Dot Earth Blog: The Cold War Push Behind Neil Armstrong's 'One Small Step'

I was saddened to learn today of the death of NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong, whose ?one small step? so fixated my generation (I was born in 1956). The video above provides an unusual split-screen view of Armstrong?s hop from the lunar module landing gear to the dusty lunar surface (much more footage and background is here).

The Apollo missions were utterly captivating for young science buffs like me (and my brother, whose room often smelled of glue as he assembled detailed spacecraft models). To review that era, start with the great ?Mission to the Moon? interactive video feature produced by The Times.

While I?ve interviewed all kinds of luminaries in 30 years as a journalist, I still feel a particular sense of honor when I call up Rusty Schweickart, an Apollo 9 astronaut whose prime concern these days is helping humans develop the capacity to detect and deflect asteroids that might hit the Earth.

It?s easy to forget that for young people these days, the space race is somewhat mysterious, particularly now that manned missions beyond Earth orbit are a thing of the past ? at least for the time being. By chance, just yesterday my 14-year-old son, Jack, asked me a powerful and important question about the moon missions.

He was flipping through ?Paper Astronaut: The Paper Spacecraft Mission Manual? and asked: ?Would we have gone to the Moon if there hadn?t been a cold war?? My gut answer was ?no.? But today I did a bit of homework and here?s what I found:?

Tapes and transcripts released last year by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library provide some detail on the political and geopolitical context, as summarized here by About.com:

Recently released audio recordings from the Kennedy White House reveal that politics, more than science, may have fueled America?s race to the moon against the Soviets.

The 73-minute tape, recently released by the John F. Kennedy Library, records a meeting between President Kennedy, NASA Administrator James Webb, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and others in the Cabinet Room of the White House on November 21, 1962.

The discussion reveals a president who felt landing men on the moon should be NASA?s top priority and a NASA chief who did not. When asked by Kennedy if he considered the moon landing to be NASA?s top priority, Webb responded, ?No sir, I do not. I think it is one of the top priority programs.?

Kennedy then urges Webb to adjust his priorities because, ?This is important for political reasons, international political reasons. This is, whether we like it or not, an intensive race.?

The worlds of politics and science were suddenly at odds. Webb told Kennedy that NASA scientists still had grave doubts about the survivability of a moon landing. ?We don?t know anything about the surface of the moon,? he states, going on to suggest that only through a careful, comprehensive and scientific approach to manned exploration could the U.S. gain ?pre-eminence in space.?

More excerpts can be read at the presidential library Web site.

Also read Bill Broad?s 2007 feature in a special Science Times section on the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, ?From the Start, the Space Race Was an Arms Race.?

After reviewing this and other background, I?d stick with my gut hunch.

This doesn?t take away from the breathtaking nature of the Apollo astronauts? achievements and our species? other activities on the edge of the possible. And the cold war produced a host of incredible breakthroughs in other areas of science and technology.

But it does reinforce the picture of a species that, for the most part, doesn?t undertake dramatic, sustained and costly ventures without a near-term, practical imperative at the root.

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=66285d91f08228261eca629bd321688b

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