Was it really worth it??

Back in those dark distant days of my youth our heroes were to spaceman who, naturally enough, just happened to be Englishmen; Dan Dare and Flash Gordon. Dare, along with his sidekick Digby was a typically lantern jawed taciturn hero in the John Wayne mould who spent his days in long, complex and often impossibly obscure battles with the biggest menaces in the universe, the Mekons; all very exciting but a little bit too long winded for we simple youngsters. Flash Gordon on the other hand was far more dashing and impetuous and that reminded us all of another hero, Douglas Fairbanks; Flash seemed to have something going with a very attractive lady called Dale Arden but unlike the films of today we never even saw them kiss let alone get down to some of the carnal joys that we take the granted these days. Such is progress. Dan and Flash had two things in common however; they possessed absolutely wonderful technology which allowed them to traverse the universe at will, even though the string was holding up the rocket ships were all too visible in some of the screenshots which reduced we are pre-teenagers at the Saturday matinees to hysterics.

Fast forward a decade or so and science fiction became science fact; to the absolute amazement of the Americans the Russians beat them into space by first of all sending a dog into orbit and then a real live human being called Yuri Gagarin; the then president Kennedy was absolutely incensed that they had had the effrontery to get there before the Yanks and the space race was on!

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Fair enough, putting a dog and then a man into orbit was one thing but the real prestige achievement would be to actually put a man on the moon! Whether or not there was really any justification in doing this from the point of view of defence, economics, exploration, and all the other driving forces that have sent men into strange and dangerous environments since time begun, was not really considered. Prestige was at stake, and so any amount of effort or expense was justified in the USA. The Russians however to a more logical attitude and concluded that the game was not worth a candle; there was not likely to be anything on the moon that was worth bringing back at such huge expense so they settled back on their laurels! Kennedy, somewhat perturbed by the probable cost of this venture raised the possibility with Russian scientists about a joint-venture but the Soviet Union had other priorities; if they were going to go to the moon they would do it on their own and they would do it before America did! The problem was that as Russia in those days was a Communist society it was very difficult to actually get things done, and although superficially the Soviet Union was a successful example for the rest of the world to follow the truth was that it was riddled with inefficiencies, corruption and downright incompetence so the massive funds necessary to not only place a man on the moon but to actually bring him back again simply didn't exist.

In America, however, money was no object. A major problem cropped up when a fire broke out during a ground test of a lunar module and three potential astronauts were tragically killed but by Christmas Eve in 1968 three other astronauts were in orbit around the moon sending back photographs of potential landing sites. In the meanwhile the Russians had been suffering innumerable setbacks with both design and engineering defects which made it quite clear that they were not going to be able to compete with the Americans; perhaps wisely, in 1974, the whole project was abandoned, by which time the race had already been won a long time previously because as far back as July the 20th, 1969, the Apollo 11 module landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong was the first human being, at least in recorded history, to walk on the surface of it.

Was it worth doing? The actual fleet of landing a manned module on the moon and bringing back a few rock samples may well have had some scientific value but it is difficult to argue that the enormous cost for this was justified. However, the argument is that this was a prestigious exercise which raised the standing of the USA in the eyes of the rest of the world! Sadly, a recent survey suggested that around 60% of the 5000 people who were polled throughout the world believed that the whole thing was a con and that all the pictures of the moon landing were created in a film studio. Vanity, Vanity, all is vanity!