...and It Wasn't Easy

I, like many people I know, was enchanted with outer space as a child. I dreamed of being an astronaut and braving the horrible, frigid vacuum of space for the sake of science. One of the first stories I ever wrote is entitled "We're Going to the Moon, and it Won't be Easy," a fascinating tale that follow the exploits of my then-best friend, Tim (a stuffed tree frog) and me as we voyage to the moon and are met there by strikingly retro-styled alien life forms, who (obviously) have an ax to grind with human folk. One might say I was not a kid with his head in the clouds, but rather a child with his mind stuck on the Sci Fi Channel. Unlike most people, however, my love of cosmology did not dwindle and fade as I grew to adulthood. I exhausted the University of Oregon's offered astronomy courses. I've spent countless hours watching "The Universe" on the History Channel (now in HD!). Hell, I have even read books by Carl Sagan. As obtuse as all these things may be, in my opinion the strangest thing about all of this behavior is the fact that virtually no one knows about it. In short, I'm a complete closet nerd.

All of this is to serve as only a brief precursor to the short vignette I'd like to share: On Wednesday night I was trying to convince myself to go to the gym - or rather, I was laying on the couch watching Mythbusters thinking that an evening of exercise would be a more astute (yet far less satisfying) way to spend my evening. This particular episode focused on all the ludicrous conspiracy theories posed over the last 40 years that claim NASA never made it to the moon. Test after test categorically debunked the theories, and as they did so I found my self cheering for the side of NASA.

I've come to realize that when someone claims the moon landings were all just an elaborate masquerade, I am personally offended as a member of the human race. Sending Neil and Buzz (and all ten other men) all the way to the moon, and then bringing them back safely is in my opinion the most difficult endeavor and greatest achievement in the history of engineering, mathematics and physics that humans as a species have ever successfully accomplished. On top of that, it speaks volumes at the strength and determination of the human spirit of adventure.

After thousands of years wandering around by the light of the moon and the stars and wondering what was really up in the sky, we were able to go there not even 70 years after the Wright Brothers' first successful airplane flew across the sands of the Carolina coast. To ignore all the evidence or our success and try to cheapen the awe and wonder of what we've actually done as a species is simply insulting. To claim humans have never walked on the moon is beyond simple ignorance, it's to spit in the face of all the brilliant men an women who designed the Saturn V rocket that took us there, a slap to the families who lost loved ones in our attempts to get off the ground, and a sucker punch in the gut to our species as a whole.