Neil Armstrong Man on the Moon Essay
Nowadays the Moon is the most attractive object for human civilization among all space objects visible to the naked eye. In some ancient cults, the Moon as a space object was even more worshiped than the Sun. Many poets devoted their best poems to it, while astronomers believed that it has greatly affected the fate of rulers and even the destinies of whole civilizations. It is hard to argue mystical talks about the Moon and its influence on human life because the Moon was attributed most mysterious properties in the past, but contemporary life is a life of technical progress and the first landing on the Moon has opened new frames of perception of the world and space to many people. It is a truth that people always wanted to set foot on its surface. Fortunately, this dream has acquired visible outlines in the second half of the twentieth century with the beginning of space exploration. Thus, the main aim of the assignment is to analyze the impact of the first landing on the Moon on the development of society in the past and nowadays.
To begin, it is important to note that the first Moon landing was the event that has changed the development of world history forever. This event has happen on July 20, 1969, when two astronauts set foot on the surface of the celestial body – the moon, for the first time. One of them, Neil Armstrong, said a phrase that all people know from school: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” (Kramer, 1997). Surprisingly, even after more than four decades have passed since the first Moon landing, the value of the step-jump of the earthlings to the moon is not comprehended to a full degree. Our culture is not able to accommodate a wide space of new possibilities associated with this step because it has to do its own small step in this direction.
Observing the event from its impact on the American nation in the past, it is good to note that the first Moon landing was a kind of a victory of the United States of America over the whole world in an ideological struggle for world domination. The project of the first Moon landing was really great. For instance, according to Burgess, the mobilization of national resources for the implementation of the first mission to the moon was comparable with the priority programs of wartime (Burgess, 2010). The program was fully provided by many billions of dollars, people and technical firms, and equipment. Thus, the flight on the moon had an enormous influence on modern civilization, which continues even today through the work of computers, satellites, and other technological innovations.
To continue, it is possible to mention a very important fact that the first landing on the Moon was important also due to its demonstration that the human mind can achieve everything a person could imagine. In other words, access to space is similar to access over the limits of the human mind. Thus, this is a victory of the human mind over the existing reality, when impossible things gain their true shape. To explain, the scope of the mind that has the title of “the noosphere” (its essence has been determined by Vernadsky) has overcome earthly limits.
Considering the first Moon landing from the perspectives of contemporary life, it becomes obvious that the cosmic epoch teaches people to respect the planet and use its resources in a more rational way because only such an attitude to the own planet may open the path to parallel worlds and development of contemporary civilization. It seems that the meaning, significance, and implications of access to the space will be eventually understood more deeply in the future than now (Gallentine, 2016). But it is clear even nowadays that space has become a necessity, a general perspective of the future, and there is no way back after the first Moon landing.
Moreover, the application area of human activity is expanding with the development of cosmic technologies and possibilities of space travel. It can be said that access to space is the greatest achievement of mankind, a victory of the human mind over the forces of nature. In the past, all the applications of scientific knowledge and technological advances were limited to terrestrial limits, but then, with the beginning of human space exploration, man began to involve space in the scope of his own practice (Watkins, 2006). As a result, space travel not only opens up the possibility of more in-depth knowledge of the world around us but there is a number of purely practical problems that are of great economic importance, which can be most successfully addressed by space technology.
In conclusion, the first Moon landing, being human access to space, is an important turn in the history of the development of human society. It extends the scope of mind, the scope of the interaction between nature and society. There is no doubt that more and more people will master space in the future, including all the celestial bodies of the Solar System. Human access to space has changed our traditional ideas about the relationship between nature and society because astronautics directly affects the life of our planet today and will effectively help people of different specialties in their work in the nearest future. Thus, the first Moon landing occupies a very special place in a number of scientific and technological achievements of mankind. It marks a fundamentally new relationship between society and the nature of the earth, serving in this case, the scale of the universe.
Works Cited
Burgess, C. Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975. University of Nebraska Press, 2010.
Gallentine, J. Infinity Beckoned: Adventuring Through the Inner Solar System, 1969-1989. University of Nebraska Press, 2016.
Kramer, B. Neil Armstrong: The First Man on the Moon (People to Know). Enslow Publishers, 1997.
Watkins, B. Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes. Praeger, 2006.
