Opinion Man on the moon

It took the NYT almost half-a-century to turn the page on that error. In 1920,it had derided the rocketry pioneer Robert H. Goddard for proposing lunar missions. With a shaky understanding of Newton’s Third Law,its editorialist had contended that a rocket engine could not deliver thrust in a void since there was nothing to push against. By the time the corrigendum was published,Goddard had been in the grave for a quarter of a century.

Outside the rarefied world of physics,Apollo 11 also turned the page on a chapter of history which began decades after Goddard,when European scientists fleeing Nazi persecution helped the US to create the Bomb which accelerated the end of World War II. Postwar,scientific prowess became an indicator of national power. But this incubated the Cold War,an unwinnable conflict where the contenders could only score brownie points by grandstanding,because the alternative was mutually assured destruction. The tastiest brownies came from rocket science. The space race began in 1957 when the USSR put Sputnik into orbit. Laika,Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova — dog,man,woman — followed the little beeper into space. To regain the lead in the scientific Olympics,the US had to set the bar higher. It had to put a man on the moon.

The space race accelerated in 1969. Before Apollo 11,the USSR launched Venera 5 and 6 to Venus,followed by a docking exercise between Soyuz 4 and 5,paving the way to space stations. The US launched Apollo 9 and 10 to test the lunar module and do a full landing rehearsal. And then,on July 20,Neil Armstrong took the step that was “a giant leap for mankind”. He was the right man in the right place. He had the right quotes to beam back to earth,which made him an icon of the era. They included the apocryphal,“Good luck,Mr Gorsky!” Its back story is too hilariously bizarre to be told here,so please Google the phrase.

The year marked the high point of the space age. President Nixon had taken office. The first 747 and the first Concorde were test-flown. Jan Palach immolated himself in Wenceslas Square to protest the Prague Spring (1968),beginning the long slide of Soviet authority which would end in the breakup of the USSR. Canada went bilingual. The Godfather was published. Led Zeppelin,Blind Faith and Sesame Street debuted. The Beatles held their last concert,an impromptu gig on the roof of Apple Records. Midnight Cowboy premièred. The Stonewall Riots happened in New York,beginning the quest for gay pride. And Operation Breakfast started — the secret bombing of Cambodia.

In 1969,the nuts and bolts of our own age were pre-flighted — cheap intercontinental travel across a unipolar world,the explosive diversification of popular music and visual media,the assertion of minorities,a tilt towards multiculturalism and America’s appetite for black ops on distant shores.

Last Saturday,the passing of the iconic Neil Armstrong finally turned the page on an energetic chapter of history which was almost over anyway. So much has changed since his moonwalk. Even Michael Jackson,the second moonwalker to achieve fame,is gone. A generation has grown up in a unipolar world but now,perhaps out of a visceral yearning for the familiar horrors of bipolarity,China is being seen as the rising competitor of the US. An absurd idea,since international politics is done differently now. China is heavily invested in US Treasury paper,so if it harmed the US,it would compromise its own interests. The new connected world is a hard place with a rock included for free.

Borders are being erased but,paradoxically,politics is focused on identity,engineering multiple clashes of civilisations. And science,which once stood for prowess and advancement,now stands in the dock,accused of raping the planet’s resources,destroying its environment,fiddling with its genetic material and setting the doomsday clock ticking.

Armstrong’s era had dreamt of escaping the earth. Ours is inward-looking. It obsesses about saving the planet. Back in 1920,when he was attacked by The New York Times,Goddard had responded: “Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it. Once realised,it becomes commonplace.”

What is tomorrow’s commonplace? Despite the public curiosity about Curiosity,space is no longer a credible frontier. Our current obsessions concern our health,the health of the environment,terrestrial life forms,genes,and the new politics associated with them. The life sciences have taken precedence partly because experimental physics hasn’t kept abreast of its theoretical cousin,rendering the latter’s predictions open to question. We dream of recreating ourselves and our world. But when the gap narrows,perhaps a wider universe will again open up.

pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com