By David Himmel

There were few times Richard Nixon was right during his time as president. One of those few times was when, while speaking via telephone from the Oval Office to the first two men to set foot on the moon as they were on the moon, he told them that back on earth, the world was united as one. One spectator. One people. One race. One planet.

It’s ironic that it was Nixon who made that phone call. The insane idea to put a man on the moon and return him to earth was President John F. Kennedy’s, the man who derailed Nixon’s political trajectory in 1960 and kicked off a lifetime of hatred for the Kennedy family and a doubling-down of his intense paranoia. The call came from a man with an ever-growing enemies list who had enflamed an already burning decade. A decade that had dredged sociopolitical chasms that would continue to expand and deepen into the twenty-first century. A decade that began in the exact opposite way with so much youthful zest and hope for the future. 1960 wasn’t perfect but 1969 was hell. And Nixon was hellbent on driving the American Experiment right off the cliff for the sake of his own jowly skin.

But fifty years ago — July  20, 1969 — Dick Nixon was right. For the first time in human history, all the people on earth were truly one. We were one with wonder. A human on the moon meant the true beginning of endless possibilities. Gathered around TV sets and radios, the people of earth experienced a scientific feat most of humanity had only dreamt of in fever dreams of madness. For one priceless moment, humanity was rooting for three humans to make the impossible possible. For one priceless moment, humanity was rooting for the same thing: humanity.

We haven’t been that way since. 

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What in the last half century has united the world all at once for the same purpose? What single event has occurred that impacted earth in a positive way that was not for the benefit of one single nation or select group of nations or profit-minded organizations?

 I called my father, who was nineteen when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped foot on the moon. I asked him what it was like for him at that moment.

“I was probably a camp counselor that summer, so no, I didn’t watch it. But the replayed it so many times that I didn’t feel like I missed out. I wasn’t personally concerned about the space race and beating the Russians, but the whole thing was kind of mystical.”

But the mystique quickly wore off. Apollo 12 and 13 launched without much fanfare at all. Can you name a single astronaut aboard Apollo 12 without looking it up? The world only briefly cared about Apollo 13 because it was almost a disaster. And many of us can name those astronauts because they were played by Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton. A human hasn’t stepped foot on the moon since 1972. 

“I expected to see the moon colonized,” Dad says. “I haven’t followed it so I don’t know what experiments they’ve done, but I really thought that they’d be building habitats on the moon. People living on the moon — doing what, I don’t know. But all these scientific things, these science-fiction things we had when we were growing up, that’s what I envisioned.”

The moon landing captured our imagination and fueled our fantasies. With the image of the earthrise taken from the window of Apollo 8 as it orbited the moon, humans were able to look back on themselves as well as to the stars. (The image even caused the flat earth community to rethink its existence. But only for a moment.) When Armstrong made that “giant leap for mankind,” he allowed us the possibility to look beyond the stars. The moon landing was intended to be the first step toward everything else. 

If we ever put a human on Mars, it’ll be a big deal. But not as big a deal as the moon landing because the moon landing proved we could do such a crazy thing. Apollo 11 was The Beatles. Many great bands have come since and influenced music and pop culture in dramatic ways but The Beatles were the first to do it on that scale and to leave that lasting of a tangible legacy.

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My father was born in mid-June 1950, smack dab in the middle of the twentieth century. He’s seen a lot of remarkable moments take place in human history. When asked about it, he shrugs it off. “I’ve seen so much in my lifetime that it just kind of goes with the flow. The moon landing was great but what have you done for me lately?”

Dad proves Nixon’s point. It was “one priceless moment.” And it was brief. NASA couldn’t colonize the moon or put a man on Mars or go beyond because funding was pulled with the loss of public interest. And without a new wow factor, no one would care. Until NASA put a teacher in a shuttle and millions of children gathered around large TV sets in school libraries and gymnasiums to watch the first civilian — a teacher, just like the one who had been showing them how to do long division — go into space. But not before she was vaporized when the Challenger exploded.

That was tragedy. And tragedy might bring people together but it wasn’t enough to pull the world together the way the moonwalk did seventeen years before. And it certainly didn’t instill confidence that civilians would be going to the moon any time soon.

“I will never go to the moon,” Dad says. I doubt you will ever go to the moon. Will your son ever go to the moon? I doubt it, but maybe. The moon landing doesn’t affect my life the way the iPhone has. If I drop my iPhone in the toilet, my day is ruined.”

The iPhone may be the most revolutionary thing to occur in fifty years. It has certainly changed the way we interact with each other, with commerce, with our health. And there would be no iPhone if there had been no Apollo 11. So in that way, my dad is wrong because the moon landing and the amount of technological prowess and savvy required to make it happen gave birth to the computer age.

I asked Dad to list the top five events in his life that he felt most impacted humanity. His response:

“Smaller airplane seats.”

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A lot of remarkable things have happened since July 20, 1969. I am not pining for a past I wasn’t even a part of. But even if all those remarkable things didn’t just fall into the flow of everyday as they did and do for my dad, and so many other everyday earthlings, nothing is as poignant and as full of wonder at every single moment, and for all of humanity as the moon landing. 

The thing is, we don’t need another moon landing moment. We don’t need to be blown away every single day. The moon landing is a part of our collective human history that will always be with us. It showed us that anything is possible. What we need to do is experience the wonderment of the landing and the journey to get Man there. Not to chase the high but to remember two things:

1. How insignificant we are, how, for the most part, menial our lives are day-to-day, and
2. How this planet is ours. All of ours. Together. Without borders and skin colors and religions and political opinions.

The only thing that can change that and prevent that wonder is us — with our myopic view from the surface of the rock we’re trying so desperately to destroy.