 | Apollo 11: American Excellence Remembered
(July 18, 2008) | 
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Sunday July 20, 2008 will
likely be a fairly typical summer day in America.
People will get up, go to Church, and maybe hold a
barbeque in the back yard. Perhaps the more
industrious amongst us will wash the family car.
Calmness, serenity, and above all, normality will
rule the day. And in a way, that is an awful shame.
Thirty nine years ago on that date (also a Sunday),
the nation was anything but normal. Americans
huddled around their TV sets and radios, listening
to the almost unintelligible exchange of technical
jargon, watching crude network animations, trying
desperately to comprehend the unfolding events a
quarter of a million miles away. Few realized just how close the
mission was to total failure, with only seconds of
fuel remaining in the spacecraft. |
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Christopher Adamo
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Then, at 4:53 pm eastern time, after a
heart-stopping momentary hush, an eight word message, crisp,
clear, and easily discernible, crackled across the void of space
and into the homes and businesses of anxiously awaiting
Americans. Eight words that, from that day forward, might well
have irrefutably defined the course of this nation, its history,
and its legacy in terms of “before” and “after.” “Houston,
Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” In the aftermath
of Neil Armstrong's brief declaration, some aspects of life on
earth would be changed forever.
During the following twenty one hours, a fantastic drama
unfolded as Armstrong set foot on the moon, accompanied a few
moments later by his co-pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin. A crude
black-and-white television transmission allowed earthlings to
share in the occasion, as the astronauts collected samples,
raised the American flag over lunar soil, and talked with the
President via telephone from the Oval Office. Finally they
launched their spacecraft back towards their awaiting colleague
overhead for the journey home.
Back on earth, other forces, more typical of humanity in all of
its futility and flailing, were working hard to undo the
stunning success for America that was Apollo 11, along with
everything patriotic and good that it represented. Modern
academia vastly prefers instead to recall the summer of 1969
with remembrances of “Woodstock,” a four-day tribute to the self
absorption and debauchery of the hippie and flower-child
movement.
Even in the midst of the massive parades and celebrations that
characterized America's immediate response to the successful
Apollo mission, its larger significance as a defining event of
the Cold-War escaped the comprehension of many. During the years
since, this aspect of the “Space Race” between America and the
Soviet Union has been all but erased from consideration. Yet, as
an event no less pivotal in its age than was the D-Day invasion
of Normandy in World War II, the significance of Project Apollo
cannot be overstated.
Ultimately, man's journey to the moon entailed not just the
skill and courage of the three astronauts who flew the mission,
but rather was the summation of American technical expertise and
commitment to the cause. Thus, the feats of Apollo 11 Commander
Neil Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Aldrin, and Command
Module Pilot Michael Collins represented a pivotal moment in a
life or death struggle against Soviet Russia for technological
dominance of the world. It was in that realm, far more than in
the arena of the traditional military battle, that the
encounters of the Cold War would be fought, and its outcome
decided.
Barely a dozen years prior, the gauntlet of this conflict had
been thrown down by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. On October
4, 1957, the world was electrified by the Soviet announcement
that it had successfully orbited the world's first artificial
satellite, Sputnik 1. Visible from earth, it sailed
dispassionately through the night skies with a menacing silence
that at once promised greater horizons for humanity, accompanied
by the appalling threat that such a future might be realized in
a world under the iron fisted dominion of the Soviet Union.
America's technological superiority, unquestioned at the close
of the Second World War as it ushered in the atomic age, was now
seriously in jeopardy. Not only had the Soviets managed to
appropriate the secrets of the atomic bomb within five years of
its invention, with the advent of Sputnik and the advances in
rocketry it represented, they were quite possibly equipped to
deliver a nuclear warhead, via intercontinental ballistic
missile, to selected targets within the United States.
The future of the entire free world would thus be determined by
the arms race, the space race, and ultimately the moon race that
ensued. And in the dark days immediately following news of
Sputnik, an American win was by no means assured. In truth, the
Soviets had every intention of beating America to the moon,
having even chosen their premier Cosmonaut, Alexi Leonov, to fly
the mission.
However, several catastrophic space-hardware failures during the
1960s eventually rendered their chances for success a virtual
impossibility. Meanwhile, America had risen to the occasion,
inspired by President John Kennedy's momentous May 25, 1961
speech in which he challenged the nation to achieve a manned
moon landing before the end of the decade.
Apollo 11, derided by the Soviets as technologically
insignificant, excessively expensive and indifferent to the
suffering of common citizens (an indictment immediately echoed
by America's leftists and eventually accepted and carried by the
nation's liberal media), was nonetheless the crowning jewel of
that challenge.
So on that twentieth of July thirty nine years ago, America did
indeed realize a decisive victory in the Cold War. American
heroism and greatness was on display. Flags were flying then.
And they should be flown every July 20 lest we ever forget. |
Christopher Adamo
Copyright 2008About Author:
Christopher G. Adamo is a freelance writer and staff writer for
the New Media Alliance. He lives in southeastern Wyoming. He has
been active in local and state politics for many years and is a
managing partner in
Best
American Buy, an e-commerce business that markets products
exclusively made in America. His other articles can be
found at
www.chrisadamo.com.
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