Commentary: On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress and announced that it was his goal to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Within eight years, the U.S. did just that. July 20, 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 space mission in which Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins flew to the moon, and the first two human beings, Armstrong and Aldrin, walked on the moon. Apollo 11 was the most famous of the Apollo missions, but each Apollo mission, those that proceeded it and those that followed it, increased NASA’s technological capabilities and scientific results.
I was a toddler when Apollo 11 launched, but I remember being irritated that all the major networks co-opted my favorite TV programs to show coverage of this historic mission. This would occur for another three-and-a-half years, making me dread turning on the tube and having to watch grainy images of astronauts prancing on the moon. In adulthood, I have become a space junkie. Imagine sitting 363 feet high (higher than the Statue of Liberty) on top of a three-stage Saturn V rocket that has more than 160,000,000 million horsepower and 7.89 million pounds of thrust, moving the crew at more than 6,000 miles per hour or 1.67 miles per second. The Saturn V rocket burned more fuel in a tenth of a second than the total fuel Charles Lindbergh used to cross the Atlantic, and to this day is the most powerful engine that humans have ever built.
I am so proud that of the 12 astronauts who walked on the moon, Ed Mitchell (Artesia) and Harrison Jack Schmitt (Silver City) are from my home state of New Mexico; and Frank Borman, Apollo 8 Commander, eventually settled in Las Cruces, where his son had a car dealership. To me, all the men of the Apollo program, and those that preceded them in the Gemini and Mercury programs, are among the greatest American heroes our nation has ever produced. They risked their lives in a field that was dangerous to put mankind in space and on the moon, without any guarantee that they would return to Earth alive.
Unfortunately, the American public generally grew used to men routinely landing on the moon, and coverage of the moon missions on television routinely lost viewership to acts like the Johnny Mann Singers. Coupled with waning interest, the cost of the program, and the entering of the U.S. into a recession, the federal government halted the Apollo moon missions in 1972 after Apollo 17. It is estimated that the U.S. spent approximately $30 billion on the Apollo program, which is equivalent to $144.3 billion in today’s dollars. This sounds like a lot of money, but according to Paul D. Lowman Jr. on NASA’s website, “It was not enormously expensive relative to the American federal budget of the day. The several sub-programs mentioned cost a total of about $30 billion by the end of Fiscal Year 1975. To allow for inflation, a same-year comparison may help: the FY-75 NASA budget was $3.3 billion, and the FY-75 Food Stamp Program $5.5 billion.”
And what did we get for this money? Research, an understanding of the moon’s formation, more knowledge of the solar system, and a better understanding of the Earth itself. Out of the Apollo programs came the Skylab space station, which spent six years orbiting Earth, allowing scientists to conduct 270 experiments in biomedical and life sciences, and solar astronomy. At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 people and required the support of more than 20,000 industrial firms and universities. The Apollo program is one of the only areas in which the U.S. and Soviet Union cooperated during the Cold War. In 1975, the Apollo spacecraft flew for the last time, carrying out a rendezvous and docking with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft. This cooperative effort was at least one bridge across the political divide of the Cold War - it would appear that this is exactly what we need now.
Today, the quest for space truly has become an international industry. Rocket technology and spacecraft are created all over the world. Space launches are taking in places such as Kazakhstan. Unlike the U.S.-Soviet bilateral competition that dominated the space race in the 60s and 70s, joint ventures between private companies from different countries are now common. The private sector just might beat NASA in again successfully launching humans into deep space flight. And even though NASA’s latest effort, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, is running behind schedule, the agency plans to launch possibly by 2020. It is hoped that the SLS will eventually again take astronauts back to the moon, and maybe even farther to destinations such as Mars. Excitement is being generated by NASA’s InSight lander which landed on Mars last month and is now sending data back to Earth.
A reinvigorated space industry has the promise not just of global trade, but of universal trade and trade across our galaxy. The quest for science, technology, and education that it can spur across the globe is invaluable. It has the potential to entice cooperation among antagonistic nations, while again putting hundreds of thousands of people to work in advanced fields. To paraphrase the words spoken by the last man on the moon, Gene Cernan, “Godspeed the crews of future space missions.”
Jerry Pacheco is Executive Director of the International Business Accelerator, a non-profit trade counseling program of the New Mexico Small Business Development Centers Network, and the President/CEO of the Border Industrial Association. He can be reached at 575-589-2200 or jerry@nmiba.com