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Moon landing: Obama greets Apollo 11 crew
But the President has nothing to say about future manned flights to the Moon or Mars
To mark the 40th anniversary of man walking on the Moon, President Barack Obama invited the three crew members of Apollo 11 to the Oval Office yesterday and vowed to make the mathematics and science skills that sent Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong (pictured above, left to right) 500,000 miles into space "cool again".
But he was unable to make any promises to the three men about America's future plans for manned space exploration - either back to the Moon, as Armstrong favours, or on to Mars, as Aldrin and Collins have been advocating.
Obama was a seven-year-old living in Hawaii when Armstrong and Aldrin stepped onto the Moon on July 20, 1969. He recalled sitting on his grandfather's shoulders and gazing out to sea when, four days later, the Apollo command module splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean about 900 miles to the south.
"I remember waving American flags and my grandfather telling me that the Apollo mission was an example of how Americans can do anything they put their minds to," Obama told the astronauts, now approaching their 80th birthdays.
In Britain, because of the time difference, the anniversary is today: Armstrong took his first step just before at 3.56 am BST.
Intriguing in retrospect, the newspaper headline writers did not all jump on Armstrong's famous words "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". Instead, the science journalists reporting from Houston seemed more intent on telling readers what the Moon was like.
Hence the New York Times headline was: 'Astronauts land on plain; collect rocks, plant flag' followed by the equally un-catchy sub-heading: 'A powdery surface is closely examined'. This picked up on Armstrong's immediate comments about the surface of the Moon. It was, he told Houston, "like a very fine powder, a very fine grain surface" and it had "a soft beauty all its own, like some desert of the United States".
The Daily Telegraph, which quaintly referred to Armstrong and Aldrin as 'lunarnauts' not astronauts, headlined its report: 'Americans walk on the Moon' with the sub-heading: "It has a soft beauty all its own".
In a sidebar from Houston, the paper reported Armstrong's 'One small step' line, commenting: "These were probably words that will be remembered for ages to comes and be learned by schoolchildren a thousand years from now." ·
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How about a no brainer for the Obama Adminstration. A cheap and cheerful $300m project that will send a low flying satellite into lunar orbit-to take high definition video of the US flag (and the lunar rovers etc) on the moon surface-to be posted live on the internet upon every orbit,every 24 hours (they already have satellites that can read car number plates from space). It would put a lot of mullahs, jihadists and khilafatists out of business and prevent several hundred thousand young men from being sucked into fundamentalism by such dinosaurs. A biggest bang for the buck in the fight with the forces against modernisation and the war on terror. Why,they could even get commercial sponsorship from the shaving blade manufacturers considering the number of mullah dinosaurs who would then have to shave off their beards! The conspiracy theorists will also be grateful as they will then be able to concentrate on 9-11 and Elvis sightings instead! And yes, 40 years on, everyone (not just the conspiracy theorists) wants to know if the flag and lunar rovers are still there ?! Really $300m to extend the product life cycle of America's greatness, its a no brainer.