#Buzz aldrin race into space visor breaks free
The United States would beat the Soviets at their own game, it was said, because America was exceptional in its ability to turn dreams into reality, a myth that drew not only from the cult of the free market but also the worship of modern science and technology.Īpollo, of course, was funded by the federal government, not the free market. Catalyzed by the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite in 1957, and then by its 1961 launch of Yuri Gagarin, the first human into orbit, Apollo was, to many, a quintessentially American response to being outperformed. The Apollo program also connected two other narratives redolent of the American century: exceptionalism and technology. Kennedy’s presidency, when he called on the nation to marshal its grit to “the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny.” Laying out the challenge to Congress in a major speech in May 1961, he extolled “this nation 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.” That this was a battle of politics rather than an imperative to seek knowledge was not lost on the many tens of thousands who worked for NASA in the 1960s: politics encouraged science and vice versa. Apollo began as a pivotal moment in John F. Most books on Apollo have discrete beginning (its conception) and end points (the landing).
With the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing in July 2019, the mountain of tomes grows ever larger. The cumulative power of this mounting meditation has been to remember, rethink, and recover the original ineffable gloss of optimism of the space race - ad infinitum. Indeed, from the moment that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969, a nostalgia industry has accrued around Apollo. These questions have animated a vast canon of writers, historians, journalists, and memoirists. Was it the “we” of white middle America of crewcut men in Mission Control Center near Houston, Texas? Or was it the “we” of 125th and Lenox in Harlem, with its very different economic and racial demographics? Moving outward, was it the “we” of the millions across the world who saw the landing on live TV? And did the landing itself represent the zenith of human technical ingenuity, or was it just a pointlessly expensive bombastic gesture that meant very little in the end?
Scott-Heron’s lament implicitly and explicitly posed a question about Apollo’s authorship: when the Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon, they left a plaque stating simply, “We came in peace for all mankind.” But who was this “we,” Scott-Heron seemed to ask. I think I’ll send these doctor bills, Airmail special Simply, elegantly, and bitterly, Scott-Heron continued: “The man just upped my rent last night / Cause whitey’s on the moon / No hot water, no toilets, no lights / But whitey’s on the moon.” He concludes on a dare: THE FAMED POET and musician Gil Scott-Heron responded to the Apollo Moon landing with these words: “A rat done bit my sister Nell / With Whitey on the moon / Her face and arms began to swell / And whitey’s on the moon.” Released on his album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, the year after Neil Armstrong’s triumphant steps on the Moon, the track caught the mood of those American citizens with more pressing problems on their minds.
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