The problem is reputation.
I still have people, now and then, that come into my store, find out
that I’m involved in planetary science, and firmly express their opinion that
humanity never landed on the moon; that the whole thing was faked.
We did. Really. And when I say ‘we did’, I mean ‘We a nation;
we a species… landed on the moon.’ Not
only is it true that we landed on the moon, we can prove it in lots of ways,
not the least of which is by going and looking at the stuff that we left behind
while we were there, such as tracks, little moon rover cars, and garbage. (links
to images are here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/revisited/ ) There are, in fact, dozens and dozens of ways
that we can prove that we visited the moon.
There are people that spend their entire lives studying the rocks that
we brought back and managing the missions that capture images of the stuff we
left behind while continuing to study the topography and geology of that
distant, shining orb, and anybody willing to do the hard work can become one of
these people. I've spoken directly with
one of the fellows that drove a little buggy around the surface of that barren
desert and came back to tell the tale. A
significant number of these people are still alive. You can meet them and hear them speak, online
or in person. And you and everyone else
in the world can see the equipment that we used to achieve the task on display
at Johnson Space Center, the National Museum of Air and Space, and in several
other publicly accessible repositories.
So why, when there is absolute and compelling evidence that
we, as a species, have been to the moon and returned with souvenirs to tell the
tale, are there still reasonably rational people who doubt that it ever happened?
The problem is reputation.
If you ask anyone alive at the time of the moon landing, ‘did we land on
the moon?’ most of them will tell you ‘yes!’
And they may remember it as one of the most important and compelling
moments in their lives. If you ask the
same people a slightly different question, ‘Would the US government have faked
a moon mission if they thought it would hurt or intimidate the USSR and help to
win the Cold War?’ I think the same group of people would answer with a
resounding ‘Oh, heck yah!’
This makes it hard to make fun of folks who think we never
made the trip. In 1969, African
Americans has been ‘citizens’ for 99 years, but had effectively been allowed to
vote for four. Women had been ‘equal’
citizens, with the right to vote, for 49 years, but congress was 98% male, and
it was the most diverse congress in US history to that time. People still thought tobacco was soothing and
healthy for the throat. We had stopped
using the lobotomy as a ‘cure’ for bad behavior only a few years before, and we
still daubed mercury on cuts as a disinfectant.
And drug, military, religious, and social ‘educational’ films and
posters were… well… just fascinating.
I don’t blame people who think that we never landed on the
moon because I understand that a reasonably humble person, looking back, is
forced to reckon with the fact that we have always been pretty good at lying to
ourselves, both intentionally and unintentionally. I’m always a little depressed when someone
brings it up in the store, but I understand.
There are few people that would be so naïve as to say that we weren't
above a little robust propaganda when it came to dealing with the dreaded Soviets. This human achievement, however, was not a
lie. It wasn't propaganda, and it wasn't
the hopeful self delusion of a generation.
It was one of the greatest of human achievements. And remembering that we did it compels us to
do it again, and to reach farther.
To know that we have taken a first step encourages us to
take a second, and compels us with an obligation - to ensure that it is not the
last.
________________________
Image: NAC image of the Apollo 14 landing site acquired 25 January
2011. Descent stage of lunar module Antares in center, image width is 500
meters [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].
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