Neil Armstrong's usually known for his silence and lack of public pronouncements on just about everything. He wouldn't even do interviews about his 2005 biography, First Man, by James Hansen, before the book came out. Reading it, a person can get the sense why he holds back. Some folks felt that he was picked to be the first man on the moon because he was somehow a better person or better astronaut than others. Armstrong, probably rightly, rejected that idea. But he also somehow let it move into the idea that he was still nothing special, even though he was the first human being ever to set foot on something in space that wasn't Earth. So he also rejected the idea that there was any reason to talk to anyone after he got back from the moon as well.
Either way, Armstrong found something to say about President Obama's decision to ground the only nation to ever land on the moon from even the low-earth orbit taxi rides it has been reduced to for close to 30 years. Along with fellow moonwalker Eugene Cernan and Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, Armstrong released an open letter to the president criticizing the action in clear and unambiguous terms.
In fairness, Armstrong's crewmate, Buzz Aldrin, has supported President Obama's decision (scroll to the end of the story). But he's a lonely voice among those who've been in space or helped them get there. Another open letter Monday urged the president to change his mind and it was signed by Lowell, Cernan and many others, including Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter and former NASA flight director Gene Kranz, who guided the team that brought Lovell's damaged Apollo 13 flight home safely.
Last year, when the president honored Armstrong, Aldrin and pilot Michael Collins on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, he said he remembered his grandfather telling him that the Apollo program was "an example of how Americans can do anything they set their minds to." He added, "As we speak, another generation of kids out there who are looking up at the sky and are going to be the next Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin."
Maybe their kids will get to.
with all due respect to armstrong et al, the more i read about the plans for nasa, the more it sounds ambitious AND realistic in its planning. i suspect the apollo guys react viscerally to the idea that we're not going back to the moon anytime soon...but then, the folks studying the most recent plan came back and said it was seriously underfunded as it was, and wasn't really going to happen until 2028. (though, of course, this is an opportunity to bash obama, and i know you couldn't pass it up.)
ReplyDeleteheh heh.
Definitely possible that they (and maybe me too) are simply reacting and that this lays the groundwork for a stronger, smarter plan. But some of the things they note -- like how long it took to get an operable manned program off the ground when it was a major national priority and wondering how much longer it might take to start over again when there's nothing like that kind of urgency today -- do not make me optimistic.
ReplyDeleteAnd like I said in an earlier post, President Obama may have made the final bad decision regarding the US space program, but the first and worst ones are Nixon's.