They Promised a Mars Landing in My Lifetime

Alan Shepard, became the first American lifted by rocket into outer space on May 5, 1961.  His spaceship, Freedom 7, built by the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation of St. Louis, was launched at 9:34am EST. It was a 15-minute suborbital flight which carried Shepard to an altitude of 116 miles and to a splashdown point 302 miles down range from Cape Canaveral. 

I remember that day fifty years ago. I was a 4th grader at Red Cedar Elementary School.  Classes were suspended and all the students were brought into the gym. The teachers had televisions set up so all of us could watch that momentous event. I remember the teachers being as excited about the launch as the students.

For those of us who were young, this was the most exciting moment of our lives. For the adults, that day was the day America caught up with the Russian space program. Ninety-nine months later, Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would be standing on the moon. 

The Mercury Program (step one to the moon), of which Shepard’s flight was the first, put six Americans into space. Two-and-a-half months after Shepard, Gus Grissom, rode his spacecraft, Liberty Bell 7, into a second suborbital flight. John Glenn in Friendship 7 was the first American to orbit the Earth (three times) on February 20, 1962. Scott Carpenter also orbited three times in Aurora 7 on May 24, 1962. Wally Schirra orbited six times in Sigma 7 on October 3, 1962. The last American astronaut to solo into space was Gordo Cooper. He orbited the earth twenty-two times in Faith 7 for more than a day. 

I saw every one of those launches on television. Mercury was followed by (step two to the moon) the Gemini Program. Apollo was step three. Actually, I have seen every American manned space launch with the exception of a few space shuttle missions.  Every American alive on July 20, 1969, remembers where they were when Apollo 11 touched down on the moon in the Sea of Tranquility.  Some, like newsman Walter Cronkite, cried with joy. 

Students of that period were inspired by the idea of space travel. By the thousands they went to college to study engineering and other sciences. Boomers were focused on the moon, Mars, and beyond.  The television program “Star Trek” aired September 6, 1966, for the first time. 

On May 16, 2011, I witnessed the last flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour. I wonder how many children took the time to watch. I wonder how many teachers pointed out the importance. In mid-July 2011, Space Shuttle Atlantis is to make the last scheduled American manned space flight, forty-two years after the first moon landing. 

Boomers, the children of the 1950s and 1960s, express angst about the ending of the manned space program. They ask where the promise of a Mars landing in their lifetime has gone. They ask why we have never returned to the moon. We ask what has happened to the spirit of exploration that once defined this country.