40 years ago: a big step
Published on Jul 20, 2009 at 6:48 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under history, space exploration.
There’s not much to say that everyone else isn’t already saying all over the internet. Forty years ago, the first humans set foot on another world: the Moon. It may be the nearest other world, but it is nonetheless another world. That is an amazing feat.
In a way, it is hard to imagine that it was only 40 years ago that men set foot on the Moon. In another way, it is hard to imagine that we’ve gone so slow in space exploration in the 40 years since then. Apollo 11 was less than 70 years after the first recorded powered human flight by the Wright brothers. It was only about 30 years after the first rockets were able to reach the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. It was barely more than a decade after the first artificial satellite was placed into Earth orbit. With that furious rate of technological development, you can understand why many at NASA thought that by the end of the 20th Century we’d have a permanent space station, a Moon base, and a manned mission to Mars. But, then things sort of came to a halt. We’ve made progress, for sure, and it has been important. But, we’ve been going far slower.
Maybe it’s way past time to pick up the pace again.
-Astroprof
Image courtesy NASA
CCPhysicist on July 21, 2009 at 9:44 pm: 1
One important thing about the “big step” is that the ease of jumping 3 feet (and how long it takes to drop 3 feet) is a clear indication that they were working in reduced gravity. One more problem for the cranks …