I was lucky enough to be raised in an era that was host to a great many improvements, advantages, challenges, and triumphs. While it is true that this era also saw more than its fair share of injustices and tragedies, I think the positive things that came out of this ear far outweigh the negative ones.
I'm speaking, of course, about the '60s. Whenever I think of the '60s I immediately think of three things: the assassination of JFK, the Vietnam War, and the "Space Race" between the United States and the Soviet Union. In my humble opinion the space program takes center stage as the most important event out of that era. We as a nation accomplished so much in so short a time that it boggles the mind to think of it. And the advancements made during that ten year era are still having an impact on us today.
I don't remember much about the Mercury program because I either hadn't started school yet or had just started and the school thought that first and second graders didn't need to hear about it. But I vividly remember the Gemini and Apollo programs, mainly because of the attention that the news media in general and the schools in particular gave them. Every time there was a launch in the Gemini program, class would come to a stop as the teacher rolled in this big black and white TV on a metal rolling stand (the kind you only found in schools, and if you're my age you know what I'm talking about), plugged it in and turned it on, then adjusted the rabbit ears to get the best picture. We would then spend the next 30 minutes or so watching the launch or, later on in the program, the space walks the astronauts took.
Make no mistake about it, the space program was a hell of a big deal in the 1960s, and deservedly so. It was such a big deal that school came to a stop just to watch it, and in those days school didn't stop for anything short of a natural disaster. So for classes to be halted so we could watch it live on TV was a very big deal indeed.
And the more the program went on, the more media attention it got. Every time there was a significant advancement or achievement in the Gemini Program, that's all you'd hear about on the news and all you'd see on the front pages of the newspapers. America was in love with the astronauts and the space program, and it clearly showed.
America's heart got broken on January 27, 1967 when, during a routine procedures test, a fire broke out in the Apollo 1 capsule and killed Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Gus Grissom was one of the original seven Mercury astronauts, and Ed White was the first American to walk in space. The fire caused some major changes in the space program, but the program recovered and a little more than two short years later there was an American walking on the moon.
The Apollo Program garnered just as much attention as the Gemini Program, maybe even more. I vividly remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard that the Apollo 13 astronauts had made it back safely. I had an afternoon paper route at that time, and I was at the drop off spot at Nine Mile Road and Mapleleaf Avenue, and the weather looked like it was going to dump a ton of rain down on me at any moment. The truck from the Richmond News Leader stopped and tossed out my bundles of papers, and the fist thing I saw was the huge black letter headline that said just two words: "THEY'RE BACK!" At that time the lot was a dirt lot with a big oak tree in it, and as soon as I saw the headline the rain started. I put the two bundles of papers under the big tree and got my poncho out of the basket on my bike, put it on, and then sat on the bundles of papers to keep them dry with my poncho while it rained. And brother, did it rain hard! Took about half an hour for it to stop, and by that time the lot was a muddy mess so I had a hell of a time getting the papers folded, put in the basket, and then getting the now-front heavy bike out of the muddy lot without dumping the papers all over the place. But the thing I remember most about that day is that big, black headline proudly and thankfully proclaiming that the three astronauts were home safe.
I also remember watching the moon landing live on TV. I was spending the night at a friend's house the next street over for the purpose of watching the moon landing together, and as I recall my friend didn't make it - he was fast asleep when Neil Armstrong took that first famous step on the moon and uttered those now historic words. I also remember not being able to see much since the video quality wasn't all that good, but I absolutely remember watching it.
The Apollo Program marched on after that, with a total of eleven missions being carried out with only Apollo 13 being classified as a failure because it never made a landing on the moon. NASA and the Apollo Program began accomplishing the impossible on a regular basis, setting the stage for future manned flights to the other celestial bodies that make up our universe. But the down side of this is that the public began to treat the fantastic as the routine, and by the time Apollo 17 took place the public was bored with space travel to the point where TVs weren't rolled into the classroom to watch the launch anymore, the newspapers didn't carry the missions on the front page anymore, and the budget for NASA was slashed by the short-sighted politicians who run our country. Apollo 17 became the last of the Apollo missions. There were three more scheduled, but they never took place. America was bored with space travel. It was 1972 and American had focused its attention elsewhere.
Five years later that attention was refocused on the space program with the launching of the first successful space shuttle program. For the first time in history a winged spacecraft that was capable of landing on an airstrip on dry land instead of having to splash down in the ocean successfully completed a mission. This marked a turning point in space flight because prior to this all of America's spacecraft were designed to be used only once; the space shuttle was designed to be reused over and over again, a first for any nation with a space program - meaning the US and the Russians. Once again America proved what it was capable of, and once again the American public fell in love with the space program.
But familiarity breeds contempt, and it wasn't long before America once again got bored with the space program. The space shuttle program proved to be wildly successful, with more missions being carried out so close together as to become fairly routine. With the notable exceptions of the "Challenger" disaster in 1986 and the "Columbia" disaster in 2003, America paid little attention to the shuttle program, and the program came to an end in 2011. Americans had once again gotten bored with the space program, and America's dreams for space travel pretty much came to an end.
And this is a huge mistake. The human species is born to explore, to venture out to lands never seen before, and to discover as much as we can about anything we can. There is no major project going on with NASA at the moment, and there's even been talk about doing away with NASA altogether. And that would be an even bigger mistake. If mankind is ever going to find out once and for all whether or not we're alone in the universe, then NASA and the space program need to continue. We would be cheating ourselves if we allowed otherwise.
But that's what happens when wonder turns to complacency.
Deo Vindice.
IHC
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