Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 7/31/2004

Question
hello... can u tell me about the explorations in the moon?
thanks a lot...

Answer
Hi Raiza,
The space exploration unfortunately was supposed to be a glorious saga of exploration but now with hind sight i think it was nothing but a glorified "rat race"!
You see, it all started by the competition between the superpowers of the cold war "to do something that the other side could not do".
The soviets pipped the Americans by being able to send the first real artificial satellite into earth orbit in the late 50s. (Sputnik).
I used to read jokes that all it did was transmit the soviet gospel back to earth ..like.."the earth is red"!
The embarrassed americans soon rallied and started their Gemini program for astronauts in th earth orbit.
That was followed by John F Kennedy challenging the american establishment to put a man on the moon.
Ofcourse he had vernher von braun on his side as the director of NASA. (He designed the German V2 or A4 rockets that bombarded London all the way from Peenmundee in europe, and had the first inertial guidance systems and liquid fuelled rocket motors..Potassium permanganate and Hydrogen peroxide i think were the ingredients..)
He turned up with the Huge saturn 5 rockets burning kerosene and liquid oxygen!
In all Nasa flew 17 missions I think.
My brother was invited to be part of the group of international students who actually saw the liftoff of appollo 17. And has an envelop signed by Neil Armstrong in his possession somewhere..
For some reason, the program was abandoned soon afterwards.
There are many "conspiracy theories" about this, but to me it appears that American politicians soon realised that it was a case of diminishing returns!
So the program was called off after a few joyrides on the moon! (I am being funny here, but these joy-rides came at a huge cost in terms of great all-round human effort! We must acknowledge that.)
Anyway for lay people, nothing goes waste, in the field of technology! that is the silver lining..the spinoffs from the tehcnologies have helped people design new consumer gadgets, and made our life easier.
Afterall where would we be without the microwave oven that was the spinoff of mass produced radar tubes?
Where would we be had Von braun not made his V2s?
For a complete perspective on the later moon missions, use the site:- http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/frame.html
Jayen