Malta and landing on the moon
We went to the moon by Gordon Caruana Dingli, published by Kite Group, 2021
The time had finally come: in Malta it was 4.56am on the morning of July 21, 1969 – in the United States it was still the evening of July 20 – when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong he placed his feet on the face of the moon and described the moment in his most famous phrase “a small step for (a) man – but a giant leap for humanity”.
Edwin Buzz Aldrin followed 20 minutes later. They walked on the Moon for two and a half hours, collecting rock samples and leaving their marks on the surface of the moon, which will last forever, with no wind, rain or any form of weather to destroy them.
This period that defines the history of the human species, which is still recent enough for many people to clearly remember, is described in great detail by Gordon Caruana Dingli in this excellent book published by Kite Group.
Caruana Dingli describes the pivotal moment when more than 500 million viewers worldwide watched on television that night of July 20-21, 1969, as astronauts landed in the South Sea. -Canquility, “in peace for all human beings”.
The landing on the moon marks the end of an unprecedented Soviet-American space war, in the midst of the Cold War, which began with the promise of US President John F. Kennedy on the 25th. May 1961, “to land a person on the moon. before the end of this decade and bring it back to Earth safely ”. This is when NASA found itself inventing space travel as it progressed.
Before it actually happened, many saw it as an impossible endeavor – let’s not forget that Kennedy committed to the United States landing on the moon just three weeks after sending Alan Shepard as their first man in space. It was just over a month after Gagarin established the first acquisition of human spaceflight by the USSR.
The landing of Apollo 11 was the latest morale boost for the American general public – against the Soviets who were the first to reach all milestones in space before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. The USSR launched the first satellite, the first crew, the first person to orbit the Earth, the first woman in space, made the first spacewalk and even secured the first robotic space landing on Earth. Moon, and later even the first landing on another planet with Venus 7 landed on Venus in 1970.
We Went to the Moon is a fitting title for this book as this tremendous achievement is shared with all mankind. The book explains how this journey into the unknown unfolded and who the main protagonists were. It lasted less than a decade, but it was not without its tragedies.
In 1967, the first Apollo mission itself was a major blow to the Americans: all three astronauts were burned to death in a test on the ground in their capsule. The cabin, filled with pure oxygen, was set on fire after a damaged cable emitted an electric spark.
Apollo missions were also extremely expensive, with the total cost of the program approaching $ 152 billion, in US dollars today. This is the equivalent of 25 times the total annual expenditure of the Maltese government budget, which is around € 6 billion. That was the price of the space race with the Soviet Union – without which there would have been no landing of Apollo 11 in 1969.
Caruana Dingli writes about the men who landed on the moon between July 20, 1969, and December 14, 1972. Since then no one has been there. Fifty-two years later, only four of these 12 heroes are still alive: Buzz Aldrin from Apollo 11, David Scott (Apollo 15), Charles Duke (Apollo 16) and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17), a geologist and also a former US. senator that Caruana Dingli welcomed to Malta on a visit in 2009 to give talks to the Maltese public.
This book fills a gap in Maltese popular science literature. Each of the short chapters in this book tells the story of how it happened and the people at the forefront of it.
The second part of the book includes a unique set of memorabilia from famous Maltese personalities, former presidents and prime ministers as well as many others from all walks of life, reliving their childhood experiences in July. 1969 (long before their sleep).
I was amazed to see how these memories lingered in people’s minds – down to the make and model of the television set itself that was used to watch these events unfold.
Partly scientific, a historical part, this book will easily engage readers, even those with little interest in space exploration, in a journey back to the 1960s, as it presents non-isolated events but in the context of their times, both in Malta and abroad.
Nowadays, conspiracy theorists try to make us believe that maybe it was just a hoax, staged in a movie studio. Considering that we only went to the moon six times, almost 50 years ago, we can begin to see the story of these forgotten and rejected heroes. This is a risk that will occur when the memory of the facts is not revived.
Thus, after 52 years, this book is a valuable contribution to reviving the memory of those events that, at that time, aroused many hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
There is no doubt that the lunar landing will continue to inspire today’s space efforts – instead of destroying superpowers, we have rival billionaires like Bezos and Musk. We can discuss at length whether humanity will, or should, return to the Moon, but Apollo 11’s landing on the moon may be remembered as the most significant event of the 20th century.
Alexei Pace gives lectures on astronomy and has served as president of the Astronomical Society of Malta.
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