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April 30, 2006
Are We Lost in Space?
“Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon” (in IMAX 3D) is a huge, glitzy, knock-your-socks-off special effects advertisement for the space program. And, boy does it work! As a child of the Sixties who remembers ditching church one evening in 1969 to sit transfixed as Neil Armstrong took his “small step,” I was already an easy mark. But this production would have sealed the deal in any event. It is the right mix of stunning visuals and vision: As the lunar module descends, we the audience stand on the surface, and watch, dodging the dust and rocks blasted our way. And as the Astronauts leap-walk through their chores, we reach out to help them pick up a stone or snap a picture. All the while, Mission Control cheers and chatters in our ear.
The real argument for funding the space program has always resided in the outer reaches of the strictly reasonable. It’s really about poetry—or the poetic exploration of what it means to be human. So when the spiritually earth-bound get you talking Tang and Teflon, you’re dead. This film, however, eschews all that in favor of authorities such as Socrates, Neil Armstrong himself, and a host of children testifying to the human capacity for wonder. Still, isn’t it all too damn expensive? Wasn’t such a grandiose vision of social purpose something that belonged to our (eh, more liberal) grandparents?
As a country, as a people, we can never be more than we imagine ourselves to be. When Kennedy spoke of going to the Moon and “doing the other things,” he was speaking of and to a people who believed their ability to create a better world was nearly infinite. It was the innocence of that belief that took us to the lunar surface over thirty years ago—surely, one of our finest hours. But that belief also has its foolish side. At the same time we were walking on the moon we were also wading through rice paddies, spending lives and billions on a tragic attempt to re-engineer a culture we didn’t understand in the least.
You would think that the proper lesson to be learned from this history is that it’s not resources that restrict us, but the intelligence and care we use to imagine the future we would create. Well, you’d think, anyway. Just for comparison: Iraq: $315 billion (through fiscal '06); NASA yearly budget: approx. $15 billion.
Posted by stevemack at April 30, 2006 10:41 AM
