Isn't it sad, because we bought into the coldwar propaganda that this is something extremely valuable? I'm not saying that space exploration isn't worthwhile, I think it is. However, if they were framed as simply very skilled technicians, instead of heroes of a generation, would we feel this bizarre feeling of incongruity about their later lives?
The first humans to walk on another celestial body? I'd say that's a defining moment in human history alongside the discovery of fire, agriculture, metals, oil, plastic, flight, nuclear fission etc.
Just because we haven't fully achieved the potential of sending humans to space yet doesn't make it less of an achievement. Perhaps when we finally colonize space we'll appreciate how pioneering the Apollo program really was, especially as we forced it all through before we were even really ready, technologically.
It’s not really different from the first person standing on the South Pole. At the time we did not have the capability for people to live there making the trip pointless. Now that we have that capacity, we gained nothing from the first explores to make it to the South Pole.
Space exploration is meaningful when the first person is born, grows up, and has a kid on some other celestial body. Whoever that is will be a milestone worth remembering, until that point it’s just flags and video.
> Here are some Apollo specific innovations: microchip, cordless tools, joystick, CAT scans, technology in MRI machines, modern shoe designs, freeze dried food, vacuum sealed packages, dampening material, retro-reflector (detects chemical leaks), water purification, silicon based storage of records, fly-by-wire, ground water cleaning, large fabric roofs used in landmark buildings, anti-tip rafts, insulation blankets, and countless others.
The microchip was invented in the 1950’s well before the Apollo program. Don’t get me wrong space flight is useful. But, going to the moon on it’s own is a tiny step in actually expanding civilization beyond earth.
In that context, the ISS as a long term space structure is a far larger achievement than walking on the moon.
The moon landing itself, that's reasonably fair. However given the overlap with Gemini (many experiments ended up having to be adapted on the fly), Apollo Applications (like ASTP and SkyLab) and subsequent programs that built off of them, there's quite a lot of scientific understanding and secondarily, technological advancement and international cooperation that couldn't have come as easily from sending robots for a lot of that.
But partly I just disagree with the premise that we gained nothing by someone being the first to the South Pole. No one's going to send well-funded and well-equipped professional scientists until it's proven it can be done. The explorers who have to work on figuring out how to get there contribute to those who come after them with more certain paths. It's like saying we gained nothing by having Gemini dock with an Agena. Sure it was mostly a stunt in many respects, but they had to work out all the math and logistics behind rendezvous that made Apollo possible, and that we now use all the time on the ISS.
To rephrase, I'm not saying this isn't a historical milestone. Though since you're leaning quite heavily on this, I'll add that printed word is probably a bigger deal than most of the things you mentioned, even if it doesn't have the ring of space flight or nuclear fission. But, this is not what I meant to discuss.
To come back to my point, the astronauts were singled out and idolized and that didn't have a bearing on reality. If today someone were to muster modern science into an astounding vehicle of marvelous engineering and ambition, and it would require a human technician to operate, and let's say I would be that technician, you wouldn't say that I'm a hero or a person of extreme merit, because I would be just a technician.
Enter framing. If I would operate the device or vehicle on some interesting journey, and I would then go off to shake hands with some politicians, and there was some incentive for the media apparatus to spin this in some simplistic, easily graspable way, they would have everything they needed, and I'd become a vivid symbol of that marvelous flowering of our civilization (or of US, given the Cold War context).
Will you ask the casual observer to grasp the grandiose complexity of what led to this event, or will you just give him a pawn-head in the form of an astronaut and say "idolize him", thus letting him confuse a flashy front-man for the real thing?
They are heros because they risked their lives. There was a serious chance of dying, but they went out there for something that was more of a benefit to other people than it was to them.
That's true, I guess I got carried off with my point and didn't think about what the journey was like for them. Though, it doesn't really retract from my point about misplaced idolization.
It most certainly was not just about cold war propaganda. The dream to reach for the heavens has existed since antiquity. ad astra per aspera, as the saying goes.
