancy, when President Kennedy addressed members of Congress on May 25, 1961 declared, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." That address came only six weeks after the Soviet Union had put Yuri Gagarin, the first human to be put into orbit in a capsule called Vostok. The "Cold War" really started warming up five days later when Kennedy launched the ill-advised and ill-fated Bay of Pigs disaster failing spectacularly to overthrow Soviet-backed dictator Fidel Castro. When President Kennedy made the announcement to Congress simultaneously NASA officials and scientists felt the pucker factor with the reaction, "We're going to do what?" We hardly had a clue as to how to get humans on the moon--and here's the most important part of Kennedy's statement--bring them safely back to the earth. This was complete science fiction stuff; Buck Rogers, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, those guys. As an avid science fiction fan and reader I grew up with the Corbett series and great sci-fi writers like John Brunner, Poul Anderson, Marion Bradley, Philip K. Dick, Robert Moore Williams, et.al. But that was from the fertile minds of those authors...Kennedy was talking about the real thing, REAL rocket science. As the president put it the next year in a speech at Rice University, "We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard!"
This was the American Way in the day! We do it because it is HARD! American pride was on the line--we had just been dissed by our sworn enemy, the Soviet Union, was showing us up starting with Sputnik the first man-made satellite. Then, much later, the aforementioned first man in orbit. In junior high (now middle school unfortunately) and high school I kept hearing classmates and friends saying that we had "lost" the space race and whoever got to the moon first would "rule the earth!" Most were convinced that the Russians would get there first. For those of you who were not born at the time it's hard for me to describe the national excitement and euphoria we were feeling to have a national goal. The only way to explain it to you is that you imagine your favorite sports team's biggest rivalry like Georgia Tech-Georgia, Clemson-South Carolina, Army-Navy, Slippery Rock-Shippensburg (you can fill in the blank) and the excitement you feel as the big game approaches and your team is the underdog and then stages a great almost-impossible come-from-behind victory. That's kinda what it was like. But the stakes so much higher--the sky literally was the limit...and beyond.
So on this date when Apollo 11 was launched we all held our collective breath. We knew they would get there because there had been a couple of other test moon shots where they went into orbit around the Moon. That wasn't the big question/worry. Just landing on the Moon was a question because there was a theory that the Moon didn't have a solid surface. A best-selling science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke was out years before called A Fall of Moondust. The plot was the first Moon landing that went terribly wrong because the spaceship sunk into the surface like dying in quicksand. So as they approached the Moon, went into orbit and then launched the lunar lander we were on the edge of our seats. Then as the two men, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin approached the surface, their initial landing spot just didn't seem to be right so Armstrong took the controls and began looking for an alternate. It was a nailbiter and we watched and prayed and down the two men went and when the lunder module touched down and Armstrong said, "the Eagle has landed!" we all breathed a sigh of relief and NASA scientists and engineers and personnel at Cape Kennedy (the name at the time) and Houston exploded in cheers. Then came Armstrong's immortal words as he became the first human being to put his foot down on another world, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Actually he was supposed to say, "One small step for a man, not just "man" but considering the excitement of the moment we'll forgive him.
It was turning into a glorious mission as I and my fellow Army ROTC cadets watched on a black-and-white television set that had been brought into the barracks at Fort Bragg, North Carolina for us to watch. The next trick and breathtaking moment we were waiting for was getting them back onboard the orbital craft safely and then the voyage home. The news people of the era were giving us all the bad things that could possibly go wrong. If the rocket didn't fire, if it didn't fire long enough, on and on. I could only imagine what the families of these men were going through listening to this. History tells us, of course, that everything worked perfectly and the three men, Armstrong especially, became national and perhaps world heroes. We had BEATEN THE RUSSIANS at something. We hit the comeback trail and beat them to the Moon. Ironically, they--the Russians--have yet to put a man on the Moon now 50 years later but because we have neglected our space program for so long the Ruskies are giving our astronauts a ride to the International Space Station. How embarrassing is that???
Fortunately we now have a president who understands the importance of NASA and the space program and because of the advances in technology we now have private industry involved in the space program. It's becoming cheaper with reusable rockets and far more powerful computers and guidance systems. The benefits in the ratio of dollars spent on the space program compared to the return in better products, new products and advancement of science is remarkable. I'm delighted it's back on the priority list because we lost our way spending way too much on social programs which have been, for the most part, total failures and monumental wastes of money, and neglecting NASA which has given us an enormous bang for our buck. I just knew for sure fifty years ago that by now we'd have colonies on the Moon and perhaps even on Mars but we lost our way falling for the negative propaganda that our money was much better spent down here solving social problems. What garbage! Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the landing and we in the good ol' USA and frankly the rest of the world should celebrate! Looking forward to going back! As CBS icon Walter Cronkite said when we put our first man in orbit, "Godspeed, John Glenn!" Amen to that and to all who followed and well continue to follow.