Apollo 11 and September 11: The Power of Symbols

Twice in my lifetime the world stopped to watch a single event on TV: On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. And on Sept. 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers fell.

There's one ironic connection: Both were the product of metal and fuel, technology in the service of human will. But a specific dissonance is even more striking.

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The Moon Race was, of course, a political battle -- a Cold War artifact of the military and ideological competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. But some consequences of that competition transcend the realpolitik issues of the day.

Twenty years ago, I was given one of the best assignments of my career. I was told to write a story about the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11. I came up with a single question that I posed to people: How was the world different because of that historic footstep two decades before?

My premise was that the answer would be: Not as much as people expected at the time. After all, in the 1960s, the moon landing had been compared to Columbus reaching the "New World." But a couple of decades or so after Columbus made it to Hispaniola, there were already colonies, plans for massive exploration, and the beginnings of huge political and sociological changes back in Europe.

Nothing like that had happened on Earth by 1989 because of the moon landings. (Or by 2009, for that matter.)

Some people I talked to granted my premise. But over and over, I got an answer I had not expected. From the first President Bush, Ralph Nader, Walter Cronkite, civil rights leader C.T. Vivian, and others.

They all talked about the power of an image that we actually first saw in December 1968 during the mission of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to orbit the moon. That was the first time people had ever seen the whole Earth live. It's a view you can't get from a low orbit, a view you can get only by going far enough away and looking back.

The most famous Apollo 8 image of the day – it became a U.S. postage stamp – may have been the one of earthrise in lunar orbit.

What turned that image into a symbol? The Rev. C.T. Vivian knows something about symbols. He had become a human civil rights symbol in 1965, when an Alabama sheriff beat him with a nightstick in front of the world's press during a demonstration in Selma.

That new image of the whole Earth was galvanizing for many people, he said.

"For the first time, I truly believe, humankind saw its interdependence," he told me in 1989. "The more we understand that, we realize there must be changes in our racial attitudes because we must live together, change in our concept of ecology because we realize this is a living planet."

About seven months after Apollo 8 circled the moon, Apollo 11 landed.

Apollo's success offered the earth an inoculation of inspiration summarized in an open-ended question: "If man can go to the moon, why can't we . . . ?"

"It was a good argument," Ralph Nader told me 20 years ago. "It wasn't just metaphorical."

The Space Race was a way for the United States to establish bragging rights without using bullets and client states. But when Armstrong took his "one giant leap," he did not do it in the name of a particular nation.

"That's one small step for (a) man, " he said shortly before 10 p.m. EDT. "One giant leap for mankind." (Watch video from that live, grainy TV broadcast here.)

Yes, he and Buzz Aldrin eventually took their tourist snaps in front of an American flag. But the message on the plaque they left behind on the lunar lander carries a broader message:

HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969 A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND

Jump forward 32 years and a couple of months. The fanatics who smashed those jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the name of Islam rejected the symbolic meaning of the picture of the globe from space. They despised the very idea of Earth unified in diversity. They created an image with a very different symbolic freight – of hate and separation and violence.

That day of terror left behind an infection of fear summarized in its own open-ended question: "If something so awful can happen so easily, then we need to get ready for . . ."

The last manned lunar mission was Apollo 17, in December 1972. I'm not so naïve to think that if we'd kept exploring the moon that we'd now be living in Star Trek's Federation of peace and tolerance.

But what if Muslim and Jewish lunar explorers had been given the chance to sit in their selenian rec room, basking in the earthshine of the long lunar night and discussing the challenges of when to offer daily prayers?

What if children all over the world had been able to look up at the moon for four decades and think "There are people up there, people like me. If they can do that, I could . . ."

Maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe it still could.


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