To Boldly Go Where No Man Had Gone Before

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"The mission was Apollo 11. It was the capstone of an extraordinary effort ... and while men could argue endlessly over whether it had been worth the cost, its success was undeniably an American triumph."

William Manchester

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When this day dawned 45 years ago, many things were true that would not be true anymore when the sun went down.

July 16, 1969 was a Wednesday. I don't know if Wednesday was known colloquially as "Hump Day" then as it is today, but millions of Americans got up that morning and went to work, just as they did every weekday morning. Some commuted great distances — as some do today.

It was summer, which meant that some families were on vacation road trips to landmarks, beaches, amusement parks or baseball games.

Wanderlust is deeply embedded in the American DNA, but, no matter how far any other Americans traveled in July 1969, the concept of travel would be forever changed by three men. Travel generally implies a destination of some kind, and those three men gave that word a makeover on this day.

Those three men — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins — were the crew of Apollo 11, NASA's fifth manned space mission of the Apollo program.

In recent years, Americans had seen many manned space missions lift off in the Mercury and Gemini programs as well as the Apollo program. They knew the risks all too well, having witnessed the fiery deaths of three astronauts during a ground test for Apollo 1 a couple of years earlier. They knew there was nothing routine about space travel.

Except the destination.

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"Apollo 11, with its 36–story–high Saturn 5 rocket, was fired at Cape Kennedy's launch complex 39A at 9:32 on the morning of July 16, 1969. ... The Saturn's third stage put them into an orbit at a height of 118 miles. After a 2½–hour check of all instruments systems, they refired the third stage. This gave them a velocity ... sufficient to throw them beyond the earth's atmosphere and on their way to the moon, a quarter–million miles away."

William Manchester

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The eventual destination for Apollo 11 would be — as it had been for all space missions that had gone before — a splashdown. American missions splashed down in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and Apollo 11 was scheduled to complete its mission with a splashdown in the Pacific.

But in between the liftoff 45 years ago today and the splashdown eight days later, Apollo 11 did something that no other mission had done. It stopped somewhere — the moon. Two members of the crew descended to the moon's surface and walked around. They planted a flag to show they had been there.

And they left the first of several piles of space–travel debris.

On this anniversary, I suppose it is appropriate to wonder what kind of future, if any, America's space program has.

Aldrin has been an advocate of one–way missions for the first travelers to Mars.

And recently he revealed that he saw a UFO during Apollo 11's journey to the moon.

If that one–way trip to Mars materializes, the first travelers might expect to encounter a UFO as well — although Aldrin conceded that it could have been sunlight reflecting off panels from the spaceship. Since he does not know which panel, it qualifies (technically) as unidentified, and it was a flying object — just not, apparently, a flying saucer.

But Aldrin has also said that he believes there must be life somewhere else. If that is true, it seems at least possible that a spaceship from earth bound for Mars could encounter a UFO.

No one knows how long it will take a manned rocket to make the journey. So far, only unmanned probes have been sent, but it typically takes six months to a year for them to cover the 55 million–kilometer distance.

Surely they will bump into a real flying saucer during that time.

Reaching for the Stars

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Forty years ago today, man embarked on the most significant journey in his existence on this planet — Apollo 11's trip to the moon.

The world held its collective breath on July 16, 1969, as the rocket lifted off. Four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the moon.

In today's Washington Post, Aldrin repeats a call he issued at CNN.com last month for missions to Mars.

This time, Aldrin puts a little more flesh on the bones of his proposal. But he is clear that it is not an objective that can be met in a few years. It is a long–term project.

"If we avoided the pitfall of aiming solely for the moon, we could be on Mars by the 60th anniversary year of our Apollo 11 flight," he writes.

Aldrin insists that this plan "wouldn't require building new rockets from scratch, as current plans do, and it would make maximum use of the capabilities we have without breaking the bank. It is a reasonable and affordable plan — if we again think in visionary terms."

July 16 is memorable for a lot of things — visionary in nature or not.

• In 1945, the atomic age began with the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in a test near Alamogordo, N.M. Less than a month later, the United States dropped two nuclear weapons on Japan, and World War II came to an end.


• In 1973, four years after the launch of Apollo 11, Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of a taping system in the Nixon White House during his testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee. The tapes that were produced by that taping system ultimately led to the end of Nixon's presidency.


• And, in 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn and sister–in–law Lauren died in a plane crash off Martha's Vineyard. The timing of the crash was ironic, since Kennedy's father had been the one who challenged America to go to the moon in the early 1960s.

In fact, although July marked the triumph of President Kennedy's vision, it has also been a month of tragedy for his family.

Not only did his son die in that plane crash, but also, while Apollo 11 was on its way to the moon, President Kennedy's youngest brother, Ted, drove his Oldsmobile off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, injuring himself and killing his passenger, 28–year–old Mary Jo Kopechne.

The Next Frontier

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Buzz Aldrin walks on the moon's surface in July 1969.

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Forty years ago this summer, Buzz Aldrin was part of perhaps the greatest adventure in which any man has participated — Apollo 11's trip to the moon.

In a special commentary for CNN, Aldrin urges mankind to "continue the journey" — not by "rerunning the moon race that we won 40 years ago" but by focusing on "a destination in space that offers great rewards for the risks to achieve it."

And he has a place in mind.

"I believe that destination must be homesteading Mars," Aldrin writes, "the first human colony on another world."

Aldrin says we could start by sending crews to Mars' moons, then we could move on to the planet's surface.

I understand Aldrin's desire to go to Mars — and I understand why he thinks returning to the moon fails to "ignite the imagination of young Americans" the way the space race of the '60s did.

But, before anyone starts packing for a trip to Mars, there are some things that need to be resolved.

It's going to cost a lot of money to send a crew to the "Red Planet." I don't know how much because I'm hardly an authority on space travel, but I know enough to know that the moon was — and still is — in our orbit, which other planets are not. Therefore, the distance to be traveled is greater.

How much greater? Well, I don't know exact distances, but the Apollo 11 crew needed only a few days to fly to the moon, a couple of days for Aldrin and Neil Armstrong to land on the moon and take a few strolls on its surface, then rejoin Michael Collins and spend about three more days returning to earth. The round trip took a little more than a week.

In the late 1990s, it took months for the unmanned mission that took the rover Sojourner to Mars to arrive at its destination so, obviously, a manned trip to Mars is going to require rockets that can carry more of everything — more fuel for the journey, more food for the crew, etc.

And, when they arrive at Mars, the astronauts will find a barren planet — no vegetation, no water, nothing. NASA will need to have worked out all the details in advance because, by the time the astronauts get there, it will be too late for anyone to say, "Oh, darn! We didn't work out what we need to do about ________!" It will be a long trip back to earth to take care of anything that may have been overlooked.

And that leads me to the questions about fuel. We live in a time when greater attention is being given to the finite nature of fossil fuels. What would be the energy source for this rocket's seven– or eight–month journey? How will the weight distribution of the rocket be affected?

And I mentioned the costs before. I was a child in the 1960s and I don't recall hearing any debates about the expense of sending men to the moon. But times were better then, and the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations hadn't committed more than $1 trillion to stimulating a weak economy. For now, I feel the American public is going to be hesitant to invest in anything that can't be counted on to create jobs or contribute in an immediate way to the GDP.

Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of expanding our exploration of space, and I believe Mars could hold some vital information for us. But it's going to require an enormous financial investment to do what Aldrin wants to do, and the American taxpayers will be understandably skittish about making that kind of commitment on the heels of the commitments it has had to make.

There may be plenty of bang to be had for our bucks, but I don't think taxpayers are in the mood for deferred gratification right now, no matter how romantic the notion of going to Mars may be.

What I think is likely to occur is this: The United States government may undertake a study of the possibility of a manned mission to Mars. If it is deemed feasible, NASA will begin work on plans for the right kind of rocket for the job. We're in no space race this time so NASA can take its time and make informed decisions. And, if all goes well, perhaps we would be ready to launch such a mission maybe 10 years from now.

Which means, I believe, that Aldrin, who will be 80 years old in January, probably will not see the first manned mission to Mars.

But I think he would be happy if he sees America make its commitment to the project.

I don't know if that will happen. But, like just about everything else that Americans would like to see accomplished in their lifetimes — a cure for cancer, the development of cheap alternative sources of energy or anything else you can name — it's going to cost a lot of money and it's going to come with no guarantees of success.

Of course, that has been the dilemma facing all explorers throughout the ages. Fortunately, someone or something always has made the difference — sometimes at the last possible moment.

It is part of man's DNA to want to explore, to go where no one has gone before. For a time, colonizing this continent was the next item on the agenda. After colonists arrived here, exploring the rest of the continent was next. Then it was the moon.

Now, Mars is what's next. We'll get there. But we may not get there as quickly as Buzz would like.