Back in the Day… 7 December 2011

The Blue Marble

On 7 December 1972, the final Apollo moon mission was launched. Apollo 17 took to the stars at 5:33am, flown by Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt and Ronald Evans, with Cernan and Schmitt becoming the last two men (to date) to walk upon the lunar surface. I’ve written before on how a part of me wishes I’d been around to watch a grainy black and white TV as Apollo 11 made history; nowadays I hope against hope that, as a species, we can achieve something just as epic – a manned trip to Mars?

Apollo 17 was also responsible for one of the most iconic images of the 20th century, the Blue Marble photograph. When you look at the Earth from space, it gives a different perspective – all our hopes, fears and conflicts hang there quietly in space. I hope we go back there some day.

Zambia vs the Martians: The Strange Story of a Forgotten Space Programme

In celebration of Zambia’s Independence Day, here’s a post I wrote a while back about one of the strangest space programmes in history…

 

Ahh, thank you Library Angel. I was only thinking yesterday that I haven’t written a Historical Randomness post for ages; this morning I update my iPod’s news feeds (because I don’t do anything as predictable as listen to music on my iPod) and there, on Discovery’s feed is the most historically random story I’ve come across in a long time. Because, ladies and gentlemen, Zambia was once about to launch a manned mission to Mars.

Well, when I say “Zambia”, I mean “a Zambian science teacher”, and when I say “about to”, I mean “was never going to”. It seems a bit churlish to point this out, because it’s such a cool story, but this isn’t a story about a great, lost technological advancement buried in the West’s ignorance of African history, this is the story of an enthusiastic amateur, two cats and a bunch of horny potential astronauts.

The background: in 1962, African nationalist parties won Rhodesia’s elections and voted for the secession of Northern Rhodesia; two years later, on 24 October 1964, the Republic of Zambia was born. Cue much celebration, but all this partying was, for one new Zambian, a distraction from the country’s real priority – Edward Makuka Nkoloso was going to get a spacecraft to Mars by 1965, dammit. Even Time magazine noted this ambition in their coverage of the independence celebrations.

This was the sixties, of course, and space was the new frontier – Stephen King has written of a childhood memory of how the adults around him freaked out at the news that Russia had launched Sputnik, and Wernher von Braun was now using the technology used by the Nazis to bomb London in the service of America’s own Saturn programme. In 1962, JFK delivered a speech at Rice Stadium, Texas, pledging to carry out a successful round trip to the Moon by the end of the decade. It was the start of the Space Race between the USA and the Soviet Union, but in Nkoloso’s mind they were also rans, trying to steal his own secrets of space travel for their own ends. After all, they just wanted to carry out small potatoes projects like getting to the Moon by 1970; he had the far more ambitious target of landing a crew on Mars by 1965 (he outlined his aims in this editorial).

Nkoloso was a school science teacher in a country where just 0.002% of the population had a degree. Establishing a secret HQ outside the capital Lusaka, Nkoloso’s space pioneers were 11 men, one 16-year old girl, a Christian missionary and two cats. Trained by swinging off ropes, rolling down hills in oil drums and walking on their hands (and yes, footage of this has made it to Youtube, albeit complete with slappable presenters), the project was derailled by the fact that the men were more interested in copping off with the girl, and things kinda fell apart when she left the project after getting pregnant.

Despite the space programme still being in its relative post-war infancy, the idea of getting to Mars wasn’t all that out-there. The aforementioned von Braun had become the chief populiser of space exploration and in 1952 he published The Mars Project, outling his ideas for a manned mission to the red planet. Remember, this is Mars we’re talking about, and the idea that it might be inhabited has long maintained a hold on the imagination, at least since Percival Lowell popularised the idea in the 1890s that Mars was covered in artificial canals (an extension of astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli’s view that the planet was covered in channels, as opposed to canals built by Martians – blame translation from the Italian). Science fiction also built on the idea that we could be invaded by our nearest astronomical neighbour – the variois tellings of The War of the Worlds is probably the best example of this.

Nkoloso went along with the life on Mars theory, believing it to be inhabited by a primative culture – hence the inclusion of a missionary in his crew, although they vowed not to force Christianity on the natives (it’s interesting to put this approach to First Contact in the context of a country that had only just emerged from colonial rule by Britain – the colonised looking to become the colonisers, maybe, whilst not making the mistakes of the past? It’s not like HG Wells didn’t draw a link between his Martian invasion and European imperialism).

At any rate, the Zambian space programme (which, I should add, wasn’t sanctioned by the government, unsurprisingly) never took off; UNESCO wasn’t keen to stump up the £7 million worth of funding Nkoloso requested from them (although it would have been a bargain compared to the Apollo programme’s $25.4 billion); they were more interested in setting up CERN (the organisation responsible for the World Wide Web and the Large Hadron Collider) and moving the Abu Simbel temple to prevent it from being flooded by the Nile). The project, such as it was, died a death and Nkoloso went on to become president of the Ndola Ex-Servicemen’s Association.

It would be easy to laugh at the whole thing, and it is faintly farcical (although it would make a fantastic film, and someone should look into it – Film Zambia?), but perhaps it’s an example of the potency of two Big Ideas – this article links it to the power space exploration has over the human imagination, and I think there’s definitely something in that, but I guess there’s also something attractive about the opportunity for the little guy, however deluded, to stand up to the big dogs, even in the shadow of colonialism and Cold War superpower posturing. After all, the US may be the only country to have sent someone to a neighbouring celestial body, but Nkoloso shows us we don’t have to believe they’re the only ones who can do it.

So when the first Zambian makes it into space, he or she should spare a thought for Edward Nkoloso and his visions of Mars. The universe is vaster than we make it, and there’s always room for bigger dreams.

Historical Randomness #13: Zambia vs the Martians

Ahh, thank you Library Angel. I was only thinking yesterday that I haven’t written a Historical Randomness post for ages; this morning I update my iPod’s news feeds (because I don’t do anything as predictable as listen to music on my iPod) and there, on Discovery’s feed is the most historically random story I’ve come across in a long time. Because, ladies and gentlemen, Zambia was once about to launch a manned mission to Mars.

Well, when I say “Zambia”, I mean “a Zambian science teacher”, and when I say “about to”, I mean “was never going to”. It seems a bit churlish to point this out, because it’s such a cool story, but this isn’t a story about a great, lost technological advancement buried in the West’s ignorance of African history, this is the story of an enthusiastic amateur, two cats and a bunch of horny potential astronauts.

The background: in 1962, African nationalist parties won Rhodesia’s elections and voted for the secession of Northern Rhodesia; two years later, on 24 October 1964, the Republic of Zambia was born. Cue much celebration, but all this partying was, for one new Zambian, a distraction from the country’s real priority – Edward Makuka Nkoloso was going to get a spacecraft to Mars by 1965, dammit. Even Time magazine noted this ambition in their coverage of the independence celebrations.

This was the sixties, of course, and space was the new frontier – Stephen King has written of a childhood memory of how the adults around him freaked out at the news that Russia had launched Sputnik, and Wernher von Braun was now using the technology used by the Nazis to bomb London in the service of America’s own Saturn programme. In 1962, JFK delivered a speech at Rice Stadium, Texas, pledging to carry out a successful round trip to the Moon by the end of the decade. It was the start of the Space Race between the USA and the Soviet Union, but in Nkoloso’s mind they were also rans, trying to steal his own secrets of space travel for their own ends. After all, they just wanted to carry out small potatoes projects like getting to the Moon by 1970; he had the far more ambitious target of landing a crew on Mars by 1965 (he outlined his aims in this editorial).

Nkoloso was a school science teacher in a country where just 0.002% of the population had a degree. Establishing a secret HQ outside the capital Lusaka, Nkoloso’s space pioneers were 11 men, one 16-year old girl, a Christian missionary and two cats. Trained by swinging off ropes, rolling down hills in oil drums and walking on their hands (and yes, footage of this has made it to Youtube, albeit complete with slappable presenters), the project was derailled by the fact that the men were more interested in copping off with the girl, and things kinda fell apart when she left the project after getting pregnant.

Despite the space programme still being in its relative post-war infancy, the idea of getting to Mars wasn’t all that out-there. The aforementioned von Braun had become the chief populiser of space exploration and in 1952 he published The Mars Project, outling his ideas for a manned mission to the red planet. Remember, this is Mars we’re talking about, and the idea that it might be inhabited has long maintained a hold on the imagination, at least since Percival Lowell popularised the idea in the 1890s that Mars was covered in artificial canals (an extension of astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli’s view that the planet was covered in channels, as opposed to canals built by Martians – blame translation from the Italian). Science fiction also built on the idea that we could be invaded by our nearest astronomical neighbour – the variois tellings of The War of the Worlds is probably the best example of this.

Nkoloso went along with the life on Mars theory, believing it to be inhabited by a primative culture – hence the inclusion of a missionary in his crew, although they vowed not to force Christianity on the natives (it’s interesting to put this approach to First Contact in the context of a country that had only just emerged from colonial rule by Britain – the colonised looking to become the colonisers, maybe, whilst not making the mistakes of the past? It’s not like HG Wells didn’t draw a link between his Martian invasion and European imperialism).

At any rate, the Zambian space programme (which, I should add, wasn’t sanctioned by the government, unsurprisingly) never took off; UNESCO wasn’t keen to stump up the £7 million worth of funding Nkoloso requested from them (although it would have been a bargain compared to the Apollo programme’s $25.4 billion); they were more interested in setting up CERN (the organisation responsible for the World Wide Web and the Large Hadron Collider) and moving the Abu Simbel temple to prevent it from being flooded by the Nile). The project, such as it was, died a death and Nkoloso went on to become president of the Ndola Ex-Servicemen’s Association.

It would be easy to laugh at the whole thing, and it is faintly farcical (although it would make a fantastic film, and someone should look into it – Film Zambia?), but perhaps it’s an example of the potency of two Big Ideas – this article links it to the power space exploration has over the human imagination, and I think there’s definitely something in that, but I guess there’s also something attractive about the opportunity for the little guy, however deluded, to stand up to the big dogs, even in the shadow of colonialism and Cold War superpower posturing. After all, the US may be the only country to have sent someone to a neighbouring celestial body, but Nkoloso shows us we don’t have to believe they’re the only ones who can do it.

So when the first Zambian makes it into space, he or she should spare a thought for Edward Nkoloso and his visions of Mars. The universe is vaster than we make it, and there’s always room for bigger dreams.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Sci-Fi Becomes Reality (Again)

As technology advances, there seem to be more and more moments when it appears as though science fiction is becoming real. The latest of these, reported by the Discovery Channel, is an exoplanet that orbits a binary star and may therefore have a similar sunset to Tatooine. Tatooine, for those of you who don’t know, is Luke Skywalker’s home planet in Star Wars. I hope this new planet has its own satellite, because then I can say "That’s no moon, that’s a space station!" and have a little geek out…

Meanwhile, when I saw the headline ‘Silver Found on Moon’, I had a little panic that the Outer Space Treaty might accidentally find its way into a shredder, but it turns out there isn’t enough to make it worth mining.

Yet.

Thank goodness.

Writer’s Block: Fly me to the moon

Although Stephen Hawking suggests it might be an idea to turn off the planetary lights and pretend to be out, I wrote this back in 2005 because I’m a fan of space exploration. Some of the references may be slightly dated but I still feel the same:

I don’t know why this should be so, but, having read in Moondust that only nine of the twelve men who walked on the moon are still alive, I’m a bit unsettled. I think it’s because, as the book mentions, the moon landings are often seen as the last optimistic act of the twentieth century. In a world that’s currently dealing with everything from terrorism to climate change to hurricanes, the idea of a major act of optimism is highly attractive. Part of me wants to see humans walk on Mars, simply because it would be a great historical act that doesn’t involve people killing each other.

Of course, there are the arguments against the space programme. It costs a heck of a lot of money when there are issues down here on Earth that need fixing. To be honest, I sympathise with that view, although I ask a counter-question – why is it a choice between the exploration of space and the elimination of poverty, say? Why’s it never a choice between space exploration and fighting wars? Or space exploration and the continual propping up of industries that are hurting the planet?

We’re a clever species when we put our minds to it, but we seem to get locked into cycles of destruction. We seize on anything, be it religion, or politics, or race, or land to perpetuate the darker angels of our natures. Fundamentalisms that have forgetten the fundamentals add fuel to the fire. The West spends more on helping cows to live well than they do on aid to the Third World. Knowledge increases exponentially, but I’m not so convinced about wisdom – to paraphrase Smashmouth, our brains get smart but our hearts get dumb.

So I think that’s why I’m interested in the space programme, why I’d like to see us land on Mars (or something) one day. A quarter of those who’ve walked on the moon are now gone and the rest are getting no younger, and the last optimistic act of the twentieth century slips into history, and where’s the first great optimistic act of the 21st Century, which is already getting dominated by the war on terror and climate squinkiness? Well, there is one that I can think of off the top of my head – the Make Poverty History campaign, which I also hope is a great success. I don’t want humanity to have to chose between great scientific and exploratory acts and straightening out geopolitical structures that condemn millions to poverty. I want us to prioritise and do both, and sacrifice some of the other things that have scarred our collective psyche for far too long.

Meanwhile, here’s something I blogged last year on the 30th anniversary of the first moon landing:

If I could go back in time and witness any event of the 20th Century, I think the moon landing would be top of the list. Maybe it’s my inner geek, but the whole idea of looking up and seeing the moon, that big ball of rock that’s been Earth’s companion for billions of years, and knowing that human beings have actually been up there, knowing that technical ingenuity is capable of getting people over 300,000km from home and back again, with less computer processing power than most household gizmos (probably including my microwave)… It’s kinda awe-inspiring.

Today’s the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, and you can’t move for tripping over a retrospective. I’m glad we’re seeing this – it’s hard to escape the impression that we’ve all got cynical about the subject (it was too expensive, it’s boring, it was all filmed in a desert in Arizona, whatever); now at least we’re celebrating it as an achievement. Thing is, where do we go from here? The last moon landing took place in 1972 and we’ve never been back; the Shuttle’s the space equivalant of taking the bus down to the shops, and while we all love the application of space technology such as communications satellites, is there really a public hunger for this sort of thing? I’m not convinced, and that’s why, although the next step would seem to be Mars or one of its moons, I’m not holding my breath that I’ll ever see human footprints in red martian dust. NASA are committed to returning to the moon by 2018, but…

But I want to see us go back into space. I know what people are saying – it costs too much, there are problems to be solved here on Earth. Well, yeah, but we haven’t gone beyond our galactic back garden for 37 years and you know what? Those problems still need fixing. If Brown or Obama or someone came out and gave the environmental or anti-poverty equivalant of JFK’s speech at Rice Stadium, and really meant it, I’d be ecstatic. I’m not seeing it though. Maybe we live in a more cynical age, maybe we’re all jaundiced by political short-termism and careerism, I dunno.

I’m still idealistic though. I want to know why it’s always staged as a choice between space exploration (and its resulting science) and, say, eradicating AIDS. Why is it never a choice between space exploration and dropping bombs on people? Why is it never a choice between space exploration and the money we have to throw at dealing with the greed of bankers and dodgy MP expense claims and every other instance of corruption you can think of? Why can’t we do something good at the expense of something bad?

I’m not sure my generation has had it’s moment to gather around – maybe Live Aid – and there’s another generation below me that’s in the same boat. Much as I think the Internet is hugely significant, in 40 years time I really hope I’m not sitting in front of a TV documentary celebrating Facebook. What’s our big moment going to be? I’d love it if it was putting a man or woman on Mars, but you know, I’d also love it if we cured cancer or wiped out Third World debt or pioneered a clean energy source that no-one’s even thought of yet. There’s got to be something more that can unite us beyond death and Simon Cowell.

Neil, Buzz, Michael – Thank you. I just want to know who’ll be following in your small steps and giant leaps.

And as a last word, here’s Buzz Aldrin punching the chief moon-landing-denier. Remember kids, violence is, um, wrong….