{"id":18169,"date":"2012-12-14T10:51:18","date_gmt":"2012-12-14T15:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=18169"},"modified":"2012-12-14T10:51:18","modified_gmt":"2012-12-14T15:51:18","slug":"40-years-ago-today-man-last-walked-on-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/12\/14\/40-years-ago-today-man-last-walked-on-the-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"40 years ago today, man last walked on the moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At <em>sp!ked<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiked-online.com\/index.php\/site\/article\/13174\" target=\"_blank\">Patrick West<\/a> notes an under-observed anniversary:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is a fine testament to NASA\u2019s Apollo programme that of all the world-shaking events in living memory, men landing on the moon is the only one that doesn\u2019t involve death. As Andrew Smith, author of Moon Dust (2006), notes, everyone remembers where they were when John F Kennedy was assassinated, Princess Diana died, or on 9\/11. Most people, if they were alive at the time, also vividly recall when a man first walked on the moon on 20 July 1969.<\/p>\n<p>Few, however, will remember what they were doing when the last man walked on the moon. That was 40 years ago today.<\/p>\n<p>As he fired up the engines of <em>Apollo 17<\/em>\u2018s Lunar Module, Gene Cernan, the last man on the moon, delivered a final message to the world: \u2018America\u2019s challenge has forged man\u2019s destiny of tomorrow. And as we leave the moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return with peace and hope for all mankind.\u2019 On this date, many of us lament that we haven\u2019t gone back to the moon. Others won\u2019t, citing the vast expense of this Cold War sideshow, equivalent to roughly $130 billion in today\u2019s money.<\/p>\n<p>We certainly aren\u2019t likely to return to the moon in such cynical and pessimistic times, of Mayan prophecies, omens of economic stagnation and environmental catastrophe, Frankie Boyle misanthropy and books called <em>Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit?<\/em>. In other words, everything the Apollo programme didn\u2019t represent. America\u2019s race to the moon may have been partly a means of getting one over the Soviets, but it also embodied the spirit of adventure and progress, as encapsulated by Neil Armstrong\u2019s first words from the moon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At sp!ked, Patrick West notes an under-observed anniversary: It is a fine testament to NASA\u2019s Apollo programme that of all the world-shaking events in living memory, men landing on the moon is the only one that doesn\u2019t involve death. As Andrew Smith, author of Moon Dust (2006), notes, everyone remembers where they were when John [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,44,15,13],"tags":[105,108,70,69],"class_list":["post-18169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-space-science","category-technology","category-usa","tag-apollo","tag-coldwar","tag-moon","tag-nasa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4J3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18170,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18169\/revisions\/18170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}