YouTube screen grab

YouTube screen grab

YouTube screen grab

YouTube

YouTube screen grab

YouTube screen grab

YouTube screen grab

YouTube screen grab

YouTube screen grab

YouTube screen grab

Chances are that anyone in their 50s or older will remember watching Apollo 11 land on the Moon. And while younger people may not envy your age, many of us sure do wish we had witnessed that bit of history live—human beings landing on, then exploring another world, right before our eyes.

Thanks to documentaries and YouTube, the younger set can experience some of the flavor of the late 1960s today, as well as what the Moon landing meant at the time to America and the world. The zeitgeist of hope and possibility might perhaps best be captured in a CBS News discussion on July 20, 1969—Apollo 11 landing day. Hosted by the inimitable Walter Cronkite, the great newsman interviewed science fiction authors Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein about the implications of NASA's achievement. The program featured a discussion just after the landing, with a second segment following the first moonwalk by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

"Time just stopped for me, I think it stopped for everybody," a 51-year-old Clarke said, describing how it felt to watch the lunar module touch down. "My heart stopped. My breathing stopped."

Cronkite was equally taken aback by what he was witnessing: "I can’t imagine a moment to equal this. The only thing I could imagine is some fellow came forward and could say positively that we were not going to have any more war."

Both Clarke and Heinlein then suggest that such an event might make problems back on Earth seem more trivial and bring the world closer together. While it may not usher in world peace, certainly, it would forever change the planet—and humanity—the authors agreed. Heinlein, then 62, whose novel the Moon is a Harsh Mistress had been published just three years earlier, was especially effusive.

"I think this whole business today has been thought of in too small of terms," he said. "This is the greatest event in all of the history of the human race up until this time. Today is New Year’s Day of Year One. If we don’t change the calendar, historians will do so." By landing on another world, Heinlein asserts, humankind has gone through puberty, confirmation, and a bat mitzvah all at once. "This is the biggest day the human race has ever seen," he adds, "the most important thing since the human race learned to talk."

Colonization

The two science-fiction luminaries envisioned the Apollo landings as the beginning of human colonization of space. Clarke said he foresaw finding new ways of controlling gravity in space once humans were able to study it free of the constraints of Earth. "When we get into space we'll learn how to control it," he said.

Like Clarke, Heinlein envisioned the Moon landings as just the first step. "I think this is the most hopeful thing that has happened," he said. "I don’t know if we’re going to get rid of war… But I do know that your grandchildren, the descendants of all of us, will be in colonies elsewhere, the human race will not die even if we spoil this planet. It’s going to go on and on and on... We’re going to be at Proxima Centauri before you know it. "

With its low gravity, Heinlein envisioned the Moon as a place where humans could grow old in relative comfort. "Certainly before the end of the century we will have hospitals on the Moon for elderly people to enable them to live quite a lot longer because of their tired hearts under one-sixth gravity, and their fragile bones, and so forth," he said.

Cronkite, the sober newsman, was not immune to the optimism. "We’ve got earthbound constraints, but it’s as inevitable now as the tides that are controlled by that Moon upon which men landed upon today," he said. "You can’t stop progress, and this is progress."

Today, some 47 years later, it's rather melancholy-inducing to watch great thinkers wax poetic about the future of humanity in space. Just five more human missions would land on the Moon, and then progress did, in fact, stop. There would be no colonies. No old folks' homes. No one would return to deep space again. Instead of controlling gravity, gravity still controls access to space, and it remains a costly, dangerous trip.

Women in space

Toward the end of the discussion, after Cronkite opines that "school boys" will be taught about Neil Armstrong's first words on the Moon for centuries to come, Heinlein makes a rather refreshing comment—space is not just for men.

"I want to point out that it doesn’t have to be a man at all, and for esprit, and for the continuation of the human race, it is time for us as quickly as possible to get the other half of the human race in on this," he said. "It does not take a man to run a spaceship. It can be done just as well by a woman as it can be done by a man." Indeed, he says, women like Peggy Fleming (an Olympic gold medalist in figure skating) would have saved NASA considerably on weight were they sent instead of "three big men."

After Clarke says he can't imagine a crew of three women instead of three men, Cronkite makes an unfortunate joke about how the women wouldn't be able to decide who should go down to the surface. Heinlein saves the discussion by returning to his point that women were eminently able and "could qualify tomorrow" to become astronauts.

As a final point Clarke opines that women will undoubtedly go into space soon. In fact, he added, "Do you realize the first baby is going to be born off the Earth before the end of this century?" Alas, no.

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