Forty years ago today Apollo XI landed on the moon. I had spent much of the prior few years working at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory under Doc Draper, a true genius, where I was the one who finalized the star tracker used on this mission and more importantly Apollo XIII.
I had completed my task and we had seen it work on other missions. It was the summer of 1969 and I also had a few other academic duties, since I always did multiple tasks in Cambridge and Boston. Yet the day of the landing I found myself with my son at Mt Auburn Hospital treating a salmonella infection, a true case of dysentery. This was a bit terrifying in a 3 year old. Thus between re-hydration and IVs with antibiotics I missed the moon landing. This was in a way a rather symbolic act having been so close to the very thing. I had placed my equipment in the capsule and had made certain it functioned. My son and his friends had even "tested" the capsule we had at the I Lab. But here I was with reality dealing with an infection.
I did receive many rewards for my participation as shown here. But I never saw it live. I never regretted that because what I was doing was much more a contribution to humanity.
This one was the specific MIT award as well.
But what of Apollo and what good if any did it do. Looking back over 40 years I fear that I am one of perhaps few who believe that id did more harm than good. It took a generation of young technical people and put them in a "space" program, or for many in some military or intelligence program, applying their technical skills to non-economic purposes. At the same time Japan and Germany were tooling up for the 70s. That is when the zoomed by us and the US had to retool again. The Americans are resilient, they survived Nixon, Johnson, Carter and Roosevelt. Thus there is hope.
What Apollo also shops, as a corollary to the above "brain drain" is that large Government programs can take great resources from the productive parts of an economy and place them in Government hands and this results in a loss of international competitiveness. The essence of the current Administration's Stimulus program is a replica of this old program.
One must remember however that no less than two years after Apollo XI, in 1971 ,when I completed my doctoral degrees that there were no jobs, not just a few, but none. MIT had no recruiters show up on campus, no matter what degrees you had, the NY Times had no ads, they always had pages and pages, but in June 1971 they had none, we dropped off the gold standard, wage and price controls were in place, the War in Vietnam still raged, and the economy was worse off that even the great Depression! Sound familiar?
Yes we got rid of Nixon, but Ford and Carter were no gifts from the gods, they continued to set us back. Fortunately Government programs absorbing human talent and economic capital were cut back and people, as is their want, set to work creating new businesses, the entrepreneur did more for the economy and people in general than all Apollo engineers together. It was getting Government out of the way that turned the "Depression" of 1969-1980 around. This is a lesson we should understand and remember, and not the sending of men to the moon.
I had completed my task and we had seen it work on other missions. It was the summer of 1969 and I also had a few other academic duties, since I always did multiple tasks in Cambridge and Boston. Yet the day of the landing I found myself with my son at Mt Auburn Hospital treating a salmonella infection, a true case of dysentery. This was a bit terrifying in a 3 year old. Thus between re-hydration and IVs with antibiotics I missed the moon landing. This was in a way a rather symbolic act having been so close to the very thing. I had placed my equipment in the capsule and had made certain it functioned. My son and his friends had even "tested" the capsule we had at the I Lab. But here I was with reality dealing with an infection.
I did receive many rewards for my participation as shown here. But I never saw it live. I never regretted that because what I was doing was much more a contribution to humanity.
This one was the specific MIT award as well.
But what of Apollo and what good if any did it do. Looking back over 40 years I fear that I am one of perhaps few who believe that id did more harm than good. It took a generation of young technical people and put them in a "space" program, or for many in some military or intelligence program, applying their technical skills to non-economic purposes. At the same time Japan and Germany were tooling up for the 70s. That is when the zoomed by us and the US had to retool again. The Americans are resilient, they survived Nixon, Johnson, Carter and Roosevelt. Thus there is hope.
What Apollo also shops, as a corollary to the above "brain drain" is that large Government programs can take great resources from the productive parts of an economy and place them in Government hands and this results in a loss of international competitiveness. The essence of the current Administration's Stimulus program is a replica of this old program.
One must remember however that no less than two years after Apollo XI, in 1971 ,when I completed my doctoral degrees that there were no jobs, not just a few, but none. MIT had no recruiters show up on campus, no matter what degrees you had, the NY Times had no ads, they always had pages and pages, but in June 1971 they had none, we dropped off the gold standard, wage and price controls were in place, the War in Vietnam still raged, and the economy was worse off that even the great Depression! Sound familiar?
Yes we got rid of Nixon, but Ford and Carter were no gifts from the gods, they continued to set us back. Fortunately Government programs absorbing human talent and economic capital were cut back and people, as is their want, set to work creating new businesses, the entrepreneur did more for the economy and people in general than all Apollo engineers together. It was getting Government out of the way that turned the "Depression" of 1969-1980 around. This is a lesson we should understand and remember, and not the sending of men to the moon.
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