“No barrier is too high for mortals;
In our foolhardiness we try
To escalade the very sky.
Still we presumptuously aspire,
And still with unabated fire
Jove hurls his thunderbolts of fire.”—Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), The Odes of Horace, translated by James Michie (1987)
The Roman poet Horace (65-8 BC) would not have glimpsed kindred spirits in the Apollo 11 crew that journeyed to the moon on July 20, 1969. Where they were physically fit, he cheerfully admitted to being chubby; where they had ventured far from home, he was content to live on his farm; where they were willing to risk their lives in a vulnerable capsule dwarfed by the immense universe they were penetrating, he was careful to avoid even the suspicion of offending his patron, the Emperor Augustus.
In “One Giant Leap to Nowhere,” a New York Times op-ed yesterday about declining interest in space following the lunar mission, Right Stuff author Tom Wolfe alludes to the “Promethean” nature of the voyage undertaken by astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. The Promethean myth is also at the center of Horace’s concern here.
I’m not sure how the ancient Romans or Greeks could have even begun to surmount the bounds of earth. But the Romans, practical engineers par excellence, did have the kind of interest in arenas, infrastructure, and defenses against enemies that underlay America at mid-century. Maybe Horace’s verses here represented a veiled warning to his countrymen on the perils of such impulses.
John F. Kennedy’s bold statement in 1961 that America would put a man on the moon within the decade required eight years and an expenditure of $25 billion. Such a venture today, in a country financially hard-pressed, would be absolutely inconceivable.
In 1978, historian Michael Hart wrote a book called The Hundred: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History. He put JFK on the list (#81) solely because the President fired up Americans’ interest in going to the moon.
Ironically, however, we know now that Kennedy, as rational and cautious a man (in his policies, anyway) as any who ever occupied the White House, was not interested in the scientific aspects of space, according to Craig Nelson’s new history, Rocket Men. He came to his full-throated advocacy of the cause at least partly for the same reason that he did the civil-rights movement: because of its link to the Cold War.
Increasingly as his administration went on, Kennedy grasped the complications of persuading newly decolonized nations to join “the long twilight struggle” against the Soviet Union when America allowed a substantial amount of its residents to live without the rights they deserved.
Similarly, as he assumed office, even while listened to the best scientific minds in the country, he did not find anything intrinsically valuable about exploring the stars. But he became convinced that, by losing the “space race,” the Third World would wonder if America really enjoyed the superiority it claimed over the Soviet bloc.
Ironically, the man who persuaded the President about the necessity of the space program was his Vice-President, Lyndon Johnson. I wrote “ironically” for a couple of reasons:
* If the President’s brother Bobby had had his way, Johnson would not have been able to catch JFK’s ear on even this matter, but would have been entirely consigned to attending funerals for world leaders.
In our foolhardiness we try
To escalade the very sky.
Still we presumptuously aspire,
And still with unabated fire
Jove hurls his thunderbolts of fire.”—Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), The Odes of Horace, translated by James Michie (1987)
The Roman poet Horace (65-8 BC) would not have glimpsed kindred spirits in the Apollo 11 crew that journeyed to the moon on July 20, 1969. Where they were physically fit, he cheerfully admitted to being chubby; where they had ventured far from home, he was content to live on his farm; where they were willing to risk their lives in a vulnerable capsule dwarfed by the immense universe they were penetrating, he was careful to avoid even the suspicion of offending his patron, the Emperor Augustus.
In “One Giant Leap to Nowhere,” a New York Times op-ed yesterday about declining interest in space following the lunar mission, Right Stuff author Tom Wolfe alludes to the “Promethean” nature of the voyage undertaken by astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. The Promethean myth is also at the center of Horace’s concern here.
I’m not sure how the ancient Romans or Greeks could have even begun to surmount the bounds of earth. But the Romans, practical engineers par excellence, did have the kind of interest in arenas, infrastructure, and defenses against enemies that underlay America at mid-century. Maybe Horace’s verses here represented a veiled warning to his countrymen on the perils of such impulses.
John F. Kennedy’s bold statement in 1961 that America would put a man on the moon within the decade required eight years and an expenditure of $25 billion. Such a venture today, in a country financially hard-pressed, would be absolutely inconceivable.
In 1978, historian Michael Hart wrote a book called The Hundred: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History. He put JFK on the list (#81) solely because the President fired up Americans’ interest in going to the moon.
Ironically, however, we know now that Kennedy, as rational and cautious a man (in his policies, anyway) as any who ever occupied the White House, was not interested in the scientific aspects of space, according to Craig Nelson’s new history, Rocket Men. He came to his full-throated advocacy of the cause at least partly for the same reason that he did the civil-rights movement: because of its link to the Cold War.
Increasingly as his administration went on, Kennedy grasped the complications of persuading newly decolonized nations to join “the long twilight struggle” against the Soviet Union when America allowed a substantial amount of its residents to live without the rights they deserved.
Similarly, as he assumed office, even while listened to the best scientific minds in the country, he did not find anything intrinsically valuable about exploring the stars. But he became convinced that, by losing the “space race,” the Third World would wonder if America really enjoyed the superiority it claimed over the Soviet bloc.
Ironically, the man who persuaded the President about the necessity of the space program was his Vice-President, Lyndon Johnson. I wrote “ironically” for a couple of reasons:
* If the President’s brother Bobby had had his way, Johnson would not have been able to catch JFK’s ear on even this matter, but would have been entirely consigned to attending funerals for world leaders.
* When LBJ became president, he could have diminished funds for the space program. Instead, he maintained them at full strength.
* In both the book and film adaptation of The Right Stuff, LBJ comes across as a hysterically egocentric politico—someone who tells associates that the Russians “have our peckers in their pockets” and who fumes in his limo as shy astronaut wife Annie Glenn refuses to admit him, his entourage and his media circus into her home—rather than as a shrewd, forceful and effective proponent of the space program.
While we commemorate the space program today, a few other points:
* I’ve always been fascinated by autographs and their historical and financial value. Since 1994, Neil Armstrong’s, according to a Boston Globe article last week, has risen to the point where his signature is now the most sought-after by a living human being. The former astronaut spurred this upsurge because, after 1994, he stopped signing autographs out of concern over forgeries.
* Armstrong’s hometown is Wapakoneta, Ohio, which now maintains in his honor the Armstrong Air and Space Museum. I myself had occasion to visit this site on my passage through the town more than 20 years ago, when another resident married my oldest brother. I’m sure that Armstrong regarded his lunar mission as the great adventure of his life, but for sheer daring I doubt it can match my sister-in-law’s decision to become a part of our family.
* Perhaps as good a reason as any to journey back to the stars—not just to the moon, but to Mars, the next logical destination—is not what it teaches about other heavenly bodies but about what it shows about the beauty and fragility of our own planet. The image accompanying today’s post shows, from the lunar surface, the "earthrise." Breathtaking, right? A similar picture taken during the Apollo 8 mission gave tremendous impetus to the environmental movement, according to an NPR story. It can’t hurt to have another such reminder today.
The fear that Horace expressed in his poem concerned the tendency toward hubris, the belief that human beings can solve all things, that the laws of nature and history don’t apply, or at least that they can be bent to our will. The Vietnam War—a conflict catastrophically widened by a liberal Democratic administration—was an example of how ignoring limits courts catastrophe. The lunar landing—a triumph of ingenuity and daring conducted under the same administration—likewise sought to surmount limits.
Perhaps the American mission in space succeeded in the 1960s because, virtually every step of the way, we wanted to know every possible danger so we would not be unprepared, alone and in the vast darkness of space.
After all, it sometimes gets lost, in the triumphalistic narratives and commentaries of the past week commemorating this epochal event, that the moon looked, according to Apollo 11 pilot Collins, like a “withered, sun-seared peach pit.” "There is no comfort to it," the atronaut continued; "it is too stark and barren; its invitation is monotonous and meant for geologists only.”
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