This summer, on July 20th, the 40th anniversary of one of mankind’s most memorable achievements passed almost unnoticed amidst a stream of news concerning a world-wide recession, an American health care reform, an unsuccessful settlement freeze in the occupied territories and many other current events. During my summer-internship in Washington DC this year, at the occasion of this 40^th anniversary, I enjoyed many discussions with a friend of mine who is a scientist at the University of Virginia and space-enthusiast. American national media however was far less enthusiastic, allowing much more air-time for the coverage of Michael Jackson’s death than for this significant national anniversary.

For further reading: How the Moon Produces Its Own Water (moondaily.com), Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (spacex.com)

Why was the moon landing of Apollo 11, the “giant leap for mankind”, almost pushed off the air? Perhaps the major news-networks had decided that the citizens of the world had other, more pressing concerns than the bitter-sweet nostalgia attached to an era of American greatness, which many feel had long since faded. Perhaps chief news editors felt that they didn’t want to spoil the cautious optimism that was starting to gain ground in the general public.

Wait a minute, spoil? Why would the commemoration of one of the most significant American achievements in history, paralleled possibly by V-day or the abolition of slavery, spoil the mood of the American public? My guess is that it’s because people always start to ask themselves what we have achieved in space exploration since the moon landing. When one takes a second look at space history, a cold, creeping sensation of frustration sets in. The Apollo program was discontinued by the Nixon administration in 1972, because Nixon had decided that the money was better-spent on an unwinnable war in Vietnam, than on the advancement of human civilization.

Since 1972, Astronauts, Cosmonauts, and more recently Taikonauts are all stuck in low earth orbit (LEO). Don’t even bother asking about “Euronauts”. From a science and engineering point of view, manned spaceflight to other celestial bodies, the nearest one of which is the moon, is orders of magnitude more challenging and complex than “hanging out” in LEO. The American space agency, NASA, accomplished the moon landing only 11 years after launching its first satellite (Voyager 1) into orbit, and only 8 years after shooting its first astronaut (Alan Shepard) into space. The German rocket scientist, and former chief of Nazi-Germany’s ballistic missile program, Wernher von Braun (1912-1977) designed and built the Saturn V rocket for NASA, on top of which the Apollo astronauts rode into space. Not only the Saturn V itself had to be developed from scratch, but also the high-strength low-weight materials of which it was made; the ultra-precision manufacturing techniques and the microcomputers for the guidance system all had to be invented for the purpose. One would imagine, that such a complex monster of a machine, filled with innovative cutting-edge technologies, would suffer from “teething problems”. Saturn V however has never lost a payload in any of its thirteen missions, and it remains the largest and most powerful launch vehicle to this day.

Nowadays, 40 years later, your Ipod has hundreds of times more processing power than the guidance system of Apollo. High-precision manufacturing techniques and high performance materials are routinely used in all kinds of products: cars, windows, computers, your Ipod etc. Despite the broad use and low cost of many of the technologies required for space flight, all we have today is an awfully expensive Space Shuttle that routinely crashes and burns, and cannot transport astronauts safely and any further than LEO. How can that be? If America achieved the “giant leap for mankind” after only 12 years of space activities (NASA was founded in 1957), how can it be that the following forty years didn’t produce any equally impressive results? Has space exploration suddenly become too difficult for humanity? Is it too expensive? Or has someone decided that humanity does not need to develop a space-faring civilization after all?

A part of the answer may lie in the so-called space race, in which America trailed behind the Soviet Union until the moon-landing. The USSR was the first nation to ever launch a satellite (Sputnik 1) into orbit, and also the first to shoot a human (Yuri Gagarin) into space. In a sense, the Soviet achievements are even more impressive than America’s, taking into account that the USSR had been devastated by WWII, in which it had lost 20 million soldiers, also taking into account that it was a very newly industrialized country at the time, and that it only had about half of the US’s population size. Some commentators claim that the generous funding of the Apollo space program (at its peak in the mid-1960s almost 5% of the US federal budget) was only permitted by politicians in order to beat the “communist enemy”. I tend to hold a more nuanced view of the reasons for the funding of the space race, but I concede that  great power competition certainly was an important factor.

Russia, despite the collapse of its former empire, the Soviet Union, still disposes over a cheaper and more reliable crew transport alternative, the Soyuz spacecraft, than the West. Europe does not even possess manned space flight capability, notwithstanding its advanced industrial base, and the necessary financial means, Europe consistently opted for leaving it’s space-flight potential unused.

Not all news is bad news however. China and India each developed their own ambitious national space program. China sent its first Taikonaut into space on Oct. 13th 2003, and the unmanned Indian lunar probe Chandrayaan 1 recently discovered significant traces of water on the lunar surface. Water on the moon may turn out to be a game-changer and make possible the maintenance of a permanently manned lunar base. In the US, meanwhile, Space X a privately held company, develops and manufactures the Falcon spacecraft, a whole new family of launch vehicles designed to increase the reliability and decrease the cost of access to space ultimately by a factor of ten.

This article is the first in a series of articles about space, published at the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.

DAVID KAINRATH