Midlife Rock Stars?

On this date in 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. The following day, Neil Armstrong and “Buzz’ Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the lunar surface.

I was a kid, so those days were not like any others I had ever known.  It was the first time that I could recall when, it seemed, the world stopped: regularly-scheduled television programs, baseball games and other events were paused, postponed, canceled or rescheduled. There was nothing else on TV because, really, not many people would have wanted to watch anything else.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Aldrin and Armstrong—and Michael Collins, who remained in orbit around the moon and, arguably, was the most important person in Apollo 11’s success— were given a hero’s welcome. I would go as far as to say the that they attained a status in people’s minds that no one else has before or since.

In one sense, they were like rock stars: They seemed larger than life and so many young people wanted to be like them—or, at least, the image they held of those men. And that image includes one of youth: The fame, fortune and glamor of being a rock star seems attainable because some achieve it in their 20s or even earlier: They aren’t much older than siblings, cousins or, in some cases, aunts or uncles. And in one sense, the astronauts seemed young because they were fit and energetic (and, depending on your perspective, handsome) and represented the future.

The image, of course, differs from the reality. Just almost no young person has any idea of just how much hard work it takes to become a successful musical performer, even if you have Jimi Hendrix’s talent, they don’t know how much intensive training someone has to undergo—sometimes at the cost of marriages and other things in life—to become an astronaut.

Oh, and the astronauts weren’t as young as they might have seemed. Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins were born within a few months of each other in 1930. That would have made them nearly 40 by the time of Apollo 11. While that is not old, I think some would say they were middle-aged. Given Armstrong lived to be 82 and Collins to 90–and that Aldrin is 96–they could all be said to have been, literally, in the middle of their lives when they took that historic flight.

Did that make them midlife rock stars?

In Other Worlds, And Ages

Yesterday, on the 50th anniversary the first moonwalk, I wrote about Dr. Rhett Allain's wonderful article on what it would take to ride a bicycle to the moon.

If I live long enough to see all of that technology develop, and eat my vegetables and drink my milk (I do one of those things now!), I just might make it to the Sea of Tranquility.  

Now that I think about it, I wonder whether I'd want to take such a trip.  After all, if I could go to Paris and bump into someone I hadn't seen in twenty years, who knows who (or what) I might encounter in another world:

How Long Would It Take You To Ride To The Moon?

As a teenager, I followed the journey of John Rakowski, who rode his bicycle around the globe.  In all, it took him three years to pedal through every continent except Antarctica.

Up to that time, one other journey so captured my imagination:  the Apollo 11 flight.  Exactly fifty years ago on this date, Neil Armstrong alighted from the space capsule and became the first human to set foot on the moon.

I must say, though, that the moon landing didn't sustain my interest in the same way Rakowski's trip did, mainly because the trip from Cape Canaveral to the lunar surface took only four days, and a few days later, Armstrong and fellow astronauts Buzz Aldrin (who followed in Armstrong's steps) and Michael Collins returned. 

Moreover, you couldn't escape (even if you wanted to) seeing or hearing about Apollo 11:  literally everything else, from Bewitched to ballgames, was pre-empted for moment-by-moment coverage of the event.  It really took no effort to follow the moon mission.  On the other hand, the only news, it seemed, you could get about Rakowski's trip was his serialized accounts in Bicycling!, which came out every month.

I mention him and the astronauts today because of an interesting Wired article.  Rhett Allain is a physicist who can actually explain his work in terms that folks like me can understand.  Heck, he's even entertaining.  But what makes his article so wonderful is that he takes a seemingly idle question (which, I admit, I have pondered) and answers it in a way that makes the process of scientific research comprehensible and fascinating while showing its complexities.

The question is this:  How long would it take to ride a bicycle to the moon?  The short answer is 267 days, but that assumes that the cyclist weighs 75 kg (165 pounds) and puts out the same amount of energy as a Tour de France cyclist would--for 24 hours a day.  He acknowledges that such a combination of factors is impossible, and that other things come into play, such as what sort of cable or other contraption would serve as the rider's route between worlds and a bicycle capable of being ridden on it.

One thing that's great about Dr. Allain's article is that it reveals just how complicated a task it was to land humans on the moon, and why accomplishing it little more than six years after JFK's proclamation was nothing short of miraculous.