Reaching for the Moon

by Roger D. Launius

  Apollo as spiritual quest found expression from the unveiling of the program. At a uniquely oblique angle Project Apollo represented the incarnation of a new religious tradition. It evoked, in a metaphorical and absolutist sense, emotions of awe, devotion, omnipotence, and, most important, redemption for humanity. It embodied a new clerical caste (the engineers and especially the astronauts), arcane rituals (Mission Control and other operational activities) that were deeply mythical as well as possessing a higher purpose, a language of devotion (NASA jargon invoked by both practitioners and acolytes/enthusiasts), articles of faith, and a theology of salvation that allowed humanity to reach beyond Earth and settle the cosmos. The promise of a utopian Zion on a new world, coupled with immortality for the species, resonates through every fiber of the space-exploration community. For those who embraced this idea of a new Zion, as has always been the case for adherents throughout history, the present culture was unrighteous and unnerving. They chose to escape, and leaving the planet could be the ultimate form of escape. Wernher von Braun, one example among many, viewed Apollo as a millenarian new beginning for humankind. These deep-seated convictions energized space exploration and the subjugation of the universe from before the dawn of the space age.

  But while many Apollo advocates presented the program in explicitly spiritual terms, countless others used secular language to express religious ideals. American novelist Ray Bradbury once commented in a fashion reminiscent of a jeremiad: “Too many of us have lost the passion and emotion of the remarkable things we’ve done in space. Let us not tear up the future, but rather again heed the creative metaphors that render space travel a religious experience. When the blast of a rocket launch slams you against the wall and all the rust is shaken off your body, you will hear the great shout of the universe and the joyful crying of people who have been changed by what they’ve seen.” Bradbury firmly believed that no one leaves a space launch untransformed. Like the Eucharist, the ritual of the launch offers a recommitment to the endeavor and a symbolic cleansing of the communicant’s sole. The experience, as he commented repeatedly, is both thrilling and sanctifying.

  Norman Mailer’s critique of Apollo, Of a Fire on the Moon (1969), eloquently observed that these missions were really about seeking to become one with God: “They don’t know what to do when they get there. The fact that it’s technological is what’s wrong with it. It’s too exclusively technological. People are sick to death of technology. The technologists themselves are wondering how they can control technology before technology wipes out the Earth. So what we’re looking for at this time in human history is an enlargement of human consciousness, a rediscovery of spiritual values to which we can adhere because they deepen us.”

  That same spiritual quest, coupled with the technological enterprise, is present in the 1995 feature film Apollo 13. That mission, in 1970, when an explosion crippled a lunar-landing mission and NASA nearly lost astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert, has been recast as one of NASA’s finest hours, a successful failure. Fifty-six hours into the flight an oxygen tank in the Apollo service module ruptured and damaged several of the power, electrical, and lifesupport systems. People around the world watched and waited and hoped and prayed as NASA personnel on the ground and the crew worked to find a way safely home. It was a close call, but the crew returned safely on April 17, 1970. The near-disaster at the same time solidified in the popular mind NASA’s collective genius and prompted reconsideration of the propriety of the whole effort. While one must give the NASA flight team high marks for perseverance, dedication, and an unshakable belief that they could bring the crew home safely, it is quite strange that no one seems to realize that the mission had already failed, and failed catastrophically, by the time of the accident. The fact that Apollo 13 is now viewed as one of NASA’s shining moments says much about the ability of humanity to recast historical events into meaningful morality plays.

  From this skewed perspective, Apollo 13 became a vehicle for criticism of the social order that emerged from the 1960s and a celebration of an earlier age. When the film appeared in 1995, reviewer John Powers, writing for the Washington Post, commented on its incessant nostalgia for “the paradisiacal America invoked by Ronald Reagan and Pat Buchanan—an America where men were men, women were subservient, and people of color kept out of the way.” In addition, Powers wrote, “Its story line could be a Republican parable about 1995 America: A marvelous vessel loses its power and speeds toward extinction, until it’s saved by a team of heroic white men.” If anything, Powers underemphasized the white America evoked in Apollo 13. Only two women have speaking parts of substance. Kathleen Quinlan as Marilyn Lovell, wife of the Apollo 13 commander, steadfastly offers proud support while privately fearing the worst. Mary Kate Schellhardt as the Lovells’ daughter functions as a spokesperson for the least important elements of the social revolution, complaining at one point in a shrewish voice that the Beatles have broken up and her world has accordingly collapsed.

  The heroes of Apollo 13 are the geeks of Mission Control, while the astronauts aboard the spacecraft are spirited but essentially emasculated characters to be saved. Lovell, Haise, and Swigert must wait to be rescued in a manner not unlike Rapunzel, as an active helper but unable to accomplish the task alone. As historian Tom D. Crouch wrote of this film’s depiction of the “studs” in Mission Control:

  The real heroes of this film are either bald or sporting brush cuts; wear thick glasses; are partial to rumpled short sleeve shirts; and chain-smoke an endless string of cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. For all of that, these slide rule–wielding technonerds solve all of the difficult problems required to bring the crew home. They are, in the words of one of the astronauts portrayed in the film, “steely-eyed missile men.”

  Apollo 13 the film, accordingly, venerates a long-past era in American history. Indeed, it may have been an era already gone by the time of the actual mission in 1970. It is a hallowing of masculinity in a nostalgic context.

  A recent study completed for NASA concluded that representation of space exploration in films is highly nostalgic, and Apollo fuels that perception:

  As a group, the public entertainments we tend to buy into are either nostalgic visions of the “space race” period (“The Right Stuff,” “Apollo 13,” “From the Earth to the Moon”) or fantasies reflecting the romantic imagination of the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers era (“Star Wars” rather than “Star Trek”). These are the visions people support in the most meaningful way possible: with their time and dollars. . . . Boomers have a great nostalgic affection for NASA, but their own priorities have shifted from a future focus to maintaining what they have. They see money spent on space exploration as threatening their future entitlements.

  At a sublime level, Apollo nostalgia may serve as a trope for a larger lack of interest in the future expressed by Americans in the first part of the twenty-first century. A shifting cultural center of gravity toward maintenance of the status quo has become common.

  Conclusion

  The space race in general, the Moon landings especially, should be viewed as a watershed in world history. It was an endeavor that demonstrated both the technological and economic brilliance of the nations involved and established scientific-technological mastery as the fundamental demarcation of a successful nation-state. It had been an enormous undertaking, costing more than $50 billion (about $250 billion in 2018 dollars), with only the building of the Panama Canal rivaling the space race in size as the largest nonmilitary technological endeavor ever undertaken. Several important legacies of the space race should be remembered. First, and probably most important, the Americans won the race despite an early and persistent lead by the Soviets through the first half of the 1960s.

  In both nations, but especially in the United States, the space race successfully accomplished the political goals for which it had been created. Kennedy and Khrushchev had been dealing with one Cold War crisis after another by 1961, when the Americans announced the Moon race.
Upon its successful conclusion, at the time of the Apollo 11 landing, Mission Control in Houston flashed the words of President John F. Kennedy announcing the Apollo commitment on its big screen. Those phrases were followed with these: “TASK ACCOMPLISHED, July 1969.” No greater understatement could probably have been made. Any assessment of Apollo that does not recognize the accomplishment of landing Americans on the Moon and safely bringing them home before the end of the 1960s is incomplete and inaccurate, for that was the primary goal of the undertaking.

  Second, the space race demonstrated the triumph of management in meeting enormously difficult systems engineering, technological, and organizational integration requirements. Sergei Korolev effectively combated internal bureaucratic infighting to keep the Soviet program on track until his death in January 1966. No one else possessed the stature and gravitas to keep those forces in check thereafter. Korolev’s longtime lieutenant, Vasily Mishin, proved no match for the politically connected Valentin Glushko, and the Soviet program declined into disorder. Its successes in the late 1960s were testament to the technical competence of the engineers and scientists working in the program. It raises the question, might there have been a different outcome had not Korolev died so suddenly? It is easy to imagine that he might have rallied the resources and lined up the support in the Kremlin for a push to beat the Americans to the Moon.

  As it turned out, that organizational flair characterized NASA and its senior leadership. The NASA administrator at the height of the program between 1961 and 1968, James E. Webb, kept his team on track, provided his scientists and engineers with the resources they required, and ensured political support where necessary. NASA proved that the space race was much more a management exercise than anything else, and that the technological challenge, while sophisticated and impressive, was within grasp. More difficult was ensuring that those technological skills were properly managed and used. Webb’s contention was confirmed by Apollo.

  Third, the space race forced the people of the world to view the planet Earth in a new way. It helped to galvanize the modern environmental movement and give legs to the quest for an understanding of the geophysical features of our planet. Perhaps just as important, NASA pursued critical Earth-science objectives in the 1960s. Indeed, at a fundamental level NASA—along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—became the critical component in the 1960s of the origins of a new scientific discipline that emerged in the United States, Earth system science. During that decade NASA developed the critical technology that made possible the convergence of many different scientific disciplines into a single system of investigation. It presided over the rise of interdisciplinarity in the various sciences focusing on understanding the Earth. As such, it incorporated understandings of how the atmosphere, ocean, land, and biospheric components of Earth interacted as an integrated system. This resulted from studies of the interaction between the physical climate system and biogeochemical cycles.

  Very early the role of humans in this process emerged as NASA pursued research with its Landsat satellites to demonstrate changes in land use and ground cover. Only the analysis of data obtained through both in situ observations and from remotely sensed observations, as well as the development of sophisticated ocean-atmosphere-land models, made this possible. Not until the space race did a fundamental ingredient of this process emerge in the use of satellites. By the 1970s Earth system science offered a foundation for understanding and forecasting changes in the global environment and regional implications.

  Finally, the Apollo program, although an enormous achievement, left a divided legacy for both the American and Soviet efforts at space exploration. The space race has been perceived as a golden age that would be forever recognized as the ultimate achievement of humanity, but as it recedes into the past, it looks more like an anomaly than the norm.

  Apollo, for example, has taken on mythical characteristics, but ones that are bittersweet. Historian Alex Roland captured this Apollo myth best: as a retelling of U.S. exceptionalism for a specific purpose. In this setting, it is not so much about history as it is the communication of “tribal rituals, meant to comfort the old and indoctrinate the young.” He noted in 1994:

  All the exhilarating stories are here: the brave, visionary young President who set America on a course to the moon and immortality; the 400,000 workers across the nation who built the Apollo spacecraft; the swashbuckling astronauts who exuded the right stuff; the preliminary flights of Mercury and Gemini—from Alan Shepard’s suborbital arc into space, through John Glenn’s first tentative orbits, through the rendezvous and spacewalks of Gemini that rehearsed the techniques necessary for Apollo. There is the 1967 fire that killed three astronauts and charred ineradicably the Apollo record and the Apollo memory; the circumlunar flight of Christmas 1968 that introduced the world to Earth-rise over the lunar landscape; the climax of Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong’s heroic piloting and modest words, “that’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”; the even greater drama of Apollo 13, rocked by an explosion on the way to the moon and converted to a lifeboat that returned its crew safely to Earth thanks to the true heroics of the engineers in Houston; and, finally, the anticlimax of the last Apollo missions.

  Roland finds an epic aura of Apollo in this recitation of the voyages of discovery. The missions, however, turned into a dead end rather than a new beginning, and no amount of heroic prose could overcome that unforeseen plot twist. The Apollo project was, therefore, an anomaly in the national decision-making process. The perception of a “golden age” of space exploration has been difficult to overcome.

  Something that neither the United States nor the USSR understood as the space race was under way is that such an effort would never be repeated. Racing to the Moon was an anomaly in human history. It had more in common with the building of the pyramids of Egypt and the great cathedrals of Europe than of anything that might be considered normal public policy. The symbolism of the space race has held special appeal for the true believers of space exploration. To them, it suggested that space exploration deserved special consideration. The decision to engage in expansive space-exploration activities was sui generis, and not to be questioned. Tragically, this illusion has held sway for more than a generation since the last landing on the Moon. There is no second space race in the foreseeable future.

  For Further Review

  Books

  Aldrin, Buzz. Men from Earth. New York: Bantam, 1989. Provides an intimate account of how NASA accomplished the national goal of putting an American on the Moon before the end of the decade. Interweaves the story of the U.S.Soviet race to reach the Moon with the author’s firsthand experience flying both the Gemini and Apollo missions during the height of the space race. Aldrin’s recounting of his two spaceflights is compelling, especially the account of the nearly aborted Apollo 11 lunar landing.

  ———. Return to Earth. New York: Bantam, 1973. Describes the celebrity associated with being the second human on the Moon and the author’s struggles with alcoholism and depression in the early 1970s. Aldrin writes about the pressure to keep the stress and day-to-day problems inside, and its effect on his marriage, which ended in divorce.

  Allday, Jonathan. Apollo in Perspective: Spaceflight Then and Now. New York: Institute of Physics Publications, 1999. Takes a retrospective look at the Apollo space program and the technology that was used to land an American on the Moon as a means to explain the basic physics and technology of spaceflight. Also conveys the huge technological strides that were made and the dedication of the people working on the program.

  Armstrong, Neil A., et al. First on the Moon: A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. Written with Gene Farmer and Dora Jane Hamblin. Epilogue by Arthur C. Clarke. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. This is the “official” memoir of the Apollo 11 landing mission to the Moon in 1969. It was prepared by the ghostwriters Farmer and Hamblin from information made available exclusively to them through a somewhat inf
amous Time-Life/Field Enterprises contract that excluded the rest of the media from contact with the astronauts’ families. Contains much personal information about the astronauts that is not available elsewhere.

  Bean, Alan L. Apollo: An Eyewitness Account by Astronaut/Explorer Artist/Moonwalker. Shelton, CT: Greenwich Workshop, 1998. This is a large-format discussion of Apollo written by an Apollo 12 crewmember and illustrated with his unique artwork.

  Beattie, Donald A. Taking Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. A history of the lunar science undertaken during Project Apollo. Beattie gives a firsthand account of efforts by NASA scientists to do more to include science payloads on Apollo missions despite opposition from mission engineers, who envisioned a direct round-trip shot with as much margin for error as possible.

  Benjamin, Marina. Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped Our Vision of a World Beyond. New York: Free Press, 2003. The author ruminates on the scarred spaceflight culture that Apollo created and the later space program destroyed. She visits Roswell, New Mexico, with its alien kitsch, and the Kennedy Space Center in Cocoa Beach, Florida, with its gigantic rocket assembly buildings and launch complexes and reminders of the heyday of Apollo, when humans went to the Moon.

  Benson, Charles D., and William Barnaby Faherty. Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4204, 1978. An excellent official history of the design and construction of the lunar launch facilities at Kennedy Space Center. This book was reprinted in 2001 as a two-volume paperback by University Press of Florida under the titles Gateway to the Moon: Building the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex and Moon Launch! A History of the Saturn-Apollo Launch Operations.