Neil Armstrong’s recent death leaves educators with the opportunity to share a number of important life lessons from the Apollo era with our students. The lessons that we can learn from Neil Armstrong and the Apollo team include the importance of teamwork, consensus, compromise and how critical it is that our youth continue to believe in humanity’s accomplishments, potential, ingenuity and will.
Lessons From Neil Armstrong
The End of an Era?
The sad death of Neil Armstrong on August 25th marks not only the passing of a man, but the fading of an era in the history of human progress. The ideals and passions that guided mid-twentieth century America in its drive to marshal its technology to go to the Moon and to educate its young people in science have almost completely dissipated. It’s not clear what, if anything, will replace them; but we—educators in particular—could do much worse than to reignite the spirit of those times and the Apollo Project.
A Team Endeavor
Neil Armstrong was perhaps the best of the Apollo-era astronauts, a modest yet brilliant, courageous and decisive pilot-engineer. Yet he was the first to admit that he, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins did not fly to the Moon on Apollo 11 solely because of their own efforts. They were the three men at the top of a pyramid of 400,000 people, all of whom worked on different aspects of the program, from the spacecraft to the food, but all of whom were determined that “[the mission] won’t fail because of me”.
Coming to a Consensus
However, we should not think that all of these people automatically agreed on the best way to get to the Moon. Early in the Apollo Project, the debate over the best way to land on the Moon lasted well over a year, and was so heated that there was danger of Apollo missing its 1969 lunar landing deadline.
The original proposal was based on ideas that scientists and the public had grown up with; you build a rocket, send it to the Moon, it lands, then takes off and returns to Earth. This was called ‘direct ascent’. Another way to do this would be to launch the Moonship, without fuel, on one rocket, and then have it rendezvous with a fuel tanker launched into orbit by a second rocket. The Moonship would dock with the fuel tanker, transfer the fuel, and then set off for the Moon. This was called “earth-orbit rendezvous [EOR]”. This was popular with engineers like Max Faget, the designer of the Apollo spacecraft, and Wernher von Braun, whose team designed and built the Saturn V moon rocket.
A third alternative was also suggested by an engineer named John Houbolt, based on the idea that naval vessels often don’t go into port themselves, but send a smaller ship instead. Why not carry a smaller spacecraft to land on the Moon, and then leave it behind when the astronauts returned from the Moon to the main spacecraft? This was called lunar-orbit rendezvous [LOR].”
Most scientists and engineers thought that this idea was stupid. Rendezvous at the Moon? What happens if something goes wrong? Faget and von Braun were dead-set against LOR.
The Art of Compromise
However, it soon became clear that direct ascent and EOR were not necessarily feasible. If the pilot sat in the nose of the spacecraft, how would he be able to see behind him, down the length of the rocket, to land on the Moon? All sorts of seating arrangements were designed to allow the pilot-astronaut to see behind him. Some involved mirrors. Others twisted the astronaut into awkward and uncomfortable positions, which is just what is needed to ensure a safe landing. None of them worked.
There was also, in 1961, the problem of landing a large rocket on the Moon. At this time, NASA was having enough trouble launching a large rocket into Earth orbit with an astronaut aboard [it wasn’t until February 1962 that NASA succeeded in launching John Glenn into earth orbit]. If NASA couldn’t get a rocket to launch upward, how successful would it be in getting one to land?
Houbolt saw his chance, and began to promote LOR wherever and whenever he could. The Lunar Module, a spacecraft that was designed to land, not to return home, would solve all of these problems. Eventually, by mid-1962, von Braun and Faget came to agree with Houbolt’s arguments, and changed their minds: they would support LOR. With the decision made, the final design and construction of the Apollo spacecraft could finally begin – a year later than expected.
Scientific Advances Require Team Work and Compromise
The lesson for today in this story is simple: be willing to listen to those who disagree with you—you might learn something. In politics, economics, and in science (especially the issue of climate change and global warming) today, there is a strong tendency to ridicule and demonize opponents in order to silence them, rather than address their arguments with an open mind and accept that they almost certainly have valid points to make. Had von Braun and Faget been unwilling to examine Houbert’s ideas, and change their minds, the Apollo spacecraft might, quite literally, never have gotten off the ground. How many opportunities are we losing to assess and resolve our problems through such willful blindness and intolerance of others’ ideas?
There were many other examples of this type of analysis and decision-making throughout the Apollo Program. Why were these engineers, scientists, and political leaders able to do what today’s equivalent leaders cannot?
Perhaps it has to do with both attitude and confidence.
Progress Depends Upon A Positive Attitude and Confidence in Humanity
What becomes more amazing as Apollo retreats further and further into the past is the difference in attitudes between those days and today. We had a strong sense of confidence in ourselves; we believed that humanity could find solutions to problems, and that those solutions were a matter of imagination, knowledge and perseverance. That was why scientific education was necessary: without knowledge, there would be no way to make things better. There certainly was no sense that humanity is the problem, that human technology is the harbinger of doom, or that we humans are a cancer that the earth would be better off without.
We still advance technologically in a limited fashion: the worst automobile made today is vastly superior in terms of safety and fuel use to the best automobile made in 1969. We see advances in computer and information technology almost daily. But those advances have been built on technology pioneered in the Apollo era; there have been few, if any, major breakthroughs since the 1960s. Is part of the reason for this our changed attitude towards technology and humanity itself?
Apollo Era Lessons For Educators
If so, we are treading a dangerous path. No human civilization has ever been as dependent upon science and technology to survive as 21st century North America is, and it’s hard to think of any other society that takes for granted, and often willfully denigrates, the basis of its very existence. We could take lessons from the Apollo era and once again promote education not only in science and technology, but in learning how to prepare for and cope with change—both often woefully lacking today.
Teach Students To Believe In Humanity’s Accomplishments & Potential
For educators, the legacy of Neil Armstrong and his era is simple: teach students knowledge. Teach them critical thinking skills to use that knowledge. Teach them Voltaire’s most famous epigram—I disagree with every word you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it—and to follow it when working with others.
Perhaps most importantly: teach students to believe in what humanity has accomplished, and what humanity can accomplish. Yes, we have problems, but they can be solved by human ingenuity and will.
But only—only!—if we’re willing to learn from Armstrong and the 400,000 who propelled him to the Moon, believe in ourselves—and try.
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In what ways does your school plan to honour Neil Armstrong and the Apollo team’s legacy? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.
Related:
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Character-building in Education: Helping Children Grow Into Successful, Independent Adults