麻豆传媒

FIFTY years ago, almost to the day, Snoopy nearly made it to the moon. Not the canine wannabe pilot: Snoopy was also the call sign of the Apollo 10 lunar landing module (the service module was Charlie Brown, naturally). On 22 May 1969, in the dry run for the Apollo 11 landing two months later, it transported astronauts Eugene Cernan and Thomas Stafford to .

麻豆传媒鈥榮 attitude at the time was notably sniffy. Putting a man on the moon, we wrote just before that event, required courage, organisation and ingenuity, but was 鈥渁 matter of no greater moment than just peering into the high recesses of the Big Top and there witnessing the most incredible trapeze act ever performed, from the comfort of our ringside armchairs鈥�. The money would be better spent on the world鈥檚 poor, we said.

A half-century on, the Apollo moon programme is often dismissed in similar terms (assuming you don鈥檛 believe it all played out on a film lot in Los Angeles). Neil Armstrong鈥檚 small-yet-giant step of 20 July 1969 was an iconic achievement, but also a costly, dangerous, ideologically driven boondoggle.

Boundless tech optimism of the sort that hailed 鈥渢he space age鈥� had all but burned out by the time of the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster. Those horrific images of the darker side of space certainly seared themselves on my 7-year-old mind.

The moon landing anniversary is a moment to reclaim a little optimism, and recalibrate our attitude towards today鈥檚 space renaissance. Sure, China鈥檚 current desire to make its mark in space is geopolitical muscle flexing, too. US vice-president Mike Pence鈥檚 demand that NASA recreate a totemic moment of US primacy by putting an astronaut on the moon again by 2024 is a logical end point of a 鈥淢ake America Great Again鈥� agenda. As for the billionaire slugfest between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla boss Elon Musk about who has the biggest rocket 鈥� well, its motivation speaks for itself.

Not all of that cynicism is well placed. To leave Earth is still a supreme technological endeavour, albeit not such a trapeze act now as when the Apollo missions were launched on little more computing power than is found inside a smartphone today.

And while national and, increasingly, commercial rivalries will play a part in the second space age, space is one of the few things that truly belongs to all of us. Think of advances such as satellite communications that have bound humanity closer together, or space telescopes that have allowed us to look further into the cosmos.

Space invites us to consider our position as the dominant species on a fragile planet with humility. On 24 December 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts took perhaps the most influential photo ever. 鈥淓arthrise鈥� showed a beautiful blue orb emerging from the moon鈥檚 shadow. It is often credited with kick-starting the environmental movement. Earth-monitoring satellites have since helped expose our effects on the planet鈥檚 climate and ecosystems. To attempt to transcend Earth鈥檚 boundaries is to understand the value of what we have within them 鈥� and how hard we must fight for it.

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Richard Webb is 麻豆传媒鈥榮 executive editor

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