Thought for the Day

We're coming up on the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing, July 20, 1969. This impending anniversary prompts today's Thought for the Day:

We got to the moon with analog technology.

This will never cease to blow my mind. More important, though, is that it's beginning to make me sad in a way that I'm not yet able to articulate.

If I try to make my point with specific examples I'll get thrown off track trying to explain and justify them. If I try to distill my point I'll end up making a watery generalization. Perhaps I can come at this from another direction.

I can describe how it makes me feel. As I said above, sad. But it's more specific than that. Hurt, let down. Abandoned, betrayed. Confused, too.

I grew up very aware of our space program. My grandfather was vice president and general counsel for Rockwell International, which, in an earlier incarnation, was North American Aviation (Rockwell's constituent parts were sold off in the '90s, and its aerospace arm is now part of Boeing). North American built the Apollo lunar module, and Rockwell built the engines for the Space Shuttle. Hell, Rockwell was the largest NASA contractor (not to mention the largest defense contractor) when I was a kid. Needless to say, the space program was a BIG fucking deal in my house.

So, these men, these titans of industry, these members of the greatest generation, trim and confident in their Brooks Brothers suits, knowing nothing in life but to be legit, perched a few exceptional men (an inordinate amount of whom were left handed, let's not forget) at the very tip-top of unfathomable tons of newly conjured alloys and ludicrously volatile fuel in order to beat gravity and beat the godless communists to the moon.

Romantic as hell, ain't it? A nation's ambition writ large, symbolized by its flag planted firmly in that eerie pale grey dust, the result of hard work by its best and brightest.

These days, what have we got to show for our countless billions of military-industrial complex dollars? Not to put too fine a point on it, but a giant fucked-up shit-hole breeding ground for terrorists nestled right next to an ancient conflict involving a country we've got to support and sitting on top of the bulk of the world's most precious resource. Pretty much the opposite of romantic.

So what do we have to show from this glorious digital age? A ton of shit that occupies us, entertains us, distracts us, fragments us, allows us to hole up and distance ourselves from any and all realities, gives us access to so much information that none of it matters.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to have seen for the first time those images of the Earth from the Moon. I know in my life I've seen nothing so revelatory.

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I know landing on the Moon was pretty awesome, but here's another perspective that I quite enjoy: