Memories of moonshots past - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

The launch of the Artemis II rocket flight to the moon last week brought back memories of the first flight to the moon in 1969.
Jill and I had only been married a few months when the first moonshot took place. We were still living in Toronto at the time and hadn’t yet got enough money to buy a television, so didn’t have the option of watching Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the moon with his memorable quote: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

 

Apparently many others were also short of televisions back then. I remember people being lined up outside the windows of Eaton’s on College Street watching the happenings.

 

That was a historic summer. In the old movie A Walk on the Moon, a bored wife, played by Diane Lane, misses the moonwalk as she makes love to a travelling salesman, then travels to Woodstock for the famous music festival. I only faintly heard about Woodstock, too.

 

So much has changed from those days that it’s hard to believe that time has passed since the first moon walk. When we first moved to our current house in 1975, we could watch about three channels: CKNX Wingham, CFPL London and CKCO Kitchener. Today with satellite we can choose among about 200 channels – either to watch the moonshot or avoid it.

 

The same night that Artemis II launched, we chose to watch the 1995 movie Apollo 13. That’s the true-life story of the 1970 disaster in which an oxygen tank exploded as the mission was 200,000 miles from earth on its way to the moon. The commander, Jim Lovell, played in the movie by Tom Hanks, had to give up his flight to the moon and, with his crew, carefully manoeuvre his disabled craft back to earth. It was so long ago that Lovell was 97 when he died last year.

 

All those early flights were only American affairs, but Artemis II included Canadian Jeremy Hansen  of the Canadian Space Agency. Hansen’s participation made the mission more meaningful for Canadians. Generally, his address is given as London, bringing it closer again to us. I saw a television show that traced his photo to a yearbook from Ingersoll where he went to high school making him even more connected to those living in rural Ontario.

 

The flight is scheduled to touch down on earth today, Friday, all going well.

 

It’s hard to imagine how much has changed since that first landing on the moon 56 years ago. That moon landing was inspired by the late President John F. Kennedy, who, before his assassination in 1963, had committed his country to conquer space, to catch up and pass the Communist Soviet Union, which had put the first man in space. 

 

Today, the space shot had trouble claiming headlines because current president Donald J. Trump is in the midst of an undeclared war in Iran. Meanwhile, he is on friendly terms with Russia despite it siding with Iran and sending fuel to interrupt his isolation of Cuba, while he fights with normal U.S. allies like Canada, Britain and France, threatens to quit NATO and is prepared to absorb Canada.

 

So many other things have changed, too,like the number of TV channels we can watch because we have access to satellite TV through a dish at the back of our property about the size of a platter you served roast turkey on for the Easter holiday. My sister and her husband were among the first to have satellite TV. I remember when they had a six-to-eight-foot satellite dish in those early days.

 

Satellite TV is one of the advantages we have from the exploration of space. Apparently there have been so many satellites sent up that there is danger of collisions with “space junk” from satellites that have outlived their usefulness.

 

One of the things space travel has provided is better weather forecasting. I remember when Johnnie Brent, on CKNX television, or Percy Saltzman on CBC used to draw approaching weather systems on a blackboard. Today, weather forecasters stand in front of a greenboard on which are projected images received from satellites suggesting, almost to the minute, when weather patterns will affect viewers.

 

Television itself has changed. The CKNX television station was always financially vulnerable, but the space age helped “Doc” Cruickshank decide it was time to sell. He sold to CFPL London which in turn was sold to CTV.

 

Newspapers too have changed. First, independent newspapers were sold to small chains like Goderich Signal-Star Publishing, then those chains were sold to huge chains, and the Goderich printing plant, where The Citizen was first printed, was closed down.

 

So much has changed since the first moon-shot. No doubt in future people will be able to point out advances originated by this flight too.