Michael Stevens: LONELY. http://youtu.be/_QPcclYWOr4
Nixon’s undelivered moon speech: http://watergate.info/1969/07/20/an-undelivered-nixon-speech.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon
In this video, Michael Stevens talks about the United States moon missions, Voyager I, and the human emotion of loneliness. On July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. Meanwhile, orbiting around the moon was Michael Collins; the lesser known of the three astronauts, in the command module waiting to reconnect with the moon walkers later. While he was orbiting the other side of the moon he lost all radio contact with Earth and his fellow astronauts, and he was the farthest a single human has been from another human since the beginning of humanity. For the 48 minutes Michael Collins was orbiting the dark side of the moon, he was quite literally the most lonely a human being has ever been.
On July 18th, 1969 Nixon’s speechwriter prepared a speech for Nixon to read if the moon mission failed and the astronauts were unable to return to earth. It reads;
“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.
They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.
For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”
This speech was never given, as the astronauts landed safely in the pacific ocean on July 24th, effectively ending the space race and fulfilling the words of the late President Kennedy in a speech given before congress in 1961; “before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”.
In the 1960’s, a Grand Tour to study the outer planets was proposed. This prompted NASA to begin work on a mission in the early 1970’s. Voyager I is a 1600 lb space probe launched by NASA on September 5th, 1977. Operating for 36 years, 8 months and 22 days as of 27 May 2014, the spacecraft still continues to receive routine commands and return data. At a distance of about 127.74 AU (1.911×1010 km) from the Earth as of May 8, 2014, it is the farthest human-made object from Earth. Due to three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, the probe will continue to operate some of its functions until 2025.
Attached to Voyager 1’s outer hull is a gold plated disc, speaking in a universal tongue of binary code and physics. The front shows how to play the record with the correct playback speed of video and audio in binary code, and the position of Sol (our sun) in perspective to the direction of 14 pulsars. Contained as information on the record are pictures of scientific interest such as mathematical and physical quantities, the solar system and its planets, DNA, and human anatomy. Contained as audio are recordings representing different human emotions, sounds of nature, and a wide musical selection.
On the golden disc representing the human emotion of Loneliness, is a song by “Blind” Willy Johnson, titled “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground”. There are no words to the song, just humming. Willy Johnson wasn’t blind his whole life, but when he was seven his stepmother threw lye in his face, and he died of malarial fever when his house burned to the ground and he had nowhere else to go. To think that his song is immortalized on a golden disc, floating through the cosmos representing a loneliness for all of humanity is very humbling. I think we took the right step in humbling ourselves before the vast unknown, and I hope we continue to follow this path in our future explorations.
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