Mercury, Gemini and Apollo

The day begins at four o'clock this morning. Its raining and I go to the spare bedroom where my computer is kept and close the window. Brenda tells me not to close all of the windows if rain isn't coming in through them. As a compromise I leave most of the windows open a few inches. When I lie down back in bed six o'clock seems to arrive just a few moments later.

I did some more research on the Apollo space program this morning and the government sites are the best among the group. The amateur sites are full of urban myths and memorabilia. A story about oral sex and Neil Armstrong appeared in the upper twenty five percent of links given to me by the search engine. Maybe this really shouldn't surprise me, because even though the web can be helpful more often than not it sinks to the lowest common denominator.

When I was on the James Joyce mailing list, every so often a plea for help on a term paper would be posted. This post would generate one of two responses. Some were willing to help the student and the others wanted the student to learn by himself what to write. The question as to whether or not the web is truly a reliable source for research depends on a person's point of view. I guess the large libraries online could be trusted, but most of the rest of the information is second hand knowledge. All that I know is that my college was not online when I was there, so this really wasn't an option for me.

Last night I finished reading Moon Shot. It was a nice change of pace from what I usually read. Nonfiction reads much faster for me than fiction. Very seldom does nonfiction try to be experimental with language. Its all very straight forward in my mind. Now I might have to go back to the bookstore and see if I can still get the Buzz Aldrin book.

I'm not sure why the space program is having such an effect on me right now. Its far too late for me to become an astronaut and my ear problems would probably prevent me from being one anyway. Maybe its the drive that these people had two decades ago. Its true that the space program started out as a race between super powers in the heart of the cold war, but it became something far more noble at it grew over the years. At least I like to think that in the end it did manage to transcend some of the thinking that it was us against them.

Many of those that walked on the moon said that being there and looking down at the planet earth puts everything into a whole new perspective. These men have seen the world like no others have ever seen it. Everything that they knew and had experienced was floating before them. It was all so fragile.

The saddest part of the story is that man has not walked on the moon in over twenty years and will not do so again until sometime in the next century. No one else has been given the opportunity to see and experience what these men did. These people really did something that was heroic. Now no one cares. Today the world is content to have sports players as heroes. I, however, prefer an astronaut instead of an over paid athlete.

Maybe I am getting taken in by a small remnant of the idealism of the nineteen sixties. People don't care about the space program as much now. Its become routine and expensive. Of course this sentiment started in the nineteen seventies and brought an end to the Apollo program. I'll be the first to admit that I have trouble keeping current with space program, but the media certainly doesn't help either. Shuttle flights are buried in the back pages of newspapers and very seldom make the televised news. Now they just focus on the failures. The Mir space station would be a good example. Then there are the exceptions like Sojourner on Mars last year.

I just want to say that I think its great that John Glenn is going back into space.

Since I finished the Moon Shot book, I started to read The Stranger by Camus this afternoon at work. Here I go from triumphs in space to inner turmoil.

The other three books currently at my desk are Chance by Joseph Conrad, Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen and Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf. I've read part way through all of them, but have yet to finish one of them.

I apologize for the brevity of the last three entries, but the thrust behind them had dissipated by this afternoon, when I started to compose this one. Well, they can't all be good.