...I just finished a book called Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth by Andrew Smith and although it was not a quick read and he writes very intelligently (read: sometimes hard to follow for a distracted sahm), I really, really liked it.It made me think about how amazing it was that 12 men touched the moon over 30 years ago and no one can tell us if that will ever happen again.
I can't tell you why all the sudden I am fascinated by Apollo and space, but for the past month (did my interest spark when Rhett made his solar system for school? When I also watched Apollo 13 for probably the 13th time?) I have been reading about astronauts and space and all those things that for all of my life never captured my attention.
It is easy to see why. By the time I was born, the Moon Landings were old stories. Elvis had died. Vietnam was over. The 80s were about to begin and then the Challenger exploded and as a 2nd grader, that was the first time I really understood there to be such a thing as astronauts.
That being said, I did always believe that we had been to the moon. That fact was just that: a fact. Nothing more. I don't remember being that impressed with it.
Later, the things I learned about space exploration were from movies, namely The Right Stuff and Apollo 13 but still, it never impressed me much. I guess because to me, it was just a movie. The real thing happened so long ago.
Reading this book, I learned that there are many moon landing hoax believers and most of them are younger (meaning: not alive when it happened). I can understand that. I mean, why could we go to the moon and then not go again?
Finishing this book, I understand more about why we haven't gone back (you probably could guess it has something to do with politics and money and you would be right) but I can also see now how amazing it was that we sent men up there in the first place. To have 6 moon landings between July 1969 and December 1972 is utterly remarkable.
If you have any interest in the lives of the 9 remaining Moonwalkers and how that one event changed their lives, then I recommend this book. But if you would rather just watch Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell in the movie about the Apollo that didn't make it to the moon, then that is okay with me. It was a really good movie.
3 comments:
It is amazing to look up at the moon and realize that people were once up there.
I've been reading about Arctic exploration lately -- it's often pointed out that the ships that entered the Arctic back in the 1800s may as well have been on the moon, because once they get into the pack ice, they had no way of communicating with the world. (And we equally screwed -- if not more so -- if something went wrong.)
I have always thought it odd that space exploration has seemed to decline since the Apollo missions, even though technology has advanced exponentially. You would think that 30 years after the 1st landing on the moon we would have a whole colony of people living there by now.
I remember staying up until 2:00 am on the day of the first moon walk to watch it. And yes, I heard "That's one small step for man, one huge step for mankind."
Mom
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