There are some who ask today why does man go to the moon? Why do we expend these huge funds? Why utilize mankind’s talents and resources in this fashion?
When President Kennedy first said we will land a man on the moon in this decade he quoted the Irish writer Frank O’Connor.
O’Connor used to tell how he and his boyhood friends would make their way across the countryside; and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high to climb, too doubtful to try, too difficult to permit their journey to continue, they took off their caps and tossed them over the wall - and then they had no choice but to follow them!
We tossed our cap over the wall of space and we had no choice but to follow it - to explore all the wonders and treasures that lie on the other side.
It is man’s nature to search for the difficult, to seek the exciting, to reach for exhilaration, to savor the dangerous.
It is both the fear of the unknown and the glory of piercing it that sent the Phoenicians to circumnavigate Africa 2500 years ago.
...That sent an Italian to discover the New World
...That sent a Portuguese to circumnavigate the world for the first time less than 450 years ago
...That sent a Frenchman to build a great canal in the Middle East.
...And that sent a Norwegian to discover the South Pole.
It was the challenge, the danger, the exhilaration, the difficulty and the unknown which sent this craft and the men in it to be the first to circumnavigate the moon.
Space is a challenge to the curiosity, vision and courage of mankind. It intrigues the curiosity, for it may hold the secret of the creation of the universe and of mankind.
It stimulates vision and it expands comprehension of a realm which, since the beginning of time, has largely been left to the vagaries of mystery, superstition and speculation.
But in many ways the success of the Apollo has also given us a new vision, a new hope about man’s place on this earth.
From this spacecraft, for the first time, man has seen earth as a single globe with clouds fusing with the seas, with the seas fusing with the great land masses. No continent, no nation, no people stand out alone. With this spacecraft we have achieved distance. And with distance we have found a new perspective – BORMAN - a beautiful blue jewel the perspective of interdependence, perspective that for the first time has given visual meaning to the words that all members of the family of man are truly dependent on each other.
This may be the most singular achievement of this challenge, this danger, this exhilaration and this piercing of the unknown.
Spacecraft
Spacesuits
Farther apart in space -- Closer we grow in realization that we are all “Brotherhood of Man.”
