To the Moon!

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

Did you watch the Moon Landing?

No, not the one in July of 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the Lunar surface (or onto s soundstage in Florida, filmed by Stanley Kubrick, for you “tinfoil hat” types) and made a “giant leap for mankind.”

I’m talking about the one yesterday. Yes, that’s right. While it’s certainly not getting the media attention the oricingal mission did, it’s still pretty cool. No, it’s not a manned flight. We haven’t had one of those since 1972. But it is the virst private venture (as in, not being done by NASA or any other government’s space program) to ever land on the Moon. A venture capital group called Intuitive Machines launched Odysseus a week ago and it entered orbit around the Moon Thursday afternoon around 4 p.m. Again, I found the whole thing very neat.

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To give you an idea of how far we’ve come in terms of technology, the original Moon Landing was broadcast via analog signal into homes around the world, while Thursday’s landing was live streamed on the internet. I watched it on YouTube.

One cool thing about it was that NASA, while not a financial or oversight partner with Intuitive Machines, did give the company a place to launch their expedition and in return they let NASA send a few scientific research items along for the ride.

So, it’s maybe not as big a deal as I’d like it to be. But it might be an important step toward the next “giant leap,” like a base on the Moon or a manned mission to Mars. We don’t really hear a lot about the Space Race these days, and that’s too bad. because we have better resources for that kind of thing than evet before. Of course, it’s not all an exact science either. Today’s Moon Landing was not, at least from what we’ve seen, 100% successful. While the team monitoring Odysseus’s flight was able to confirm the craft landed on the Moon, the transmission signals have not been as successful as hoped, meaning some of the instruments or components may have been damaged in the landing and it might be a while before those issues can be addressed, or they might be permanent. Either way, it’s cool to be back on the Moon.