Man on the moon

When Bart Howard wrote Fly me to the moon in 1954,the lyrics were mere fantasy and the thought whimsical. By the time Frank Sinatra re-recorded it 10 years later,the prospect of seeing what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars was not assured but the possibility existed that man would be on the moon soon. In the summer of 69,a stunned world watched two images of scientific and technological marvel. The first was the lift-off of a 30-storey-high Saturn V rocket from the Kennedy Space Centre and the second,on July 20,1969,was that of man on his first moon walk.

Mans fascination with the moon is age-old and the curiosity has been passed down from Babylonian astronomers to Greek philosophers to todays astronauts. The need to place this one small step within the context of the 60s space race is apt. It followed from a bold declaration by then-US President John F. Kennedy,I believe that the US should commit itself to achieving the goal,before this decade is out,of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. It was an option following complex political calculations during of the Cold War rivalry. The avenues of competition between the US and the erstwhile Soviet Union were limited: war,economy or technology. War would result in nuclear destruction,economic results were postulated in the long run but the outcome of a technological race would be immediate and the victor triumphant.

So what have we gained from the 500,000-mile voyage? The immediate result was a slowing down in the momentum of the space race. It also brought about a flurry of excitement and doubt within the social arts. Art,cinema,literature,fashion absorbed and processed the new information in one form or the other,and as scientists continued discovering the bright-faced moon,artists measured its shadowy craters.