Apollo 11 made us believe we could do anything, but it could hasten our end

This faith in technology has given us a false sense of security.

The Apollo project gave us the astonishing spectacle of a blue marble rising over the sterile surface of the moon. Of course, the moon was already known to be uninhabitable. But being shown something in high-resolution colour photography makes a stronger impression than being told it by the experts. Our planet appeared in the photos as a small, vulnerable object amid surroundings utterly inimical to life. They showed, in a way that no scientific report could, the importance of keeping the Earth habitable, boosting the environmental movement.

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But the moon landings affected many people in precisely the opposite way. No other public project has been such a spectacular success. The aim was so simple and concrete that everyone could immediately grasp it. Kennedy’s commitment to “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth” was made before the US had even put a man into orbit. Yet it was achieved just eight years later – barely half the time it takes nowadays to build a new railway across London. “Top that,” the Americans can easily say. Fifty years on, no one has.

The trouble with spectacular successes is that they breed complacency. The moon landings reinforced the belief that technology will always be able to solve our problems. Everyone knows the saying, “If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can…” All we need is the will to do it. And a lot of money, of course. But not as much as you might think: the entire Apollo programme, over 12 years, cost about £120 billion in today’s money. That’s how much the US spends on its military in 11 weeks (and Britain in three years). If technology can do that, what can it not do?

ALSO READ: 50 yrs of Apollo 11: How geological maps made the moon landings worthwhile

This faith in technology has given us a false sense of security. Every day we hear urgent warnings about antibiotic resistance, soil depletion, deforestation, loss of biodiversity and of course climate change. These imminent catastrophes are the result of our own behaviour. The obvious solution is to change that behaviour: to stop abusing antibiotics, destroying tropical forests, burning fossil fuels, and so on. Yet we don’t.

Part of the reason we don’t is the expectation that technology will save us. If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can develop new antibiotics, replenish the soil and restore the tropical forests. We can stop climate change by building machines to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. (And anyway, we can build walls to keep out the rising seas.) All we need is better politicians.

50 years of Apollo mission: Was Moon landing fake? Here are the facts

Conspiracy theories that claimed that the moon landing was faked and that it was all a Hollywood-like cinematic production shot on Earth have been doing the rounds for decades.

Even fifty years after astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon, there are people who still insist that it never happened and that it was a hoax perpetrated by the US government.

On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 Mission landed two men on the Moon. Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin piloted the lunar module, which detached from the spacecraft and landed on the Moon's surface. Their commander, Neil Armstrong, became the first man on the Moon. He passed away in 2012 at the age of 82.

However, conspiracy theories that claimed that the moon landing was faked and that it was all a Hollywood-like cinematic production shot on Earth have been doing the rounds for decades.

The Associated Press recently listed the most common claims and the counters to them:

1) Claim: In the photos from the Moon, the American flag looks like it's flapping in the wind. That would be impossible because there's no air up on the Moon.

Fact: Instead of letting the American flag droop, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) had decided to use a right-angled rod to keep the flag spread out, Roger Launius, Nasa's former chief historian, told AP. According to the report, Armstrong and Aldrin bent the rod a bit by accident, which made it look like the flag was in motion. Further, Launius told AP, the astronauts were worried the flagpole would fall down after they had twisted it into the ground, so they snapped the photos quickly, capturing the flag as it was still in motion.

ALSO READ: 50th anniversary of Apollo 11: How we came to know a lot about the Moon

2) Claim: No stars can be seen in the background of any photographs as Nasa knew that astronomers would be able to use them to figure out whether the photos were taken on the Earth or the Moon.

Fact: Astronomer Emily Drabek-Maunder, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London, told AP that the shutter speeds on the astronauts' cameras were too fast to capture the stars' faint light.

One small step for a man': Did we mishear Armstrong's first words on Moon?

Armstrong insisted that he actually said, 'That's one small step for a man.' In fact, in the official transcript, Nasa transcribes the quote as 'that's one small step for (a) man'.

Business Standard : On July 20, 1969, an estimated 650 million people watched in suspense as Neil Armstrong descended a ladder towards the surface of the Moon.

As he took his first steps, he uttered words that would be written into history books for generations to come: “That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”

Or at least that’s how the media reported his words.

But Armstrong insisted that he actually said, “That’s one small step for a man.” In fact, in the official transcript of the Moon landing mission, NASA transcribes the quote as “that’s one small step for (a) man.”

As a linguist, I’m fascinated by mistakes between what people say and what people hear.

In fact, I recently conducted a study on ambiguous speech, using Armstrong’s famous quote to try to figure out why and how we successfully understand speech most of the time, but also make the occasional mistake.

Our extraordinary speech-processing abilities

Despite confusion over Armstrong’s words, speakers and listeners have a remarkable ability to agree on what is said and what is heard.

When we talk, we formulate a thought, retrieve words from memory and move our mouths to produce sound. We do this quickly, producing, in English, around five syllables every second.

The process for listeners is equally complex and speedy. We hear sounds, which we separate into speech and non-speech information, combine the speech sounds into words, and determine the meanings of these words. Again, this happens nearly instantaneously, and errors rarely occur.

These processes are even more extraordinary when you think more closely about the properties of speech. Unlike writing, speech doesn’t have spaces between words. When people speak, there are typically very few pauses within a sentence.

Yet listeners have little trouble determining word boundaries in real time. This is because there are little cues – like pitch and rhythm – that indicate when one word stops and the next begins.

50 yrs of moon landing: When the world paused to watch Armstrong's moonwalk

Officially more than 500 million people gathered around their sets to watch him leap from the ladder of Apollo 11's Eagle landing craft and onto the surface of the Sea of Tranquility.

Business Standard : When Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, he became the biggest live television star in history.

Officially more than 500 million people gathered around their sets to watch him leap from the ladder of Apollo 11's Eagle landing craft and onto the surface of the Sea of Tranquility.

But, as AFP reported at the time, that figure was probably an underestimation.

Experts now believe the real number was closer to 700 million, a fifth of the planet's population at the time.

Next month will mark 50 years since Armstrong's famous phrase -- "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" -- was heard around the world.

The moment was the culmination of an unprecedented 31-hour live link-up between NASA and major US TV networks.

Armstrong's first steps onto the lunar landscape on July 21, 1969 were followed second-by-second by viewers across the globe, with the notable exception of China and the old Soviet bloc.

Normal life across the planet stopped for those special moments, AFP reported, with Japan's Emperor Hirohito interrupting a ritual walk with his empress to watch it.

The mission was covered in exhaustive detail over a marathon eight days of broadcasts from the last-minute preparations and the lift-off, to the moonwalk and return to Earth.

Some 3,500 journalists followed events at the Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas.

Joel Banow, who was a director for CBS News at the time, said the sheer scale of the event was mind-boggling.

"It was my job to make the programme as exciting as possible. We spent more than USD 1 million on the production, which was astronomical for a news programme in '69," he told Robert Stone in his documentary "Chasing the Moon".

"Some of the ideas I came up with were inspired by science fiction films I saw as a child," he admitted.

In fact, TV channels competed with each other to come up with the most "space age" sets, with some turning to star sci-fi authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Orson Welles, the director of the radio drama "The War of the Worlds".

Space ethics? Five questions for how we choose to use the moon

There are ethical questions that need to be answered regarding such planetary defence systems.

The Moon has always served as an inspiration for humanity, and there are many potential benefits for further exploration of our planet’s rocky satellite.

But we need to establish guidelines to prevent unethical behaviour on the Moon, particularly regarding the use of natural resources and off-planet labour.

How humans should interact with space and celestial objects is central to the emerging field of space ethics. It’s something I’ve been involved with since 2015, when I taught my first class on consent for the use of celestial objects at Yale University’s Summer Bioethics Institute.

As we prepare to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, here are five things we need to reflect on regarding ethical considerations for various future uses of the Moon.

1) Human settlement on the Moon

Some people believe establishing human settlements on the Moon – and other bodies – may help lessen the environmental burden of overpopulation on Earth. While the practical issues of survival and maintaining communication receive a lot of attention in discussions of Moon settlements, the ethical considerations are often overlooked.

These include whether Moon-based humans would have the same legal and human rights as their counterparts on Earth. Would children born on the Moon even share the citizenship of their parents, or would they be stateless on Earth? And would they have a different physiology to Earth-born humans due to the reduced gravity on the Moon? A new breed of Moonians? Moonlings?

We need to consider the complexities of establishing independent governance of a Moon base to promote the development of a fair society for those living there. The Moon Village Association, a non-governmental organisation, is one body focused on exploring the possibilities of Moon settlement.

2) Mining the Moon

The Moon is already being considered as a mining site, or a base of operations for asteroid mining.

As with all mining projects on Earth, there are concerns about environmental sustainability and whether it is appropriate for mining corporations to profit from the commercialisation of natural resources in space.

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