A Brave New World « CabbieBlog

A Brave New World

16 July, 2009 at 2:32 pm | In Thinking allowed | 2 Comments
Tags: moon landing

Take note of the time and date of this post, for it was exactly 40 years ago that three men lifted off on top of the most powerful rocket ever constructed.

After 12 years work by the Americans, that cost $25 billion ($250 billion at today’s prices), amounting to 5 per cent of America’s gross domestic product, and it must be said a few lives, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins headed for the moon.

Scarcely believable now, but five days later 600 million people, an incredible one-fifth of the global population at the time, watched the subsequent moon walk on television.

It would not be unreasonable to question why this is featured on CabbieBlog. Well, I tell you this, in 1969 with a contentious major war in Asia slowly being lost by America, Apollo 11 gave the world hope in the human spirit of endeavour, and for once, just once, humanity rose above the petty squabbles seemingly to have beset us all. It’s just a pity we didn’t have a new uniting spirit.

I will finish this post with a quote from Bill Anders, astronaut on Apollo 8:

“We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

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I think that to go to the moon was one of the most momentous decisions ever taken by humanity. It has affected our thinking in so many ways and continues to do so even when we are hardly aware of the fact. Without Apollo, I think we would be living in a very different world.

Should we regret that humanity has not done more? Possibly, but human progress is so painfully slow and I think Apollo did give us an impulse in a positive direction.

If proposals to mount a new mission come to fruition, I hope the results will be as inspiring.

Comment by SilverTiger — 20 July, 2009 #
Im having a lot of trouble with your blog loading lately. Intermittant, and goes to a page could not be found every so often. Hope there isnt any problems.

Comment by Patrick — 2 August, 2009 #