Apollo program was one mission -- accomplished
Dale Davenport
on July 19, 2009 at 7:59 AM, updated September 22, 2009 at 11:58 AM
In an age when we expect government programs to bog down in bureaucracy, and for officials to fib about it, no one should be surprised that some folks think the Apollo 11 moon landing was a hoax. How could the federal government have perfected a spaceship to transport people safely across 240,000 miles of deep space and return them safely to Earth? A 2001 Fox TV network show highlighted the "evidence" some skeptics say they have to support their theory that the $25 billion Apollo program was a giant conspiracy to deceive the world into thinking that U.S. technology was superior to that of the old Soviet Union. The nonbelievers point to photographs they say wouldn't have turned out as they did if they actually had been taken by astronauts on the moon. As if they might know. Some folks always find scientific advancements perplexing, some, somewhere, probably still believing the Earth to be flat. Still, the technological achievement of Apollo 11 was so huge that perhaps we should wonder that there are not more skeptics. For three years, I was one of about two dozen U.S. Navy personnel assigned full-time to coordinate and oversee the recovery of Apollo astronauts and spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean. My job was media relations, though I got to see the technological side of re-entry and recovery closely enough to marvel at its logic and efficiency. The Navy had been recovering space missions for the better part of a decade before I was involved, so the procedure was almost routine. The significance of the mission was what made Apollo recoveries different, including the special precautions necessary for men who had been in an environment brand new to human existence. No one knew what they might bring back with them, besides rocks. In reading through the claims of some moon landing skeptics last week, I was struck by how little credit they gave the Mercury, Gemini and early Apollo missions flown by U.S. astronauts that laid the foundation for Apollo 11. Each of these was a step toward the ultimate goal, each testing a system or procedure that would be part of the larger package of systems and procedures required for a lunar landing. The U.S. space program of the 1960s is a classic example of scientific research, a step-by-step process that builds on its findings. It also is testament to academic discipline, the rigors of mathematics and the undeterred pursuit of solutions. There were failures along the way -- a human certainty -- yet each failure became a vital lesson. Gene Kranz, flight director for the Apollo 13 mission that broke down on its way to the moon, was said to have declared to his staff seeking to rescue the astronauts, "Failure is not an option." When Ed Harris, as Kranz, uttered that line in Ron Howard's 1995 film "Apollo 13," it took me back 26 years to my introduction to spacecraft recovery, when a gruff senior naval aviator who headed our task force, Capt. Robert Tolleson, insisted that we maintain such a policy for everything we did. What set the space program apart for me was the insistence on excellence and the goal of perfection. In the deep-water Navy I had come from, I had seen failures excused or covered up. Now failures were lessons, NOT to be repeated. Preparation was, in essence, a religion. Like athletes, we were always working to improve, even when it seemed we were at the top of our game. It taught me always to have a backup plan and to be prepared for the unexpected. In a 1962 speech at Rice University in Houston, President John F. Kennedy explained his goal of a manned mission to the moon. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things," he said, "not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win." In today's entertainment culture, we pick out individuals to admire and celebrate for their talent and skill on the athletic field or in some other individual pursuit. My best memories of working on six Apollo missions, beginning with Apollo 10, are of no individual heroes, but of ordinary folks working together on a collective goal that still seems to some observers to be beyond the abilities of humans to perform. Maybe that's why I remain optimistic about America's future. Dale Davenport is the former Patriot-News editorial page editor: .
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