Reaching for the Moon

Human innovation is about taking anything from the field of the possible and bringing it into reality, and I believe that the scale of what we achieve is linked to our ability to tap into that field.

Surely one of the greatest human achievements must be landing on the Moon. This feat is beautifully covered by Ron Howard in his feature-length documentary In the Shadow of the Moon (official site & IMDb). Made up entirely of undoctored real footage and only the voices of the astronauts themselves with no voiceover. This isn't a Boy's Own technical space fantasy, it is the personal story of the 24 astronauts flew to the Moon and the only 12 who have actually ever stood on its surface, as well as that of the humanity collectively at the time.

Not being around for the first Moon landing on 20 July 1969, I've always taken it for granted as something that has always been, but when you see the story of it unfolding in the astronauts' own words you realise what a monumental achievement it was and what a milestone it was for the whole planet. Apart from the technical and human marvel of it, what really struck me was that for one magic moment, the whole planet was unified as a single human race. As Mike Collins said, it was, "We did it."

Many actually credit the Apollo missions with the beginning of the environmental movement, where for the first time we saw the Earth as so small and fragile, an oasis of life hanging in the vastness of space. The famous 'Earthrise' picture below, showed us that the Earth was something to be protected.

“I instantly thought it was ironic; we had come all this way to study the moon, and yet it was this view of the Earth that was one of the most important events for Apollo 8,” said Anders in an interview on NASA TV.

“There are basically two messages that came to me,” Anders said of the picture. “One of them is that the planet is quite fragile. It reminded me of a Christmas tree ornament. But the other message to me, and I don’t think this one has really sunk in yet, is that the Earth is really small. We’re not the center of the universe; we’re way out in left field on a tiny dust mote, but it is our home and we need to take care of it.”

Anders said it didn’t take long after the crew had returned home for this photograph to become iconic for the environmental movement.

“Back in the 60’s it gave us a sense that the world was a place we all shared together,” Anders said. “We couldn’t see any boundaries from space.”

Bill Anders, Apollo 8
quoted in Universe Today

Throughout the documentary I was struck by the astronauts themselves. Although now well into their 70s, they all had a remarkable liveliness and a depth and wisdom in their eyes. You get the feeling that the whole group of people that came together for the Apollo missions were a special bunch of people who, if you can believe this documentary and Apollo 13, were a highly creative, intelligent, dedicated team.

To me, this backs my theory that to bring great achievements into being from the field of the possible, you must be in some way closely in touch with it. I certainly felt that from hearing some of them speak. I'll leave you with some of their words from the film.

The biggest joy was on the way home. In my cockpit window, every two minutes: the Earth, the Moon, the Sun, and a whole 360 degree panorama of the heavens - and that was the powerful, overwhelming experience. And suddenly I realised that the molecules of my body, and the molecules of the spacecraft, and the molecules in the body of my partners, were prototyped and manufactured in some ancient generation of stars. And that was an overwhelming sense of oneness, of connectedness - it wasn't, "Them and us," it was, "That's me. That's all of it. It's one thing," and it was accompanied by an ecstasy, a sense of "Oh, my God. Wow. Yes," an insight, an epiphany.

Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14

I can remember the beautiful water. We were out in the deep water in the Pacific. It was such a startling violet colour. I remember looking at the ocean and admiring, "Nice ocean you've got here planet Earth."

To me though, the marvel of it is that it all worked like clockwork, I'd've almost said like magic - there might be a little bit of magic mixed up in the back of that big clock somewhere - because everything worked as it was supposed to. Nobody messed up. Even I didn't make mistakes!

Mike Collins, Apollo 11

After the flight of Apollo 11, the three of us went on a round the world trip. Wherever we went, people, instead of saying, "Well, you Americans did it," everywhere they said, "We did it. We humankind. We the human race. We people did it," and I had never heard of people in different countries use this word "We," "We," "We," as emphatically as we were hearing from Europeans, Asians, Africans - wherever we went it was, "We finally did it." I thought that was a wonderful thing. Ephemeral, but wonderful.

Mike Collins, Apollo 11

I felt that I was literally standing on a plateau somewhere out there in space - a plateau that science and technology had allowed me to get to - but now what I was seeing, and even more important, what I was feeling, at that moment in time, science and technology had no answers for - literally no answers, because there I was, and there you are, there you are, the Earth - dynamic, overwhelming, and I felt that the world is just... just too much purpose, too much logic - it was just too beautiful to have happened by accident.

There has to be someone bigger than you and bigger than me - and I mean this in a spiritual sense, not a religious sense - there has to be a Creator of the Universe who stands above the religions that we ourselves create to govern our lives.

Gene Cernan, Apollo 10 & 17

I think, if you do something that's drastically different, like flying to the Moon and coming back again, everyone tells you how important it is, how wonderful it is and how important, important, important, then by comparison a lot of other things that used to seem important don't seem quite as much so. And, I'm not saying that I'm able to face life with greater equanimity because I've flown to the Moon, but I try to. And maybe some of our terrestrial squabbles don't seem as important after having flown to the Moon than they did before.

Mike Collins, Apollo 11

We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth. The fact that just from the distance of the Moon, you could put your thumb up, and you could hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything that you've ever known - your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself - all behind your thumb, and how insignificant we really all are, but then how fortunate we are to have this body and to be able to enjoy living here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself.

Jim Lovell, Apollo 8 & 13

Trailer from YouTube: