The Eagle Has Landed

They're down; they're safe; they've shown it can be done. The Eagle has landed. There is life on the moon, at last. And space itself seems friendlier. The men who have been out there before—after nine years there are still only 37 of them, plus one woman—have been near-robots, bulky servo-mechanisms slotted into their capsule's machinery. Yet man frisking on the powdery moon is different. Preposterously space-suited, sweating heavily and near middle-aged he may be, but he is no robot.

At every bounding step, by Armstrong and Aldrin, the moon seemed almost to accommodate itself to man. It is not a particularly comfortable place, but it neither impeded the astronauts' landing, nor their departure on the journey back to earth. Dust on its surface did not stick excessively to their feet, their cameras or their windows. The physical toll on them was less than half what had been expected; the visitors did not come anywhere near using up their oxygen and water reserves. The scientific equipment they had brought could be erected and worked; there were interesting, purple rocks to take back to scientific earthmen. Courage of a cold and disciplined kind that few men have ever been called upon to show was rewarded by proof positive of what we could only suspect a week ago: that man, from this day on, can go wheresoever in the universe his mind wills and his ingenuity contrives.

Where will he go next? This is where men come down to earth. In particular the American people may come down with a bump when they discover how little the Apollo pioneers can really do now. The Americans have not spent beyond their means. To get to the moon has cost no more than the equal of nearly 3 per cent of one year's gross national product, spent over a decade, but earth taxpayers will expect more for that than one bag of rocks. They will want their crock of gold. One day they still surely get it, but will their patience hold out while the space engineers spend the next decade consolidating what Armstrong and Aldrin achieved in 27 hours? When new land is struck, behind the explorers come the anonymous toilers to cut the roads and harbours. Space will be no different from earth in this. So it will be a long, expensive and necessarily less exciting slog than the flight of the Eagle. And as the excitement dies and familiarity sets in, the voices that say the money could be better spent on ending wars and poverty on earth must gain converts.

But this argument overlooks the factor in human make-up that sets us apart from the apes. When man became a tool-maker, he ceased to be a monkey. The human race's way of sublimating its highest aspirations has been to build the greatest and grandest artifact that the technology of the time can achieve. Through the pyramids, the parthenons and the temples, built as they were on blood and bones, to the be-spired cathedrals conceived and constructed in ages of great poverty, the line runs unbroken to the launch pad of Apollo. Oddly—or perhaps not so oddly—the churchmen with their unstinting praise of the astronauts have recognised this where the liberally-educated rationalists with their bored carping, and their ill-bred little jokes, have not. Spiralling to the planets expresses something in human nature that relieving poverty, however noble a cause that is, does not. And to the planets, sooner rather than later, man is now certain to go.

If he went tomorrow, it would be American man, with Soviet man at his heels and the rest of the industrialised world nowhere. When Europe drew pride and status from its expensive colonies, the Americans had none; the tables are turned now. While the United States rings July 21st red on its calendar, Europe faces the probability that when the planets are opened up we Europeans will have no part in doing it. The idea, at this late stage, of a European manned space programme is nonsense. The policy that would make more sense would be to approach the United States to see if the Administration will accept some foreign collaboration in the hugely expensive next years of its space programme. If the next American objective is Mars, a sensible Administration may welcome help and participation—especially if this excludes pressure to co-operate with the Russians.

The first space industry, communication satellites, is already on an international basis, with Britain the largest non-American shareholder. The arrangement has worked well, at least for Britain; two of the four newest satellites are being built entirely by British companies. When the Apollo programme involves 20,000 contractors, it ceases to matter how far from the actual launch site their factories are; they could as easily be in Britain as in the United States. If there were a British government with the self-confidence to think of real priorities this would be the time for Mr Wilson to say these things when he meets Mr Nixon on Sunday week. There is an economic fare to be paid for the ride to the Copernicus crater—and to participation in what will dominate men's minds and energies in the next century. There will not be a better chance. There will be no opportunity in this generation that it would cost us more to miss.

From the Archive - Jul 26th 1969
The Economist print edition