The Return to the Moon

It has been described as one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century. Thanks to a combination of masterful engineering, the enduring human spirit and a dash of political rivalry, man travelled and walked on the moon.

Amid war in the Far East and racial tension on the home front, President John F. Kennedy announced an ambitious plan to send a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. It was a challenge to Nasa—a gauntlet thrown by Kennedy—to take a man to the moon and to return him safely back to Earth.

President Barack Obama is in a similar situation—two wars abroad, a growing economic crisis at home—and yet he has thrown no gauntlet. Obama's cancellation of President George W. Bush's return-to-the-moon mission has caused considerable ire amongst the scientific community and the men who have walked on the surface of the moon.

The Constellation programme has been cancelled and the Space Shuttle is about to be scrubbed. In its place, the Obama administration has decided on a long-term strategy for man’s return to interstellar space travel. In this strategy, there will be more dependency on private companies and other nations to shoulder American presence in space. At the same time there are plans to adapt lighter versions of the scrubbed launch vehicles.

However, these plans are not concrete. Nothing has been drafted, or papers been passed or signed. The proposal to return to manned spaceflight would start around 2025 and an eventual flight around 2030. The plan also adds six billion dollars for Nasa to invest in younger and eager companies that will assist them into space.

Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk is offering to fly Nasa astronauts into space within three years from now. His price tag of 20 million dollars is a bargain for Nasa which already has to pay 56 million dollars to Russia and almost 300 million dollars if it sends astronauts on its own. Musk’s company represents the generational shift in space flight exploration. People like Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bozos (founder of Amazon.com) are the new generation of space travel, far from the zenith of Nasa’s days of glory.

The response from Nasa’s experts has not been warming. ''It is the demise of American people in space except in someone else's vehicle. This is a catastrophe,'' says Apollo 17 Commander, and last man on the moon, Eugene Cernan. Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell added that, “The whole thing is flawed.'' And Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, responded to the plan in an email to the press that he had ''substantial reservations'' about the Obama plan.

With a volatile economic environment, combined with the American military budget on the rise, space travel and exploration have taken a back seat. The majority of the public are interested in jobs and a safe future for their children, rather than taking more steps on the moon.

Hence, it would make sense for President Obama to take such measures against space travel. At the same time, however, once the Space Shuttle retires and most of the Constellation programme is cancelled, there will also be job cuts at Nasa. In that instance, President Obama told Nasa workers, "The bottom line is, nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space, than I am. But we've got to do it in a smart way."

Man will return to moon and eventually take another giant leap towards Mars. Though Nasa and the astronauts of yesteryear have often romanticised reasons for returning, it is perhaps the sentiments of astronaut William Anders, who on Apollo 8 (man’s first mission to orbit the moon) took the memorable ‘Earthrise’ picture, that convey the need to return the best: "We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth."

A bigger leap for Mankind...

It was part of a challenge and the culmination of a space race. Man’s journey and landing on the moon marked a colossal achievement in the history of mankind — unmatched to this date

On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on another world. His small step became mankind’s giant leap and for that one moment while man was on the moon, the entire world — which was locked in many bitter self-conflicts — looked up towards the heavens as one in complete awe.

It seemed like a simple thing to do for Armstrong to step off the ledge of the lunar module called Eagle. On the contrary, that step was the result of a decade-long effort put in by Nasa and even cost the lives of potential astronauts. It started with a simple speech and a challenge put forth by President John F Kennedy in 1961, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

Although the Apollo missions had already begun, it took 30 missions and five human spaceflights and three lunar space flights, to get man on the moon. From rocket tests, to aborted mission tests, to preparing the astronauts themselves, the effort put in by Nasa and the American government has yet to be matched in recent years of space travel.

Almost 35 years have passed since the last mission to moon, Apollo 17. It was the December 14, 1972, when the last man on the moon, Eugene Cernan last set foot on the lunar surface and no one has ever graced the surface of our only satellite since then. Budget reductions, faltering economies and mishaps brushed Nasa aside from being the once favorite of American governments, as the nation stopped looking to the heavens for bold adventures and looked around for materialistic opportunities, such as wars and other conflicts. But man’s return to the moon has always been inevitable.

Foundations for man’s return to the moon have been laid since 2004, when President George W Bush called for a plan to return manned missions to the Moon by 2020. Mimicking the space race of the 50s and 60s, the US once again faces competition, and this time not just from one nation.

China has developed ambitious plans for exploring the moon and has started the Chang'e programme for lunar exploration. The first successful launch of the Chang'e-1 took place on October 24, 2007. India too has joined the leagues of the lunar challenge, and several unmanned missions begin with Chandrayaan I originally scheduled to launch in February 2008, but now delayed to September 2008. India hopes to expand from robots to humans and have the first Indian on the moon by 2030. Nasa is taking steps further from just manned missions and is already working on deploying a permanent settlement on the moon in the form of an outpost around the lunar poles.

We all know the first words ever spoken when man landed on the moon, but very few of us remember the last words, as spoken by Cernan on that fateful day in December, "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. As I take these last steps from the surface for some time to come, I'd just like to record that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. Godspeed the crew of Apollo Seventeen."

Indeed, the challenge of yesterday, that of the first step that made man leap a giant leap for mankind, has poised man once again towards an even bigger leap — to the future and beyond.