40 years ago, a new era was about to begin
I hardly heard anything on the news about this, really mentioned as an afterthought to the shuttle Endeavour finally being able to launch today. Anyway, today the 16th of July is the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Apollo 11 mission. Hopefully everyone actually already knows what the Apollo 11 mission is but just in case, it was the NASA launch that would for the first time place our species on another world, which was accomplished 4 days later.
I suppose most people these days do not view this as a big deal, after all most who will read this very post were born after the fact and thus we knew all our lives that people had already been to the Moon, making the entire concept rather mundane. Still was there any greater leap forward in exploration for our species then that for the first time in it's 10,000 years of civilization and more than 100,000 years of existence left the "cradle" of Earth? For the first time in all of human history we were no longer restricted to a single world, now we could look back at home from another world, which is pretty amazing.
Sadly no one has been to the Moon after 1972 and since then the farthest any astronaut has traveled is low Earth orbit. Our reach into and exploration of the solar system since then, done by machines, which while very exciting in itself, is still nowhere near as much as incredible of an achievement as sending actual people. Still there is hope, back in 2004 president Bush made it a goal of NASA to place astronauts back on the moon by 2018 for a seven-day stay. There are even plans to establish a base there, which also would be yet another leap forward in our journey into space. Of course the return mission (or hopefully, missions) this time around is a mere stepping stone for the next great leap forward, the first manned trip to Mars, which some say will happen in 2032 (probably as an international effort). Tests and simulations have already begun to see how astronauts would do on such a long journey. Now wouldn't that be an amazing sight?
I suppose most people these days do not view this as a big deal, after all most who will read this very post were born after the fact and thus we knew all our lives that people had already been to the Moon, making the entire concept rather mundane. Still was there any greater leap forward in exploration for our species then that for the first time in it's 10,000 years of civilization and more than 100,000 years of existence left the "cradle" of Earth? For the first time in all of human history we were no longer restricted to a single world, now we could look back at home from another world, which is pretty amazing.
Sadly no one has been to the Moon after 1972 and since then the farthest any astronaut has traveled is low Earth orbit. Our reach into and exploration of the solar system since then, done by machines, which while very exciting in itself, is still nowhere near as much as incredible of an achievement as sending actual people. Still there is hope, back in 2004 president Bush made it a goal of NASA to place astronauts back on the moon by 2018 for a seven-day stay. There are even plans to establish a base there, which also would be yet another leap forward in our journey into space. Of course the return mission (or hopefully, missions) this time around is a mere stepping stone for the next great leap forward, the first manned trip to Mars, which some say will happen in 2032 (probably as an international effort). Tests and simulations have already begun to see how astronauts would do on such a long journey. Now wouldn't that be an amazing sight?