Echoes from Space (PDF)

Wissenschaftliche Studie aus dem Jahr 2003 im Fachbereich Astronomie, Note: keine, , Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Whether Neil Armstrong's "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,"
was inspired by the moment's greatness or the work of a NASA speechwriter, is
secondary. What mattered is that people around the world, riveted to their flickering
black and white TV-sets, instinctively understood that they witnessed more than a
landing on our moon: Humanity's shedding of the shackles of gravity.
Yes, those few words from an astronaut on lunar ground heralded nothing less
than that we, humans, were no longer inseparably bonded to planet Earth. That human
mind had surmounted the barrier that, through the eons of history, towered between our
world and the immensity of the cosmos.
Such was the overture to the "roaring sixties", those decades of scientific
achievements which got us as close as one can get to a regular airline to the moon, and
as fringe benefits, lead to the launch of space-station "Skylab", robotic touchdowns on
Venus and Mars, and close-up photographs by unmanned space probes out to the
boundaries of the solar system.
But then, unseen at first, a shadow fell over the concept of tearing down the
barriers banning us from the immensity of the worlds beyond Earth. All of a sudden,
staggering breakthroughs did little to preserve the spirit of those who, a few years
before, had crowded Cape Canaveral for a glimpse at the launch of the first lunar
rockets, and the billions of people who ecstatically cheered Neil Armstrong's first steps
on lunar ground.
As if a few short years had taught people to silently look the other way as Congress yielded to a few protesting welfare junkies while politics triumphed over
science and money won out over the mind.
Had Armstrong's gigantic step forward lead into an equally gigantic step
backward, as if those in power had tolerated all space efforts for reasons no farther
reaching than to make good on JFK's ten years deadline for beating the Soviets to the
moon? Or should we seek deeper causes for the death of a spirit that, like the once
unstoppable wave of settlers' westwards, had propelled Americans into space?
Something stronger than congressional bickering, a feeling of disappointment, deep
enough to uproot all former enthusiasm for human achievements? A broken promise, a
wish ignored? [...]