Footprints in the Dust

Happy Apollo Day! Forty years ago men from Earth went to the Moon. They "came in peace for all mankind." Eight others followed . . . and then nothing more. Except for a few footprints and instrument packages, the barren dust of the Moon is as undisturbed now as it has been for a billion years.

I suppose, in a weird way, we have Lee Harvey Oswald to thank for the fact that even those few footprints are there at all. Had President Kennedy not been assassinated, the lunar program he inspired might have died some time in the mid-1960s from budget cuts and more politically useful things to spend the money on. But Kennedy died and the space program lived on as his memorial -- until the goal of reaching the Moon was achieved and the program could be scaled down without any inconvenient complaints about betraying JFK's legacy.

When will the next human step onto the Moon? The current NASA plan calls for 2019 -- the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 -- but already there are problems with the Ares rocket, calls for program changes, and the sound of budget cutting knives being sharpened. My personal guess is that the "return to the Moon" will get pushed back, and pushed back, and pushed back, and never actually happen. There will always be some voting bloc more deserving of tax dollars, and the aerospace companies and NASA employees will have to be satisfied with more puttering around in low Earth orbit.

Some time around 2040, perhaps, a spacecraft will set down on the Moon's dusty surface, and human feet will make some new footprints, and a new flag will be hammered into the hard-packed regolith soil. But it won't be the Stars and Stripes.

The future belongs to those who actually go out and build it. Americans have decided not to attend. The future isn't ours anymore.