Looking up and back at the moon

Fifty-seven years later and the return trip seems almost anticlimactic. That’s the way it seems to go with sequels—the first endeavor offers us something novel. The experience is exciting because it is new and there are no expectations. Discovery is an adventure and adventures, generally, are fun.
It was this week in 1969, on July 21, when the first man set foot on the moon. Actually, of the dozen astronauts who have stepped onto the lunar surface, every single one has been a man.

“It’s still the same old moon. I really don’t think it’s changed,” Mrs. Themal Wyre of Imperial Beach told The Star-News at the time. Her daughter-in-law Georgie Wyre added: “If anything I have a little more respect for it.”

The two women’s insights were included in a popular feature used by many news organizations: Man on the Street interviews gauging everyday people’s reactions to news of the day.

It’s hard to imagine at the time there would be anything else more compelling on the minds of people worldwide. Of course there were the wars, hunger, poverty, injustice and other ills that have plagued humanity for ages. But for a brief moment we—humans— had accomplished the impossible.

We travelled via space shape to another celestial body. Though it was an act born of international competition amid the “Space Race” the act of landing and setting foot on the moon was something that everyone could look to with awe, hope and belief in what was possible.

Nearly 60 years later the United States sent a manned rocket to visit the moon, though this time there was no landing and there were no footprints left behind. That day is scheduled for 2028.

News of the springtime affair came and went with some but not much fanfare. Maybe because in the interim humanity has built an International Space Station that regularly sees astronauts coming and going. And there have also been unmanned landings on Mars, the red planet that is on average more than 140 million miles away.

But it was 57 years ago this week when people walked on the moon. It’s still the same old moon, as Mrs. Wyre said. But it is so much more. It is a symbol of the human spirit and what we can achieve working together.