The secret formula for going to the moon

James Oberg NBC News space analyst

HOUSTON - Over the three and a half years from July 1969 to December 1972, six teams of astronauts walked on the moon. They went from “We came in peace for all mankind” to the parting words, “We’ll be back.”

But decades passed, and nobody came back. At various times in the 1980s and 1990s, space enthusiasts (myself included) were encouraged by speculation about being “halfway back to the moon.” That is, in one’s imagination, the years until the next human footprint were certain to be less than the years since the last footprint. It was going to be downhill from now on, or so it could be thought.

There's a chance that estimate might even be true. If the Obama administration and its successors stick to the “space vision” unveiled five years ago, Americans might be walking on the moon again in 10 years, or 15 at the outside. If they do, it won’t have been a decade between moon programs, or a generation — it will have been practically an entire human lifetime.

Between now and then, the grim statistics of the actuarial tables suggests that despite the hopes and wellwishers and the best efforts of medical science, Earth may well lapse back to a demographic situation that had ended on July 20, 1969, when nobody living on Earth had ever been to the moon. It would be nice if any Apollo moonwalkers lived long enough to see new footsteps on the moon, at least for cultural continuity — but it may not happen.

With the loss of key players in historic events comes a loss of memory. Artifacts may endure, and records can last as well. But the thoughts, hopes and fears of the participants — they can fade away forever. And this loss of the past may cripple the future, since unless we understand the why of past efforts, knowing the when and who and how may turn out to be useless.

The ‘why’ of Apollo
Skimming the popular literature of spaceflight history, a novice reader may be forgiven for believing that humans went to the moon because they are a curious species for whom exploration has always been a wired-in cultural trait. These readers may also imagine a time when scientists wielded enormous influence over federal budgets.

In addition, they may be led to believe that economists were able to forecast tremendous “technical spinoffs” from space discoveries that would lead to medical and microelectronic revolutions. Realization that Earth was a tiny, fragile world was going to totally revolutionize humankind’s view of the world they lived in. Further, there was the enticing possibility that resources of value might be located and profitably exploited.

Cynics, meanwhile, can be forgiven falling for the equally seductive myths of “bread and circuses” in space as a distraction from domestic woes, or the outgrowth of a short-lived spasm of machismo from a president embarrassed by the failure of foreign adventures, a project that was fulfilled after his tragic assassination for mainly sentimental reasons. It was also a “moondoggle” of literally astronomical proportion when it came to allocating funds to states and congressional districts whose leaders needed rewarding or influencing.

All these and other motivations were fulfilled by Apollo’s success, to be sure. And the ideas were part of the contemporary debates as well. But political historians know that none of them were persuasive when it came time, year after year, to vote more billions of dollars from the federal budget.

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