Magnificent Desolation
America's Space Legacy
July 20th, 1969 turned out to be an ending rather than a beginning. The Eagle had landed and millions watched around the globe via the magic of television. Armstrong and Aldrin, after narrowly averting a scrubbed landing, touched down at Tranquility Base, suited up, and walked on the Moon. Ten more men would follow, then nothing.
Much has been said about the Moon landing as the culmination of the "race to the Moon" between the United States and the Soviet Union. As such, Apollo 11 was a victory. In Russia, Sergei Korolev's massive N-1 rocket was the vessel intended to get the USSR to the Moon first. Weighing over 2800 tons at launch, it was propelled by forty-two liquid oxygen and kerosene engines. The first test launch, in February 1969, suffered engine failure and a fire and crashed forty-five miles from the launch site. Five months later, on the third of July, the next N-1 exploded after rising 600 feet. The blast destroyed its pad, the adjacent launch pad and the additional N-1 parked on it, as well as most of the ground support equipment. Less than two weeks later, the Saturn V carrying Aldrin, Armstrong, and Collins blasted into the morning skies over the Florida coast. The Soviets would try again in 1971 and 1972 - both rockets exploded within seconds of takeoff. By 1974 the Soviet Lunar program was officially cancelled and its existence remained a state secret until 1989.
Korolev never lived to see any of it, however. His sudden death in 1966 saved him from witnessing the program that he, more than any other, made great dissolve into a grasping parody of itself. Korolev's design genius is evident enough - his Soyuz crafts are still in service in the present Russian space program. China's Shenzhou is a close copy. However, his greatest trimuph was never to occur. It was he who convinced the Soviet Politburo that beating the Americans to the Moon would be a worthwhile venture, and that he could solve the technological challenges of the task.
Nevertheless, without Korolev's launch successes embarassing the United States again and again in the early 1960s, President Kennedy would not likely have pushed for such an ambitious program as Apollo. As such, Korolev indirectly did contribute to man's first landing on another celestial body. As an engineer, perhaps he would have appreciated that, even if the men who landed there didn't do it in a craft he constructed.
Meanwhile, Armstrong and Aldrin (and Collins, orbiting above), joined a historical chain of great explorers. They, and the thousands of engineers, technicians, and scientists that built the Apollo and Saturn V were not followed in subsequent decades by more lunar explorers. However, in fifty or one hundred years, when men have set foot for the first time on Mars - or Pluto; when the first manned ship orbits Jupiter or Saturn - or leaves the Solar System, it will be remembered that it all began with Apollo 11.
20.07.2004 © ljr