The documentary Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo, is now available in theatres and on demand. That鈥檚 what a Facebook ad told me as I sat down to type this column.
That鈥檚 quite interesting, since earlier in the day as I folded clothes, I listened to the audio book of A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, by Andrew Chaikin. I鈥檓 still early in the book, and just got through the part where Apollo 8 made mankind鈥檚 first venture to lunar orbit.
This book comes on the heels of Failure Is Not an Option, by Gene Kranz. Kranz was a key member of mission control in the early days of space exploration. In the movie Apollo 13, he鈥檚 played by Ed Harris. He鈥檚 one of the key players featured in Mission Control. It鈥檚 hard not to notice that the people in that documentary are, well, very old.
And as I crawled out of bed this holiday weekend, my son was watching The Martian, the recent sci-fi flick about an astronaut played by Matt Damon being accidentally left on Mars for over a year before being rescued.
Through all of this, I kept thinking to myself that man last set foot on the moon before I was born, and who knows if I will live long enough to see it happen again? All my life, experts have said we were 30 years from visiting Mars. Well over 30 years later, we鈥檙e still likely 30 years away.
In 2011, at the Williston Basin Conference in Regina, I had the privilege of talking to and shaking the hand of Dr. Harrison Schmitt, the only geologist to walk on the moon, and one of only 12 men to do the same. Schmitt was part of Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the moon, and technically the second last man to walk on it. That鈥檚 semantics, really, since it鈥檚 just the order of who scaled the ladder last to get into the lunar module.
As a geology conference, attracting him was quite a score. For me, meeting Schmitt was on par with meeting Donald Trump. Maybe higher, upon reflection. Trump didn鈥檛 walk on the moon.
But along the lines of Kranz being old, the astronauts he helped get to the moon are also old. And of the 12 who actually landed, half are now dead.
One of the things that keeps being mentioned in the books I鈥檝e been listening to was President John F. Kennedy鈥檚 1961 invocation to reach the moon before the end of the decade, not because it was easy, because it was hard. His words were inspirational to, well, everyone, it seems. But once that was accomplished, it seems like things just went downhill, especially the impetus to actually get it done.
The space shuttle program has come and gone, and all the remaining shuttles are now museum pieces.
The new Orion spacecraft, meant to bring Americans (and hopefully a few Canadians) back into space, looks an awful lot like Apollo, except that it鈥檚 over 40 years late. On May 12, NASA announced it intends to launch the Orion in Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), but will be doing so without a crew. Oh, and it now won鈥檛 happen until 2019. The last flight of the space shuttle took place in 2011, but, hey, there鈥檚 no rush here.
Elon Musk keeps trying to land rockets for their eventual re-use. Various ventures are trying to commercialize space travel. Musk wants to send people to Mars, eventually. Given how slow NASA have become, let鈥檚 hope Musk leaves them in the dust.
Here鈥檚 what I don鈥檛 get 鈥� why is this so hard? Compared to what it took to get the Apollo program together, when every mission had to figure out some set of unknowns, we鈥檝e been going to space for a long time now. Most of the unknowns are now known.
There鈥檚 more computing power in my office than in all of NASA in the 1960s. It鈥檚 common to have CNC machining capabilities now in most machine shops. There is so much we can do now that is far beyond what was 鈥渟pace age鈥� back then. So why don鈥檛 we just do it?
The Space Launch System, which carries the Orion, is NASA鈥檚 project to get back in the game. Canada鈥檚 training its newest class of astronauts. Whether any of them will actually fly or not is another story.
I鈥檓 not holding my breath.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
