HALF A CENTURY OF NASA
TO IMPROVE LIFE HERE, TO EXTEND LIFE THERE, TO FIND LIFE BEYOND.
It’s NASA’s fifty year anniversary this year. That’s fifty years since Eisenhower decided enough was enough, that America would no longer trail and splutter in the fumes of Russia’s rampant space development, that the nerdy Nation Advisory Committee for Aeronautics would become a government-funded priority. With a mission statement fit for Armaggedon 2 - “To improve life here, to extend life there, to find life beyond” - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was born.
The Russians continued to do everything first: they hit the moon with a man-made object first; they orbited the moon first; the photographed the moon’s furthest side first; they sent a man into space first; they sent a woman into space first. In short, they did most things first, except for actually putting a man on the moon. Someone must have forgotten to chalk that up in the ‘things to do first list’; in 1969, as we well know, the Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin beat them to it.
Since then, NASA has continued to forge ahead. Voyager 1, launched in 1977, continues to beam back images and data as it hops from star to asteroid to moon on its never ending voyage through the unknown. But no one really seems to care that much these days. It’s like we take it for granted. The reality of space exploration hardly compares to the fiction we’re accustomed to seeing at the cinema these days. To many, NASA is just something that’s there, ticking over all the time, yet never really doing anything to grab hold of the public consciousness like those early lunar landings.
But let’s not forget what the people working there have actually done, the unprecedented contribution its people, past and present, have made to humanity in those 50 years of progress (and, inevitably almost, occasional tragedy). As Tony Long wrote recently for WIRED Magazine, “By any measuring stick, the American space program, kick-started by a tiny Russian satellite in 1957, stands as both a towering scientific success and a triumph of the human spirit. We are privileged to be along for the ride.” Here’s to many more years of pushing the limits of human exploration.
(As a side, ever wondered who actually runs NASA? Find out here.)
