Nearly 50 years have passed since Neil Armstrong first set foot on the lunar surface, and it is clear that Apollo 11 will continue to haunt the human imagination for a long time.
Editor's Note: This article is part of a series that recalls the mission of Apollo 11 fifty years later.
Shortly before his death (1963), the author and theorist C. S. Lewis wrote a speculative, imaginary result of the Apollo 11 program: This is just a mission that has just begun to place humans on the moon. In the mouths of the masses, the Apollo program was a pure success, its ambition and success made it go down in history, and its connotations were remarkable, clear, and alluded to us. We went to the moon because landing on the moon was challenging, and the moon was right there waiting for us.
Even America's opponents in the space arms race have embraced this claim. When the first American astronaut flew at the far end of the moon, the Kremlin issued a congratulatory statement: "The United States has transcended the limits of national achievement and reached a new milestone in the exploration of cosmic civilization by mankind."
In Lwies' view, the Apollo program was not a landmark step in human exploration of the universe. He saw this as a moral step backwards. Arriving at the "Silver Planet" by rocket is not only a blasphemy against the goddesses Artemis (symbolizing hunting) and Diana (symbolizing the moon), but also destroying people's infinite reverie of the pearl in the night sky,-- in fact, the land of the moon is uneven, far less sacred than people think. At the same time as the awakening of scientific thought, people's hearts also left an indelible scar. "All the myths, psalms, and love about the moon will be gone forever," Lewis said, "and the man who first landed on the moon stole something from all of us." ”
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, there is one thing worth pondering, and that is the difference between the official narrative given by Apollo and the lewis readings. It is not that one is more convincing than the other, but it is a reminder to resist the temptation of cosmologist rhetoric, even as we discuss exploring the universe. The meaning of Apollo 11 is different for different people. In the atlantic we want to celebrate the anniversary by revealing as much of the meaning of Apollo 11 as possible.
This is necessary. This means, for example, that something that landed on the moon was somehow driven by material attention, succeeding without the help of the former Nazis. What this must mean is that the moon landing was widely publicized as an invasion, both at home and abroad, where the moon stone was distributed. Country after country, casting an effect called the Moonlight, responds to Nilsonism. This must mean something, when 12 humans walked past the moon table, laughing, and even dancing on the moon table, all appearing as white people.
We are certainly not the first to have such thoughts. "I can't afford to pay for medical treatment, but it's all white people on the moon." Black poet Gil Scott-Heron wrote in 1970 that it was only a few months before the Eagle landed on Silent Lake.
Similarly, there are plenty of articles about American heroism and the image of astronauts, not to mention computer programmers. Some documentaries, Apollo 11, highlight joann Morgan, the lonely woman in NASA's mission-controlled monoculture of high modernism. The popular pink lipstick stood out from the short sleeves and short hair of the white shirt, and in a sense she seemed to be a visitor from the future.
Morgan spoke with Marina Koren, a space writer for Atlantic, about one of several of the works that will give people the experience of landing on the moon. On launch day, we will publish an excerpt from Norman Mailer's literary work on Apollo 11, Fire on the Moon. Like Lewis, Mailer harbored mental suspicions about Apollo, but the rocket engines kept him in awe.
"Two orange flames burst out from the base of the rocket like elves," he wrote of saturn V, "white like a ghost, white like Melville's beluga whale ... The slender, angelic and mysterious stage ship rose silently from the embodiment of the flames and began to rise slowly into the sky. ...... Then, here it comes... The deafening barking of a thousand machine guns sounded at once... The thunderous whispers of The Flame Niagara... A apocalyptic fury. ”
We will follow the spacecraft out of the atmosphere into lunar orbit, where we can hear the voice of Michael Collins, one of the three Apollo 11 astronauts who is often forgotten. After Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were sent to the lunar surface, he spun around the moon alone in a narrow bubble for a day, when he was the loneliest man in the universe. In their aging days, they face a new kind of loneliness due to their unique experiences. We would think, what would it mean if Earth didn't land on the moon again?
We will see the moon landing as an engineering feat, a feat that has forever changed the vocabulary, metaphors and stories of technology. The moon landing can also be interpreted as a major news event, and in terms of its scale as a spectacle in the television broadcast world, television broadcasts about the Apollo moon landing program can only be compared with 9/11. And what does it mean to have an enduring conspiracy theory that both the Apollo program and 9/11 inspired?
Of course, the conspiracy itself is a myth, and he takes us back to C. S. Lewis and his misconception: the Apollo program would make the moon lose its magic. If anything, Apollo restored the moon's magic. Science has slowly erased the supernatural phenomena of the silvery planet, depicting her barren, numb face in more and more detail. Whatever your vision of the future, humanity's visit brought a new destiny to the moon.
If you think our species will one day venture into stars, the moon will be the first stepping stone on the cosmic journey. If you think that the stars are xxx and the earth is our only home, then the moon becomes a habitat from which it is possible to gaze at the blue planet, receiving all the ecologically extracted wisdom in a single aesthetic experience. If Apollo was a new Tower of Babel, it would be a myth that there would be extreme arrogance before it collapsed. You can see its story passed down through any broken culture, as we return to a bleak, pre-civilized state, a new Icarus fable where the moon stands under the sun. Whatever our fate, the moon landing is likely to haunt the human imagination for a long time, and its meaning is always complex and changeable.
Resources
1. WJ Encyclopedia
2. Astronomical terms
3. ROSS ANDERSEN- Ross ANDERSEN-
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