40th Anniversary of moon landing:
Triump of scientific endeavor
USA: The United States today proudly marks the 40th anniversary of
its conquest of the moon, a triumph of scientific endeavor now
remembered at a time when US dominance in space is increasingly
uncertain.
President Barack Obama kicks off a week of events when he meets
Monday at the White House with the crew of the Apollo 11 mission, who
became the first to accomplish the dream of ages and walk on the surface
of the moon.
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," said
astronaut Neil Armstrong as he stepped down from the lunar lander on
July 20, 1969, as an estimated 500 million people on Earth crowded round
televisions and radios.
Four decades ago, at the height of the Cold War, the US achievement
was a huge morale booster to a country mired in the bloody Vietnam war,
ushering in a new sense of confidence and challenging concepts of
science and religion.
"Armstrong is on the moon - Neil Armstrong, 38-year-old American,
standing on the surface of the moon, on this July 20, 19 hundred and
69," intoned US newscaster Walter Cronkite. "Whew, boy," exclaimed
Cronkite, who died this week aged 92. "There he is, there's a foot
coming down the steps. So there's a foot on the moon." But dreams that
one day we might all be able to travel to the stars have been rudely
brought down to earth.
Only 12 men, all Americans, have ever walked on the moon, and the
last to set foot there were in 1972, at the end of the Apollo missions.
Now ambitious plans to put US astronauts back on the moon by 2020 to
establish manned lunar bases for further space exploration to Mars under
the Constellation project are increasingly in doubt.
And other nations such as Russia, China and even India and Japan are
increasingly honing and expanding their own space programs.
"I think we are at an extremely critical juncture as we celebrate
this anniversary because, we at least in the US are in the process of
deciding ... what is the future of humans in space," said John Logsdon,
an expert in aerospace history at the National Air and Space Museum in
Washington.
Washington,Sunday, AFP |