October 3, 2013: An artist’s rendition of Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon, with his face visible, at the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio. Armstrong died in 2012 and was buried at sea. Only one-third of the men who walked on the moon are still alive.
I do not expect the United States of America to land on the moon in my lifetime.
Americans might return, eventually, but I think it’s likely they would be part of an international crew. But the nation that put so much from so many into making it possible for one man to take one small step doesn’t exist anymore.
It took just under eight years and two months from President John F. Kennedy’s call to Congress and the nation “to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth,” to doing precisely that.
It has been eight years, four months, and 11 days since the United States has been capable of putting a human being into orbit.
About the time I turned 9, I was told there was a plan of getting back to the moon by 2001 and Mars by 2015. So much for that.
For years, pundits and politicians asked, “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we do [pet cause]?” No one should be asking that anymore, because the correct question is “If we could put a man on the moon, why can’t we put a man on the moon?”
A moon mission requires a lot of things from a nation. It requires invested leaders who can occasionally think beyond — or not worry about — the next election, and are willing to do some back-scratching with people they strongly disagree with to achieve a higher goal. It requires an ability to withstand, overcome, or suppress a descent into tribalism; a vow to select the best people with as little regard for other factors as possible; the support of the man and woman on the street (or at least, enough to matter); unsurpassed domestic manufacturing capabilities; and the ability to undertake massive civilian and military infrastructure investments that go from plan to shovel in a time frame closer to 10 months than 10 years.
But most importantly, it requires people who believe in both their country and themselves to the extent that pushing the boundaries of the possible is seen as both their duty and their destiny.
When a nation like that is ready to act, the rest of the world will be watching.