In the footsteps of giants

WE CHOOSE to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not only because they are easy, but because they are hard.

The words are those of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The year is 1962. The place: Houston, Texas.

He had promised, after the embarrassment of watching Russia hurtle the first man into space, to put an astronaut on the moon before the decade ended. He kept that promise, albeit posthumously.

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” The famous words of Neil Armstrong. The date is Jul 20, 1969. The place: The moon.

As far as Ireland of the late 1960s was concerned, there wasn’t much difference between the moon and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida from where the Saturn V rocket had exploded into space, carrying with it the dreams and hopes of millions.

Both were worlds away.

Yet Armstrong’s words were received loud and clear in my bedroom on the fourth floor of 6 Wellington Terrace in Cork. Barely in my teens, I was sitting up in bed at 3am in striped pyjamas, transfixed by the ghostly flicker of the black and white television to watch Armstrong make his giant leap.

I had watched the lift-off and, along with billions more, had fretted until the lunar module landed safely on the moon. The fear was that ground would be like quicksand and there would be nowhere to land, or that the module would crash and that Armstrong and his crew would suffer a hideous death. It was part high drama, part horror flick.

Then came the reassuring words: “Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.” The response from the controllers in Houston was one of immediate relief: “You got a bunch of guys down here about to turn blue; we’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”

I had to get up for school in a few hours, but who cared? This was history in the making. It was also enormous fun. I had been gazing at the screen for hours, occasionally adjusting the “rabbit’s ears” on the television with my father’s help. His job was to make sure it didn’t shift. He was used to it, being forced to ensure that my mother could watch The Late Late Show with Gay Byrne in focus. With four children, he had also put in years of Wanderly Wagon adjustment. I stared transfixed as a bulky faded figure made a hesitant descent on what looked like a makeshift ladder, the kind my mother might have used to wallpaper my bedroom. Armstrong’s moves were not exactly gracious. He seemed to bump and skip his way into the history books.

Yet this was the moment the world changed forever. At 10:56pm Eastern Standard Time Jul 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong become the first human to set foot on the moon.

The journey had taken four days. I hadn’t done my schoolwork but I had done my spacework. For weeks I had been working out the enormous energy required to breach the Earth’s gravity; I knew the velocity needed to achieve this and — abusing my English homework notebook — I had plotted the trajectory to the moon.

I had done all that with the help of my very own Nasa pen pals — one of them Armstrong, the other Edwin Aldrin, better known as “Buzz” and Michael Collins, commander of the lunar module. Two years before, I had begun writing to them, asking for photos, information, anything to sate a schoolboy’s appetite for space exploration. “Don’t expect too much,” my father warned. “You could end up disappointed. They are very busy men and may not even get to see your letters, let alone respond to them.” For once, Dad was wrong. The letters came flying back with regularity. Mostly they were typed but they were real letters, real responses. I was soon on first-name terms with my new best friends. The last communication before the Apollo 11 mission included a request from Neil, Buzz and Michael. “Please keep us in your prayers.” I assured them I would.

THEY didn’t disappoint. The drama was palpable, even allowing for the ghostly images flickering through a dodgy TV set. I watched as they caressed the lunar surface after flying longer than planned. They were down to their last 40 seconds of landing fuel and had to swerve to avoid a field of boulders and a large crater bigger than a bus.

This was at a time when computer guidance technique was in its infancy. As Armstrong told an Irish audience in the National Concert Hall: “We had less technical power than you have in your mobile phones.”

Before leaving the lunar surface, the astronauts removed a sheet of stainless steel to unveil the plaque affixed to the lunar module leg under the descent ladder: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.” It was signed by Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin, and president Richard Nixon.

Those words were later echoed by Gene Cernan, the last man on the moon. He said: “As we leave the moon at Taurus Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.”

Armstrong’s small step was supposed to herald a giant leap, not only in space exploration but also in inter-planetary tourism. We were told that after a few years of lunar exploration — a decade at the outset — holiday trips on commercial rocket ships would be commonplace. Walt Disney was even said to be toying with the idea of building a theme park on our nearest celestial neighbour.

In the end of course, expediency put paid to such lofty ambitions, the world grew weary of the same-again space exploits and the Apollo mission foundered in a sea of indifference.

The footprints left by the astronauts on the moon are more permanent than most solid structures on earth. Barring a chance meteorite impact, those impressions in the lunar soil will last for millions of years. For those space cadets who, like myself, witnessed the event on television, the spirit of those pioneers will live on. The famous first journey had many looking to the sky, temporarily forgetting their earthly woes. It would be a terrible pity if the most tangible legacy to their achievements should be a faded flag and the dusty imprint of an astronaut’s boot.

I have my hopes fixed on a ticket to the moon in years to come. My boot prints will be no match for Armstrong’s or Aldrin’s, but I won’t mind a bit. I’ll be walking in the footsteps of giants.

Key dates

Notable events in the history of space exploration:

* Oct 4, 1957: First artificial satellite, Sputnik I, is launched by the Soviet Union.

* Apr 12, 1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin completes the first manned space flight, orbiting the earth in 108 minutes.

* May 5, 1961: US launches first American astronaut, Alan Shepard Jr, into space, on a 15-minute suborbital flight.

* May 25, 1961: US president John F Kennedy declares the American space objective to put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.

* Feb 20, 1962: John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, completing three orbits.

* Jun 16-19, 1963: Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, makes 48 orbits.

* Mar 18, 1965: Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov takes man’s first spacewalk.

* Jan 27, 1967: Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee die when a fire sweeps the Apollo I command module during a ground test at Kennedy Space Center.

* Apr 24, 1967: Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when his Soyuz I spacecraft crashes on return to Earth.

* Dec 21, 1968: First manned spacecraft to orbit moon, Apollo 8, comes within 110km of the surface.

* Jul 20, 1969: Man walks on the moon. Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin of Apollo XI spend over 21 hours on the moon.

* Jun 29, 1971: Three cosmonauts, Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev, die during re-entry of their Soyuz 11 spacecraft.

* Dec 7-19, 1972: Apollo 17 mission which includes the longest and last stay of man on the moon — 74 hours, 59 minutes — by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.

* May 14, 1973: Skylab I, first US orbiting laboratory, is launched.

* July 17-19, 1975: US astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts participate in Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, docking together in space for two days.

* April 12, 1981: The Space Shuttle Columbia becomes first winged spaceship to orbit Earth and return to airport landing.

* June 18, 1983: Sally Ride becomes first US woman in space.

* Jan 28, 1986: The Challenger shuttle explodes 73 seconds after launch from Kennedy Space Center, killing its crew of seven.

* Dec 21, 1988: Cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov return to Earth from Soviet space station Mir after man’s longest space flight — 365 days, 22 hours, 39 minutes.

* Oct 29, 1998: John Glenn, now 77, returns to space aboard shuttle Discovery, becoming the oldest person ever to fly in space.

* May 29, 1999: Discovery becomes first shuttle to dock with the international space station.

* Feb 1, 2003: Shuttle Columbia breaks apart over Texas, 16 minutes before it was due to land.

* Jul 21, 2011: Final space shuttle mission ends when Atlantis arrives at Kennedy Space Center.

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