Share |

Ever Since Seeing The Moon Landings On A Television Set As A Child I Have Been Utterly Enthralled By Space Exploration And There Is A Whole Lot More Of The Universe Still To Be Deciphered

Sunday, May 29, 2011

When I was very young I can recall being encouraged to sit up very late one night with my dad and watch on an ancient black and white television as Apollo 11 landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong made history by setting foot on the surface. The anticipation prior to the moon landing and the regular news reports about the so-called ‘Space Race’ between the Americans and the Russians made a very big impression on me as a small child and in fact I am still interested in space and space travel. I make no claim to be an expert about it all, but the idea of a universe so huge that we can’t even begin to conceive its size is very humbling. We humans really are the most insignificant animals when considered in the context of everything else that exists.



Humans have been gazing at the skies since the dawn of time. Many ancient civilisations came up with rites and traditions dictated by the movements of the stars and planets, and even today our activities are affected by the sun and the moon a lot more than we truly understand. Over the centuries, humans must have looked to the skies and discussed what some other planets were like. Actually, there is a complete industry that has developed from the idea of life on other planets – aliens, little green men, unidentified flying objects, the entire science fiction genre of films and literature, impossible weapons with light pouring from a Laser eye – would any of these concepts exist if there was nothing else in the sky for them to supposedly originate from?

With rapid advances in technology over the last hundred years, the wish to head out into space and see other planets slowly changed from a dream to a possible reality and the Cold War competition between the USA and the USSR fuelled the comparatively speedy development of equipment which could travel beyond the earth’s atmosphere. The V2 rocket, built by the Germans had become the first man-made weapon which could be launched into space without mechanical problems, and soon after the end of the Second World War, when both the USA and the Russians had gained access to the technology, their first development work was aimed at using the knowledge for weapons. But after the Russians achieved their aim of sending a human into space in 1961, the Americans immediately decided to move ahead with their own programme of manned space exploration.

The very first American to go into space did so just one month behind Yuri Gagarin and from then onwards, both countries began to consider the moon as their target for exploration. In the 1960’s robot crafts were sent to the moon and sent back intelligence about its surface, and the Russians also successfully sent an unmanned craft into orbit around the moon, which gave us the earliest images of the other side of the moon.

Not many years later, the USA launched the very first manned spacecraft intended to fly to the moon. Apollo 8, launched in 1968, orbited the moon and returned safely to earth. It’s amazing to take into account that it was actually the following year when Apollo 11 achieved the feat of successfully reaching the moon meaning that two men could actually walk about on its surface. It’s an even more outstanding feat when you realise that the whole trip to the moon and back to earth was achieved with less computer ability than my laptop, a games console, Laser eye surgery equipment or most mobile phones!

Apollo 11 is one of the first real news stories that I can remember being aware of, largely I suppose because it got so much public interest, but I was totally fascinated by the concept and have continued to take an interest in space related achievements to this very day. But it’s a sad indication of the media’s control of what is considered to be news, that just two launches later, Apollo 13 was only considered newsworthy when events took a turn for the worse.

Lessons learned from the disaster (and eventual triumph) of Apollo 13, along with the expense of the space programme led to a gradual cutback to manned space flights, and the final man to stand on the moon did so in 1972. Since then, of course, numerous unmanned craft have been rocketed into space by a number of nations and the International Space Station is orbiting the earth at the moment, and is often visible if you are in the right place at the right time – a glare of light travelling across the sky as if sent out from a Laser eye beam.

As science and technology move on (just contemplate how far we’ve come in the past century – from the Ford Model T to the Bugatti Veyron, bi-planes to supersonic jets, fountain pens to computers, monocles to Laser eye surgery – the list is endless), humans will carry on sending spacecrafts further and further into the deepest points of the universe and in the future will undoubtedly discover numerous things which are way beyond our imagination at this moment in time. But I can definitely say that ever since that late night when I saw Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon, I will continue to be fascinated by the latest discoveries about the universe.

0 comments: