Fifty years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on another world, while Michael Collins orbited and waited, the media is full of nostalgia. I was there at the time and well remember the awe with which the adventure was greeted. The whole world held its breath at the launch, during the quarter of a million mile journey and especially during the final descent and landing. It was a moment of not only a lifetime or even a generation; it was a moment in human history that can never be forgotten. The subsequent return was followed just as closely as it was not until those unbelievably brave pioneers were safely back on earth that the mission was truly complete.
In the 3 years that followed another 6 Apollo spacecraft set off for the Moon and another 10 men actually set foot there, Eugene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17, being the last human to leave a mark on its surface when he climbed back aboard his spacecraft in December 1972. Not all of the missions were successful, the unbelievable drama of Apollo 13 perhaps providing the single most
incredible achievement of the entire space programme. Again, the world held its breath as the impossible was achieved and the 3 astronauts were somehow brought back alive.
As well as the men who walked on the Moon there is a tendency to forget that there were those who, like Michael Collins, simply circled the Moon waiting for their colleagues to return and never had a chance of landing. Then there were the crews of Apollos 8 and 10 who made the journey but, after travelling so far, never made the final step. Altogether, 9 craft and 27 men travelled to the Moon and back between December 1968 and December 1972 but no one has gone further than Earth orbit ever since.
The men who travelled into space all those years ago were certainly brave. They sat atop the huge Saturn V rockets knowing that the slightest problem might see them blown to pieces or incinerated, as were the crew of Apollo 1 when fire broke out during a training exercise. Once airborne, they had to rely on technology which, by today's standards, was incredibly primitive; their onboard computers had little more power than a modern digital watch. It was them against the elements, with death waiting for them around every corner; incredibly, all those who made the journey to the Moon came back safely.
However, and it's a big however, were those brave spacemen any more brave, or even as brave, as those who journeyed across the oceans of Earth in the past ? The astronauts knew where they were going, they could see their goal and had massive numbers of people helping them; those, like Vasco da Gama, Columbus, Drake, Cook, and others genuinely set off into the unknown; they headed off without usable maps and with the most basic of navigational aids. They didn't know where they were going or what they'd find wherever they ended up; the earliest of these pioneers didn't even know if they would come to some void, an edge of the world off which they would fall, or would they arrive in a place inhabited by ferocious dragons.
Human history is full of adventurers. Those who first migrated from Africa many thousands of years ago, spreading out across the globe had no real idea of where they were going or what they would find. Over the millennia, humans have explored their surroundings, an insatiable curiosity driving them on, and the brave men who travelled to the Moon were just the latest in a long line of pioneers. Now it seems that humanity is gearing up for a new round of exploration with plans being put in place for a return to the Moon within the next few years and for missions to Mars and beyond soon after.
Today's knowledge and technology is vastly superior to that of the 1960s and it is undoubtedly time for us to take that next step. I just hope I'm still around to watch in awe as the first man, or woman, sets foot on Mars and the incredible story of humanity moves on.
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