‘We came in peace for all mankind’
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” — President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961
At this time 50 years ago, the Apollo 11 capsule ferrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon was roughly halfway though its journey.
It had thundered skyward earlier in the week from Cape Kennedy, Florida, atop a 36-story-tall Saturn V rocket, powered by engines designed and built by Wernher von Braun’s team at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
Ever since, the U.S. space program has had a special place in the hearts of many if not most people who live in north Alabama, and not just because Marshall remains a major employer and economic driver in the region. Many of us know people who worked on the Apollo program, and if we don’t, chances are our parents did.
From our up-close vantage point, it is sometimes difficult to appreciate the global perspective. The space race might have been born of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but it wasn’t just Americans who were transfixed by their television sets during the liftoff of that Saturn V and touchdown four days later of the Eagle lunar module on the surface of another world. People all over the Earth were transfixed.
Apollo 11 carried not just three American astronauts, but the hopes and dreams of an entire planet.
These dreams came at a cost — not just in the form of NASA budgets that dwarf anything the space program receives today or is projected to receive in the future, but in human terms.
When President John F. Kennedy said in 1961 that the U.S. would, before the end of the decade, send a man to the moon and return him safety to Earth, the space race had just begun, and America was lagging behind the Soviets. NASA had logged just 15 minutes of human suborbital flight when Alan Shepard became the first American in space.
Even to some involved, the task seemed impossible.
“I was used to facing up to impossible things. We were in the rocket business, so we were doing some weird and wonderful things back in those days. But, yes, it was an unbelievable announcement at that time,” John Tribe, one of Cape Canaveral’s original rocket scientists, told The Associated Press. “It took a lot of guts.”
Yet on July 20, 1969, Armstrong became the first man on the moon, followed soon after by Aldrin. Four days later, the Columbia command module carrying Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins spashed down safely in the Pacific. The speech President Richard Nixon had written in the event of the worst happening became a footnote in the history of one of mankind’s greatest triumphs.
Not everyone lived to see that day. The crew of Apollo 1, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee, died when fire swept their command module during a launch rehearsal.
There were other costs, too.
“You know how we got to the moon as fast as we did is because we burned people out,” retired NASA engineer and “Rocket Boys” author Homer Hickam told the AP. “Come to Huntsville, go to the cemetery, look at all those young men who are dead down there. They worked themselves to death.”
Was it all worth it?
Armstrong, perhaps said it best with his first words as he stepped onto the lunar surface. Apollo 11 was a “giant leap for mankind.” It was a testament to human endeavor, achievement and making the possible impossible.
We haven’t been back to the moon since 1972. We will return. The question is not if, but when. In the meantime, we left a memento behind, a plaque with this inscription:
“Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
