PASCAGOULA -- Since late last week Americans have been gearing up to mark today's 40th anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon, most with excitement, a few with mixed feelings.
The trip was every kid's dream of finding out if the sphere really was made of green cheese.
Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins didn't find cheese, but they did put themselves and the United States into history books throughout the world.
"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," said Armstrong after making that initial step.
Just as she did then, 40 years later Joahan McDole of Gautier wonders what good has come of the moon landing and space exploration in general. She thinks she's outside the norm when it comes to America's excitement over travel to the moon.
"I just remember it was in the middle of the Vietnam War," she said today. "I remember sitting there on the floor and watching it with a group of friends."
McDole was 22 years old when she watched the live broadcast of the lunar landing July 20, 1969, with neighbors at her apartment building. It was a Sunday night and most of America was gathered around their television sets to watch the technological event, sponsored by NASA.
She'd just graduated that year from the University of Southern Mississippi. She later went on to live in Scotland and the Middle East.
"I still wondered, then and now, why do we even want to go to the moon?" McDole said. "I don't see us moving any great mass of people to the moon.
The real estate agent believes the astronauts, engineers and scientists involved in America's space program are people of great minds, but she does not have that kind of interest. Calling herself a realist rather than a visionary, she's more interested in the present.
"It's 40 years later. I have no objection that we do it, but I don't know what it's doing for mankind," said McDole.
The Gautier resident, who is age 62, is not alone in her questioning of the purpose of the space progam and the trips to the moon, which included at least four more moon landings. President John Kennedy declared in 1961 that America would land a man on the moon but the end of the decade.
Several women from The View on the ABC Network have wondered the same thing that has gone through McDole's mind. Elizabeth Hasselbeck said the research by NASA has yield such technological advances as invisible braces, long distance telecommunications, water filters and kidney dialysis.
According to www.wikipedia.org, the Apollo Program was a human spaceflight program undertaken by NASA during the years 1961-1975 with the goal of conducting manned moon landing missions. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced a goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. It was accomplished on July 20, 1969, by the landing of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, with Michael Collins orbiting above during the Apollo 11 mission. Five subsequent Apollo missins also landed astronauts the moon, the last one in 1972. These six Apollo spaceflights are the only times humans have landed on another celestial body. The Apollo program, specifically the lunar landings, is often cited as the greatest technological achievement in human history.
According to www.history.com, which has been featuring space exploration programs today, a number of technological advances have come about, directly and indirectly, because of the trip to the moon. They include laptop computers, Cat scans, news broadcasting, and modern cameras.
All of today, newspaper articles and television, radio and websites have shown pictures, and live broadcasts and videos of the liftoff and landing of Apollo 11 on the moon. The footage comes from the CBS television Network, which originally broadcast the landing live.
The historical footage includes longtime news anchorman Walter Cronkite, who died July 17, three days before the anniversay of an event that was one of the defining moments of his career as a national broadcast reporter. He was 92 and will be buried Thursday, July 23.
Numerous events, ceremonies and talk shows have featured the three original astronauts of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, who are all in their 70s now. Buzz Aldrin would like to see a return to the moon, but Collins wants to go farther, on to Mars.
Interviews with Americans around the country yielded various responses of the moon walk:
"It was the greatest accomplishmnt in the history of the world."
"We are following in the footsteps of our generation."
"If we don't push against the frontier we will be like the Greeks and Romans. We will disappear."
