There are still people who believe the earth is flat and all the evidence against it is a conspiracy.
50 years ago the US has pull off perhaps the greatest feat in human history - for all the wrong reasons. I am not talking about the moon landing itself - that is just the tip of it, and frankly, placing a man on the moon had nealy zero scientific meaning.
First, the feat.
What the US achieved is an awe inspiring demonstration of what happens when all the shackles and restraints come off and scientists and engineers are allowed to go all out bonkers. The goal that president Kennedy has set (man on the moon before the end of the decade) was like Columbus pitching the idea to sail around the world before the invention of sails and ocean navigation. This was completely crazy.
Amazingly it worked! When science was unleashed science-fiction became exact science. When Niel and Buzz were hopping on the moon it was an engineering victory above all else. This is the kind if event that sends ripples through history and across the globe. I forgot which one of them said it, but he said he was amazed when he heard people from other countries saying that “we” did it - as in “mankind”, not just the Yanks.
I can testify to the magnitude of the ripples from this event. Inspite of being born some 4 years sfter the last moon landing, half a world away from the US, in a village with no phone at home and a B&W TV, I was as a child completely fascinated with this. Looking at the moon and being told that people recently walked on it left me wide eyed and open mouthed. Lots of kids wanted to be astronauts back then - but I very early realized that I wated to be the scientist. Life is complicated, but I consider the “Apollo effect” to be a major reason I ended up being a physicist and astronomer in particular.
Now the reasons -
The US did not go to the moon because it cared about science or humanity, or turning some kid in a village into a scientist. It went to the moon to beat the Russians. The Russians went to space to scare the Americans. So in the end, it was all about petty human disputes snd conflicts. It is very unlikely to go this path again any time soon. The ending of the cold war is the worst thing that happened to science. Without it, “progress” today is having emogies on your iPhone that mimic your face - we could have had colonies on Mars by now! But no - we wastesll our creativity and brain power on self indulgence and recreational commodities.
Maybe Elon Musk is the only guy that gets it. That still dream really big, like a 5 years old kid.
We need many many more people like that.
