From the Earth to the Moon

Tom Hanks brought From the Earth to the Moon to HBO. I watched it once in junior high, but am taking some time to watch the magnificent series again.

What I was most intrigued by was the public interest in going to the moon. There seemed to be no “real” reason other than curiosity for man to travel beyond his own skies to the moon.  The policy wonks up in Washington seem only interested in beating the Russians.  American leaders were afraid of the loss of morale, so we spent billions and billions of dollars going to the moon, and what did we get?

Well, we got velcro.

Certainly, there are other things we “got” out of this.  Satellite technology, increased understanding of our ecosystems, etc, but all of these things could have been done in the earth’s orbit.  We didn’t need to go the moon to figure many of the things we figured out about space.  All of the patriotic music throughout the movie seems to somehow reinforce these notions.

Looking back on the Cold War makes all that we did so futile.  Sure we won, but what did we really win?  We created enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world, and then the Russians did it too.  We nearly fell into nuclear war, when both Russia and the United States could have worked together.  I know I probably sound utopian, but it just doesn’t make sense, and it makes me wonder what one will say about the “war on terror” 50 years from now.

This is not in any way to denounce the HBO series.  This is the best movie I have ever seen made on the NASA voyages, but it just makes one wonder what might have been different had we not spent billions in a space race…