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Looking Forward

In the past week there must have been a hundred stories written celebrating the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11. Here’s just a small sampling:

These articles try to cover the topic from all angles. Some looked at the wonders of the achievement. Others extolled the newspaper’s local community and their contribution. Some used the event to demand the U.S. do it again.

None of this interests me much. Though I passionately want humans, preferable Americans, back on the Moon exploring and settling it, this fetish with celebrating Apollo is to me becoming quite tiresome.

Instead, I spend my time trolling the internet, looking for news that describes actual work going on today that will make it possible to return to the Moon. Rather than dwell endlessly on this past great achievement (of which by the way I wrote an entire book about), I prefer to read about and report on the effort of modern engineers to get us back there.

It is today’s work that counts, not the great accomplishments of the past. We need to stop looking back at what previous generations did and strive to do something grand for ourselves.

Or to put it another way, wouldn’t it be far better to celebrate Apollo on the Moon itself?

When that happens, the landing of Apollo will finally begin to mean something.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

2 comments

  • Competential

    Maybe the age of the surviving Apollo astronauts is driving media people who wants to do interviews?

    Btw, if average life expectancy for men is 76 years now, I note that the 12 moon walking Apollo astronauts born 1923-1935 are on average 2 years older. And counting for the 8 still alive. Radiation and lunar dust and whatever they were exposed to during training doesn’t seem to have been very unhealthy.

  • I wrote a little ditty on the event (http://bkivey.wordpress.com/2014/07/20/the-ballad-of-apollo-11/) celebrating the event, while noting the lack of progress since then.

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