Last year at a family gathering, someone from the younger generation commented that they had no idea why NASA was still in the business of shooting people into space. They felt like the money was sorely needed for things like the next generation of renewable fuel, for example.
My father was there, a sixty-something electronic engineer who worked on Apollo. He said many important things came out of the space program. Naturally he was asked how exactly our society benefited from the Apollo program. He replied that important inventions, like Velcro, had come from the space program. Velcro?
We giggled for days at his unwitting reinforcement of our claim that NASA and its work has become largely irrelevant. Of course, those younger than I were incredulous. But I understood. In his time, the effect of the space program was pervasive. National identity, our contrast with the fierce rise of communism, and the world’s new path of technical military domination fed the enthusiasm for the space program and all it produced.
My father’s point wasn’t that Velcro was an important invention, it was that even the smallest and most insignificant of the stuff we regard as normal today came from the space program. We are in so many ways children of Apollo. The goal to reach the moon not only galvanized our country, but was a goal so big, so beyond anything tried before, that it changed us for good. It changed us in ways we can’t recognize anymore.
Getting back to the original comments of the 20 somethings, I think there is some common ground here. I think it is time to stop shooting people into space, and stop worshiping that past accomplishment. It’s time to set another outrageous goal, outrageous like going to the Moon. Another goal that is so beyond us, and so indicative of what this country stands for, that it changes us forever. Something that we all feel, and all want for ourselves and everyone who comes after us.
Thank you Apollo 11. Now lets figure out what to give our children’s children, something that they won’t be able to see or understand, but will make them richer and stronger for us having done it.
Tags: Apollo, Apollo+11, energy, energy+policy, Moon+Landing, NASA, Space+Program, Velcro