The money spent on the Apollo program, Skylab, the Shuttles, the ISS - all that is a drop in the bucket compared to spending on our military over that same time frame.
Despite the sleight of mind that seems to view money spent on space as somehow being loaded into rockets and hurled away, it was and is spent here on this planet, where it employs really smart people to solve tough problems and expand our knowledge.
The concern for the earth got a huge boost once we first saw it while Iooking back from the moon. Today an expanding network of satellites monitor its health - the Copernicus program.
https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Overview3
But that the only thing driving it in America is how it can support the department of defense or make more money for billionaires is an indictment of how far America has lost the vision we once had.
12
Sure, fully fund a new, improved Space Program. But, take ALL the money from the Defense Department.
Deal ???
5
I think going to the moon was and will be a stupid waste of time, talent and money.
6
Sooo interesting that there is soooo much money out there -- and the current Neoliberal aka vulture capitalist movement requires that it should reside in the hands of private individuals who spend it on..... or buy more land, build more rental housing, find a new way to increase their own wealth … usually without paying taxes.. or should I say preferably not paying taxes: after all a progressive system of taxes -- one might even call it "Christian" -- "from those with much, more is expected" is called socialist.
The Vietnam War IMO inherited from the French and the result of some kind of knee-jerk response to the mere term Communism -- like all knee jerk responses to words which most people cannot define -- a war where the generals constantly lied (IMO the Ken Burns documentary should be required viewing bi-annually by Congress) required huge amounts of money and cannon fodder(aka young men).
The plight of all poor people (it's not just race, it's also region) needs "reparation." PS why not require that supposed US companies with executive offices in the USA and the majority of their market in the USA make
at least 50% of what they sell here. Disruption seems fine when certain people make $$, but becomes "bad" when all of sudden the 1% might lose $$. We have a perverse economic system not at capitalism basically a variation on slavery the cotton was exported to be turned into cloth). based on the suffering of people with limited choices. We can do better.
2
Sorry, Woodstock was all about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.
Nobody at Woodstock was protesting about the Vietnam War or the space race, they were there to have a good time, which many of them did.
13
Surprising we’re not talking about a women on the moon. Or maybe a president.
This article is premised on an entirely false dichotomy, and posits a connection between the space program and the military, which in fact did not really exist. For the most part the research that made the space program so successful was not classified, but rather carried on in non-secure facilities. I suspect that it was the openness of the space race that made it unpopular with the cynical operatives who populated the Nixon administration. Many people of the "Woodstock generation" (myself included) were strong supporters of the space program. There were a multitude of socially useful spinoffs from space race technology, which remain important today. I think we'd all be much better off if the entire enterprise had not been allowed to die. It was a period in American history when it was not taken for granted that government agencies were incapable of doing anything right, and that everything should just be left to the whims of the market. The success of the entire space enterprise up to 1969 provides a pretty strong case that this is just nonsense.
9
It was not either/or.
We spent more on LBJ's programs to overcome poverty than ever we spent going to the Moon.
If we needed more at home, it was right there being wasted in Vietnam.
We should have gone to the Moon, gone beyond, kept going, and also fixed things here at home. We could have with what was wasted in Vietnam.
10
I prefer we make it a priority to go to Mars. I really want to get off this planet. It is overcrowded, chaotic and no one seems to want to work together anymore. Please, please NASA. I volunteer for one way to Mars.
Brilliant illustration! Superb.
1
The Chinese will certainly put boots on the moon whether we do or not. If they get their first before our revisit, they will essentially annex it and militarize it.
1
I personally love our space program, however, I'd be a fool to think that launching a payload into space, re-directing it, and controlling where that payload landed would have absolutely nothing to do with nuclear weapons. I had everything to do with delivering nuclear weapons.
Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon" summed it up best
8
Most of the current privatized space race seems like a macho fantasy enterprise for men in the top .01 percent — one with terrifying repercussions.
Why would we trust some of the same people who are mining the privacy of everyone who touches the internet to take over space?
If they spent their money to improve our planet, maybe they could stop building fancy end times bunkers or imaging new planets to colonize after they help destroy this one.
30
A stark cultural divide? Professor Maher's history is quite different from the one I experienced. Born in 1952, I experienced the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs step-by-step. I also experienced the Viet Nam War step-by-step the Diem Coup, Tonkin Gulf, Tet Offensive, antiwar demonstrations for McCarthy against Johnson and feared the draft.
The space program was generally a positive counter to the War. That was no more so than when Apollo 8 orbited the moon in the fraught year 1968..
10
This is why, as expressed by JFK in 1962. Read the rest of the speech, too.
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
13
I was 13 in 1969, and was enthralled by the Moon Landing. I still have my (very dog-eared) scrapbook I made at the time, with newspaper clippings and fabulous photos from Life magazine. Living in Ireland, I was vaguely aware of Vietnam (as a younger child, I had wondered why the news was always about soldiers fighting 'gorillas' - until my grandmother explained) and not aware of Woodstock at all. During my childhood of the 1960s, America was a dream, and the Moon Landing was a shining example of how great it was. (I have a photo of me aged 7, in 1963, waving an American flag for the visit of President Kennedy to my home town in Wexford- the County of his ancestry.) There was some discussion at school about the 'waste' of money that the Space Race was- and I led the team in a school debate that argued in favour of spending on space exploration when there were still so many poor people in the world. I recall that my argument was basically that if we did not strive to reach the stars, we were failing in our human destiny, and that the hope and glory of space exploration lifted everyone up above the mundane. I might even make the same argument now, with 50 more years of life behind me. I never did become an astronaut (my dream then), but did become a computer scientist - and an American citizen. I've left America now, and will probably not return permanently. Europe, with its kinder, gentler, more human society, is now a much better place to live life.
10
It was quite a feat to land on the moon with 1960’s technology. It was really expensive in 1960’s dollars. There was quite a group who were anti-government and anti-war who would have probably protested anything DC was doing in the 60’s. But I’m glad we did it, I think we can look back now 50 years later and agree it was worth it.
3
I turned 9 the summer Armstrong walked on the moon. My memory of the televised launches and landings is my annoyance that they kept interrupting my cartoon watching. My parents did not sit by me to explain the significance of the accomplishment. Besides, Jeannie and Samantha Stephens did magic all the time.
1
Other than being a matter of pride, I am at a loss to identify what the Moon effort did for the US and its citizens that was of practical benefit.
5
@Mike On the current Nature website there is an article about a survey of 800+ of Nature's contributors. More than half said they were inspired to go into science as a career by the Apollo accomplishments
Can you think of a better or greater legacy?
11
@Mike everything from the computer which allowed you to type this out, to your watch, to miniaturized electronics (they had to be smaller and lighter to get into space), in fact, most all technology you enjoy today (to include medical) was made better. The Apollo program rapidly impacted the acceleration of technological advancement. Without this technological advancement to meet the needs of the space program you would not have laptops, etc. Everything had to be improved to accommodate space flight such as power consumption, mass, volume and data rate.
The space program impacted all of this and you with the results every day of your life.
8
What does this mean in retrospect?
" Should America have spent $20 billion to win a Cold War battle to put the first man on the moon? Or should the country instead have made that kind of financial and political commitment to tackle the host of problems that then convulsed our home planet — not only the war in Southeast Asia, but also racial discrimination, pollution and gender inequality?"
First, even 50 years later with all of our "consciousnesses raised" we can't come to any agreements on how to solve these problems.. How could we do it then with no consciousness of the issues.
I know one thing, the space program gave us all of the modern tools we now take for granted. Large Scale integrated circuits, new materials , and a generation of scientists who would create cell phones, the internet cloud computing and thousands of jobs.
Meanwhile, I was a 1st lieutenant just trying to keep my platoon safe and stay alive one more day.
16
On the evening of the moon landing there was a heavy rainstorm in NYC. I was pregnant and stuck in the subway, with thousands of others, when it broke down in the storm. Those were the days of disinvestment in the city before rich folks decided they wanted it back. Whenever there are celebrations of the space program I think about those who have no reason to celebrate.
2
And from an economic perspective, those people complaining about NASA and the space program turned out to be largely wrong. The program paid back in spades in accelerating development of the semiconductor industry, transforming the communications industry, innovating manufacturing processes, developing other new industries (like cryogenics), and more. Also practices in conducting Earth observation (like with Skylab) proved helpful too, for later unmanned satellites, like the Landsat mentioned in the article. And by most accounts, the country, the national economy, and many peoples' livelihoods benefitted from such investments/spin offs well into the 1990s.
10
@Michael Dunne There is no evidence for those claims. Sure, there was considerable technical progress, just as there is on any big technical project. But, we could have invested in educating engineers and physicists and developing computer technology with another more rationally selected project. As is usually the case in the U.S., the moon project was hyped and ballyhooed by the companies that would benefit. It is ever thus. (By the way, I was a young system engineer for NASA during the Apollo program era. So, I saw it first-hand.)
2
Dreams don't cost the tax payer.
Reality does -
per NASA's over budget and behind schedule dream and if the government doesn't fund multiple millions the current attempt will not succeed and the taxpayers will be held ransom again to pay for NASA's dream.
***We need to rebuild our trust in government and COMPASSION towards each other.
THE MOON WILL BE HERE TOMORROW.
FIX OUR COUNTRY 1ST - then I'll be happy to pay for another moon trip.
We need:
1. Housing, affordable - $400.00 or less per month rent or $5 flop housing for those that can't or won't commit to work or to themselves.
2. Basic living resources - food, diapers, hygiene products, clothes and shoes.
5. If we work together at the Mom, Pop, young adult and child level we can do more then our government can.
6. With love/ victory gardens and donations we can help each other and not depend on the government.
7. In return for local and national help, the US citizens given FREE SERVICES must provide community service in some form, be it picking up litter, serving in food banks or community soup kitchens or animal shelters or hospitals, etc.
We also need and can provide work via
*Infrastructure for our country - bridges, roads, park land, etc.
*Care for our aging citizens and children born with parents that can't parent.
*Making clothes, knitting garments, baking bread, growing plants - these and many more services can be provided by MEN OR WOMEN in exchange for food, etc.
Our parents and children need help now.
1
When I was discharged from the Marines, as I returned from service in Vietnam and other places, I spent a few days in California moving slowly through the discharge process.
One day I went to a local bar and watched a human being bounce around as he wandered on the moon. I made the comment that "so this is what America has been doing while its kids fought in a war".
Soon after they ended the draft and the Vietnam conflict ended, not the one where the firing still occurred, but the one on America's streets.
War should be an "all in" activity. Either a country goes to war with everything and everyone involved, or it stays the hell out.
No, as spectacular as the Moon missions were, there were other things to do and take care of.
A decent educational benefit for veterans would have been nice.
Hugh
6
Both events were emblematic of a young, energetic, and optimistic nation. Yes, optimistic. The author pulls quotes from a healthy debate to pronounce a pathology that never was. Heck, in the spirit of those times, Martin Luther King, Jr. persuaded Nichelle Nichols to stay on as Lt. Uhura on Star Trek because he wanted to affirm that this Apollo program was the start of an adventure to be justly shared by all of humanity.
We believed in our engineers and in our ideals. It's shameful that the author seeks to fracture the underlying truth of that moment in order to further divide us today.
10
I remember seeing a video clip of maybe someone at Woodstock where someone came to the mic and said, "They just landed on the Moon!" and the audience cheered. If that happened--I couldn't find a YouTube clip--them maybe the divide wasn't that stark.
@Michael Gallagher
Unless there was a time machine that moved the Woodstock festival back from mid August to mid July, no, it didn't happen.
6
Not how I remember things.
I was a Freshman in high school, envious of those who made it to Woodstock (though the reviews from those there was more about the mud than the music) but also accepting of the moon mission.
America was a place that could simultaneously hold more than one dream in 1969, even while many were living the nightmare in Vietnam.
The dichotomy between the moon and civil rights or poverty... nope, don't buy it. Sure, a few protests here and there, but to suggest there was some split in the Zeitgeist between the moon landing and other government projects is really rash revisionism.
20
Actually it was our politicians, under pressure from their constituents, that ultimately wrecked the space program with their endless wrangling over taxpayer money. So what if the Soviets got to the moon first? Isn't repairing the infrastructure more important than sending a spaceship into the great void? Why should the taxpayers fund such a costly and wasteful enterprise such as space exploration which would benefit only a handful of nerdy scientists on earth? Too bad there was no Queen Isabella who would be willing to hock her jewels to pay for such a dangerous adventure.
Part of the reason we went to the moon was to pay tribute to John Kennedy who was assassinated long before Apollo 11 took off on its lunar mission. He wanted us to go to the moon in his inaugural address because he knew America was up to the challenge. America was more than up to the task of tackling hard challenges.
Kennedy would be appalled to see what a wimpy nation of crybabies America has become.
9
And in 2019 we must recognize and pursue higher priorities than placing spacecraft on planets and moons. Fighting climate change, addressing income inequality, and providing health care for all ALL qualify.
Somehow the point that has been forgotten was the necessity to physically put a man on the moon. It would have been far cheaper to send a robot to the moon to gather moon rocks, but we took the more expensive route to reinforce the masculine ideal, or some greater goal that I can't fathom. We would still have many of the scientific advancements that resulted from the race to the moon. Would that have left the Russians to continue their efforts to literally put Russian foot prints there? Perhaps, but the Russians did abandon their efforts. Probably, due to economic considerations. However, they did continue other efforts in space. The only way we send men and supplies to the space station currently is through the Russian space program. At great cost. So, did we win? Just to ask.
1
@james simpson Yes, we won. And the reason that Russian space program is around in good measure is due to US support in the 1990s. As for the costs, whole new industries were accelerated, developed from the space program. For example, like with computer chips. Apollo and the Minuteman programs were instrumental in drastically lower costs, boosting quality, and creating markets for such technologies.
2
Back then people knew what prevented poverty. same as now:
1. get your education - grad from high school at least
2. don't have a baby until after marriage
3. get a full time job... if your self-employment venture is not enough to support you (and the fam), keep your day job until it is.
4
@ARLOs
Not everyone can either get or keep a job -- and PS by the 1960s the CEOs were doing a good job of closing factories here and opening them overseas.
Midwestern smaller cities have been systematically impoverished: the interstate highways bypass them, their factories have been closed and replaced by Walmart, NAFTA the rush to Wall Street perpetuated by the Fed Reserve. The birthrate in American has gone down... and BTW what were fulltime jobs have become part time gigs because employers don't want to have to pay for health insurance or pensions.
Banksters and other forced many into poverty... as can health emergencies... and guess what student loans can never be discharged via bankruptcy proceedings? (Who made that law?)
1
Technology is easy, Sociology is hard.
It was a magnificently inspirational project that we could study, learn, engineer, and know how to proceed. Where exactly to efficiently spend the money.
Solving society's issues with healthcare, homelessness and mental illness, war and bigotry would have been just as valuable of course but no one knew how to do it, even how to confidently proceed or where to spend the money.
Technology is easy, Sociology is hard.
45
@JFR To this day, humanity cannot or does not want to, solve the problems of mental illness, homelessness, healthcare, war, and bigotry. Technology is easy, Sociology is hard. Well said.
10
I don’t know if it was by luck or design, but NASA and the moon race kept the nation together in the 60s more than any other single factor. With all the social and political divisions going on at the time, NASA gave us all something to root for as a nation. I was a war-protesting hippy, and my buddies and I would be in the street throwing tear gas back at the cops, then all rush inside to watch the NASA launches on TV, even getting misty-eyed when the first images from the moon came in. Of the million people at Cape Canaveral and the half million people at Woodstock: I knew people who were at both. This column, I’m afraid, is completely misguided, just flat out wrong.
91
@David Sorry David, but I was also involved in the anti-war movement in southern California, and nobody I knew was impressed with going to the moon while the slaughter in Vietnam continued. How many Americans and Vietnamese died the day of the moon landing?
13
@Jerry Harris
Still, looking back, it's amazing that our country was able to fight a stupid, immoral war (in only ONE country, you may note--nowadays we have trouble even keeping our heads around the places where our wars are creating mayhem), and simultaneously build an Interstate highway system AND go to the moon.
We were already pretty disfunctional, but we still had dreams back then. We thought we were great. The long economic slide off the post World War II high didn't begin until 1975.
Nowadays, we can't even keep Eisenhower's highways from crumbling, and we know in our hearts that we are a dying empire in a dying world.
13
I went to Woodstock, was strongly against the Vietnam War, and participated in many peace rallies, as did most of my friends. I was also 100% behind the space program, and thrilled by the moon walk, as was mostly everyone I knew, which included members of SDS. This article tries to pigeon-hole a diverse spectrum of people into two opposing camps. It is simplistic and untrue.
127
@Richard "It is simplistic and untrue," which sadly makes it a good fit for the opinion pages in our current culture.
13
@Richard
Yep, as an opinion piece I kind of took it to be a case of writers myopia. I seriously doubt an overwhelming consensus had been recorded during that event. After all, it's well known that hippies admire the place where angel dust comes from: Like wow, space, it's out there. :*)
I too was against the war, but for the moon visit. I didn't make it to woodstock, I had to wait till it was in the theaters.
9
Re: Neil M. Maher
Some people can complain about anything.
3
I'm surprised by the misconceptions in the column and comments..
If you were a functioning adult at the time of Apollo 11, you knew why we were going to the Moon: to show up the Soviets, who shocked us with Sputnik and embarrassed us by launching the first man into space.
Many people seem to have forgotten that the planned Apollo 18, 19, and 20 missions were canceled. There was not one overriding reason, but a number: lack of funds (as the Vietnam war sucked up more money), a shift in NASA emphasis (to SkyLab and the space shuttle), running out of the (1-time-use-only) Saturn V rockets, lack of public interest. After all, we had already beaten the Soviets; why beat them several times at the same thing? But there really was a reason for going back: to get a greater diversity of lunar rocks. They have now told us how the Moon formed and shed light on the early history of Earth.
Many still bemoan that we went there and that we are going again. They should understand that going back is not using money that we could be using to solve climate change, lift people out of poverty, or afford excellent health care for all. We can do both. It's just that we choose not to make the commitment. Trump just signed a $160 billion annual increase (increase!!) in defense budget. That annual $160 billion could have solved a lot problems, but we all (Trump supporters and opposers alike) let it go.
The fault, dear countryman, is not in the stars. It's in our passivity.
42
@jkinnc Agree. The 'why can't we use the money for something else' argument is usually false. The real resources required for the space race are not the same as those required to feed the foodless. The solution is will and economic management.
6
This interesting story weakens when you rely on actions of members of the Establishment like Ted Kennedy to tell the story. Kennedy was not the catalyst.There was a bigger, more populist, and more bitter grassroots movement against NASA spending. Just look up the lyrics of Gil Scott Heron’s spoken word “Whitey’s On The Moon” http://enviro-history.com/whitey-on-the-moon.html
@Beth The article is inaccurate about spending. Spending was getting cut even well before Apollo 11 landed on the moon, after 1966. From $5.933 billion in 1966, to $4.251 billion for 1969.
1
Great article. It was truly stunning how support for manned space travel fizzled after Apollo 11. Especially since then VP Spiro Agnew said we should commit to a man on Mars by the end of the century.
In a recent Ipsos/C-Span poll only 8% of Americans support sending a person to the moon today and only 18% support sending a person to Mars.
The interest today seems to be in unmanned satellites that are able to do more than humans can for a fraction of the cost because they can boldly go where no man can.
After all, Voyager was launched over 40 years ago and the thing still (partially) works!
THAT'S getting your money's worth.
3
My family and friends were strongly against the Vietnam War, but we were all as excited and thrilled about the moon program as everyone else. Personally, I knew there were other needs that needed expenditure but sensed that landing men on the moon would demonstrate what humans were capable of. The moon landing seemed like another step in the progress of humanity, toward a brighter future. Those were optimistic times.
11
Both events celebrated American. One for its technical prowess and other for art, culture, and freedom.
3
I was a young engineer who worked on Apollo, on the launch pad. I too thought it was a waste of money and like a few others at the Cape discussed this issue privately, but all of us wanted it to succeed. I now believe I was wrong about Apollo. It was not the mission itself but the enormous amount of money that went into science education and research, very little of which were the results from landing on the moon. But, because we increased irreversibly the funds going to science, this country became the world's leader in fields from molecular biology to physics and engineering. That led to incredible discoveries from immunotherapy to modern computers and a better material life for Americans and people everywhere.
22
The oddest thing about going to the moon was that there was nothing to do once you got there. Collecting lunar rocks wore thin after the first few bags. The lunar runabout ran about in circles. Nor was there any justification for spending the fantastic amount of money needed to establish lunar colonies. The space race was a pretty good spectacle while it lasted. But even the Super Bowl doesn't go on forever.
1
@The Dog
Yep, as a 14-year-old on a lake in the Midwest, I watched a few minutes, then went outside to play with friends in a warm summer night.
The old folks were watching their TVs while we ran from mosquitos.
There's always going to be those who wail about spending money in space instead of on Earth. NASA's budget is a mere $20 Billion, or .58% of the Federal Budget, and imagine what can be done if NASA's budget were doubled: more missions to the Moon and Mars, probes to the outer planets and beyond, more Earth observation, asteroid monitoring and defense, and more. With the technology spinoffs and transfer, the space program has done far more for people on Earth than just throwing money at problems and hoping for the best-which is what the opponents seem to have wanted. And they do come across as Luddites to many.
Space buffs have a saying: The Meek can have the Earth: the rest of us are going to the stars. I missed Apollo (not born in '69 and too young to remember 14 through 17), but bring on Artemis, the new program.
2
The criticisms the author points out about the space program were said at the time by even mainstream critics (it was not the Woodstock generation only). William Manchester in his book "the Glory and the Dream" points out the problem with spending 10's of billions on space (and interestingly, for a WWII veteran, on Vietnam) while ignoring problems at home, the late 60's riots showed one of the consequences of ignoring issues at home.
The problem with this critique is it assumes that had we not spent the money on the Apollo program it would have been used to straighten out issues around poverty and racial inequality and to be blunt I doubt that.It wasn't like tremendous money was being spent on the poor before Apollo, and there is no evidence that any more would have been spent had Apollo not happened. More importantly, Apollo left a lasting, positive thing to the world, the amount of new technology and new ways of doing things that came out of that program is staggering, whereas the Vietnam war, despite what the conservatives and sadly veterans of that war sometimes claim, had zero value, We spent a lot more on Vietnam (we were spending 60 billion a year), lost 58,000 people, and ended up with nothing.
There are always problems in the world, there are always injustices, there are always 'better things to spend money on', but if human beings didn't have the need to move and grow, if they didn't look up and out, we would still be bands of hunter gatherers living in Africa.
7
How, exactly, would spending another $20 billion in the late 1960s solved "racial discrimination...and gender inequality"? If the last 50 years have proven ANYTHING, its that spending more taxpayer money doesn't solve these problems
13
Mr Neil Maher notes "20 Billion" dollars were spent to put a man on the moon,
Indeed, Maher does acknowledge the scientific and inspirational significance of the achievement of the space program.
However, he suggests an equivalence; that we should "....also applaud those who took to the streets to ground the space race in problems back on Earth".
Not to worry. Since Great Society, roughly 20 Trillion (one thousand times as much) has been spent on an increasingly wide range of social programs.
Perhaps he could describe what was achieved.
8
1 reason the U.S. had to pursue the space program including landing men on the moon was because we were in a competition with the USSR & they were winning handily until JFK made space a priority. Had we ceded space to the USSR, they might have launched orbital nukes, sparking a nuclear war that would have wiped out most life on the planet. They certainly would have been the dominant superpower.
The space race is comparable to the race to create the 1st atomic bomb during WW2. We had to do it because we knew Germany was pursuing it. Had Germany beaten us to the atomic bomb, it would be a very different world today.
Besides, I don't think the dichotomy between Woodstock & the Moon Landing laid out in this article is all that accurate. Of course there were people protesting huge funds going into the space program, & some of them & others were protesting the funds spent & loss of lives in Vietnam.
& some of the Woodstock generation celebrated the quest for the moon because like their championing of sex, drugs, & rock 'n' roll, it was farrrrr out, man. Seriously. Space travel was mind-expanding, & the Geek culture that is so dominant today was just beginning with sci-fi writers like Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury; TV shows like Star Trek & movies like 2001; & Marvel comics.
The Apollo 8 photo "Planet Earth" was instantly iconic, & not just among conservatives, warmongers, etc. It put things in perspective, one that more closely aligned with the hippies than the establishment.
5
Would that it were that simple. The moon program gave us much more than it cost. First, like the Manhattan Project, it was a template into how to marshall many resources, particularly scientists & engineers of a wide variety of disciplines to work together for a period of years to accomplish something most people thought was impossible. We have yet to apply this lesson to serious problems ever since. Think about a Moon project against cancer or the causes of global climate instability or attacking the rampant hunger & starvation throughout the world. Second, there were an astonishing number of breakthroughs in many scientific fields, the stuff only a major war usually produces (and discoveries made during war are usually kept top secret for years until old enough to be released into the public). Our knowledge of human physiology, medicine, miniaturization of computers, & a hundred other technologies took major leaps forward, leaps that we are still enjoying the benefits of today. The space program ended up contributing so much to so many disciplines it has paid for itself many times over - & continues to pay. It was never a question of either/or. If the space program didn't exist, does anybody really think that the money spent on it would have all gone to improving things in America? Or, more likely much of it would have been eaten up by increased military spending (particularly for our futile war in Vietnam) or political pork to insure politicians re-elections.
19
The songs performed at Woodstock included "America" ("They've all come, to look for America") and "Everyday People". These songs celebrate America. There were indeed songs that were (rightly) critical of American involvement in the Vietnam War. But I can't think of a single song from Woodstock that is critical of America.
10
@Dan Styer-I think it was , "we want THIS kind of America instead of THAT kind," and seemed to believe that America was essentially good, worth correcting and worth committing civil disobedience for, rather than acting as if only one kind of America should exist. Currently, the nation is so fragmented that one side believes that the other has beliefs that are completely without merit and are anti-American. That didn't happen in the 1960's. Thanks to trump, respectful disagreement has disappeared from our national shouting matches.
4
@Ellen Country Joe and the Fish, Credence Clearwater, Jimi Hendrix ... to name a few ... were not pro-American.
2
We humans here on Earth are trashing it apace, barely able to get along with each other. I wonder if we go to Mars we will trash it, too, and set up weapons systems to protect our various national enclaves.
Hannah Arndt wrote: "Instead of conquering nations or mountains or space, might we set out to conquer our need to conquer?"
7
@Daniel
Arndt hit the nail on the head. The propensities for aggression and greed are deeply embedded in the human DNA. Wars will never stop and greed will rule no matter what social engineering we attempt.
The differences we see in our country today are between those who recognize these truths and those who pretend they don't exist or can be changed.
The only logical thing to do, in order to save our planet, is to drastically reduce our numbers. I doubt that we have the smarts to work towards this goal. We, along with the planet and all that's on it, are simply doomed.
2
A smart op-ed that clearly has rankled some aging baby boomers nostalgic for halcyon days past. Maher is a historian. His job isn’t to confirm biases or soothe egos. It is to look at the past with clear eyes in a new way. This op-ed does the job. The snarky comments calling him out for not being alive at the time are proof that he did his job.
3
@Mainer Man
You're still seeing the past through jaded eyes, Bud.
Especially if you choose to see the world through generational astrology ... aging boomers ... confirmation biases ... really too funny.
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@Mainer Man
This article would ring truer with fewer generalities. Revisionist history requires footnotes.
No one wants to go back to the 60s -- images of the caskets covered with American flags were not shown on TV . JFK, RFK and MLK all died .
Anyway the 60s are long past. Too bad the same discussions about the same problems (population, racism, war) continue now with additional problems (income inequality, AI, mostly an agriculture and service economy.) And so it goes.
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"The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever. "
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
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@michaelscody We probably have at least a billion years before we are forced to leave. That's pretty close to forever. If we can't have a stable existence on Earth how could we possible make it work on other planets. So far, we can't even make a self contained system work on Earth. Even on the moon which is 142 times closer than Mars, it will be nearly impossible.
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Neil M. Maher was all of five years old in 1969. It seems you've emphasized the counter side, Neil, and ignored the other side. Not balanced.
I give you a C- for content, but on the plus side you write very well for an academic--clear and concise.
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Ok, I'm glad we went to the moon but do we really need to go back? Trump, in his exuberance for days past, says we're going back to the moon, Someone should tell him we did that already. Maybe we can drop by the moon on our way to mars? Or maybe we could devote our energy to saving earth. Heck, we're already here.
@Sean Your comment is merely a reiteration of the old saw that says, "Why should we go to the moon or mars when we still have problems on Earth?"
How about putting it this way, "Why do people still keep pets, a capricious indulgence that costs $70 billion in the US alone, when we have so many more important problems to solve?" The fact is the we throw away somewhere in the range of a trillion dollars a year on a bunch of junk that we could live without quite happily. Why is space exploration considered to be more frivolous? I don't think that it is fundamentally important in an existential way but I can think of far worse things that we could waste money on, like expensive wars that do no good.
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@Sean - still, given that we are working much harder to keep destroying our habitat on earth, it would be nice to know we have an alternative to retire to when we finish making the earth uninhabitable for man.
How can you write this article without mentioning Gil Scott Heron's classic song/poem/rap, Whitey on the Moon? He was definitely not of the 'Woodstock Nation'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
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That awful song ruined First Man for me.
@Tom Actually I made exactly the same comment six hours ago and they didn’t post it. Do you think it violated some policy to say “Whitey”? Anyway, glad you got through the censors. Gill Scott was reflecting a deep sense of bitterness and betrayal about this country’s policies. I don’t think we are any different now. This is bread and circuses to keep us focused away from other public issues like the enormous wealth disparities in this country.
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The article is sensible; the teaser is not. The $20 billion was spent ‘at home’, not ‘on the moon’. And as the movie “Hidden Figures” suggests, NASA may even had some positive effect on reducing racism in America.
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@sterileneutrino Absolutely true about racism. Every endeavor that involves a compelling need for results in life threatening situations exposes the need for inclusion. It's no accident that both the military and professional sports have embraced policies of inclusion based on their experiences of what produces results. The space program is certainly in that category.
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The Apollo 11 landing was an amazing achievement, a monument to human ingenuity, and a clear marker of American ascendency. The following moon landings were more of a monument to bureaucratic inertia.
Over the last week I’ve heard many times about how we have “abandoned” space exploration. This makes me want to scream. In the intervening years we’ve landed rovers on Mars, placed the Hubble in orbit, sent probes to the moons of Jupiter, and numerous other achievements without having to put an astronaut on board as some sort of glorified hood ornament.
Now we’re planning (really?) to go back to the moon on our way to putting a human on Mars. God knows how many billions it will cost to protect and retrieve our fragile astronauts, and what real science exploration using robots will be displaced.
Oh, and as far as sci-fi fantasies about living long-term on the moon or Mars goes, what’s the point of sending people to worlds so completely hostile to higher life forms in order to establish outposts that will ultimately fail? There is more viable living space on an acre of Antarctica than on the entire planet of Mars.
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@Guy
Your comment is loaded with false statements and unsupported hyperbole. I will address your comment regarding robots.
Robots are really cool but getting results is painfully slow. People can do science far quicker. It's a quantitative problem but it may be that weighing costs vs results, humans may be a better solution.
And there are many secondary effects that produce benefits. Some like to say that the moon landing gave us tang and velcro but it's false. The moon project unleashed a torrent of technologies that we use on a daily basis, integrated circuits, gps and many more.
The challenge of putting humans on the moon and eventually mars in self sustaining colonies will likely do the same.
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@J.I.M.
Thanks Jim. OK. The bit about hyperbole is fair (it’s an internet kind of thing). But I’m thinking the benefits from Apollo you cite (e.g. integrated circuits), come from engineering challenges overcome and not anything intrinsic to the moon.
But the point I really wanted to stress is the amazing success of robotic space exploration. I know humans are far more flexible, but they are an immense liability in space travel, and with robots, you can cast a much broader net. Also, perhaps I lack vision, but self-sustaining colonies without an atmosphere of biosphere? I don’t see it.
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This is a joke, right? The people attending Woodstock were decidedly not the same people who were making decisions at the highest levels. They may have decided the space exploration was not worth the spending, but NOT because they thought the money would be better spent on social programs. Like the elite today, they opted to not spend on the poor and not spend on science. If it wasn't spent on space, it could be wasted on Vietnam by borrowing against the future to buy guns and ICBM's.
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If not for exploration, what is the point?
If we're not exploring and advancing and changing - intellectually, biologically, geographically (into space and other environments), then why are we here? Sure, most of us will just live our lives - few are scientists or astronauts. And improving those humble lives is noble and necessary, but it is not sufficient.
I want to believe that my little contribution is part of a human story that is actually going somewhere.
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@Rick K
Well said. I agree with your comments. I am a scientist with over 20 years experience, in a non-aerospace career. My son recently graduated from Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, and being there on graduation day restored my enthusiasm for science. There is a palpable energy and enthusiasm there about what we have accomplished in space and where we are going in the future. I took that renewed enthusiasm back home with me, and can look at my daily work from a little bit different angle, doing a job that helps ordinary people in their daily lives. Yes, our human story IS going somewhere, and in a positive direction.
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I hope it's clear to most people now that we wisely prioritized investing in the great science and engineering project of the Apollo program over say more welfare transfer payments.
The dynamic is similar to "teach a man to fish . . . ".
Because we made those investments 50 years ago, millions or perhaps billions today and countless future generations will benefit from the resulting spinoff technologies.
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@Mmm - I like the variations on "Give a man a fish & he will have a nice dinner. Teach him to fish, and he can feed himself for life."
There is also "Give a man a fish & he will have a nice dinner. Teach him to fish, and he can feed himself for life. Give him religion and he will starve to death praying for fish."
Or the capitalist version. "Sell a man a fish & you will make a tidy profit. Teach him to fish and you will ruin a promising business opportunity."
Terry Pratchett has a wry version: "Build a man a fire and he will be warm through the night. Set him on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life."
When I hear the "Give a man a fish" cliche, I always think of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was giving people fish, not running fly tying classes.
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This is distorted history written to serve a narrative. Many in the Woodstock generation found the Apollo program to be a source of inspiration, wonder and hope for the future. At a time when the military industrial complex of our country was perpetrating violence and death in Vietnam, Apollo was seen by many hippies, musicians, artists and seekers as a bright light of peaceful sanity. Sure it’s origins were militaristic and the truth is complex, but this is an inaccurate, reductive re-writing of the allegiances of that time.
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@David Grinspoon - Okay, my wife and I were both at the original Woodstock (though we hadn't yet met). There was nothing unpatriotic about the 3 day festival, & even celebrations of America with songs by people like Joni Mitchell reaching all the way back to Woody Guthrie's celebrations of America.
I also was in high school & college during the moon program as well as a charter member of the counter-culture from age 14 until today. I don't think I ever met another counter-culture person (Time Magazine started the term "hippies") who wasn't fascinated & supportive of the space program.
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Political calculations, not protestors, terminated the Apollo program. NASA had planned Apollo missions to the moon beyond the six that launched after the first moon landing. These missions were to be part of NASA's long-term plan to send humans to Mars. Nixon cancelled funding for these plans. His political calculation was straightforward: He had already reaped the maximum political gains from Apollo by being president for the first moon landing and making that famous phone call to Armstrong and Aldrin standing on the moon. Any political gain from landing on Mars would materialize long after Nixon was out of office. And there was the strong likelihood that at some point NASA would lose a crew and spacecraft, and Nixon wasn't interested in having that happen on his watch.
I opposed and protested the Vietnam War. I registered for the draft as a CO. I was an enthusiastic supporter of the space program. Apollo 8's orbiting the moon at the end of 1968 gave many people hope that science, knowledge, and the human spirit for exploration would unite people to prevail over the horrors of that year. These included 16,600 Americans killed in Vietnam, the assassinations of MLK and RFK, police riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and Nixon's election. The writer's attempt to pigeonhole people based on political leanings toward the war is way off base. Pigeon holing them based on musical events they attended is utterly ridiculous.
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But it does make one wonder about India, with all its poverty, spending so much of its GDP trying to get to the moon.
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@Doctor D - before their moon program, was India spending adequate money on curing its poverty & sickness. All evidence says, NOT.
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A nice straight forward piece. Thanks!
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I remember people around me saying "Why are we going to the moon?" it did employ a lot of people, though, and sparked all manner of innovations. It is forward looking to study space.
It was one of the last things of import JFK said - we shall put a man on the moon. Some said it was to make the moon a base; that we had left surveillance equipment up there.
So we got up there, walked around in the dust, came back and then what. A lot of people had that reaction.
Abernathy with the wagon was a symbol of ignorance. He should have done something more dignified. The iron requirement of getting anywhere is to learn something.
How low we have sunk. Hundreds of thousands are homeless, wages are worthless, people dying because they can't buy insulin. We are going to just tamely put up with all that?
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I'm not sure how old Mr. Maher is, but I have the distinct feeling that he's not old enough to remember 1969 with an adult's perspective, or indeed at all. He doesn't capture the feeling in the country. There were severe disagreements about a lot of public issues, but the space program was not particularly controversial. When the moon landing occurred, I recall a broad sense of "Wow, look what we did." -- a sense of the enormous portent of what had just happened.
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What we need now is a green moonshot for carbon capture technology.
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The boys and girls who were at " Woodstock " were there for the music and to find a few things , some of which they found . I don't remember any " Protesting ." This is an example of someone attaching meaning to something to suit his own view of history.
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One of the toughest choices faced by our national leaders is how to prioritize the considerable resources, especially tax dollars, at the federal level. When Kennedy was president, clearly he saw the space race as a huge point of national pride, and most of us agreed. We celebrated every launch and milestone, and mourned every failure.
I think the space race was a symbol of the American spirit, which can be applied to many things. Johnson's push for civil rights and his Great Society programs was his way of redirecting some of those resources towards our people. All of these were bold steps to create a better future. All of these were done for the common good.
Sadly, I don't see that same common good being pursued today. We continue to spend trillions on the military, always an easy political choice. But there are much harder choices that need to be made, such as addressing climate change. We need new leaders who will think boldly about our future.
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Fifty years later and there is still the tension between those of us who want a liveable planet and those who want to go to Mars. Can we please fix the mess we're in on our home planet before we head out again to space?
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How fashionable! To protest the moon landing! The generation that gave us fashionable protesting also enabled income inequality, an environmental catastrophe, and the public health issue called guns.
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What most people don't realize is that in the early 1950's, rocket scientists already widely agreed that they could land a man on the moon for a few billion dollars. They just didn't see the justification for spending so much money on a project with so little return.
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@Ernie Cohen
If the scientists said that, they they were blind to what such a program could do, they remind me of the "experts" at IBM when someone projected a future where computers would be commonly used by everyone as a fantasy, that the only people who needed computers were big banks and governments. Likely, given those rocket scientists were ex Nazi rocket program people, they were thinking the only real use of rockets was to carry warheads that could be used to kill people, not exactly known as far thinking people. Put it this way, launching an ICBM to deliver a warhead is an exercise in pretty routine engineering, to put people on the moon and have them return required all kinds of new technologies, exponentially more than an ICBM.
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Landing a man on the moon had a clearly defined goal.
Engineering at its best.
Climate change mitigation also has a clearly defined goal.
Civil rights and social engineering has a more difficult endgame.
There is the "Harrison Bergeron" hypothesis, where all are "fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else".
And then there is the ideal society that is able to appreciate the different abilities that each of us may have and harness them to their fullest potential, regardless of their valuation.
If it were a perfect world, there might be no point in existing, as we would not have the ability to make decisions based upon our virtues.
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@Mooretep It is Harrison Bergeron to remove advanced courses from schools.
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This article is continuing a narrative that is at best incomplete and at heart untrue. The scaling back of America's space program was not about responding to criticisms from the left, but from the Pentagon. As the war in Vietnam escalated, the Pentagon needed the money.
This scenario was repeated under Bush Jr, whose talk of a new moon mission floundered with the wars that followed 9/11.
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@David Bird
That isn't really true, by the time Apollo was cancelled in the mid 70's the Vietnam war had been winding down for many years, Nixon started the "vietnamization" of the war in 1969, and troops strength drew down steadily.
The real reason Apollo was ended was economic reality, by the early 1970's the US was experiencing massive inflation, thanks to the government in effect printing money to pay for the space program, great society programs and vietnam (little point of history: Nixon's budgets actually spent more on social programs that LBJ's last budget in 1968), by doing all three, we threw the economy into chaos. Unfortunately, we got nothing out of Vietnam other than close to 100 billion in debt, and the result of that damned war was the death of both the manned space program and the start of the slashing of government programs to help end poverty and inequality. The real gorilla in the room that conservatives and many vietnam vets refuse to acknowledge is that that war destroyed a lot more than just 58,000 US lives, it also led us unto the world we have today. The Apollo program left behind a lot of the technology and medicine we have today, the materials and processes and the like, Vietnam left behind nothing but pain and dashed hopes.
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Actually what weakens our democracy is income inequality, not whether the space race is carried out by private companies. Let trips to Mars become another of the billionaires' diversions. I could care less, as long as it happens on their dime. I'm more concerned about the rat race than about the space race: jobs don't pay a living wage, it's hard to send kids to college, save for retirement and pay for healthcare. That's where the focus should be.
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This man clearly knows nothing about the people who went to Woodstock. To lump them into a population of political activists is just so wrong and distorts the mood of the times. Country Joe and Fish aside, the last thing on the minds of those at Woodstock was political protest.
It was a time of spiritual revolution.
Silly as it may sound to modern ears, Timothy Leary's notion of "Turn on, tune in, drop out" does not fit as a slogan for political activism.
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As has been frequently pointed out, annual expenditure on space tends to be about the same as national expenditure on makeup or liquor. But that never stopped people from playing politics.
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I don’t get it. Does this author want a government space program or not? It’s a meandering op-ep at best.
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This article is self-contradictory. It lauds protests which resulted in public abandonment of much of the space program and diversion of funds to other domestic concerns, while decrying the resulting private adoption of those abandoned programs and urging a “robustly funded” national program instead. Which way do you want it?
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